I would like this evening to talk over with you, or rather communicate to you, a rather complex problem. To communicate, one has not only to listen with one's ears but also to see with one's eyes; and really to communicate, one has not only to see with one's eyes, to hear with one's ears, but also to see and feel with one's mind and heart.

Because one sees much more with one's mind - much more rapidly, much more quickly - than the eyes see; and the mind hears much more quickly, with greater precision, than the ear. And to feel one must see and hear, not only with one's mind but also with one's heart that is, be very sensitive. Most of us, unfortunately, have become insensitive, through our education, through modern life, through everyday turmoil, the ugliness and the despair of life, the routine, the boredom and senseless existence...

First of all, the word "meditation" evokes certain images, certain reactions, pleasant or unpleasant. And as we are going to commune together, as we are trying it, as you are feeling your way with me into this extraordinary thing called meditation, you must naturally, easily, willingly, put aside your opinions, your practices, your disciplines, to find out what the other man is trying to convey. It is one of the most difficult things to find out for oneself what is meditation.

Now, first of all, to enter into an immense problem like that you need to be very sensitive. You cannot come to it with clear-cut ideas, opinions and judgment; but you must be sensitive. We are rarely sensitive to beauty. Beauty means nothing for most of us. Personal adornment is not beauty. Beauty is not a reaction of some kind of stimulation. You listen to good music, and tears come to your eyes; and such a feeling you call a beautiful feeling. You call that an experience. That is, you are stimulated by an outward incident, by an outward occurrence, such as seeing a statue, seeing a sunset, seeing a beautiful woman or the clean, healthy smile of a child. You feel that is beautiful; that is, you are stimulated. The reaction of that stimulation is either pleasurable or not pleasurable. If it is pleasurable, you call that beauty.

But there is a beauty that is not the outcome of a reaction or a stimulation. Now that sense of beauty is not merely colour, proportion, texture, quality, but it is something far greater, much deeper; and it has nothing whatsoever to do with a passing stimulation.

It is difficult to convey that feeling, the feeling of that sense of beauty where the mind, the heart, the nerves, the whole sensory organism is in complete co-ordination.

That feeling is not induced or brought about by any stimulation, but actually is there, because you are throughout the day sensitive to everything - to your word, to your gesture, to your walk, to the dirt on the road, to the squalor of a house, to its disorderliness, the ugliness of the office, the brutal travail of man. You are aware, sensitive; and because you are so sensitive, you have activated every field of your being, activated every corner of your consciousness, of your state. It is only then that there is a sense of beauty, not stimulated by the lake, or by the mountain, or by a poem, or by the movement of a bird on the wing.

Now to communicate that feeling, if really you and I both feel that beauty which is not adorned, which is not a stimulation, which is not an intellectual concept, but an actual state [of consciousness] - to communicate that, you and I must both not only be intense but meet at the same level, with the same intensity, at the same moment. Otherwise communication ceases. And such communication is necessary to understand what we are going to go into.

You know we rarely are in a state of communion. You may hold the hand of your wife or your friend or your child, but you are not in communion you are only physically in contact. Communion implies that there is no division - not a physical division but, much more, a mental or an emotional division which each one of us has.

Because each one of us is struggling to assert himself [to find happiness for oneself], to fulfil himself, to be something, to strive, to try to become famous, ambitious, competitive; and in that state there is no communion. There may be a physical communication. But communion is something far more deep, much more intense, where you and the speaker are both in contact with something that is real - not imagined, not dialectical, not with mere reason - where both of us see the same thing, at the same moment, with the same intensity. Then there is an extraordinary relationship established between you and the speaker. This happens very rarely for most of us. To communicate with another is part of the thing about which we are going to talk.

Editor’s note: In the Omega book, Kairissi and Elenchus discuss, several times, how this shattering joint perception of transcendental beauty occurred for them; a state of “no you and no me.”

