When the mind sees itself — sees how its own parts actually work — the true weight of thought becomes clear. This seeing is not just conceptual; even the brain changes as a result of it. And this kind of insight often arrives only as a glimpse.
Until now, the mind and its parts have never seen these glimpses. They act as if they are the only ground there is. But when consciousness is touched by life directly, it becomes clear to itself that life’s energy runs deeper than thought.
This insight can come in flashes. And on seeing such a flash, the mind reacts — it starts a process built from memory, a process that feels different, feels deeper, than the ordinary. Take religious passion, for example: it shifts the mind’s attention from the worldly to the otherworldly, but the mechanism stays exactly the same — there is still a thinker, and there is still thought turning into action.
At this point, two paths open for the mind. It can cover the glimpse back up. Or it can let the light widen.
This mind, with all its faculties, is a house — a dark house. It has every possibility of staying dark, because its faculties are not intelligent in themselves; they simply function together, mechanically, dependent on one another. But on those rare occasions when the mind sees these glimpses — these small cracks — something in the human being is moved to meditate, to contemplate: I am not this house. This mind, this thought, is a mechanical process running continuously, in waking and in sleep alike.
This house is not “me.” It is not “mine.” I never belonged here.
This physical and mental life goes on living, and goes on dying, entirely on its own. I only think that I am the one living it, and I call that “my life.” This endless chain of thought — in dreaming or in waking — never lets the human mind go beneath itself. And in deep sleep, without dreams, there is no capacity for awareness at all. So this “life” of mine is nothing but accumulated knowledge, and what I call living is simply that accumulation being used.
But stop, for a moment. Look at yourself — first at the physical, then at the mental level. You are utterly unique in the whole cosmos; nothing else is your mirror image. Now break this house — the house built from the dead thoughts of tradition that you’ve accumulated — and stand in the sun. Let its unfiltered rays baptize you. Let every pore of you breathe fresh air. Any veil makes it unclean; nakedness alone carries the wisdom that radiates from within.
Smiling at glimpses is not enough — break the house, and laugh in the light. This is meditation, for all time. There is nothing this being can gain from life; the entire effort is to lose what was never its own to begin with. This is liberation — the free flow of wind through an open garden that was once choked with the stale air of closed, limited thought.
There is no religion here. Only liberation. To hold on, and to try to let go — both, in the end, cause the same pain that thought suffers endlessly. Must the mind not simply drop both — the holding and the force of trying to hold — and just be, and let be? That is what brings this great house down.
Do not run from room to room chasing a glimpse. Every room is nothing but walls, and every wall was built — by religions, by gurus, by society, by nations, by leaders. Let the walls fall. The rooms will disappear on their own.