Can you examine within yourself now the question, or through the question, what is prior? There is a thought. What is prior to thought? You may see that prior to thought, there is another thought, and another thought. All together, knowledge. Then you continue and you say, so this is endless, I will look and question thinking as a whole, as a phenomenon, with its endless continuation, and will ask, what is prior to thinking? If thought is priored by knowledge, then what is prior to thinking? And you see, you may see, if you look, that it is the unknown. Prior to thought, there is the known. Prior to thinking, there is the unknown.
And if you continue to look, really to look, not to build knowledge, you may see, for example, the nature of that observation, as the futility of knowing about the unknown. If prior to thinking, prior means first, the ground is unknown, then thinking goes on and the known comes to be. So any attempt that you recognize within yourself, to know it, to know what you just heard, is the attempt of thinking to prior itself to the unknown, basically to fake an unknown, which is totally unreal, and to know it.
And thinking, call it as exploration, inquiry, insight, any word it wishes, but it doesn't change the fact that it's thinking, trying to be prior to unknown. Why would it do that? You may ask, what's the reason or what's the nature of things that make thinking try, put tremendous creativity in prior itself to the unknown? And again, it may be seen, if you so inquire and look, that thinking, again, as a whole, knows very well that it doesn't have existence, period, and it's only pretension of existence, and all the movement of its ideation, identity, is by preventing the reality of the unknown, as a ground, preventing meaning, preventing you, you, the mind.
Mind, to see that the nature of you, the mind, is not knowing. Because if that is cleared, if that is seen, thinking loses itself. There is no thinking. There is that which is prior to thinking, and that which is prior to thinking then, come to life, not by the power of thought. And whatever that means, which is for you to find out, if at all, give nothing to thought, give nothing to thinking, give nothing to the mind, give nothing to you, absolutely nothing.