Most of us are burdened with tradition - not good tradition or bad tradition, but tradition. The word "tradition" means to carry over from the past generation to this generation; from time immemorial, to carry over from father to son and on and on, a certain custom, a certain idea, a certain concept. And that tradition conditions the mind...

We know what we mean by tradition: custom, habit, has shaped the mind - that is a fact. And that tradition has established certain methods, certain specialized processes; it says you must meditate in this [particular] way. And organized thought, a method, has been established or is being established by people who think they know how to meditate and want to teach others. It is based on a tradition, or on their own experience; or they have borrowed it from others and put it together; and they want you to practise it in order to arrive at something which they call "peace", "God", "truth", "bliss" and all the rest of it.

So the religious people throughout the world have through tradition established a method or methods in order to arrive at that state which they call "peace", or "God", or "some extraordinary experience". That is a fact: a method, a system, a practice.

... What is implied in the method? An organized system of ideas: if you do this, this and this, you will arrive there. It is an organized, specialized procedure in order to help you to arrive; and the procedure you begin to practise, day after day, slowly, purposefully - in which is involved great effort. So there is the method and there is the practice. Through a method or methods you will arrive only at a state which must be static. If you have a method, that will lead you somewhere; that somewhere must be static; it cannot be moving dynamic; it cannot be living; it is not a movement; it is static.

Some people say that if you do certain specialized, organized things, you will have peace. That peace is an idea which becomes static. But peace is never static; it is a living thing; it comes only when you understand the whole of man's struggle - not just one particular struggle, but the whole of existence: which is, his daily bread, his feelings, his ambitions, his sexual appetites, his competitiveness, his despairs and his fulfilments; the vast complex network of escapes.

In understanding all that, out of that understanding you may have peace. But if you follow a method in a particular direction, through a particular system, which will promise you or guarantee that you will have peace, then such peace is merely an idea, a static concept, which is not real at all.

That is what you are doing. You want peace of mind - whatever that may mean - and you practise it day after day. But [during the process, in life] you will get angry, you will be ambitious, you will be greedy, you will talk roughly ... you will be competitive. So you divide life: you practise a particular method, which you call meditation in order to have peace; and all your life destroys what you are seeking. So that is what is involved in practice and in method.

And also, in a method, in a system, there is implied authority: "You know, I don't know... and you are going to tell me what to do. I will get it." So there is established this thing called the guru: the authority, the enlightened, the self-realized, the man who knows: and you who do not know; and you want that, whatever that may mean. The guru looks fairly happy, fairly quiet, secluded; and he talks a great deal about self-realization and all that stuff. And you say, "How good it will be to have it!" You want it; you begin to practise, and he becomes your authority. So the method, the practice, implies authority.

... Now, what happens in an authority? You have not understood yourself, your life, your behaviour; whether you have affection, love, sympathy, does not matter; you have not explored your extraordinary being yourself; you deny all that, and you follow somebody else. And by following somebody else, you have added an extraordinary layer of fear, because [you don't trust yourself].

So practising a method implies authority. Practising a method implies mechanical procedure, it becomes mechanical. It is not a living thing which you are examining, watching, exploring. You are merely practising like a machine ... you practise a system which you hope will lead to peace; you merely practise and establish a habit; thereby your mind becomes dull and insensitive, mechanical.

All these are implied when you are practising a method; there is authority; there is a mechanical cultivation of habit which suppresses, which helps you to escape from yourself... you are [not] concerned with exploration, investigation, understanding...

For most of us, meditation means prayer; it means repeating certain words endlessly, or taking a certain posture, breathing in a certain way. Do you follow what you are doing? You are giving importance to outward activity, sitting very straight - which is fairly simple. Why should you sit straight? Because blood flows more easily to the head; that is all. And when you breathe deeply the blood gets more oxygen. There is nothing mysterious about it. But we begin with the outward signs of meditation: sitting quietly in a room; and you know every outward gesture. But there is no inward comprehension at all. Everything is from the outside.

So meditation is not practice, is not following a system. System implies authority. Therefore, meditation is not the result of authority. Nor is it a collective prayer or an individual prayer, prayer being a supplication, an asking.

