Jiddu Krishnamurti - I was walking one day in New Delhi, among the ancient tombs of the Muslims, and I saw a man come on a bicycle, a poorish man, lean the bicycle against a tree, sit cross-legged, shut his eyes and he thought he was meditating. And I watched him for some time. He was very quiet. And then he stopped meditating, got up, lit a cigarette and went on!
But he spent a long time. I came back after taking a long walk, and there he was, still sitting very quietly! And there are all those people who are practising awareness - awareness according to Zen Buddhism, or according to some professor, some writer of Zen, and all that thing that is going on and on and on. The Sufis, the Krishna conscious crowd - you know - to which you all belong.
You may remember that story of a man coming to a teacher and sitting in front of him cross-legged, closing his eyes and saying to the teacher, `I am going to meditate in order to reach the highest form of consciousness'. And the teacher said, `All right, go ahead'. And the teacher presently picked up two pieces of stone and began to rub them together, and kept on rubbing.
And presently the man opened his eyes and said, `Master, what are you doing? You are disturbing me. What are you doing?' `Oh', the Master said, `I am rubbing these two pieces of stone in order to make a mirror of it, at least in one of them there will be a mirror'. And the man said, `Master, you can do that for the next ten thousand years, you will never have a shiny pebble'. And the Master says, `You can sit like that, my friend, for the next ten thousand years...!' (Laughter)
So meditation is the emptying of the mind of the activity of the self. And you cannot empty the mind of the activity of the self by any practice, by any method, or by saying `Tell me what to do'. Therefore if you are really interested in this, concerned, you have to find out for yourself your own activity of the self as the you - the habits, the verbal statements, the gestures, the deceptions, the guilt which you cultivate and hold on to as though it were some precious thing instead of throwing it out, the punishments, all the activity of the self. And that demands awareness. Now what is being aware?
Awareness implies an observation in which there is no choice whatsoever. Just to observe without interpretation, translation, distortion, and that will take place as long as there is an observer who is trying to be aware. Right? Are you getting all this?So can you be aware, attentive, so that in that attention there is only observation and not the observer? Now listen to this. You have heard that statement: awareness is a state of mind in which the observer is not, with its choice. You hear that statement. You immediately want to put it into practice, into action. You say, `What am I to do? How am I to be aware without the observer?' So you want an immediate activity set going.
Right? Which means you have not really listened to that statement. You are more concerned with putting into action that statement, rather than listening to the statement. It is like looking at a flower and smelling the flower. The flower is there, the beauty of the flower, the colour, the loveliness of it. You look at it and pick it up and begin to tear it to pieces. And you do the same when you listen to this statement, that in awareness, in attention, there is no observer. If the observer is, then you have the problem of choice, conflict and all the rest of it.
You hear that statement and then the immediate reaction of the mind is, `How am I to do it?' So you are more concerned with the action of what to do about that statement, rather than actually listening to it. If you listen to it completely, then you are breathing the perfume, the truth of it. And the perfume, the truth acts, not the `me' that is struggling to act rightly. You have got it?
So one has to understand, if you want to meditate, and the beauty of meditation and the depth of it, if you want to find out you have to enquire into the activities of the self, which is put together by time. So you have to understand time. Time, as we said, is a movement. Please listen to this. Listen. Don't do anything about it. Just listen. Find out if it is false or true. Just observe. Listen with your heart, not with your beastly little mind. Time is movement, both physically as well as psychologically. Physically to move from here to there, that needs time.
Psychologically, the movement of time is to change `what is' into `what should be'. So thought, which is time, thought can never be still because thought is movement. Right? And this movement is part of the self. And all meditation, as one observes, and people have come to the speaker from every kind of group of meditation, always they are concerned with this problem, control and time. We are saying thought is the movement of time. Thought is the movement of time because it is the response of knowledge, experience, memory which is time. So thought can never be still. Thought can never be new. Thought can never bring about freedom.
So when one is aware of the movement of the self, in all its activities as ambition, fulfilment, in relationship and so on and so on, out of that comes a mind that is completely still, not thought is still - you understand the difference? Am I making myself clear? You understand sir, most people are trying to control their thought, and so hoping thereby to bring quietness to the mind.
