Black Belt

Self-Knowledge

Self-knowledge means going very deeply into oneself without assuming anything.

If we can very humbly and simply see the implications of all this, be aware, without assuming anything, of how our minds operate and what our thinking is based on, then I think we shall realise the extraordinary contradiction that exists in this whole process of identification. After all, it is because I feel empty, lonely, miserable, that I identify myself with my country, and this identification gives me a sense of wellbeing, a feeling of power. Or for the same reason I identify myself with a hero or with a saint. But if I can go into this process of identification very deeply, I will see that the whole movement of my thinking and my activity, however noble, is essentially based on the continuance of myself in one form or another.

Now, once I see that, if I realise it, feel it with my whole being, then religion has quite a different meaning. Then religion is no longer a process of identifying myself with God, but rather the coming into being of a state in which there is only that reality, and not the “me”. But this cannot be a mere verbal assertion, it is not just a phrase to be repeated.

That is why it is very important to have self-knowledge, which means going very deeply into oneself without assuming anything, so that the mind has no deceptions, no illusions, so that it does not trick itself into visions and false states. Then perhaps it is possible for the enclosing process of the self to come to an end – but not through any form of compulsion or discipline, because the more you discipline the self, the stronger the self becomes. What is important is to go into all this very deeply and patiently, without taking anything for granted, so that one begins to understand the ways, the purposes, the motives and directions of the mind. Then the mind comes to a state in which there is no identification at all, and therefore no effort to be something; then there is the cessation of the self, and that is the real.

Although we may swiftly, fleetingly experience this state, the difficulty for most of us is that the mind clings to the experience and wants more of it; and the very wanting of more is again the beginning of the self. That is why it is very important, for those of us who are really serious in these matters, to be inwardly aware of the process of our own thinking, to silently observe our motives, our emotional reactions, and not merely say, ‘I know myself very well’ – for actually one does not. You may know your reactions and motives superficially, at the conscious level, but the self, the “me”is a very complex affair, and to go into the totality of the self needs persistent and continuous inquiry without a motive, without an end in view. Such inquiry is surely a form of meditation.

That immense reality cannot be found through any organisation, through any church, through any book, through any person or teacher. One has to find it for oneself – which means that one has to be completely alone, uninfluenced. But we are all the result of so many influences, so many pressures, known and unknown; and that is why it is very important to understand these many pressures, influences, and be dissociated from them all, so that the mind becomes extraordinarily simple, clear. Then perhaps it will be possible to experience that which cannot be put into words.