Because you are miserable, you pray for some entity or some being to give you help. You have reduced your life to a terrible chaos, misery. You have built this social structure, this environment that is destroying human beings. You are [in fact] responsible for your [own] greed, for your activities, for your ambition - which have created the society in which the human being is caught. So you are responsible; and therefore it is no good asking somebody to help you. When you do ask, it is an escape...

So meditation is not prayer; nor is it repetition of words. You know that one of the most astonishing things is how this word "mantra" gives people such fantastic ideas. You use any word - it does not matter what word - or use a series of words; give it a special meaning, and repeat it. What happens when you repeat over and over again a series of words in English, or in Sanskrit, or in Latin or in any other language? Repeat, repeat; and your mind becomes gradually quiet, gradually dull; and you think at last you have quietened your mind.

So meditation is not prayer, not a repetition of words, not practice, not pursuing a particular method or a system in which is implied authority. If you listen to this fact, then you will never go back to that. Then you become completely responsible for yourself. Therefore, you have no guru; you do not rely on anybody, including the speaker. You are then responsible for everything that you do.

... you must be free from the authority of tradition to find God. To know yourself is to be aware. Do not give a mystical meaning or some complicated meaning to that very simple phrase "to be aware" - to be aware of those crows, to the noise of those crows. just listen, please listen; be aware of the light that is in the sky; be aware of the dark trunk of the mango tree; be aware of that palm; be aware of your neighbour, his colour, his dress; just be aware - not condemning it; not comparing; not saying "this is good", "that is bad; not explaining; not justifying - just be aware.

... You can observe, you can be aware choicelessly of outward things. It is very easy. But to move inwardly and to be aware without condemnation, without justification, without comparison is more difficult. Just be aware of what is taking place inside you - your beliefs, your fears, your dogmas, your hopes, your frustrations, your ambitions, your fears and all the rest of the things. Then the unfolding of the conscious and the unconscious begins. You have not to do a thing.

Just be aware; that is all what you have to do, without condemning, without forcing, without trying to change what you are aware of. Then you will see that it is like a tide that is coming in. You cannot prevent the tide from coming in; build a wall, or do what you will, it will come with tremendous energy. In the same way, if you are aware choicelessly, the whole field of consciousness begins to unfold.

And as it unfolds, you have to follow: and the following becomes extraordinarily difficult - following in the sense to follow the movement of every thought, of every feeling, of every secret desire. It becomes difficult the moment you resist, the moment you say, "that is ugly", "this is good", "that is bad", "this I will keep", "that I will not keep".

So you begin with the outer and move inwardly. Then you will find, when you move inwardly that the inward and the outward are not two different things, that the outward awareness is not different from the inward awareness, and that they are both the same.

Then you will see that you are living in the past; there is never a moment of actual living, when neither the past nor the future exists - which is the actual moment. You will find that you are always living in the past: what you felt; what you were; how clever, how good, how bad: the memories. That is memory. So you have to understand memory, not deny it, not suppress it, not escape. If a man has taken a vow of celibacy and is holding on to that memory, when he moves out of that memory, he feels guilty; and that smothers his life.

So you begin to watch everything and, therefore, you become very sensitive. Therefore by listening, by seeing not only the outward world, the outward gesture, but also the inward mind that looks and therefore feels, when you are so aware choicelessly, then there is no effort. It is very important to understand this.

Most of us make effort in meditation, because we want experience. It is a simple fact. Please listen to the fact - not my judgment of the fact, not your opinion with regard to the fact. The fact is that most of us want some kind of spiritual experience and the continuity of that experience. So you have to examine the whole content of experience, and the mind that desires experience.

What is experience? The word "experience" means to go through. We want experience, the so-called spiritual experience - which is, a vision, a heightened perception, a heightened understanding. We want a deep, wide, profound experience that will shatter our way of living...

Most of us, not being aware of this extraordinary inter-reaction of life, get bored with the few experiences that we have - sexual experiences, the experiences of going to the temple and the ordinary experiences - and so we want something more, much more.

