Well, what is it that you feel when you feel "I"? I'll tell you. What do you do when somebody
 says "Pay attention"? What is the difference between looking at something and taking a
 hard look at it? Or between hearing something and listening intently? What's the difference?
 What's the difference between waiting while something goes on and enduring it? Why? The
 difference is this. That when you pay attention, instead of just looking, you screw up your
 face. You frown and stare. That is a muscular activity around here. When you will, you grit
 your teeth or clench your fists. When you endure or control yourself, you pull yourself
 together physically, and therefore you get uptight. You hold your breath. You do all
 kinds of muscular things to control the functioning of your nervous system, and none of them have
 the slightest effect on the proper operation of the nervous system. If you stare at things,
 you will rather fuzz the image than see them clearly. If you listen intently by concentrating
 on muscles round the ears, you will be so much attending to muscles here that you won't
 hear things properly, and you may get singing in the ears. If you tighten up with your body
 to pull yourself together, all you do is constrict yourself. I remember in school, I sat next
 to a boy who had great difficulty in learning to read. And what they always say to children
 is try. If you can't do something, you must try. So the boy tries. And what does he do?
 When he's trying to get out words, he grunts and groans as if he were lifting weights.
 And the teacher's impressed. The boy is really trying, gives him B for effort. He's doing
 it. Has nothing to do with it. Now, we all make this muscular straining with the thought
 that it's achieving psychological results, the sort of psychological results it's intended
 to achieve. Now, all this amounts to is it's like you're taking off in a jet plane. You
 have got a mile down the runway, and the thing isn't up in the air yet, and you get nervous.
 So you start pulling at your seatbelt. That's what it is. Now, that is a chronic feeling.
 We have it in us all the time, and it corresponds to the word "I." That's what you feel when
 you say "I." You feel that chronic tension. Because when an organ is working properly,
 you don't feel it. If you see your eye, you've got cataract. If you hear your ears, you've
 got singing in your ears, you know, getting in the way of hearing. When you are fully
 functioning, you are unaware of the organ. When you're thinking clearly, your brain isn't
 getting in your way. Actually, of course, you are seeing your eyes in the sense that
 everything you see out in front of you is a condition in the optic nerves at the back
 of the skull. That's where you're aware of all this. But you're not aware of the "I"
 as the "I." I'm talking about the optical "I." So when we are aware of the ego "I,"
 we are aware of this chronic tension inside ourselves. And that's not us. It's a futile
 tension. So when we get the illusion, the image of ourselves, married to a futile tension,
 you've got an illusion married to a futility. And then you wonder why "I" can't do anything.
 Why "I" feel in the face of all the problems of the world, impotent. And why "I" somehow
 cannot manage to transform "I." Now here we get to the real problem. Because we're always
 telling each other that we should be different. Now I'm not going to tell you that tonight.
 Why not? Because I know you can't be. Nor can I. That may sound depressing, but I'll
 show you it isn't. It's very heartening. But everybody, you see, who is at all sensitive
 and awake to their own problems and human problems, is trying to change himself. We
 know we can't change the world unless we change ourselves. If we are all individually selfish,
 we're going to be collectively selfish. If we don't really love people and only pretend
 to, somehow we've got to find a way to love. After all, it's said in the Bible, "Thou shalt
 love the Lord thy God, and your neighbor as yourself." You must love. Yeah, we all agree,
 sure. But we don't. In fact, one psychologist very smartly asked a patient, "With whom are
 you in love against?" And this is particularly becomes appalling when we enter into the realm
 of higher things, by which I mean spiritual development. Everybody these days is interested
 in spiritual development. And wisely, because we want to change our consciousness. Many
 people are well aware that this egocentric consciousness is a hallucination. And that
 they presume it's the function of religion to change it. Because that's what the Zen
 Buddhists and yogis and all these people in the Orient are doing. They are changing their
 state of consciousness to get something called satori, or mystical experience, or nirvana,
 or moksha, or what have you. And everybody around here is really enthused about that,
 because you don't get that in church. I mean, there have been Christian mystics, but the
 church has been very quiet about them. In the average church, all you get is talk. There's
 no meditation, no spiritual discipline. They tell God what to do interminably, as if he
 didn't know. And then they tell the people what to do, as if they could or even wanted
 to. And then they sing religious nursery rhymes. And then, to cap it all, the Roman Catholic
 Church, which did at least have an unintelligible service, which was, you know, it was real
 mysterious and suggestive, vast magic going on. They went and put the thing into bad English.
 And they took away incense, and they took away, and they became a bunch of Protestants.
