Obscure Journal: 6

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.

Thirty-six. In our minds, fear holds greater sway than knowledge. Fear of what? Fear of losing in competition, fear of unfulfilled ambitions, fear of falling behind in the equations of greed and the pride of acquisition. The uneven development of society and civilization teaches our minds to remain bound in the shackles of servitude. The more we chase after external wealth, the more we become slaves to our own riches. If we continue this way, eventually we will possess no wealth at all—rather, we ourselves will become possessed by wealth. The more the externalities of life—furniture in our homes, clothes on our backs—devour our thoughts, the more we learn to evaluate ourselves by the price of life’s accessories, and our interest and attention toward enriching the heart gradually diminish. There is no poverty greater than that of one whose material wealth overshadows the wealth of the spirit. I used to hear: spend according to your income; now I hear: earn according to your expenditure; I say: earn and spend only as much as does not disturb your peace and comfort. What sense is there in destroying present tranquility for the illusion of future happiness? Does the owner of an 8,000-taka shirt carry more wisdom in his head than the one wearing an 800-taka shirt? The extra labor and time spent earning the additional 7,200 takas for that expensive shirt—if invested instead in reading a good book, befriending a worthy person, watching a good film, traveling to a beautiful place, listening to fine music—would that not have increased both the wealth and capacity of the heart? A wise person buys clothes, while clothes buy the fool. A donkey dressed in expensive clothes remains, in the end, merely a cheap donkey. How many inhuman beings roam around us dressed as humans! Such a society places shackles on our thoughts. We need security, we must succeed, we must walk only the socially sanctioned correct path, appeasing family and religion is mandatory duty—even if this closes all the doors of the heart, even if clinging to skeletal traditions is supposedly what life means, even if taking initiation in living according to the guru’s signals is essential lest life go astray—we remain trapped in countless such webs for eternity! Until we can free ourselves from such prejudices and beliefs, our comfort will remain the comfort of slaves. Without liberating oneself from mental servitude, self-knowledge is impossible. One who cannot know himself can never distance himself from the bonds of suffering and ignorance. True understanding of life begins not through blind obedience to tradition, but through measured doubt. Creating self-awareness is quite an arduous task, which is why most of us choose the easy, illusory path. We willingly accept systems, gurus, communities, authorities, or patterns that place our lives within a fixed, safe, worry-free framework. Such submission renders us incapable, dependent, and vulnerable. Our excessive reliance on any tradition gradually corrupts it; taking advantage of our mental weakness, those in authority themselves become corrupt, and we follow in their footsteps. We live peacefully, leaning on books, teachers, gurus, places of worship, beliefs, experiences. We feel: this is quite good, if we continue this way, all will be well, days will pass just like this. Is it truly impossible to live by rejecting the dominion of experience?

