Creation Is Something Most Holy

From Krishnamurti’s Book THE FUTURE IS NOW

We have to inquire – this is a very serious subject, don’t agree or disagree, just listen – into what is creation. Not the creation of a baby, that’s very simple, or the creation of a new something or other. Invention is totally different from creation. Invention is based on knowledge. The engineers can improve the jet; the movement is based on knowledge and the invention is also based on knowledge. So we must separate invention from creation. This requires your total energy, your capacity to penetrate. Invention is essentially based on knowledge. I improve the clock; I have a new gadget. All invention is based on knowledge, on experience; inventions are inevitably limited because they’re based on knowledge. Knowledge being ever limited, inventions must always be limited. In the future there may be no jets, but something else that will go from Delhi to Los Angeles in two hours; that’s an invention based on previous knowledge which has been improved step by step, but that’s not creation. So what is creation? So what is life? Life in the tree, life in the little grass – life, not what the scientists invent, but the beginning of life – life, the thing that lives? You may kill it, but it’s still there in the other. Don’t agree or disagree, but see that we are inquiring into the origin of life. We are going to inquire into the absolute – something that’s really marvellous. It’s not a reward; you can’t take it home and use it. What is meditation to you? What is meditation? The word, in common language in the dictionary, means: to ponder over, to think over and to concentrate, to learn to concentrate, not let your brain wander all over the place. Is that what you call meditation? Be simple, be honest. That is what? Every day taking a certain period and going to a room and sitting down quietly for ten minutes or half an hour to meditate? Is meditation concentration, thinking about something very noble? Any conscious effort to meditate is part of your discipline of the office, because you say: If I meditate, I’ll have a quiet mind, or I’ll enter into another state. The word ‘meditation’ also means to measure, which means compare. So your meditation becomes mechanical because you are exercising energy to concentrate on a picture, an image, or an idea, and that concentration divides. Concentration is always divisive; you want to concentrate on something, but thought wanders off; then you say you mustn’t wander off, and you come back. You repeat that all day long, or for half an hour. Then you come off it and say you have meditated. This meditation is advocated by all the gurus, by all the lay disciples. The Christian idea is: ‘I believe in God and I’m sacrificing myself to God; therefore, I pray to save my soul.’ Is all this meditation? I know nothing about this kind of meditation; it’s like an achievement; if I meditate for half an hour, I feel better. Or is there a totally different kind of meditation? Don’t accept anything that the speaker says, at any price. The speaker says that that is not meditation at all. That’s merely a process of achievement. If one day you have not been able to concentrate, you take a month and say: ‘Yes, I’ve got it.’ That’s like a clerk becoming a manager. So is there a different kind of meditation which is not effort, which is not measurement, which is not routine, which is not mechanical? Is there a meditation in which there is no sense of comparison, or in which there is no reward and punishment? Is there any meditation which is not based on thought which is measurement, time, and all that? How can one explain a meditation that has no measurement, that has no achievement, that doesn’t say: ‘I’m this, but I’ll become that’? ‘That’ being God or a superangel. Is there a meditation which has nothing to do with will – an energy that says: ‘I must meditate’? Is there a meditation which has nothing to do with effort at all? The speaker says there is. You don’t have to accept it. He may be talking nonsense, but he sees logically that the ordinary meditation is self – hypnosis, deceiving oneself. And, when you stop deceiving, stop all that mechanical process, is there a different kind of meditation? And unfortunately, the speaker says: Yes. But you can’t get at it through effort, through giving all your energy to something. It is something that has to be absolutely silent. First of all, begin very humbly, very, very humbly and, therefore, very gently and, therefore, no pushing, driving, saying: ‘I must do this.’ It requires a tremendous sense not only of aloneness, but a sense of – I mustn’t describe it to you. I mustn’t describe it because then you’ll go off on descriptions. If I describe it, the description is not the real. The description of the moon is not the moon, and a painting of the Himalayas is not the Himalayas. So, we’ll stop describing. It’s for you to play with it, or not play with it, going your own way with your own peculiar achievements through meditation, reward and all the rest of it. So, in meditation which is absolutely no effort, no achievement, no thinking, the brain is quiet; not made quiet by will, by intention, by conclusion and all that nonsense; it is quiet. And, being quiet, it has infinite space. Are you waiting for me to explore? And you will follow what I explain? What kind of people are you? So, is your brain ever quiet? I’m asking you. Your brain is thinking, fearing, thinking of your office work, of your family, what they will do, your sons, your daughters; thinking, which is time and thought. Is your brain ever quiet? Not made quiet by drugs, whiskey and various forms of drugging yourself. You drug yourself when you believe. You drug yourself and say: ‘Yes, this is perfectly right, the Buddha has said that, therefore it must be right. You’re drugging yourself all the time; therefore, you have no energy of that kind that demands the penetration of something immense. So, we’re now going back to find out what creation is. What is creation? It has nothing to do with invention. So what is creation, the origin, the beginning? What is life? Tell me what you think of it. What is life? Not going to the office and all the rest of it, sex and children, or no children but sex and so on and so on and so on. What is life? What gives life to that blade of grass in the cement? What is life in us? Not all the things that we go through – power, position, prestige, fame, or no fame, but shame; that’s not life; that’s part of our mishandling of life. But, what is life? Why are you listening to me? What makes you, if you are listening at all, listen to the man? What is the motive behind your listening? What do you want? What’s your desire? Behind the desire there is a motive. So what is desire? Desire is part of sensation, isn’t it? I see this beautiful clock or ugly clock; it’s a sensation. The seeing brings about a sensation. From that sensation, thought comes and makes an image of it. That is, I see this clock, rather nice, I would like to have it. The sensation of seeing, then thought coming and making an image of that sensation; at that moment, desire is born. It’s very simple. Is there a brain, your brain, which is not muddied up, muddied by environment, by tradition, by society and all the rest of it? So what is the origin of life? Are you waiting for me to answer it? This is much too serious a subject for you to play with, because we are trying to inquire into something that has no name, no end. I can kill that bird; there is another bird. I can’t kill all birds; there are too many of them in the world. So, we are inquiring into what makes a bird. What is creation behind all this? Are you waiting for me to describe it, go into it? You want me to go into it? Why? Questioner: To understand what creation is. Krishnamurti: Why do you ask that? Because I asked? No description can ever describe the origin. The origin is nameless; the origin is absolutely quiet, it’s not whirring about making noise. Creation is something that is most holy, that’s the most sacred thing in life, and if you have made a mess of your life, change it. Change it today, not tomorrow. If you are uncertain, find out why and be certain. If your thinking is not straight, think straight, logically. Unless all that is prepared, all that is settled, you can’t enter into this world, into the world of creation. It ends. This is the last talk. Do you want to sit together quietly for a while? All right, sirs, sit quietly for a while.

[From Krishnamurti’s last ever public talk]