excerpts

Meditation is not the repetition of words and formulas, mesmerizing oneself into all kinds of fanciful states. If you take opium, a tranquillizer, it will give you marvellous visions, but that is not meditation.

Meditation is actually this process of investigation into oneself. If you go into it deeply yourself, you are bound to come across all this, when it is possible to think without the centre, to see without the centre, to act so completely without idea and approximation, to love without the centre and therefore without thought and feeling.

And, when you have gone through all that, you find out for yourself a mind that is completely free and has no borders, no frontiers - a mind that is free, which has no fear and which does not come about through discipline. And if one has gone that far, one begins to see - or rather, the mind itself begins to observe the thing itself which unfolds thought - that the quality of time, the quality that is yesterday, today and tomorrow, has completely changed, and therefore action is not in terms of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Such action has no motive - all motive has its root in the past, and any action born out of that motive is still an approximation.

So, meditation is the total awareness of every movement of thought and never denying thought - which means letting every thought flower in freedom; and it is only in freedom that every thought can flower and come to an end. So out of this labour - if it can be called labour; which is really out of this observation - the mind has understood all this. Such a mind is a quiet mind, such a mind knows what it is really to be quiet, to be really still. And in that stillness, there are various other forms of movement which can only be verbal to people who have not even thought about this.

Question: After a day's hard work, one's mind gets tired. What is one to do?

Krishnamurti: The question is: after a day's work with so many occupations, one finds the little time that one has is occupied; the mind is weary; what is one to do?

You know, our whole social structure is all wrong; our education is absurd; our so-called education is merely repetition, memorizing, mugging up. How can a mind which has been struggling all day as a scientist, as a specialist, as this or that, which is so occupied for thirteen hours in something or other - how can it have a leisure which is fruitful? It cannot. How can you, after spending forty or fifty years as a scientist or a bureaucrat or a doctor or what you are - not that they are not necessary - have ten years when your mind is not conditioned, not incapable? So, the question is really: is it possible to go to the office, to be an engineer, to be an expert in fertilizers, to be a good educator, and yet, all day, every minute, keep the mind astonishingly sharp, sensitive, alive? That is really the issue, not how to have quietness at the end of the day. You are committed to engineering, to some specialization; you cannot help it; society demands it, and you have to go to work. Is it possible as you are working never to get caught in the wheels of the monstrous thing called society? I cannot answer for you. I say it is possible, not theoretically but actually. It is possible only when there is no centre; that is why I was talking about it. Think of a doctor who is a nose and throat specialist, who has practised for fifty years. What is his heaven? His heaven is nose and throat obviously. But is it possible to be a good first class doctor, and yet live, function, watch, be aware of the whole thing, of the whole process of thought? Surely, it is possible; but that requires extraordinary energy. And that energy is wasted in conflict, in effort; that energy is wasted when you are vain, ambitious, envious.

We think of energy in terms of doing something, in terms of the so-called religious idea that you must have tremendous energy to reach God, and therefore you must be a bachelor, you must do this and do that - you know all the tricks that the religious people play upon themselves, and so end up half starved, empty, dull. God does not want dull people - the people who are insensitive. You can only go to God with complete aliveness, every part of you alive, vibrant; but you see, the difficulty is to live without falling into a groove, falling into habits of thought, of ideas, of action. If you apply your mind, you will find you can live in this ugly world I am using the word `ugly' in the dictionary sense, without any emotional content behind that word - work and act, and at the same time keep the brain alert, like the river that purifies itself all the time.

Question: What is the kind of conflict you are referring to, that degenerates the mind?

Krishnamurti: The gentleman wants to know what kind of conflict degenerates the mind. Does not every conflict dull the mind - not one series of conflicts, not one specific conflict. Does not every conflict, of any kind at any depth, weaken the mind, deteriorate the mind, make the mind insensitive? If I and my wife. quarrel all day, will that not dull, weaken, the mind?

 

a well known spiritual teacher speaks of meditation but offers much error Editor’s note: With advancing age, the mortal body lacks endurance; as such, I must keep the following short, yet I feel compelled to offer a word. I was listening to a podcast of a favorite teacher, from whom I’ve learned much over the years. He spoke of meditation and, given his fine reputation, I assumed the talk would be something good. Allow me to condense the message: He advocated a form of self-managed stilling of the mind, by the repetition of aphorisms, done in a near whisper, virtually putting one to sleep. I was caught off guard. I thought he’d be offering something worthwhile. But I suddenly realized that his message was all wrong. Editor’s note: Allow me to interject: I hate the word “meditation.” It comes with too much baggage. We immediately think of trying very hard, huffing and puffing, to quiet the mind. But the mind is a quantum field of ever-bubbling possibility and refuses all attempts to stifle. If we seem to succeed, the result is not a quieting of the mind per se, but a dulling of the mind, to its detriment. And a dull mind will never find the truth. Instead of “mediation,” we should speak of “constant awareness.” The insights into higher reality that people are looking for can never be realized by so-called “quieting” the mind. These insights, if they come, are manifestations of cosmic creativity. The muse cannot be bridled and haltered. When she comes, she comes on her own terms and schedule.   “You can’t make the creative act happen. You have to do certain things, otherwise it won’t happen. But it won’t happen while you are doing them.” “What is required is an attentive response to something real and other than ourselves, of which we have only inklings at first, but which comes more and more into being through our response to it – if we are truly responsive to it. We nurture it into being; or not. In this it has something of the structure of love.” - Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions   Those who preach “stilling the mind” do nothing more than announce that they’ve never experienced the real cosmic creativity, the real doorway to truth and reality. You don’t have to manage the mind like an unruly child to achieve this, for, when the creative burst comes, it will manage you, it will still you! Editor’s note: This could remind us of what we’ve said about authentic romantic love and marriage. You don’t have to work on the real love, for, when it comes, it will work on you, and take you for a ride. But no one believes this, because they've never known it. How to access this “cosmic creativity”? Ahh, well, now we’ve used a word that sends Krishnamurti to distraction. “How” implies method and effort, and force of will destroys the muse. Then what? We cannot achieve what we’re looking for by concentration, but only attention. Remaining alert, all the day, if we can, even while we “chop wood and carry water,” will yet allow the muse to light upon us, when it’s good and ready.