Unless we can free the mind from all past experiences, memories, knowledge, and beliefs, then whatever we see and encounter as we move through life, whenever we try to receive anything new, an invisible yet forceful presence within our minds will keep threatening us, and we will unconsciously keep pulling ourselves away from anything new. What is the path to self-knowledge? Self-awareness? Self-restraint? Self-purification? Self-exploration? Yes, all of these help a person attain self-knowledge. But this requires no renunciation of worldly life. It is impossible to gain self-knowledge by severing relationships with society, one’s family, one’s community, the people of the world. The relationship we have with our surrounding environment — if we observe and analyze the various dimensions of that relationship in different circumstances with a vigilant mind and subtle discernment, it becomes easier to determine our true nature. Which direction is our journey heading? To know this, we need to know two things: One. Where we are. Two. Where we are going. If we cannot understand what condition we are actually in, then whatever we do to change our lives will be baseless. Why can’t we reach the place of our dreams? Because we don’t even know what state we are in. The problem this creates is that we either overvalue or undervalue ourselves or our current situation. If I don’t know where I stand, then how will I recognize the right path when moving forward? Before knowing what we want to become, we need to know what I have become now. We have certain ideals and beliefs embedded in our minds about what life should be like. If we try to know ourselves through these alone, then the color that has gradually become familiar to our eyes — that thick curtain of color will not allow any other color in life to come before our eyes. I am greedy, I am hypocritical, I am envious, I am harmful, I am violent, I am sensual. The primary stage of knowing oneself is to first accept that I harbor all those dark entities within me. If I don’t accept that I am bad, then how will I become good? Whether I am beautiful or ugly, good or bad, skilled or unskilled, of sound or unsound mentality, wise or foolish, honest or dishonest — whatever I may be, I must accept it without any pleasant distortion, embrace it from the heart, only then can I free myself from the chains of darkness, and only then will the journey on the path of self-purification begin. The way an event has occurred appears one way to me, another way to someone else. Depending on environment and circumstances, the same event can appear different to different people. But one thing is common for all human beings: the application of self-knowledge in explaining any matter. When a subject is viewed through self-knowledge, it appears the same way even to multiple eyes, so multiple people see that subject through identical experience. Ignorance or lack of proper knowledge creates division or confusion in experience. The other day I saw a book: How to read a book. The question is, if one cannot know how to read a book without reading this book, then is it really possible to read that book properly? If it’s not possible, then surely this book is one that had no point in being written. There is no fixed method for reading books or gaining knowledge, similarly there is no fixed path for attaining self-knowledge. Each person’s path is different. Following any particular method means walking the path shown by some teacher, some guru, some guide, some accomplished master. Now the question arises: the knowledge gained on that path—is it self-knowledge, or borrowed knowledge? Following another’s path to knowledge destroys one’s mental freedom. There is no creative work or art in this world that one person can teach another. If that were possible, we would have found successors to all those whose names are spoken with reverence in literature, painting, music, drama, and other fields. The children of Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee would have become as memorable as their fathers. These days I see day-long workshops on methods of writing poetry. Ah, Jibanananda died and was saved! He doesn’t have to witness these circuses. The origin of various arts is never guru-oriented, always inward-oriented.

Thirty-seven. How is our true nature revealed? Certain actions of ours tell others who we are. For instance, how we speak, the manner in which we express our thoughts to everyone, how we accept or reject something, how we assign blame to others or ourselves, our reactions to joy or sorrow—these and other such matters give others an impression of us. When can we feel something eternal? When we can make our mind still, simple, dispassionate, light—then we are no longer caught in the snare of words, the abundance of information no longer obscures truth, and we do not judge or analyze anything influenced by the externalities of beings or events. On the path to knowing oneself, there is no doubt, discipline, belief, assumption, delusion, or hint; the blueprint for walking that path must be drawn through a dispassionate understanding between heart and soul. What is our thought, really? Our thought is our response or reaction to our experience or memory. When this happens, a flock of memory-pigeons comes flying, pecking continuously at our brain, telling us: do this, don’t do that, you need this, you don’t need that, thinking about this will benefit you, don’t think about that—it won’t serve you at all—such thoughts consume our mental world. As a result, the natural flow of our thinking is obstructed. We constantly and unconsciously build impenetrable or difficult-to-breach walls of prejudice, belief, morality, life-philosophy, experience, argumentation, and rules within ourselves. Consequently, we cannot accept anything as it is, but instead accept it as we are. Our knowledge of it is not founded on actual reality, but on our stubbornness, ego, or blindness. When we plant a seed in the soil, does the soil consider whether the seed is good or bad before accepting it? When the crop grows, good seeds yield good crops, bad seeds yield bad crops—isn’t that what happens? Similarly, when accepting something, if we can completely empty our mind and accept it in a non-judgmental way, we can understand its true effect on our mind. In such a state, self-realization is born within us. Without this realization, it’s impossible to think correctly about anything. We and our world are not two separate entities. When we laugh, the world doesn’t cry; when we cry, the world doesn’t laugh. Deep down, all human beings are fundamentally the same. We all have greed, dishonest thoughts, fear, ambition; our hopes, desires, dreams—their roots are embedded in essentially the same place. What makes us appear different is our society, political and economic conditions, or geographical boundaries. We are what others receive from our behavior. Killing another essentially means killing one’s own humanity. Harming another means creating with one’s own hands the path to one’s own future harm. Our relationships and our behavior toward them work like mirrors of our heart. In those mirrors, we see our true face.

