Pride is a strange thing, pride in small things and big things; in our possessions, in our achievements, in our virtues, pride of race, name and family; in capacity, in looks, in knowledge. We make all this feed this pride, or we run to humility. The opposite of pride is not humility, it is still pride, only it is called humility; the consciousness of being humble is a form of pride. The mind has to be something. It struggles to be this or that, it can never be in a state of nothingness. If nothingness is a new experience, it must have that experience, the very attempt to be still is another acquisition.
Humility implies total destruction - not of outward, social things, but complete destruction of the center, of oneself, of one’s own ideas, experiences, knowledge, traditions - completely emptying the mind of everything that it has known. Therefore, such a mind is no longer thinking in terms of change.
A mind that is no longer concerned with change has no fear and is therefore free. Then it is no longer trying to change itself into another pattern, no longer exposing itself to further experiences, no longer asking and demanding, because such a mind is free; therefore, it can be quiet, still. And then, perhaps, that which is nameless can come into being.
So, humility is essential, but not of the artificial, cultivated kind. You see, one must be without capacity, without gift; one must be as nothing, inwardly. And, I think that if one sees this without trying to learn how to be as nothing, then the seeing is the experiencing of it and then, perchance, the other thing can come into being.
Have you ever gone into the question of psychological dependence? If you go into it very deeply, you will find that most of us are terribly lonely. Most of us have such shallow, empty minds. Most of us do not know what love means. So, out of that loneliness, out of that insufficiency, out of the privation of life, we are attached to something, attached to the family; we depend upon it. And when the wife or the husband turns away from us, we are jealous. Jealousy is not love; but the love which society acknowledges in the family is made respectable. That is another form of defense, another form of escape from ourselves. So every form of resistance breeds dependence. And a mind that is dependent can never be free.
You need to be free, because you will see that a mind that is free has the essence of humility. Such a mind, which is free and therefore has humility, can learn;not a mind that resists. Learning is an extraordinary thing;to learn, not to accumulate knowledge. Accumulating knowledge is quite a different thing. What we call knowledge is comparatively easy, because that is a movement from the known to the known. But to learn is a movement from the known to the unknown;you learn only like that, do you not.