So, there is an assumption that there is an experiencer and that this experiencer is independent of the experiences, but he would like to capture certain kinds of experiences and that becomes significant for him. For instance, at a very simple level, I might say ‘I’d like to experience an ice cream’ or ‘I’d like to experience going abroad and going to the hills’ or whatever. But it seems to me, it is very, very important to understand the nature and structure of what we call ‘myself’.

All of us seem to function with this idea or with this strong feeling of the existence of ‘myself’. I’m not denying the existence of the body, I’m not denying the fact that this human being has lived for so many years, has done so many things, gathered so many skills. I’m not denying any of those. But what I am questioning is whether apart from these facts that things have been done, skills have been gathered and so on, is there an experiencer at all? Or, it’s just become a habit of thought, it’s just become a habit of the human brain to structure the world around in terms of an experiencer and an experience. At a very simple level, I think it is very easy to see that though the world is structured around nations, for example, we easily talk of ‘India is very wary of Chinese designs on its borders.’ Or ‘Pakistan is very hostile to India.’ So, we take it for granted that there is an entity called Pakistan or an entity called India or whatever. But I think it is very easy to see that this thing called Pakistan or this thing called India or this thing called China is a thought held in human brains. And we identify with those thoughts. The world itself, in reality, doesn’t have to be divided into these structures of nations, of countries and so on. And yet it is very easy to fall into the habit of thinking of myself as an Indian or thinking of myself as something else.

And this thought is sustained, not only in my brain but in thousands and millions of other brains. So, this thought of India as something existent independent of us, is created because even if it is not held in this brain, it gets held in some other brain, so there seems to be some kind of an objective reality to it. I’ll try and make myself a little clearer. The tree exists whether I think about it or not. It is there as a living organism. But does the sense of ‘I’ exist independent of thought in the same way? That’s a question that can be asked. Does the feeling of ‘I’ exist independent of thought? For example, whenever I am asked to describe myself, can I talk about myself independent of the experiences, independent of the skills, independent of the beliefs, opinions, ideas and then say ‘I have these opinions’, ‘I feel the following way’, ‘I think this is right’, ‘I assume that it should be done that way’ or ‘I will feel great sorrow if this happens to me’, right? So, I would like to suggest that this is an exploration that can be carried on by you and by me as I am talking. Is there at all a thinker independent of thought? Or does the very movement of thinking create the thinker?

I’d like to suggest that the very process of thinking, the very mechanism of thinking, creates the feeling of being a thinker, of being a person, of being an independent entity, independent of those thoughts and then the thinker says ‘I want to have this experience’, ‘I want to have that experience’ and so on, right? Now there is a great problem in this. The minute the feeling of a thinker, of being a separate psychological entity is sustained, there is already a movement of isolation, a movement of separation from the whole of reality. The minute I think of myself as a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian, there is already a process of division that has happened, right? And in that process of division, I might then say ‘But I will be tolerant, I will be enlightened, I will try and create a multicultural society’ and so on. But the fact is, the whole attempt at being tolerant, the whole attempt at being multicultural and so on, is rooted in division. Because there has already been a division as ‘I’, the Hindu or the Muslim or the Christian, and the other person who is not that, right? So, in this identification as an Indian or in this identification as a Muslim or a Christian or a Hindu–that very act of identification creates a division between myself and the others. And holding onto the division, I try to relate, I try to make a bridge across the gap that has been created, right? So, I’m suggesting that one has to carefully examine and understand this process in order to understand what meditation is all about. Without understanding this process, merely coming to meditation as some kind of practice, some kind of skill, something that you can buy by going to a course and paying some money to be there for a few years or a few months or a few weeks, and then come back and say ‘I’ve learnt the art of meditation’ has very little significance. I may have captured a certain kind of skill, I may, through that process, feel comforted, I may feel that I have something that I can hold onto, but it may have very little significance in understanding truth.

