Talks by Krishnamurti in Europe 1962 (Verbatim Report) London, Saanen

Comment: I do not see the relationship between death and sorrow and the state of meditation.

Krishnamurti: To see the whole significance of sorrow, not just verbally or intellectually, but to go into it very deeply and be free of its corroding action within oneself, the mind must be in a state of meditation. All real inquiry is a state of meditation. To understand the meaning of death - which is to die every day to one's talents, to one's qualities, to one's work, to one's memories - one has to be choicelessly attentive, fully aware; and this state of choiceless attention is meditation. There is no difference between meditation and the understanding of sorrow, for the understanding of sorrow is the beginning of meditation. To go very far in meditation, the mind must be free of all its psychological entanglements. In this state of freedom there is a movement which is not of distance or of time, and that movement is creation. All this is part of meditation.

Question: Is the innocency you have described different from meditation?

KRISHNAMURTI: At some of the meetings we have had here, I have talked about the state of innocency. I have said that an innocent mind is one that is not caught in the psychological structure of society, and is therefore free of conflict; it is not weighed down by remembrances of things past - which is not a state of amnesia; it is no longer held in technique, though technique is necessary. And the questioner wants to know if there is a difference between this state of innocency and the meditation which I have been talking about this morning.

One of our difficulties, it seems to me, is that we get hold of a word like innocency, or immensity, or creation, and then try to relate everything to that particular word. As I have said, the word is not the thing. The word meditation is not the state of meditation; the word innocency is not the state of innocency. But when there is the state of innocency, it is also the state of meditation. You cannot come to that state of innocency as long as you are ambitious, as long as your mind is petty, as long as you are caught in the psychological structure of society and are nothing but an embodied technique - which is what most of us are. We have a job because we have got to earn a livelihood, and we are little better than machines, however clever, cunning, or subtle we may be. A machine-like mind is not an innocent mind. The computers, the electronic brains are probably very innocent, but they are fashioned out of metals, they are not living beings as we are. Eventually a machine may be invented that will have a kind of life of its own, and perhaps they are very close to it already. But to reduce ourselves to the point where we function like machines in our technological efforts, in our acquisition of knowledge, in our piling up of experience, does not bring about innocency. Innocency is that state in which the mind is always young and fresh. An innocent mind has no fear of death, no fear of any kind, and it is therefore free of time.

Question: Perhaps we can be in this state of attention or meditation while we are awake during the day, but what happens when we go to sleep?

If there is an experiencer or an observer of silence, it is not silence but something projected by the mind. In complete silence there is no experiencer of that silence, and then there is a state of attention in which you hear the airplane flying overhead, the train going by, and yet the mind is completely attentive to what is being said; it is observing, listening to everything. Out of this immense silence and quietude, in which the mind is no longer seeking, expecting, wanting, demanding, there comes a movement which is creation beyond time, beyond all expression. It is not the creation of the writer, of the painter, of the musician - it is something which far transcends all that. This creation is energy - energy as death, energy as love - and in it there is no beginning and no end. It comes about only through self-knowing, and this whole process is meditation.

I hope you are not being mesmerized by my words. If you really go into yourself, ruthlessly putting aside all the pettiness, the envy, the greed, the desire for fame, dying to whatever form of technique or talent you have gathered, so that you are nobody at all - then you will know for yourself what this creation is. But if you are merely influenced by another, that is not meditation.

In meditation there can be no thinker, which means that thought must come to an end - the thought which is urged forward by the desire to achieve a result. meditation has nothing to do with achieving a result. It is not a matter of breathing in a particular way, or looking at your nose, or awakening the power to perform certain tricks, or any of the rest of that immature nonsense. But if you have been listening to these talks with total attention and have more or less grasped the significance of what is being said, I think you will find there is a state of mind which is always meditative. meditation is not something apart from life. When you are driving a car or sitting in a bus, when you are chatting aimlessly, when you are walking by yourself in a wood or watching a butterfly being carried along by the wind - to be choicelessly aware of all that is part of meditation.

I am going step by step into what is meditation. Please don't wait until the end, hoping to have a complete description of how to meditate. What we are doing now is part of meditation.

Now, what one has to do is to be aware of the thinker, and not try to resolve the contradiction and bring about an integration between thought and the thinker. The thinker is the psychological entity who has accumulated experience as knowledge; he is the time-bound center which is the result of ever-changing environmental influence, and from this center he looks, he listens, he experiences. As long as one does not understand the structure and the anatomy of this center, there must always be conflict, and a mind in conflict cannot possibly understand the depth and the beauty of meditation.