We do not gain understanding about ourselves from our interpersonal relationships, because whatever we observe, we immediately construct some logic or judgment about it within ourselves. In the heat of the moment, we want to compare one incident with another irrelevant incident, and through the compulsion this creates, we decide to accept or reject someone. Relationships never survive on the strength of logic, blame, evaluation, analysis, or rigid prejudices and beliefs. We react differently in different relationships for another reason as well. Let me illustrate with an example. When I become terribly angry at something my mother says, I lose my temper completely and begin hurling harsh words at her—words I could never speak in a normal state of sound mind. If I think about it a little, I realize that if many others had said far more serious and terrible things to me instead of my mother, I might not have shown even a fraction of that outward expression of anger. So why did my mother receive such severe punishment for such a minor offense? It could be for two reasons. First: perhaps because I love my mother so much, what wouldn’t have hurt my ego much if someone else had said it, I couldn’t take lightly even when my mother said a tenth of it. Second: I know that my mother is a vulnerable person who loves me deeply. So even if I say whatever comes to mind to her, my mother won’t be able to do anything to me, or won’t do anything. When we react, we behave aggressively or gently based on the relative positions of the relationship and ourselves. What we are truly like is revealed in two ways: how gentle we can remain where we could be inflexible, and how much more flexible than necessary we can become where we are compelled to be flexible. People can be known by the manner in which they display tolerance and patience.

Thirty-eight. Many conceptions take shape within us about ourselves and the world around us. If these conceptions linger in the mind for a long time, they gradually transform into beliefs. Sometimes, after a considerable period, these beliefs can evolve into theories. Based on our experience with someone or external judgment, we can certainly form whatever conception we choose about them, but if we don’t truly know what they are actually like, then the work of knowing them properly becomes impossible. Our conception of an event doesn’t shift the event away from its actual state. In this way, conceptions, beliefs, and theories often lead us to wrong conclusions. Conception and truth are not the same thing. Conceptions arise based on our perspective, knowledge, inclinations, philosophy of life, and experience. Therefore, it is never possible to know the complete truth of any matter through conception alone. When we think about something, conceptions about it are born within us. Our likes and dislikes, the scope and capacity of our thinking, knowledge, time, and previous experiences play direct roles in our thought processes. There exists a wall between our actions and our conceptions. Experience, knowledge, and beliefs separate human beings from one another. Whenever we try to act by employing our conceptions, we end up acting as followers of distinct communities or beliefs. That is, when we act based on a conception, we must work within specific frameworks while performing that action. In such cases, is the practice of free thinking even possible? Now the question arises: what should we keep in mind when we act? If we remove conceptions, beliefs, experiences, and theories from our heads, how would we act at all? There can be different opinions on this matter, but it seems to me that anything can be done through love. No experience, conception, belief, or memory is needed to generate love within oneself. We are doing something we love to do, we want to reach somewhere we love to dream of reaching, we love to see or think about others’ reactions to what we are doing—such varied motivations help us perform any task magnificently. The world’s finest works have emerged from absolutely zero conception, experience, theory, or belief, relying solely on infinite love for the work and complete concentration. Whatever we do, we must do that work with wholehearted love and interest. But why can’t we always do this? Whenever we create a division such as “this is good, that is bad,” a kind of duality emerges in our thinking. Such duality displaces the love we have for our work. Then the scope of our work begins to narrow, and we fall away from our dream journey. Who is responsible for this? We ourselves! As a result of the inherent division in thinking, doubt arises, and we drift away from our goals. People generally prefer to unite for bad works rather than good ones; in collective human thinking, hatred always commands more respect than love. The flow of human thought follows much the same pattern. When we give shelter to doubt, doubt’s dear friend crisis arrives—crisis of conscience, crisis of understanding, crisis of enthusiasm. Well, to know what is good, is it very necessary to know what is bad? To grasp truth, must we necessarily give shelter to doubt? Is the primary step toward becoming disciplined to become intoxicated?

