Quote of the Day

Aug 3, 2023
When the me is not, then you are related; in that there is no separation whatsoever. Probably one has not felt that, the total denial (not intellectually but actually) the total cessation of the 'me'. And perhaps that's what most of us are seeking, sexually or through identification with something greater. But that again, that process of identification with something greater is the product of thought; and thought is old (like the me, the ego, the I, it is of yesterday) it is always old. The question then arises: how is it possible to let go this isolating process completely, this process which is centred in the 'me'. How is this to be done? You understand the question? How am I (whose every activity of everyday life is of fear, anxiety, despair, sorrow, confusion and hope) how is the 'me' which separates itself from another, through identification with God, with its conditioning, with its society, with its social and moral activity with the State and so on - how is that to die, to disappear so that the human being can be related? Because if we are not related, then we are going to live at war with each other. There may be no killing of each other because that is becoming too dangerous, except in far away countries. How can we live so that there is no separation, so that we really can co-operate?

There is so much to do in the world, to wipe away poverty, to live happily, to live with delight instead of with agony and fear, to build a totally different kind of society, a morality which is above all morality. But this can only be when all the morality of present day society is totally denied. There is so much to do and it cannot be done if there is this constant isolating process going on. We speak of the 'me' and the 'mine', and the 'other' - the other is beyond the wall, the me and mine is this side of the wall. So how can that essence of resistance, which is the me, how can that be completely 'let go'? Because that is really the most fundamental question in all relationship, as one sees that the relationship between images is not relationship at all and that when that kind of relationship exists there must be conflict, that we must be at each other's throats.

When you put yourself that question, inevitably you'll say: 'Must I live in a vacuum, in a state of emptiness?' I wonder if you have ever known what it is to have a mind that is completely empty. You have lived in space that is created by the 'me' (which is a very small space). The space which the 'I', the self-isolating process, has built between one person and another, that is all the space we know - the space between itself and the circumference - the frontier which thought has built. And in this space we live, in this space there is division. You say: 'If I let myself go, or if I abandon the centre of 'me', I will live in a vacuum'. But have you ever really let go the 'me', actually, so that there is no 'me' at all? Have you ever lived in this world, gone to the office in that spirit, lived with your wife or with your husband? If you have lived that way you will know that there is a state of relationship in which the 'me' is not, which is not Utopia, which is not a thing dreamt about, or a mystical, nonsensical experience, but something that can be actually done - to live at a dimension where there is relationship with all human beings.
Talks in Europe 1968 | Paris 4th Public Talk 25th April 1968 Read full text