And Krishnamurti’s concern has been that the human mind should come upon truth, not merely come upon a set of beliefs and ideas which will comfort one. Right? So, I was talking of the division that is inherent in any kind of identification. It is quite easy to see that this division occurs when one identifies oneself as an Indian or a Muslim or a Hindu. But there is a deeper identification which is more subtle, and which is more difficult to perceive as creating a movement of isolation, and that division is the feeling of ‘I’. I am suggesting, though I keep using the word ‘I’, I use the word ‘I’ in a very functional way, not as a person who is separate from you. But I am suggesting that the feeling of ‘I’ creates division as well. Because ‘I’, ‘not I’, ‘I’ and ‘you’. So, it has to be examined whether there is really an ‘I’ that is completely separate or the feeling of ‘I’ has been created by thought and sustained by thought. So, as long as thought sustains this feeling of ‘I’, the feeling of separation also is rooted in it, sustained by it. And through this separation, one tries to relate to the other human being, to nature and to reality. But in fact, because the feeling of ‘I’ is constantly isolating…so there is a paradoxical movement going on, a contradictory movement going on. On the one hand, the isolation is being sustained and on the other hand there is an attempt to bridge that isolation, bridge that gap through all kinds of practices and methods, right? Because after all, when we talk of meditation to come upon truth, we feel that there is a gap between me and truth and therefore I need to bridge that gap by purifying myself, by refining myself, by somehow making my brain capable of bridging that gap. But Krishnamurti’s approach would be, find out how the gap is sustained, don’t bother to bridge the gap. First understand how the gap is created. And when you understand how a gap is created, how it sustains itself, perhaps that very understanding lets go of that movement of isolation. And when the movement of isolation is not there, truth is not something to be achieved, it is not something to be sought after, but it is there because the mind is not isolating itself, right? So, it is not a question of coming upon truth as something out there, a fixed point to which I have to work towards, but in understanding whether what I am holding onto is true or false, and in the ending of the false, truth comes into being, right?

So, I feel, that Krishnamurti’s approach takes away every possibility of illusion because if I call myself a Hindu or call myself a Muslim, and in that process say ‘I will meditate in order to achieve God’, but because I am calling myself a Hindu or a Muslim, which means I am conditioned by those ideas, by those opinions, by those beliefs, (and) those ideas and beliefs have their own way of projecting what truth is, right? After all, if I call myself an Indian, it means a whole lot of emotional states, it means a whole lot of ideas and opinions about the nature of the Indian culture, the nature of what it is to be an Indian and so on, and then it projects and says this is what truth is. But that is merely a projection of that particular conditioning. Somebody else, conditioned in a different way, brought up in a different environment, projects truth in a different way. And then, because we are talking about truth, and there is a tremendous, vested interest in coming upon truth, in feeling that ‘I have access to truth’, the divisions that are inherent in this state of identification get intensified, right?  So, it seems to me that the starting point of understanding meditation is to explore very carefully the nature of the experiencer and the experienced, and the relationship between the experiencer and his experiences.

As I said, there is an assumption that there is an experiencer, an ‘I’ that is separate and independent of the experiences, right? And one is questioning whether that is so, or whether in the very process of thinking, in the very act of thinking, thought itself divides itself into an experiencer and that which is experienced, and then the experiencer says ‘I have had this experience, I want to have some other experience’. So, when thought divides itself in this way, a duality, a contradiction is created at the very root of one’s existence. And we sustain this contradiction right through our lives, we live with this contradiction, we live with the burden, and the fear and the sorrow of this contradiction and we try to relate to each other held by this contradiction, and that is not possible. We may try to achieve truth, we may try to achieve some kind of state of being undisturbed, but this very contradiction which is at the very heart of our existence creates its own instability, creates its own sense of anxiety because when I have isolated myself from the rest of the world, in that very isolation there is anxiety. Will I continue to exist? Will my existence be threatened? What are all the things that threaten my existence?