 And the thing was just terrible. So now all these Catholics are at loose ends. As Claire
 Booth Luce put it, not to be a pun, but she said, you know, it's no longer possible to
 practice contemplative prayer at Mass. Because you're being advised, exhorted, edified all
 the time. And it becomes a bore. Think of God listening to all those prayers. I mean,
 do have, I mean, talking about grieving the Holy Spirit. It's just awful. People have
 no consideration for God at all. But in pursuing these spiritual disciplines, yoga and Zen
 and so forth, and also psychotherapy, there comes up a big difficulty. And the big difficulty
 is this. I want to find a method whereby I can change my consciousness. But the, therefore,
 to improve myself. But the self that needs to be improved is the one that is doing the
 improving. And so I'm rather stuck. I find out the reason that I think I believe, say,
 in God is that I sure hope that somehow God will rescue me. In other words, I want to
 hang on to my own existence. And I feel rather shaky about doing that for myself, but I just
 hope there's a God who will take care of it. Or if I could be loving, I would have a better
 opinion of myself. I'd feel better about it. I could face myself, as people say, if I were
 more loving. So the unloving me, somehow, by some gimmickry, has to turn itself into
 a loving me, and this is just like trying to lift yourself off the ground with your
 own bootstraps. It can't be done. And that's why religion, in practice, mainly produces
 hypocrisy and guilt, because of the constant failure of these enterprises. Oh, people go
 and study Zen, and they come back and say, "Wow, getting rid of your ego is a superhuman
 task. I assure you it's going to be very, very difficult to get rid of your ego. You're
 going to have to sit for a long time, and you're going to get the sorest legs. It's
 hard work, and all you wretched kids who think you're getting rid of your ego on part or
 something or other, and easy yoga, you don't know what you're in for when it really comes
 down to the nitty-gritty. Well, you know, the biggest ego trip going is getting rid
 of your ego. And the joke of it all is your ego doesn't exist. There's nothing to get
 rid of. It's an illusion, as I tried to explain. But you still want to ask how to stop the
 illusion. Now, who's asking? I mean, do you think in the ordinary sense in which you use
 the word "I," how can I stop identifying myself with the wrong me? Well, the answer
 is simply you can't. Now, the Christians put this in their way when they say that mystical
 experience is a gift of divine grace. Man as such cannot achieve this experience. It
 is a gift of God, and if God doesn't give it to you, there's no way of getting it. Now,
 that is solidly true. You can't do anything about it because you don't exist. Well, you
 say, that's pretty depressing news. But the whole point is it isn't depressing news. It
 is the joyous news. There's a Zen poem which puts it like this, talking about it means
 the mystical experience, satori, the realization that you are the eternal energy of the universe,
 like Jesus did. It says like this, "You cannot catch hold of it, nor can you get rid of it.
 In not being able to get it, you get it. When you speak, it's silent. When you are silent,
 it speaks." Now, in not being able to get it, you get it. Because this whole feeling,
 what Krishnamurti is trying to explain to people, for example, when he says, "Why do
 you ask for a method? There is no method. All methods are simply gimmicks for strengthening
 your ego. So how do we not do that?" He says, "You're still asking for a method. There is
 no method. If you really understand what your I is, you will see there is no method." This
 is so sad. But it's not. This is the gospel, the good news. Because if you cannot achieve
 it, if you cannot transform yourself, that means that the main obstacle to mystical vision
 has collapsed. That was you. What happens? You can't do anything about it. You're at
 your wit's end. What are you going to do? Commit suicide? But supposing you just put
 that off for a little while. Wait and see what happens. You can't control your thoughts.
 You can't control your feelings. Because there is no controller. You are your thoughts and
 your feelings. And they're running along, running along, running along. Just sit and
 watch them. Here they go. You're still breathing, aren't you? Still growing your hair? Still
 seeing and hearing? Are you doing that? I mean, is breathing something that you do?
 Do you see? I mean, do you organize the operations of your eyes? Know exactly how to work those
 rods and cones in the retina? Do you do that? It's a happening. It happens. So you can feel
 all this happening. Your breathing is happening. Your thinking is happening. Your feeling is
 happening. You're hearing. You're seeing. The clouds are happening across the sky. The
 sky is happening blue. The sun is happening shining. There it is. All this happening.
 And may I introduce you? This is yourself. This begins to be a vision of who you really
 are. And that's the way you function. You function by happening, that is to say, by
 spontaneous occurrence. And this is not a state of affairs that you should realize.
 I cannot possibly preach it to you, because the minute you start thinking, "I should understand
 that," this is this stupid notion again of "I should bring it about," when there is no
 you to bring it about. See, that's why I'm not preaching. You can only preach to egos.
 All I can do is to talk about what is. It amuses me to talk about what is, because it's
 wonderful. I love it. And therefore I like to talk. If I get paid for it, then I make
 my living. And sensible people get paid for doing what they enjoy doing. So this is not
 going to, you see, the whole approach here is not to convert you, not to make you over,
 not to improve you, but for you to discover that if you really knew the way you are, things
 would be sane. But you see, you can't do that. You can't make that discovery, because you're
 in your own way. So long as you think, "I'm I." So long as that hallucination blocks it.
