What is there to understand about a fact? - JKOnline Daily Quotes

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What is there to understand about a fact? Posted: Now, what is there to understand about a fact? There is nothing, is there? A fact is a fact, it is self-evident. The struggle to understand comes only when the thinker is trying to do something about the fact. The action of the thinker upon the fact is shaped by his memory, by his past experience; therefore, the fact is always shaped by the thinker, and therefore he never understands the fact. But if there is no thinker, but only the fact, then the fact has not to be understood - it is a fact; and when you are face to face with a fact, what happens? When there is no escape, when there is no thinker trying to give the fact a meaning to suit himself or shape it according to his particular pattern, what happens? When you are face to face with a fact, surely then you have understood it, have you not? Therefore, there is freedom from it. And such freedom is a radical freedom, it is not just a superficial reaction, a result of the mind's trying to identify itself with a particular opposite. As long as we are seeking a result there must be the thinker, there must be the process of isolation; and a person who, in his thoughts, is isolated as the thinker, can never find what is true. The so - called religious person who is seeking God is merely establishing himself as a permanent entity apart from his thoughts, and such a person can never find reality.  - New York 1st Public Talk 4th June 1950 Collected Works, Volume 6

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