Source: 1970s, Krishnamurti in India, 1970-71 (1971), p. 157
Context: In seeking there are several things involved: there is the seeker and the thing that he seeks after. When the seeker finds what he thinks is truth, is God, is enlightenment, he must be able to recognize it. He must recognize it, right? Recognition implies previous knowledge, otherwise you cannot recognize. I cannot recognize you if I had not met you yesterday. Therefore when I say this is truth, I have already known it and therefore it is not truth. So a man who is seeking truth lives a life of hypocrisy, because his truth is the projection of his memory, of his desire, of his intentions to find something other than "what is", a formula. So seeking implies duality — the one who seeks and the thing sought after — and where there is duality there is conflict. There is wastage of energy. So you can never find it, you can never invite it.
“The thing we tell of can never be found by seeking, yet only seekers find it.”
Quoted in James Fadiman and Robert Frager, eds., Essential Sufism (Castle Books, 1998, ISBN 0-7858-0906-6, p. 37.
Quoted earlier in " Translations of Eastern Poetry and Prose https://archive.org/stream/translationsofea00nich#page/140/mode/2up/search/impossible" by RA Nicholson (p.140) (Macmillan, 1922)
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Bayazid Bastami 1
Persian Sufi mystic 804–846Related quotes
“Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.”
Fragment No. 1; Variant: We seek the absolute everywhere and only ever find things.
Blüthenstaub (1798)
Dr. J. Hegde, Sheriff of Mumbai, Mumbai, India, January 2004
About, 2000s
Self-Enquiry paraphrased, as spoken by Ram Dass in the film 'Abide as the Self.'
Abide as the Self
“Sometimes we seek that which we are not yet ready to find.”
Source: Rebel Angels
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)
“I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him.”
An Autobiography (1936); also in All Men Are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections (2005) edited by Krishna Kripalani, p. 63
1930s
"Search for Love" in The Works of D. H. Lawrence, Wordsworth Editions, (1994), p. 552
“Only upon the old can build the new;
The symbol which you seek is found in you.”
Life Without and Life Within (1859), The One In All
Context: And dost thou seek to find the one in two?
Only upon the old can build the new;
The symbol which you seek is found in you.