Transcription
That is the first thing to understand: that there is no one to guide you, no one to tell you that you are progressing, no one to tell you or to encourage you. You have to stand completely alone in meditation. You understand what it means?
And this light can only come to yourself when you understand, or investigate into yourself, what you are. That is self-awareness, to know what you are – not according to psychologists, not according to some philosophers, not according to the speaker, but to know, to be aware of your own nature, of your own structure, of your own thinking, feeling, find out the whole structure of it. Therefore, self-knowing becomes extraordinarily important. Not the description given by another, but actually ‘what is’, what you are, not what you think you are, or what you think you should be, but what actually is going on.
You know how difficult that is? Have you ever tried it? To be aware actually what is taking place, inside, inside the skin, as it were, because we observe through the knowledge of the past. Right? Through what you have acquired as an experience, or what you have gathered from another, with that knowledge you examine, therefore, you're examining yourself from the background of the past, therefore you're not actually observing ‘what is’. So, there must be freedom to observe. And then, in that observation, the whole structure and the nature of oneself begins to unroll.
You are following all this? Please give, for this morning at least, an hour’s attention. Because very few people will tell you all this because they have self-interest, they want to form organisations, groups – you follow? – the whole structure of that business. So please, if you don’t mind, give your complete attention to what is being said.
So, to understand oneself there must be observation, and that observation can only take place now. And the now is not the movement of the past which observes the now. See the difference? I can observe the now from the past, from my past conclusions, prejudices, hopes, fears and all the rest of it. Which is the observation from the past of the present, and think I am observing the now. But the observation of the now can only take place when there is no observer who is the past. You understand this? So, observation of the now becomes extraordinarily important. Which, as we said the other day, the movement of the past, meeting the present must end there, that is the now. But if you allow it to go on then the now becomes the future, or the past, but never the actual now. I hope you understand all this.