This old brain is memory and memory is always fragmentary. Every challenge – which must be new if it is a challenge at all – is met by the old brain responding according to its old patterns. Being aware choicelessly of this process, the brain itself understands its own nature and structure, and so only responds in a mechanical way to mechanical demands like writing, spelling and so on. Obviously this mechanical part of the brain must function where memory is involved. But when we make a challenge out of something which is not a challenge, like meeting someone who insulted us or flattered us some time ago, this is a mechanical response which is habitual. This response is unnecessary and without it there would be no challenge at all! So what we generally consider to be challenges are simply mechanical responses to events.
This is the way we live. All these responses are from what we call the old brain. Is the whole operation of the brain old? Is there any action of the brain which is not this response of the computer? And can this brain ever be quiet? Can it be active when it is demanded and silent when it is necessary? The answer to this lies in meditation. The understanding of this mechanical habitual brain opens the door to the new quality of the mind. When we say the new we mean something entirely different, a different dimension which cannot possibly be formulated by the old. Anything that can be formulated by the old brain is not new, for this very formulation is the action of memory which is image and thought. When the new is very close to the old, the old can reach it, touch it and contaminate it. But if the new is very far from the old then the old cannot reach it. Thought can be quiet and produce a certain silence which is the cessation of its own chattering. But this silence with its space around a centre is not the new. The new is not just the cessation of the old.
The old brain must be ready to operate mechanically when it is needed, so it must not be asleep, anaesthetised, controlled, drilled; it must operate efficiently. To operate efficiently, every form of conclusion, judgement and justification must come to an end. When the old brain operates in the field of psychological prejudices, it ceases to be efficient, sane and rational. For the old brain to function so efficiently, so truly, it must be quiet. So there is the quietness of the old brain, which is not sleep, which is not a mythical, mystical state of induced vagueness.
The new can be only when the old has completely understood its place and function. So our concern is not with the new, but having seen the whole nature and structure of the old then action is different. All our action is relationship. This different action of relationship is love, which is not the known. And meditation is freeing the mind from the known.
The separation between the old brain and the new can be perceived very definitely when the old brain loses its observer. The new cannot be perceived as the observer if the old brain sees the observed separate from itself. When the whole mechanism of the old with its observer becomes entirely quiet, keeps its acuity and therefore loses its observer, then the new is.
In a certain manner of speaking it is wrong even to make a division between the old and the new: they live in the same house, there is harmony between the two. This harmony cannot possibly exist without love. And meditation is of this love.