So, every experiencing also becomes a kind of ambivalent thing because every new experience can become a disturbance to what I hold and identify with. I think we go through our lives with this sense of anxiety about experiencing. We would like our experiences to be within a comfortable boundary, so that we are not too disturbed. I think it creates all kinds of problems for us. So, what we end up doing is: we have experiences but we don’t do the act of experiencing. I will try and explain the difference between experiencing and having an experience.

Having an experience is to come to something new and translate it in terms of all that I have experienced and held onto. For example, I may look at a flower or I might look at a person. If I look at a person and I come to that act of looking at the person through the background of all my opinions, ideas, etcetera, then I am not experiencing that moment, I’m merely having an experience, right? I am suggesting we go through life in this kind of rather dull state, this semi- blind state, of having experiences. So, we never look at something fresh, we never look at something with eyes that are completely open and attentive. We look at things through what we have already experienced, what we have already got as residues. And through that, we hope to make sense of the new. So, we are constantly translating the new in terms of the old. And a paradox there is,(that) on the one hand we don’t want to give up this movement of translating the new in terms of the old because the old is where the sense of ‘I’ resides, the old is where familiarity is, and therefore the old is where security is. So, on the one hand there’s a holding onto the old and translating the new in terms of the old. And on the other hand, there is this constant sense of wanting something new, right? Wanting stimulation of one kind or the other, of moving from one stimulation to the other, of becoming bored, of becoming weary of repetition. So, both these things happen to us. On the one hand we want to hold on to the old and we do not want to let go of it, and on the other hand we want the stimulation of something new, right? So, we live in this contradictory way of life and unless we understand all this, unless we become aware of it in our own daily lives, meditation has very little meaning. I am quite aware that many of us feel the urge to latch on to a practice, to hold on to a practice, to hold on to a structure because in holding on to a practice, in holding on to a structure, there is a feeling of treading a familiar path. And there are arguments – ‘I have not trodden this path but wiser people than we have trodden this path and therefore I will just follow them.’ But every time I follow, I have become mechanical, I have become, what Krishnamurti would call, a second-hand human being, right? And meditation is really to come upon the new, it has nothing to do with merely repeating what other people have done. Merely having experiences which other people have had. And then holding on to those experiences, feeling a sense of achievement through those experiences, feeling that I have arrived because I have had these experiences, all these are so trivial, are rather childish. But we play this game because constantly we feel that life is about becoming something. I am this, I want to become that, right?

Just to bring together all that I have been talking about: I have been talking about identification, how we tend to identify with our experiences. I have also been talking about that (how) in this very process of identification, there is, paradoxically, a division between the experiencer and the experienced. I think this is very, very interesting to observe within oneself. For example, something happens. And there is a reaction to that which has happened. The reaction can only be from the past. All reaction, psychologically, is from the past, right? So, something has happened, there is a reaction to that, and in the very reaction, there is a feeling ‘I am experiencing this’. For example, the scooter behind the taxi that I am coming in, hits the taxi because the taxi stops suddenly, right? So, there is immediately a reaction ‘How can the scooter driver ever do this to my taxi?’ (Well, it was not me, the driver did it, it was his problem!) But immediately there is a reaction, right? And a minute later or a second later, there is a reaction to the reaction which says I am angry, I am very upset about this having happened to me, right? So, there is an event, there is a reaction and there is an identification with that reaction. This is the process of division. It happens to all of us, right? This is what is called the dualistic thinking. There is nothing more profound than this. There is an event, there is reaction, and then there is this reaction to the reaction which says ‘I am experiencing this’, right? So, in that very moment of saying ‘I am experiencing this’, the dualism has been created. And then the ‘I’ has to control what is happening. Or the ‘I’ has to sustain what is happening, and this is what is being called the process of becoming.

