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Jiddu Krishnamurti - Meditation is
the beginning of Self-Knowledge
Question: There are several systems of meditation,
both Occidental and Oriental. Which do you recommend?
Jiddu
Krishnamurti : To understand what is right meditation is really a
very complex problem, and to know how to meditate, how to be in the
state of meditation, is important; but to follow any system, whether
Occidental or Oriental, is not to meditate. When you follow a system,
all that you learn is to conform, to shape the mind to a particular
pattern or drive it along a particular groove. If you pursue it ardently
enough, you will produce the result that the system guarantees, but
surely, that is not meditation. There is a lot of nonsense taught about
meditation, especially by those people who come from the Orient.
(Laughter) Please don't laugh or clap - this is not that kind of
meeting. We are trying to find out what meditation is.
You can see that those who pursue a system, who drive the mind into
certain practices, obviously condition the mind according to that
formula. Therefore, the mind is not free. It is only the free mind that
can discover, not a mind conditioned according to any system, whether
Oriental or Occidental. Conditioning is the same, by whatever name you
may call it. To see the truth there must be freedom, and a mind that is
conditioned according to a system can never see the truth.
Now, to see the truth that there can be no freedom through the
discipline of any system requires the understanding of the process of
the mind, because the mind clings to systems, to beliefs, to particular
formulas. To discover the truth of that, surely you have to see that you
are caught in a system, and to be aware of the process by which the mind
gets caught in a system is meditation. To be aware of the whole process
of thinking is self-knowledge, is it not?
So, meditation is the beginning of self-knowledge.
Without knowing the process of your own thinking, merely to sit in a
corner and go off into silence, or whatever you do, is not meditation -
it is just a wish to become, to acquire, to gain something. And
obviously, concentration is not meditation. Merely focusing the mind on
an idea, an image, or a phrase and excluding all other thoughts is not
meditation, is it? You may learn concentration in that way, but
concentration is exclusion, and when the mind excludes, it is not free.
Why do we want to focus the mind on an image or an idea, or practice a
system of so-called meditation - the more mysterious the better? Because
we think that by concentration, or through prayer, the constant
repetition of certain words, the mind will be made quiet. As I said,
concentration is a process of exclusion. We choose a particular idea or
thought and dwell on it, and while we are forcing the mind to
concentrate on it, other thoughts come in; so, there is a conflict going
on, and we spend our energy in this wasteful battle.
But if we can be open to each thought as it arises and
understand it, then we shall see that the mind does not revert to any
particular thought. The mind reverts to a thought because it has not
understood it; that is, what is not understood is repeated over and over
again, and mere exclusion will not prevent it. So, concentration, which
is exclusion, is not meditation. Most of us want to live exclusively,
with our private memories, private experiences, private knowledge; and
concentration, which we call meditation, is merely a further process of
self-enclosure, self-isolation. But the mind can never be free through
isolation, however wide your projected idea may be.
Now, you can force the mind to be quiet through what is called prayer,
the constant repetition of words, but when the mind is hypnotized into
quietness, is that a state of meditation? Surely, that only dulls the
mind, does it not? Though the mind may be pacified through discipline,
which is based on the desire for particular results, such a mind is
obviously not a free mind. Freedom can never come through discipline.
Though we think we must discipline ourselves in order
to be free, the beginning determines the end, and if the mind is
disciplined at the beginning, it will be disciplined at the end;
therefore, it can never be free. But if we can understand the whole
process of discipline, control, suppression, sublimation, substitution,
then there will be freedom from the very beginning, for the means and
the end are one - they are not two separate processes, either
politically or religiously.
So, discipline through concentration is not meditation, nor are the
various forms of prayer. Those are all tricks by which the mind is
forced to be still, and a mind that is made still through will, through
desire, can never be free. If we really look at all these things -
concentration, prayer, systems of meditation, and all the various tricks
that we learn to quiet, to hypnotize the mind - we shall discover that
they are the ways of thought, the ways of the self; and this discovery
is the beginning of meditation, which is the beginning of
self-knowledge.
Without knowing yourself, merely to concentrate, to
conform to a pattern, to follow a system, to quiet the mind through a
discipline, only leads to further misery, further confusion. But if you
begin to know the ways of your own thought by being choicelessly aware
of yourself in relationship, in your talking, in your walking, when you
are observing a bird or looking at somebody else, then, in that
awareness, the responses of your conditioned state come into being - and
in that spontaneity there is the discovery of yourself as yourself. And
the more you are aware of yourself without choice, without justification
or condemnation, the more there is freedom. It is this freedom that is
the process of meditation. But you cannot cultivate freedom any more
than you can cultivate love. Freedom comes into being, not through the
search for it, but when you understand the whole process and structure
of yourself.
Meditation, then, is the beginning of self-knowledge. When you begin
very near, you can go very far, and then you will see that thought,
which is the projection of the mind, comes to an end of itself without
being compelled, forced. Then there is silence - not the silence that is
willed, created by the mind, but a silence that is not of time; and in
that silence there is the state of creation, the timelessness' which is
reality.
So, without understanding the ways of thought, merely to force the mind
to meditate is an utter waste of time and energy and only creates more
confusion, more misery. But to understand the process of the self as the
thinker, to know the ways of the self as thought, is the beginning of
wisdom. For wisdom to be, there must be the understanding of the
accumulating process - which is the thinker. Without understanding the
thinker, meditation has no meaning because whatever he projects is
according to his own conditioning, and that is obviously not reality.
Only when the mind understands the whole process of itself as thought,
is it capable of being free, and only then does the timeless come into
being.
Source: Jiddu Krishnamurti Talk at New York & Seattle
1950
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