So it is now fairly clear that for the mind to be in a state of meditation there must be a total elimination of all conflict. Conflict exists as long as there is a division between the thinker and the thought. For most of us the thinker is separate from thought, the experiencer is different from that which is experienced. As long as this division exists, conflict is inevitable because this division is the origin of conflict. That is why it is absolutely necessary to bring about a complete cessation of this division. The thinker is the censor, the conditioned outcome of centuries of egocentric activity; he is the center of fear, of conflict, of sorrow.

I have been discussing for the last two or three weeks, among other things, the question of fear and sorrow. When the mind is afraid, or when it is burdened with sorrow, it cannot possibly be in a state of meditation. For a mind that would really understand the depth and the beauty of meditation, fear must cease, and there must be no sorrow of any kind. And when the mind is free from fear, from sorrow, from the whole psychological structure of society which is made up of ambition, greed, envy, the desire for success, the demand for power, position, prestige - when all that has been broken down and understood, then the brain becomes very quiet. But you can understand and be free of all this turmoil only when you are aware of it without effort. If you struggle to change fear into courage, you cannot understand the whole significance of fear. As I have explained, the human brain is the result of centuries of conditioned, animalistic existence. That brain has to be completely quiet, and it cannot be made quiet through discipline, through enforcement. But it is quiet of its own accord, naturally, easily, gracefully, when there is an understanding of all these things that I have been talking about.

So meditation is not the achievement of any form of permanency, and it is not prayer. Prayer implies supplication, begging, looking to another for comfort, for psychological security. meditation is not contemplation. Contemplation implies putting the mind on something and expecting, watching. There is a duality, the watcher and the thing that is watched; so meditation is not contemplation, nor is it the awakening of visions. Visions are merely the reaction, the response of your background. If you are a devout Christian you may see the Christ, and you will regard that as a great spiritual experience, but it is nothing of the sort. It is a conditioned experience, the projection of a most immature, unthoughtful mind. Just as you see the Christ, so the Buddhist will see the Buddha, and the Hindu his own particular deity. They are all projections of the mind's conditioning, and one must be free from that conditioning, and the freeing of the mind from its conditioning is part of meditation.

meditation is an extraordinary state that demands no effort. Most of us are conditioned to make effort. We struggle to achieve a result, or to sustain a particular experience, or to gather knowledge, all of which implies various forms of conflict; and without understanding conflict, it is not possible for the mind to be in that effortless state which is meditation.

So, as most of us do not know what right meditation is, it is important that we find out for ourselves. I am not going to teach you a method because any method or system of meditation merely cultivates habit; and a mind that is caught in habit is dull, insensitive, unintelligent. We must understand and be totally free of this idea of conforming to a pattern, regardless of who is supposed to have established that pattern. One has to understand the significance of all patterns, all systems. There are systems which offer a result in meditation, and when you regularly and earnestly practice such a system, it does bring about a certain experience or state; but the system has molded the mind, shaped it according to that particular pattern, and therefore the mind is not free. So, to find out what is real meditation, there must be freedom from this imitative process.

Now, let us see if we can go step by step into this question of meditation. I feel that meditation is as important as taking a bath, or having a meal, or seeing the beauty of the mountains and the shallowness of the mind. It is as important as earning a livelihood. If you do not know how to meditate rightly, you have missed a great deal - the enriching, completely beautiful and splendid awakening of life. So, I beg of you, do listen.

This morning I am going to talk about meditation. It is something very complex, and yet very simple. It is not at all the mysterious, oriental affair that many of us imagine it to be, with all kinds of romantic, nonsensical ideas around it. And to go into it very deeply, as I propose to do this morning, certain things are obviously necessary.

First of all, we must understand very clearly that the word is not the thing. The word meditation is not meditation, and one has to be extraordinarily aware if one is not merely to remain at the verbal level and regard meditation as something intellectual, or fanciful, and therefore not of great significance in daily life. One also requires a mind that is very subtle and very sensitive. Subtlety and sensitivity go together when the mind is no longer seeking. By that word seeking I mean trying to achieve a goal, grasping at visions, being caught in various forms of self-hypnosis. In other words, one must be capable of logical, rational, clear thinking. When one thinks very clearly without any pressure of seeking, one finds that thought comes to an end; and to understand what is meditation, it is essential for thought to end.

Before we go into this question of meditation, we must also understand what is the religious mind. The religious mind is not the confused, stagnant mind which is caught in belief, in dogma, in ritual. It is not a slave to authority. It does not belong to any group, to any organized religion, nor does it look to any savior, Master, or guide. It is a light unto itself.

A religious mind is a mind that is free from all influence. To be swayed by any form of influence distorts the mind. You cannot get rid of influences - you have to be aware of them. You have to be aware, consciously and also unconsciously, of the influence on your mind of all that you have read about meditation - about the various systems of meditation which offer the meditator an opportunity to achieve certain results by conforming to a specified pattern. One has to be aware of all that and put it aside.