Must compassion for someone inevitably breed hatred for another? Does the message of peace lie in war itself? A small sapling gradually becomes a mighty tree, a potter’s wheel spinning round and round becomes an airplane’s wheel, tiny droplets of water accumulating become the ocean. Life is much the same. Small love can transform into great love, small hatred can grow into great hatred, but never does the dream of a beautiful life begin with the nightmare of an ugly one. None of us walk backward into the past. Yet many of us live in the present with the past weighing on our minds. Why do we do this? You cannot walk forward while looking backward, can you? We must not invite memories of joy by leaning on memories of pain. A weak memory is a great blessing indeed. The sharper one’s memory, the more suffering accumulates within it. Walking life’s path with such a heavy and burdened heart is truly difficult. But what is the solution? How do we keep ourselves away from dark thoughts or painful memories? Whatever we love doing, or whatever brings back the sweetness of past happy memories, or whatever fills us with boundless love for our own strength and self-respect—whenever time and opportunity allow, we can do such things and thoroughly enjoy the present.

Thirty-nine. I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; I am poor, I want to be rich; I am low, I want to be high. Everyone is running to become something, living just like this. Our entire life is a constant effort to become something. This effort contains suffering, self-sacrifice, disappointment. This struggle is what we call life. I nurture an idea in my mind. I dream that I will not remain as I am now, because I do not like my present state. I prefer to be as I want to become. I think that when my dream is fulfilled, I will become someone else. But is that really so? As I am now, the way I am, I can take this with me to the state of my dreams. What I am is part of my existence, and even if I become what I want to be, that too will be another part of my existence. Consequently, I will ultimately remain myself, though perhaps my external acceptability and position will change. Will I eat differently then from how I eat now? Will the way I behave with people change? Will the arrogance in my habits and behavior disappear? I am foolish now, I am trying to become intelligent. Well, what does it mean to be intelligent? Coating conscience with some layers of knowledge, loading the mind with words from books, embedding information in memory so it can be used when needed. All this, right? Will this eliminate my foolishness? I will no longer mistreat my household servant, will not behave unjustly with neighbors, will give everyone—rich or poor—their due respect. Will all this happen overnight just by becoming intelligent? No, it doesn’t! If these things don’t happen, then what benefit did I gain by becoming intelligent? The foolishness of the intelligent is more reprehensible than the foolishness of the fool. Rather than trying to become intelligent, if I had tried to understand why I am foolish and worked to extract myself from that ignorance, that would have been the right thing to do. Our misfortune is not that we don’t get what we want, but rather that we ourselves don’t know what we actually want. The conflicts among our dreams prevent any of them from ultimately winning. To know oneself, one must place oneself in a completely neutral position and continuously ask various questions. This requires no intelligence, no experience is useful here, no institutional knowledge or recognition can ever create anything noble. What does the self mean? It is a composite form of ideas, memories, decisions, experiences, aspirations that can or cannot be named. It is the effort to become or not become something, another name for racial, personal, or collective consciousness. Recognizing reality or truth is truly not easy. For the person who understands life, there is not much need to live by faith. What does faith actually give us? Enthusiasm? Or vigor? What activities do we actually remain very enthusiastic about doing? Going to concerts, shopping, picnicking, movies, traveling. All these things! We believe that doing these will bring us joy. Well, when do we believe? Do we believe in mountains? In sunlight? In rivers? In wind? Or in moonlight?

