The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
The intellect is not the means of creation, and creation does not take place through the functioning of the intellect; on the contrary, there is creation when the intellect is silent.
The first thing to realize in meditation is that there is no authority, that the mind must be completely free to examine, to observe, to learn. And so there is no following, no accepting, no obedience.
Goodness has no opposite. Most of us consider goodness as the opposite of the bad or evil and so throughout history in any culture goodness has been considered the other face of that which is brutal. So man has always struggled against evil in order to be good; but goodness can never come into being if there is any form of violence or struggle.
Teaching is not the mere imparting of information but the cultivation of an inquiring mind which will penetrate into the question of what is religion and not merely accept the established religions, churches, and rituals.
As we are concerned with what others think of us, so we are anxious to know all about them; and from this arise the crude and subtle forms of snobbishness and the worship of authority. Thus we become more and more externalized and inwardly empty. The more externalized we are, the more sensations and distractions there must be, and this gives rise to a mind that is never quiet, that is not capable of deep search and discovery.
Without total freedom, every perception, every objective regard, is twisted. It is only the man who is totally free that can look and understand immediately. Freedom implies really, doesn't it, the total emptying of the mind. To completely empty the whole content of the mind — that is real freedom.