So, right through our lives, psychologically, the process of becoming is set in motion through the division that thought creates between the experiencer and the experienced. I hope I am making myself clear. I am taking a very simple example. Somebody close to me dies. Right? When somebody close to me dies it means a pattern that has been set, a pattern that the brain has become used to, a pattern which the brain has found familiarity with, accepted, suddenly that pattern is disturbed. And the disturbance of the pattern is experienced as sorrow, right? Is translated as sorrow. Sorrow implies I am used to this, I want it to continue, I don’t want it to change, but now it has irrevocably changed. It is no longer what it was. And the reaction to the fact that it is no longer what it was is the feeling of sorrow. Then the feeling of ‘I’ comes into being. I am in sorrow, I don’t want to be in sorrow, let me search for something, let me search for a belief, let me search for comfort, let me find some way of freeing myself from this sorrow. So, this is the dualistic process I am suggesting. That there is nothing more mysterious about the dualistic process other than the fact that there is a reaction, a reaction to the reaction. In that reaction to the reaction there is a feeling of ‘I’ who is experiencing this. And in that process the whole sense of being a permanent ‘I’, who needs to protect myself, who needs to have experiences, who needs to deepen my experiences and all that, is born, right?

So, when I seek meditation as a way of seeking more profound experiences, that primary illusion of an ‘I’ is not being questioned. So whatever experiences are gathered, whatever skills are achieved, it is still within the structure and framework of the dualism of ‘I’ and my experiences, and therefore it has very little significance. And it may create so-called comforting experiences, but it may have nothing to do with coming upon truth, right? So, unless all this is examined, explored in one’s daily life, to talk about meditation or to try and somehow achieve meditation, has very little meaning. So, the starting point of meditation, it would seem, comes, it begins, in one’s daily life, in one’s daily activities.

There is another factor which I would like to bring in now. In this dualism of ‘I’, the experiencer, and my experiences, the feeling of control also comes into being. I need to control this. I got angry; I should not have got angry. I will try and learn how to control my anger. Or I’m deeply sorrowful or I’m full of fear, I’ll try to control my fear. So, in that whole process of control, the division of the experiencer and the experienced is sustained in the form of a controller and that which has to be controlled. So, (if) you can see in all the forms of meditation there is this whole act of controlling, you must control your passions, you must control the way you sit, you must control your thoughts, right? So, a whole form of meditation may be concerned with the act of controlling. It is thought that takes you all over the place, so control your thoughts, right? And if you control your thoughts, then, they will become steady, and you will be able to perceive truth. But who is the controller? That is one of the questions that Krishnamurti has asked over and over again. Is there a controller that is different and separate from the thing that is being controlled? Is there an ‘I’ that is separate from the anger who can then control the anger? Or, the very sense of ‘I’, the sense of controller is merely the movement of thought dividing itself and therefore whatever happens in that controlling is still within the dualistic movement and therefore it has no great significance, right? So, it would seem to me that the beginning of meditation is being aware of yourself in your daily life. And to be profoundly aware of yourself without any attempt to control means the mind is extraordinarily alert, watching, observing. And that may have much more to do with meditation than going off for a system, or a practice, or a method. Because it is comparatively easy to follow a method. Somebody teaches me a method and I can always follow it, and I can always become skilled in it, and I can always feel a sense of achievement through it. But to actually observe my daily life, watch my reactions, watch my habits, watch the movement of fear, watch the movement of jealousy, watch the movement of despair, and just to watch it without control at all, demands a mind that is highly alert, right? And it is that alertness of mind that can, perhaps, come upon the movement of meditation.

I would like to communicate to you the beauty of an alertness which is not directed, which is not subjected to a sense of achievement, but an alertness which pervades the whole of one’s daily life. An alertness in which there is no structure. An alertness in which there is no method of saying: ‘I will learn to walk slowly today’, ‘I will become aware of my walking today’, ‘I will become aware of my eating tomorrow’, ‘I will become aware of my breath day after tomorrow’ but just the act of being aware. And not to convert that act of being aware into a burden, into something to be achieved, but something that you are interested in. Because you are interested in understanding how this whole structure of thought works. How this whole movement of reaction comes into being. How the sense of becoming comes into being, right? All this, this investigation, is part, it would seem to me of what Krishnamurti would call meditation. So, in a sense, every conversation of his, every talk of his was a meditation. It was not an attempt to communicate something, as somebody who informs somebody else about certain truths that he is privy to. But it was an act, it was an invitation to explore together. And when you’re exploring by yourself or when you’re exploring together, that itself is part of the movement of meditation.