we do not, because we know these things exist. We believe only in those things whose existence is questionable. We believe that life contains suffering, sorrow, unfulfillment, anguish. Wherever there is life, there will be suffering. As long as there is life, there will be torment. This requires no belief. Because whether we believe it or not makes no difference; wherever there is life, these things will exist. It would be better if we simply accepted this as truth. Believing in something creates within us a kind of doubt about its existence. Therefore, the act of believing is essentially just a strategy for evading reality. We believe in the Creator, we believe in religion. But what does this actually mean? Decorating our homes by purchasing religious texts? Even a dishonest, cunning wealthy person who happens to be a believer could do this. Or performing regular worship? Anyone who is physically capable can easily pray. Or going to places of worship? Houses of worship are places of peace; if even a non-believer goes there, we can assume they will remain at peace for as long as they stay. These activities are accompaniments to religion, that is true, but practicing religion does not mean doing these things. Religion is facing life with an honest heart without fleeing from it; properly fulfilling our responsibilities in our relationships; religion is living without harming others and allowing others to live; religious merit comes not from punishment but from forgiveness; religion is the beauty of our conduct toward those who are below us in rank or social position. The religious person who spends their entire life searching for the Creator without properly fulfilling their responsibilities toward themselves, their family, and their community—the Creator always remains far from such a person. One who has no love for humanity in their heart can never truly be religious. We know very well that life is ugly, painful, surrounded by sorrow. We want some acceptable explanation, theory, moral teaching for this infinite suffering of ours—something that will entrap the cause and origin of this pain in a web of beautiful, melodious words. We are so afraid to look at what causes us pain that we flee from the source or root of our fear. Eventually that fear becomes our habit, and we simply accept that we must spend our lives in this fear. Such slavery to fear keeps us ignorant about the cause and effect of our fear. Those who believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they stopped believing in God. Those who do not believe in God fear that life would be painful for them if they believed in God. Both sides live with belief, not with truth. These two sides have two different types of societies. The inhabitants of these two societies are divided into two different ideologies. They fear truth and live by embracing belief. Human beings are naturally doubtful creatures. From the moment reasoning faculty is born, they want their doubts to disappear. Then they receive from their society, as members of that society, what they inherit as a solution to doubt: belief. Does this actually eliminate doubt? What does belief teach? Belief says: flee from doubt, do not keep any doubt in your mind, keep doubt at a distance. What does this amount to? Belief does not answer doubt; rather, it teaches us to flee from doubt and survive. If the matter ended there, there would be no objection. The real danger begins after this. Each person’s doubts are of different kinds. Faith pushes doubt away, but it can never push truth away. When truth comes and stands before us on life’s journey, each person confronts it in their own way through their understanding, conscience, and will. Since they have already dismissed doubt without explanation, they accept truth through the medium of their faith. Whenever truth is accepted or rejected through faith, divisions and conflicts arise between people, because each person remains steadfast in their own beliefs. Those whose minds and hearts are given to conflict, cruelty, deception, dishonesty, hypocrisy, and ignorance never find God. How could they? The very path they walk, hoping to receive God’s grace, is the wrong path!

Forty. How do we listen? When we clear our minds of everything, clinging to no preconceptions or beliefs, not focusing our thoughts on any particular matter, when we completely empty our mental space and listen—what happens then? We hear the distant peal of bells or the rustle of dry leaves close by, or other things we might dismiss as utterly trivial—we hear it all. Our mind doesn’t remain trapped in narrow concerns. When we listen purely for the sake of listening, without any external motive, question or compulsion, then nature’s beauty touches us, and our hearts are nurtured. When ambition, self-interest, desire, fear, or anxiety compels or encourages us to hear something, then we don’t want to hear anything that brings us no worldly gain, that doesn’t please us, that doesn’t ease our sorrows. Through listening, we either receive or reject nature’s bounty. If we decide beforehand what we will and won’t hear, and listen accordingly, we deprive ourselves of so much. Is there truly no melody in the street’s clamor? Is there no life in the sounds of livelihood? The magic of birds’ continuous chirping can only be found in that very chirping. Before the ocean’s roar and its intoxication, even the most beautiful artificial melody must fall flat. Your beloved’s call or your child’s cry is always unique—you could never find that call or cry anywhere else, not even in exchange for all life’s accumulated wealth. Often we don’t really listen; we merely receive what we need. But how many things we need are truly beautiful? Many may listen to Mozart, but how many can surrender themselves to Mozart’s beauty? Listening is a great art. We must completely still our inner selves, set aside all knowledge, free ourselves from the slavery of thought—not following preconceptions, prejudices, or rules—and with a tranquil mind, embrace not the external illusions of sound but the melody within sound, receiving the words within words. Those nursery rhymes I heard from my mother’s lips in childhood can never be erased from memory despite all efforts. Why not? “Noton noton pigeon chicks have made their nests”—could this rhyme ever be forgotten, even if we wanted? How could it be? When I heard it then, I had no purpose of memorizing rhymes to score marks in exams. Even now when I hear that rhyme, the pigeons seem to flutter before my eyes like white feathers! Days pass without hearing bird calls. Perhaps I hear them with my ears, but how many understand the beauty in those calls? When I look at a flower and am enchanted, do I sit down to analyze its name, genus, species, address? Beauty’s essence cannot be attained by examining beauty’s lineage. When has any botanist ever managed to write poetry about a rose’s beauty? Someone’s words leave an impression on the mind only when all the world’s thoughts don’t come swarming into the mind. When listening to someone, we must understand their words with our heart, keeping no thoughts, notions, or presumptions in our head—only then can we discern whether what they’re saying is true or false. When we feel joy hearing a melody, do we make any extra effort to hear that tune, or does it naturally enter our heart?

