The centre, the observer, is memory of what has been, whether of yesterday or a thousand years. The centre is tradition, the conditioned state put together by time, chronologically and psychologically. The centre is the accumulation of knowledge and experience. The centre is always the past, so it is not a living thing; it is a dead memory of what has been. The centre creates a very small space around itself, concerned with itself endlessly, its activities, its propositions, its ideas. That space can expand through various tricks of thought, of compulsion, by drugs, but it is the space which the centre has created, and so there is no freedom and no peace. Only when there is space is there freedom, and that space cannot exist as long as there is an observer. Without that space and having no freedom, man is everlastingly seeking, searching, wanting, hoping, and thereby living in endless sorrow and misery. Public Talk 6 in Ojai, California, 13 November 1966 Read more |