So we turn to meditation. And because we want greater, heightened emotion and experience, we resort to drugs. There are various new drugs in America and Europe, which, when you take them, momentarily give you a heightened perception. If you are an artist, if you take that drug called L.S.D., that gives you an astonishing feeling of colour; you have never seen colour before as when you take this drug; colour then becomes alive, vibrant, infinite; and you can see the tree as you have never seen before; there is no division between you and the tree. If you are a priest, and if you take that drug, then you have priestly experiences and that gives you greater conviction that what you are doing is perfectly right. Or it alters your life in the field of your conditioning. So, man, being bored with his own life, with his daily experiences, wants a greater experience. So he tries to meditate, or to take drugs, or to do innumerable things to get more.

So when the mind is seeking more, it indicates that it has not understood the whole structure of its own being. Without understanding yourself or laying the right foundation, which is the only foundation - which is to understand yourself - , do what you will - sit in any posture, or stand on your head, repeat, follow, or do anything, - you will never find peace, you will never come by that which is true.

So without understanding yourself, there is no righteous behaviour. Without understanding yourself there is no action which does not breed more conflict, more misery, more confusion.

Without understanding yourself, do what you will, there is no wisdom. And only when you understand yourself, is there the intimation of life.

We are starting with having laid the foundation of self-knowing. If you have not done it, you cannot proceed;...

Therefore, a mind that deliberately practises meditation is not in a state of meditation, do what it will. Therefore, there must be no deliberate act of meditation. If there is a deliberate act of meditation, then it becomes an effort, and therefore a pressure on the mind. So, meditation is not a deliberate act, it is not a continuity. Because the moment it has continuity, it has time-value; and therefore, it has been created by the mind as a means to achieve something, or as a means to retain something.

So meditation is an act which ends each minute and has no continuity. One can see that a healthy mind is not under any pressure: the pressure of any desire or of any compulsive urge. Nor is it influenced by any outward movement, political, revolutionary, economic. It is a healthy mind that is not influenced, that is not under the compulsion of any desire. And it can only be healthy when there is self-knowledge, when it has understood the whole business. Then the mind being under no pressure, under no compulsion, the brain must also be very quiet, not induced to be quiet.

... you do not have to say, "I will sit quiet; I will try to train my brain to be alert, without reaction; or I will watch so that no influence enters." Then you are lost completely. But if you begin with self-knowing, then these things will follow naturally, like the sun rising after it has set; it will follow as: sweetly and as naturally.

... So silence goes with space; and silence is not an end, the result of a particular practice or a wish or the demand of a particular desire. It comes about naturally, and therefore effortlessly. Don't practise silence, because in that silence, there is nothing to practise.

I am not giving you a method, I am not telling you what to do. You are doing it. We are communicating together. Therefore, you can go to it naturally. Then you will be a light to yourself, a free human being; then you will have no fear; there is no guru, there is no tradition; you are a human being alive. These things follow as naturally as the day follows the night.

In that silence there is a movement which is not made of the energy of conflict. All our life is conflict, and through that conflict we derive energy. But when the mind has understood the whole nature of conflict in the world and within oneself, then out of that understanding comes silence. And therefore in that silence there is tremendous energy. It is not the silence of sleep, stagnation; but it is a silence of tremendous energy.

I do not know if you have seen a machine or a dynamo, something that is moving with terrific speed, full of energy. In the same way the mind that is completely silent is completely full of energy. And that energy, because it is not named, has no nationality, no conflict. That energy is anonymous; it is not yours or mine. And therefore that energy, when allowed to move freely, goes very far; it can go beyond the measure of time.

And this whole process which we have communicated to you is the act of meditation. When there is such an act, there is benediction. Such an act is love. And it is only such a mind that can bring order to the world. It is only such a mind that can live peacefully. It is only such a mind that does not bring confusion in its activity. And it is only such a mind that can find what is true.

 

Editor's note: This is an incredible lecture by K.