Changes

The mind by its nature is curious and interested; it sees, it observes, it tries to understand and explain; and with all this activity, it disturbs the [yogic] experience and diminishes its intensity and force. If one wants to look at it as a curiosity, one has only to watch, to try to understand. And If one knows how to rise to a higher level, simply into a region of the speculative mind which is not quite the ordinary physical mind, one can see all this play and all this struggle, all this conflict, all these contradictions as a curiosity which does not touch or affect one. If one rises a step higher still and see the goal towards which one wants to go, one will gradually come to discern between ideas favourable to progress which one will keep, and ideas opposed to this progress which harm and impair it; and from above one will have the power to set them aside, calmly, without being otherwise affected by them. But if one remains there, at that level in the midst of that confusion and conflict, well, one risks getting a headache! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/17-september-1959#p4</ref> <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/27-june-1956#p60</ref> <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/2-may-1956#p35</ref>

Healthy curiosity manifests itself in the form of love to learn. One must have a great deal of sincerity, a little courage and perseverance and then a sort of mental curiosity, understanding, seeking to know, interest, wanting to learn. To love to learn: that, one must have in one's nature. To find it impossible to stand before something grey, all hazy, in which nothing is seen clearly, and which gives one quite an unpleasant feeling. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/29-july-1953#p61</ref>

...there are people who have faith, and then they have contrary movements which come and attack. It is as though one were letting the worm into the fruit: it eventually eats it up completely. This means that such movement arises into the mind first and one should be very plucky and refuse it. Surely one must not enjoy looking on just to see what is going to happen; that kind of curiosity is terribly dangerous and needs to be seriously controlled. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/5-may-1954#p13 </ref><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/general-1#p3</ref>