 And the hallucination disappears only in the realization of its own futility. When at last
 you see you can't do it. You cannot make yourself over. You cannot really control your own mind.
 You see, when we try to control the mind, a lot of yoga teachers try to get you to control
 your own mind, mainly to prove to you that you can't do it. There's nothing, you know,
 a fool who persists in his folly will become wise. So what they do is they speed up the
 folly. And so you get concentrating. And you can have a certain amount of superficial and
 initial success by a process commonly called self-hypnosis. And you can think you're making
 progress. And a good teacher will let you go along that way for a while until he really
 throws you with one. Why are you concentrating? See, Buddhism works this way. Buddha said,
 if you suffer, you suffer because you desire. And your desires are either unattainable or
 always being disappointed or something. So cut out desire. So those disciples went away
 and stamped on desire, jumped on desire, cut the throat of desire, and threw out desire.
 But then they came back and Buddha said, but you are still desiring not to desire. They
 wanted how to get rid of that. So when you see that that's nonsense, there naturally
 comes over you a quietness. In seeing that you cannot control your mind, you realize
 there is no controller. What you took to be the thinker of thoughts is just one of the
 thoughts. What you took to be the feeler of the feelings, which was that chronic muscular
 strain, is just one of the feelings. What you took to be the experiencer of experience
 is just part of the experience. So there isn't any thinker of thoughts, feeler of feelings.
 We get into that bind because we have a grammatical rule that verbs have to have subjects. And
 the funny thing about that is that verbs are processes and subjects are nouns, which are
 supposed to be things. How does a noun start a verb? How does a thing put a process into
 action? Obviously it can't. But we always insist that there is this subject called the
 knower. And without a knower, there can't be knowing. That's just a grammatical rule.
 It isn't a rule of nature. In nature, there's just knowing, like you're feeling it. And
 I have to say you are feeling it, as if you were somehow different from the feeling. When
 I say I am feeling, what I mean is there is feeling here. When I say you are feeling,
 I mean there is feeling there. I have to say even there is feeling. What a cumbersome language
 we have. Chinese is easier. You don't have to put all that in. You can say things twice
 as fast in Chinese as you can in any other language.
 So anyway, when you come to see that you can do nothing, that the play of thought, of feeling,
 etc., just goes on by itself as a happening, then you are in a state which we will call
 meditation. And slowly, without being pushed, your thoughts will come to silence. That is
 to say, all the verbal, symbolic chatter going on in the skull. Don't try and get rid of
 it because that will again produce the illusion that there's a cola. Just, it goes on, it
 goes on, it goes on, and finally it gets tired of itself and bored and stops. And so then
 there's a silence. And this is a deeper level of meditation. And in that silence, you suddenly
 begin to see the world as it is. And you don't see any past, you don't see any future. You
 don't see any difference between yourself and the rest of it. That's just an idea. You can't
 put your hand on the difference between myself and you. You know, you can't blow it, you
 can't bounce it, you can't pull it. It's just an idea. You can't find any material body.
 Because material body is an idea. So is spiritual body. This is somebody's philosophical notions.
 See reality isn't material. That's an idea. Reality isn't spiritual. That's an idea. Reality
 is... So we find, if I've got to put it back into words, that we live in an eternal now.
 You've got all the time in the world because you've got all the time there is, which is
 now. And you are this universe. You feel a strange feeling when ideas don't define the
 differences. You feel that other people's doings are your doings. And that makes it
 very difficult to blame other people. If you're not sophisticated theologically, you may,
 of course, run screaming in the streets and say that you're God. In a way, that's what
 happened to Jesus, because he wasn't sophisticated theologically. He only had Old Testament
 biblical theology behind him. If he'd had Hindu theology, he could have put it more
 subtly. But it was only that rather primitive theology of the Old Testament. And that was
 a conception of God as a monarchical boss. And you can't go around and say, "I'm boss's
 son." If you're going to say, "I'm God," you must allow it for everyone else, too. But
 this was a heretical idea from the point of view of Hebrew theology. And so what they
 did with Jesus was they pedestalized him. That means kicked him upstairs so that he
 wouldn't be able to influence anyone else. And only you may be God. And that stopped
 the gospel cold right at the beginning. It couldn't spread.
 Anyway, this is therefore to say that the transformation of human consciousness through
 meditation is frustrated. So long as we think of it in terms of something that I myself
 can bring about by some kind of wangle, by some sort of gimmick. Because you see, that
 leads to endless games of spiritual one-upmanship and of guru competitions. Of "my guru is
 more effective than your guru." "My yoga's faster than your yoga." "I'm more aware of
 myself than you are." "I'm humbler than you are." "I'm sorry I'm


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