When someone tells us, “Listen to that song with attention, you’ll really like it,” we often find that we don’t enjoy the song. Yet, if we hear that same song without any special effort, or without consciously trying to make ourselves like it, or when it drifts to our ears unexpectedly during some unguarded moment, the song’s appeal does stir something in our hearts. Joy that comes unsought moves us more deeply. When we hear a moving train’s whistle, don’t some happy memories of train journeys float up unbidden in our subconscious mind? But if the mind is distracted, that whistle awakens no special appeal within us. A movie is playing on the television in front. Sitting in that room, one friend cannot study because of the TV’s sound, while another friend manages to prepare his college lessons just fine. Why does this happen? The first friend is giving extra attention to the television, or directing the lion’s share of his attention toward the TV, while the second friend is receiving the television’s sound and other sounds equally without any special effort. As a result, each sound creates the same kind of impact on his brain, and since no particular sound seems special to him, he neither accepts nor rejects any sound separately. Consequently, he lives in a kind of silence at that moment, and the television’s sound cannot disturb his studies. We don’t like everything we hear. Which words do we like? We accept, remember, or hear only those words that make us think, “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to say so many times,” or words we want to hear from the speaker or writer at that very moment. We reject, forget, or pretend to listen to all other words. The speaker is painting something in our imagination, on the canvas of our mind—a picture that is not his own conception, but rather a picture from our own thoughts that we’ve wanted to paint many times but could never paint as he has done. A bad speaker is one who imposes his words upon the audience. A good speaker says what the audience wants to hear. If the listener wishes to remain in his current state, then a good speaker will say something that makes the listener feel his present condition is as beautiful as a dream. If the listener dreams of reaching some other state, then a good speaker will convince the listener that with effort, it’s truly possible for him to reach that dream state. A good speaker is good precisely because he speaks what’s on the listener’s mind. Listening is not easy; generally, no one wants to accept another’s words, and often doesn’t even have time to reject them. So if something can be said to the listener that allows him to embrace and nurture those words within himself, then both the listener’s act of hearing and the speaker’s act of speaking become complete and meaningful. When we listen to someone’s words, our prior knowledge and experience so overwhelm our thinking that we don’t want to accept anything that seems inconsistent with our experience. As a result, we simply don’t hear such ideas or words, or if we do hear them, we hear them absentmindedly. We don’t listen to what we don’t like or don’t want to know. Hearing something truly new is indeed very difficult. I don’t love mathematics, but sitting in math class I’m compelled to listen to the teacher’s lecture. In such circumstances, I don’t truly learn mathematics—at best I temporarily lodge it in my head to pass the examination. Whether it be leaves, flowers, clouds, sunset, people, or the sky—to know anything deeply, we must first embrace it in our hearts, and only then comes the work of listening. What we do not care for, even if the world’s greatest scholar takes the utmost care in lecturing about it, will not enter our minds. This is the natural course of listening.

