'How is the mind to be made quiet?'
You understand? That’s the natural, normal question.
That's a wrong question,
and in that you are caught.
You yourself see that when you listen to something,
when you see a beautiful mountain, a tree,
a bird on the wing,
your mind must be totally quiet.
You see that, you understand it, you do it.
And you say,
‘If I could make my mind so quiet, then everything would be simple.’
Then you ask: 'How is it to be made quiet?'
When you ask that question, there are all the gurus,
the teachers, the students,
the professionals that say, ‘I will teach you how to be quiet.’
Right? You are following all this?
So they have a system.
As I said, we are going to tear all this to pieces to find out.
You may belong to all of them,
probably you do, you’ve got your own system of meditation,
or system of this or that.
And we are going to look into all that.
System implies a goal, an end,
and a means to that end, doesn’t it?
Please listen to this carefully.
There is the Christian method,
the Hindu method,
the Zen method,
the various methods,
including the transcendental methods.
Method being a means to an end –
the end you have projected.
You have projected the end,
calling it enlightenment, God, whatever it is,
whether you have projected it, or your guru,
or your teacher, or your priest,
they have projected it for you, and you accept it.
And then they offer you the method to achieve that end.
The end is your projection.
And when you practise the method,
which promises the achievement of that end,
it is the process of self-hypnosis.
Got it?
You know, I used to know a man –
for twenty-five years he practised meditation,
nothing else but that.
He left his family, went off into the woods,
lived a monastic life, and meditated.
And unfortunately, somebody brought him to one of the talks
in which the speaker was talking about meditation,
amongst other things,
and pointed out that
this form of meditation with a system and an end is self-hypnosis.
He came to see me the next day, and he said,
‘You are perfectly right.
Twenty-five years I’ve practised meditation,
and now I realise that I have wasted my life.’
You know, that requires a great deal of perception and vitality,
and energy, to acknowledge something that’s not true
that you have been doing.