I can talk about meditation thus far with a certain authenticity. I can say I have understood what it means to live in daily life without control, what it means to be alert and aware of reactions, what it means to be observant, what it means to look at a bird, to look at a flower with eyes that are not conditioned by habit and thought. But, I suspect there is something much deeper to meditation. Krishnamurti also talks about meditation as the movement of the emptying of the consciousness. Krishnamurti also talks about meditation as coming upon the whole movement of reality and truth. Now, I would not like to presume and I would not like to communicate to you the feeling that—that understanding which means understanding what it means for the mind to be completely silent, to be completely quiet. My mind is not silent, my mind is not quiet. But I’m not going to go to some method or some system to make my mind quiet or silent because a mind that is forced to be silent, a mind that is forced to be quiet, is not a mind that is silent. It is merely a mind that has been made silent. Much like children in a classroom will be silent if the teacher is there and instilling fear into them. But that’s not silence, it is merely a certain controlled noise. So, if one is not interested in controlled noise, but in silence, one can’t begin with control, one can’t begin with method, one can’t begin with system. One begins by just being aware of one’s daily life.

I wanted to speak for forty-five minutes; I have spoken for nearly an hour. I’d like to read something from Krishnamurti to you, I’d like to share with you things that he has talked about meditation. Perhaps we will go deeper into this whole understanding of meditation when I read out from Krishnamurti. I am reading this out not as an authority, not as propaganda, but merely to listen to somebody who has explored these issues very deeply. To listen. Not in order to imitate, not in order to achieve, not in order to compare myself with the other person and say he has gone that far, and I haven’t. But just to listen.

By the way, I don’t know how many of you are aware of this book (Meditations, Krishnamurti J, 1979, 2002 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd). I asked my colleague, Mr. Gurvinder (Neetu) Singh to bring some copies of this book, so that if people are interested, they can take copies of this home.

KJ reading ‘A meditative mind is silent. It is not the silence which thought can conceive of; it is not the silence of a still evening; it is the silence when thought—with all it images, its words and perceptions—has   entirely ceased. This meditative mind is the religious mind—the religion that is not touched by the church, the temples or by chants.

The religious mind is the explosion of love. It is this love that knows no separation. To it, far is near. It is not the one or the many, but rather that state of love in which all division ceases. Like beauty, it is not of the measure of words. From this silence alone the meditative mind acts.’ (p.1)

I’m interested in how he connects meditation, silence, the religious mind and love. Right? So, the religious mind is not merely a mind that is following certain principles or following a particular tradition or has certain strong beliefs. But a religious mind is essentially a mind that has the quality of love. And love means no division, no separation. To have no separation is to love. To have separation and then say I love, is probably to deceive oneself. It may be dependence, it may be attachment, but it may not be love at all. So, the meditative mind, silence, the religious mind, love, the quality of having no separation, they’re all connected together. And again, to come upon it—you cannot come upon it through a method, through a system, but in the act of observing your daily life, in the act of observing the many ways in which separation occurs, the mind begins to understand. And in understanding, there is the possibility of going beyond it. There is no going beyond, there is no bypassing thought. Thought cannot be bypassed, and a shortcut taken to truth. It is only through the total understanding of the structure of thought, the psychological structure of thought, and in that understanding, the putting aside of it, without effort, without a sense of achievement, that the mind comes upon truth.

I’ll read one more.

KJ reads:

‘Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life—perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique, and therefore no authority.’

Only when there is a technique, there is an authority, somebody who says I know the technique, I will teach you the technique. But when there is no technique at all, when it is the act of being aware in daily life, without control, then you don’t need an authority, you don’t need somebody to say that you’re going right or wrong.

‘When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy—if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.