Forty-one. The primary crisis of modern humanity is psychological dependence. What is this? Nearly all of us are profoundly alone. We live with minds that are shallow and empty. We want someone to love us, we love someone, yet we know nothing of what love truly is. To dispel loneliness we attach ourselves to something or other. We develop a kind of dependence upon it. This might be toward someone, or toward something. When the mind remains attached in this manner, it becomes very difficult to introduce anything new into that mind. A free mind can easily receive beautiful or desirable things without any pride, attachment, anxiety, or doubt. Why do we become dependent? Mentally, we prefer to live relying on some belief, tradition, philosophy, system, or code of conduct. We seek someone who can bring us a little happiness, comfort, peace. We want security, and security means dependence. We want dependence; without it we cannot live. We want to live dependent on someone; we want someone to live dependent on us. We want to receive security; we want to give security. Why do we want this? Lately we have come to fear certainty, we prefer to remain in doubt about the world around us. We also want someone to come and remove all our doubts. We don’t want to remain as we are. Yet when we begin to be as we want to be, we start to dislike that too. Actually, we feel comfortable living in a kind of escapist, restless mental state. We want to rely on some belief, idea, theory, doctrine to push problems aside temporarily without going deep into them. Take relationships, for instance. Those relationships that are built on mutual needs inevitably move toward conflict. When two people depend on each other, they are actually using each other to achieve some purpose. I will use you for my needs, you will use me for your needs—such contractual relationships never last. Always thinking about what I’m getting from this relationship makes any relationship fragile. Whether I’m getting what I want, or whether the other person is getting what they want—such conflicts give birth to fear, jealousy, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and strife. There is no happiness in such relationships. In society too, a society created merely on needs and interests never develops healthy human relationships. When people use each other like furniture, for convenience and their own comfort, there is no love or sincerity between them. Humans can never exist in complete isolation. If someone severs their connection with one thing, simultaneously they become connected to something else. One who detaches from worldly life becomes attached to renunciation. This is the rule. To free oneself from something means to entangle oneself with something else. We are essentially what we keep ourselves connected to. We like things that are like us. As much as we use our possessions, our possessions use us just as much. Suppose everything were taken away from us.

All our knowledge, books, religion, beliefs, relationships, even all material possessions. How would we feel then? Would not infinite loneliness, emptiness, and helplessness come to devour us? Would we not wish to flee at that very moment? Where would we run? Surely in search of something that would banish our solitude and give us shelter. We cannot bear self-isolation; to live, we need someone. We want someone else to hear what we know, and we want to hear what they know. Someone does well in their career, many people swarm around them, having reached the pinnacle of success they have been the object of everyone’s envy for who knows how long—yet look closely, and see what infinite emptiness, loneliness, and solitude devours them from within at every moment. What does such a person do then? They seek pleasure and entertainment, go to places of worship, do social service, chat with friends. What else can they do? They too must live! The questioning of conscience and the response of conscience—the union of these two creates the conflict of conscience. Solitude and connection—the joining of these two creates a similar psychological struggle, and so we try to escape and survive the loneliness and emptiness of our present moment. It is easily understood that the philosophy of being alone and the philosophy of loneliness are not the same thing. Wanting to be alone is like declaring revolution against the entire arrangement of society. To live outside society while living within it requires great capability and self-conviction. Such living is living against the current. Yet this too has its necessity. As long as we live clinging to some person, society, belief, idea, object, or opinion, no kind of self-revelation occurs within us. The first step in knowing oneself is to detach oneself from all externalities and attachments. Not everyone can do this. Only those who dedicate themselves to the path of self-knowledge can show such courage.

