Bombay, 6 January 1960:- THE MIND IS the known being that which has been experienced. With that measure, we to know the unknown. But the known can obviously never know the unknown; it can know only what it has experienced, what it has been taught, what it has gathered. Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness. If I feel that I can capture the unknown with the capacities of the known, I make a lot of noise; I talk, I reject, I choose, I try to find a way to it. But if the mind realizes its own absolute insolute incapacity to know the unknown, if it perceives that it cannot take a single step towards the unknown, then what happens? Then the mind becomes utterly silent. It is not in despair, it no longer seeking anything. The movement of search can only be from the known to the known, & all that the mind can do is to be aware that this movement will never uncover the unknown. Any movement on the part of the known is still within the field of the known. That is the only thing I have to perceive; that is the only thing the mind has to realize. Then, without any stimulation, without any purpose, the mind is silent. Eddington, Pennsyvania, 12 June 1936:- THE MECHANISTIC VIEW of life is that, as man is merely the product of environment & of various reactions, perceptible only to the senses, the environment & reactions should be controlled by a rationalized system that will allow the individual to function only within its frame. Please comprehend the full significance of this mechanistic view of life. It conceives on supreme, transcendental entity, nothing that has a continuity; this view of life admits no survival of & kind after death; life is but a brief span leading to annihilation. As man is nothing but the result of environmental reactions, concerned with the pursuit of his own egotistic security, he has helped to create a system of exploitation, cruelty, & war. So his activities must be shaped & guided by changing & controlling the environment. From Talks in Europe 1967, Paris, 30 April 1967:- THE RELIGIOUS MIND is entirely different from the mind that believes in religion. The religious mind is psychologically free from the culture of society; it is also free from any form of belief, any form of demand for experience or self-expression. And man throughout the ages has created through belief a concept that is called God. To man the belief in the concept called God has been necessary because he finds life a sorrowful affair, an affair of constant battles, conflict, misery, with an occasional spark of light, beauty, & joy. Belief in a concept, in a formula, in an idea, has become necessary because life has very little significance. The everyday routine, going to the office, the family, sex, the loneliness, the burden, the conflict of self-expression, all these have very little meaning—and there is always death at the end of it all. So man has to believe as an imperative necessity.