So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows or listening to the singing of birds or looking at the face of your wife or your child.’ (p.2)

But there is a kind of a greed in us. We’re not interested in observing our daily life with attention. We would like something which we consider bigger, something more significant, something vaster. But you have to begin very near, you’ve to begin with what you are. And to understand what you are, you can only understand it when you observe the way you act, the way you behave, the way you think in your daily life. So, for me, it brings it very close. So, meditation, religion, doesn’t become something far away to be achieved. It is right here in my daily life. In the way I speak to you, in the thoughts that are going on in me. Is there a sense of achievement in my talking with you? Is there a feeling of knowing something or is just there an act of observation, an act of exploration together. All that is part of meditation.

I’ll read one or two more with your permission.

KJ reading: ‘Meditation is to find out whether the brain, with all the activities, all its experiences, can be absolutely quiet.’

 So, is it possible for the brain, with all the activities, all the experiences it has gathered… can it be quiet?

‘Not forced, because the moment you force, there is duality.’

Duality between the controller and the controlled.

‘The entity that says, ‘I would like to have marvelous experiences, therefore I must force my brain to be quiet’, will never do it. But if you begin to inquire, observe, listen to all the movements of thought, its conditioning, its pursuits, its fears, its pleasures, watch how the brain operates, then you will see that the brain becomes extraordinarily quiet; that quietness is not sleep but is tremendously active and therefore quiet.’

Active, not in the process of thought, not active in the sense of becoming something or the other or trying to achieve something. But a mind that is completely alert, awake, is profoundly active. But because it is completely awake, thought finds its right place. It is no longer creating a virtual world of becoming this or that. And therefore, it finds its right place. Thought, in most of us, is trying to create security for itself. It is trying to create security for the entity called ‘I’. And therefore, it is forever restless, forever trying to achieve something, hold onto something. But when it realizes that its seeking of security is the very creation of insecurity, it becomes quiet. It no longer goes in that direction. When thought realizes that identifying with the nation is divisive, it divides human beings from other human beings, it no longer goes in that direction. When thought realizes that all becoming is illusory, it no longer goes in that direction. It is very simple.

  ‘A big dynamo that is working perfectly, hardly makes a sound; it is only when there is friction that there is noise.’ (p.4)

One last bit.

KJ reading: ‘Meditation is hard work. It demands the highest form of discipline—not conformity, not imitation, not obedience—but a discipline which comes through constant awareness, not only of the things about you outwardly, but also inwardly. So meditation is not an activity of isolation, but is action in daily (everyday) life which demands cooperation, sensitivity and intelligence.’

Obviously, one’s daily life demands cooperation, sensitivity, and intelligence. So, it is action in daily life.

‘Without laying the foundation of a righteous life, meditation becomes an escape and therefore has no value whatsoever. A righteous life is not the following of social morality, but the freedom from envy, greed and the search of (for) power—all of which (which all) breed enmity. The freedom from all these does not come through the activity of will but by being aware of them through self-knowing. Without knowing the activities of the self, meditation becomes sensuous excitement, and therefore has (of) very little significance.’ (p.6)

I think these words are very important because deep within us is the craving for excitement. The craving for experience is a very deep-rooted demand.  And without understanding it and letting go of it, one can easily fall into the trap of following some guru, following some authority, somebody who can quote something in Sanskrit or some other language and say I’m meditating. But it may have no value whatsoever. One last bit, please.

It is not only personal, but it has to do with mankind.

KJ reading: ‘We have to alter the structure of our society, its injustice, its appalling morality, the divisions it has created between man and woman, the wars, the utter lack of affection and love that is destroying the world. If your meditation is only a personal matter, a thing which you personally enjoy, then it is not meditation. Meditation implies a complete radical change of the mind and the heart. This is only possible when there is this extraordinary sense of inward silence and that alone brings about a religious mind. That mind knows what is sacred.’ (p.24)

So, I’ve shared with you some things which I felt I cannot talk about authentically, but I felt it is still worthwhile listening to. Thank you very much.