Forty-two. Learning anything with an unsettled mind is impossible. The most effective way to learn something new is to completely empty the mind of what we have learned before and journey with beginner’s knowledge. The experience gained from previous knowledge creates obstacles in the path of receiving new knowledge. Even the most sublime knowledge borrowed from others cannot lead us to the discovery of new understanding. One can never search for truth while binding oneself through any particular self-satisfying knowledge. The path to truth is not fixed; each person’s truth takes a different form. But what is learning, really? Is it adding something new to what we already know, making our bag of experience heavier? Or is it taking our lives through experiences we don’t know, experiences we haven’t yet had? Learning doesn’t mean cultivating memory or loading the brain with knowledge and information, but rather the ability to think clearly and soundly without any delusion; learning begins not from belief or assumption, but from actual reality. No one can ever be given knowledge through influence, intimidation, force, or by dangling carrots of reward and encouragement before their eyes. Nothing can be learned through comparison or competition with others; this only creates a kind of fear toward learning. When I have already accepted someone as superior to me, my subconscious mind will naturally obstruct me repeatedly if I try to learn more than that person. To arrange one’s life, one must compete only with oneself. In this battle, learning is more urgent than acquiring knowledge. Learning and knowledge acquisition are not the same thing. Learning is an ongoing process. What most of us do is store knowledge as memory, carefully preserve that memory in our bag of experience, and use it in various ways when needed. This is experience, knowledge, or at best tradition; but it is not learning in any way. The life-learning of an uneducated beggar may be worth far more than the erudition of a learned scholar. Knowledge and self-knowledge are two different things. The more someone knows themselves, the more self-knowledge is born within them. And the more someone knows the world around them, the more knowledge is born within them. Becoming self-aware is much more difficult than becoming knowledgeable. A top researcher-professor at a university can be very knowledgeable while keeping their self-knowledge at zero. Accumulating various facts and knowledge within oneself, or knowing about them, is not the same as learning. There are many wise and learned intellectuals who have vast experience and knowledge about the external world, but perhaps the thought of exploring their inner world has never even occurred to them. We call such people knowledgeable and honor them; but the honor and level of knowledge of the self-aware is far above that of the merely knowledgeable. The work of learning is always a present process; as soon as we have learned something, it becomes past, present learning transforms into past knowledge. From whatever we have turned into knowledge, we can learn about other related matters, we can brilliantly use that knowledge-gained experience in various similar branches of knowledge, but we cannot learn anything new from it in any way. Knowledge is always old, and learning is always new. Nature teaches us every moment. Some people keep learning throughout their lives, while others simply live out their days acquiring that learning-derived knowledge. Therefore, the place of the student of nature is higher than that of the knower of nature.

We must come to know ourselves—what our heart and soul desire, understand what these two entities are made of; we must contemplate the significance of our total existence; we must prepare ourselves to build a bridge between where we are and where we wish to go. None of this is possible while remaining within the safe, untroubled, complacent circle of our past experiences or limited thoughts. How can eyes clouded by the mists of yesterday’s stage performances savor the scenes of a new theater? We typically learn through books, in the light of experience, or under someone’s guidance. What we should do, what we cannot do, what we may think, what need not be thought, how we should feel, how we should react—all these psychosomatic processes become embedded in our knowledge and experience through various analyses of cause and effect, investigations, introspective examinations, and studies. Whatever we weave into our memory, we later apply appropriately according to environment, circumstances, and needs. An extraordinary scholar essentially keeps himself bound in chains of certain experiences and knowledge. At every stage of his life, the influence of memory and accumulated learning is starkly evident. For such a person, it becomes difficult to swim freely in nature’s and the heart’s vast ocean. From the rumination of experience and knowledge, whatever else may emerge, the work of learning something new simply does not happen. If we confine ourselves to the safe house where we have lived for centuries upon centuries, how shall we discover new dwellings? We find comfort in placing ourselves under various authorities. Living in mental servitude may be comfortable, but it brings no honor. Consciously, we ultimately choose to remain within certain personal, familial, social, and state protective barriers. Or we blindly imitate certain gurus, teachers, accomplished beings whose philosophy and teachings we accept as suitable for ourselves. I am not saying that staying in some recognized shelter is wrong, but at such times one must fully and consciously employ one’s judgment, consideration, conscience, and subtle analytical powers. The construction of a modern building in any location is impossible without destroying the pre-existing dilapidated structure there. Similarly, mental reconstruction is impossible without the complete elimination of traditional thinking.