It may be worthwhile to spend some time in trying to find out if life has any significance at all. Not the life one leads, because modern existence has very little meaning. One gives intellectual significance to life, a theoretical , theological , intellectual or mystical meaning to it, one tries to search out a deep meaning as some writers and philosophers have done over the years amidst the despair of their hopeless existence, inventing some vital deep intellectual reason. And it seems to me that it would be very much worthwhile if we could find out for ourselves, not emotionally or intellectually , but actually , factually if there is in life, anything sacred. We may live life seventy years , spending forty years in office , within the routine, the boredom and the loneliness of it all has little meaning.Realizing this both in the orient and in the west, one then gives vague significance to a symbol, to an idea, to “God”, which are obviously the inventions of the insecure mind. Now if you ask me “What is your thought concerning God ?” you have already formulated your own thought, have you not? Thought can create “God” and experience that which it has created. But surely that is not true experience. It is only its own projection that the thought experiences, therefore it is not real. But if you and i can see the truth in this, then perhaps we shall experience something much greater than a mere projection of thought.

At this present time when there is greater and greater insecurity outwardly, there is also a yearning for inward security.Since we cannot find security outside, we seek it in an idea, in thought, and so we create that, a great saviour we call God, and that concept becomes our security. Now a mind that seeks security surely cannot find the real, the true. To understand that which is beyond time , the fabrications of thought must come to an end. Thought cannot exist without words, symbols or images. And only when the mind is quiet, free of its own creations, there is a possibility of finding out what is real. So merely to ask if there is or is not God is an immature response to a problem !

To experience, to realise that which is beyond time , we must obviously understand the process of time. The mind is the result of time, it is based on the memories of yesterday. And is it possible to be free from the manipulations of yesterdays that is the process of time? What is important then, is not the cultivation of belief or disbelief, but to understand the process of the fragile human mind. It is in the mind, it is thought that creates time.Thought is time, and whatever thought projects must be of time. And thought cannot possibly go beyond itself. To discover what is beyond time , thought must come to an end, and that is the most difficult thing because the ending of thought does not come through discipline, through control, through denial or suppression. Thought ends only when we understand the whole process of thinking and to understand thinking there must be self knowledge. Thought is the “self” , thought is the word that identifies itself as “me” and at whatever level the self is places (high or low), it is still within the field of thought.

To find “God”that which is beyond time, we must understand the process of thought,that is the process of oneself.The self is very complex. It is not at any one level, but is made of many thoughts, many entities, each in contradiction with the others.There must be a constant awareness to all of them, an awareness in which there is no choice, no condemnation, no comparison: that is, there must be a capacity to see things as they are without distorting or translating them. The moment we judge or translate what is seen, we distort this process outright.To discover reality or God, there can be no belief beacuase acceptance or denail is a barrier to discovery.We all want to be secure both outwardly and inwardly, and the mind must uderstand that the search for security is an illusion.It is only the mind that is insecure, completely free from any form of possession that can discover and this is an ardorous task. It does not mean retiring into the woods, or to a monastery, or isolating oneself in some peculiar belief, on the contrary nothing can exist in isolation. To be is to be related, it is only in the midst of relationship that we can spontaneously discover ourselves as we are. It is this very discovery of ourselves as we are , without any sense of condemnation or justification , that brings about a fundamental transformation in what we are. And that is perhaps to me the beginning of wisdom…