I have seen dozens of such people who have practised - god knows - for years trying to control their thought, thereby hoping to have a mind that is really quiet. But they don't see that thought is a movement. You might divide that movement as the observer and the observed, or the thinker and the thought, or the controller and the controlled, but it is still a movement. And thought can never be still, if it is still it dies, therefore it cannot afford to be still.
You understand? So if you have gone into all this deeply, into yourself, then you will see the mind becomes completely still, not enforced, not controlled, not hypnotised. And it must be still because it is only in that stillness that a totally new, unrecognisable thing can take place. You understand sir? If I force my mind to be still, brought about through various tricks and practices, shocks, then it is the stillness of a mind that has struggled with thought, controlled thought, suppressed thought.
Right? That is entirely different from a mind that has seen the activity of the self, seen the movement of thought as time, and being aware of all that movement, that very attention brings about the quality of a mind that is completely still, in which something totally new can take place.
Are we anywhere near together? Because you see our life is routine, both sexually, daily life of habits, office, labour, it is a constant routine, a repetition, a habit, and in that area nothing new can happen. And man is always searching within that area for something new - the new non-objective painting, the new plays, the new technology, always within that area of the known.
And within that area nothing new can take place. Though human beings struggle, struggle, struggle - new ways of expression, new kind of literature, new kind of painting - and in that there is nothing new because all that is the activity of thought, and thought can never produce, create something totally out of time.
So is there anything new? You are following? Or is it always that there is nothing new under the sun? So a mind that is enquiring, really serious, must find out if there is anything new. New, not in the sense the old and the new. The new not the opposite of the old, but something completely unnameable, that cannot be put into words and utilised to create a book, or write a poem, or paint a beastly little picture. I don't know if you have ever thought about it.
Creation and expression may not always go together. We all want to express in so many different ways. To us expression has become extraordinarily important. If you feel something you must put it down. If you see a beautiful tree, the breeze among the leaves, swaying the boughs, and the depth of light and shade, shadow, if you are inclined to paint you want to express what you feel. And perhaps sell it and get some money out of it. Does creation demand expression?
You understand? It may not need expression at all. Why should it? Why should I want to express - please listen to this - something new, totally creative, energy, into words, into picture, into a stone, why? To communicate to you what the new is? And can that which is new ever be expressed at all? And when there is the expression of that, is the expression, the symbol, the word, the painting, the real? You are following all this?
Therefore creation may have no expression at all. You understand? And there is great beauty in that, because that new, that creative thing, is timeless, is the summation of all energy and why should that energy be expressed in a little painting - whether it is by the great painter or the little painter, why should it? Why should that be communicated to you through a painting? Why can't you find it for yourself? - which is much more important than my expression of that in a painting. You understand? I wonder if you have got it?
So that absolute reality can never be put into words. It can never be said that one has known it, or one has experienced it. That is all nonsense. The moment you have said, `I have experienced it', it is not that. Or when you say, `I know it', it is not that, because knowledge is the past, dead, that thing is a living thing.
So meditation is the emptying of the mind of all the activity of the self. Now will it take time? You understand? Will the emptying of - or rather I won't use that word `emptying', you will get frightened - can this process of the self come to an end, through time, through days, through years, or is it to end instantly? And is that possible? You are following all this? It is part of your meditation. When you say to yourself, `I will gradually get rid of the self', that is part of our conditioning.
Right? Because when you introduce the word `gradually' that involves time, a period, and you enjoy yourself during that period - you understand? - all the pleasures, all the feeling of guilt which you cherish, which you hold on to, and the anxiety which also gives you a certain sense of living, all that, and to be free of all that you say, `It will take time'.
And that is part of our culture, part of our evolutionary conditioning and so on. Now will it take time? Time being psychologically putting an end to the activities of the self, will it take time? Or it doesn't take time at all, but a new kind of energy must be released - please listen to me - a new kind of energy must be released which will put aside all that instantly. You understand? You understand my question?
