The word ‘meditation’ must be used very guardedly, with a great deal of hesitation, because in the Western world – and dividing the world into the West and the East is a great pity – meditation has very little meaning. The West is more familiar with the word contemplation. I think contemplation and meditation are two different things. In the East, meditation is something that one practices day after day, according to a certain method and pattern laid down by some authority, ancient or modern; and in following that pattern, one learns to conquer, control thought, and go beyond. That is the meaning generally implied by that word. The West is not so familiar with that meaning.
So let us put aside for the moment both the East and the West, and try to find out not how to meditate but the quality of a mind that is awake, aware, intense, that has no trauma, no suppression nor indulgence, that is not controlling itself all the time or at any time, that is free and therefore never lives in the shadow of yesterday. That is what we are going to consider. We must begin to understand this right from the beginning, because the first step matters much more than the last step. Freedom is not at the end, but at the beginning, and that is one of the most difficult things to understand. Without freedom there is no movement except within a very, very restricted area, that restriction being based on the image or the, idea of organised pleasure.
I am not laying down the law or telling you what to do or not to do, or that you must agree or disagree, but we have to see the idea, the principle, the image from which all thinking begins, from which all our reactions come. Without understanding that, it is not possible to be free to go far beyond the present limitations of the mind or the limitations of the society or culture in which we have been brought up. So, if I may suggest, in listening, you each have a double task, not only to listen to the speaker but also to listen to yourself.
We all want wider and deeper experiences, experiences that are more intense, more alive, not repetitive; and so we seek them through drugs, through meditation or through visions, through becoming much more sensitive. The drugs help one, for the time being, to become extraordinarily sensitive, The whole organism is heightened. The nerves and the whole being are liberated from the pettiness of daily existence, and that brings about a great intensity. In that state of intensity, it can happen that there is no experiencer or experience, there is only the thing. In watching a flower, there is only the flower, there is no watcher watching the flower. These various forms of drugs give the body, the whole organism, and hence the brain, an extraordinary sensitivity. In that state, if you are a poet, if you are an artist, if you are this or that, you have an experience according to your temperament.
Please, I have not taken any drug, because to me any form of stimulant – any form, including your being stimulated by the speaker-be it drink, or sex, or drugs, or going to Mass and getting into a certain state of emotional tension, is utterly detrimental, because any form of stimulant, however subtle, makes the mind dull through its dependence on that stimulant. The stimulant establishes a certain habit and makes the mind dull.
Most of us do not use drugs, but we do want wider and deeper experiences. So we meditate. We hope by meditation, by control of thought, by learning, by getting into some peculiar emotional, psychological, mystical state, by having visions, experiences, to reach an extraordinary state. If you are using meditation as a means to something, then meditation becomes another drug. It creates a habit, and therefore destroys the subtlety, the sensitivity, the quality of the free mind.
Most of us like systems to follow, and there are so many systems in Asia which have been transported, I don’t know why, to the West. Everyone gets trapped in those systems. There are mantras and all the rest of it. The constant repetition of words, in Latin, Sanskrit, or any other language, makes the mind quiet, but dull and stupid. A petty little mind repeating a Christian prayer is still a petty little mind. It can repeat ten million times a day, it is still a narrow, shallow, stupid mind.
Meditation is something entirely different. In order to understand it, we must put away drugs and reject all methods, including the repetition of words in order to reach some peculiar state of silence, which is really stagnation. We must also put away every form of desire for further experience. This is very difficult, because most of us are so saturated with the ugliness, brutality, violence, and despair of life that we want something more. We are longing for new experiences, whether outward experiences such as going to Mass, or inward deeper experiences. But one has to put all of these away. Only then is there freedom. The manner of putting away these things is of great importance. I can put away wanting this or that, because it is too silly, but inwardly I may still I want experiences.
I may not want to see Christ or Buddha, or this or that person, that’s too obviously silly, because it’s a projection of one’s own background. I may rationally, logically reject that. But inwardly I want my own experience, which is not contaminated by the past. But all the experiences, all the visions that I want are contaminated by the past.
I have to understand the depth, the height, the significance, the quality of the past; and in that understanding I am dying to it, the mind is dying to it. The mind is the past; the whole structure of the brain, with all its associations, is the result of the past. It is put together by time, two million years of time, and you can’t put all that away by a gesture. You have to understand it as every reaction arises. Since most of us still have a great deal of the animal in us, we have to understand all that; and to understand it, one has to be aware of it. To be aware is to watch it, listen to it, not condemn it or justify it.
By being aware outwardly and inwardly, and riding on that awareness of the outward movement as a tide that goes out and a tide that comes in, riding on that, the mind then begins to discover its own reactions, responses, demands, compulsions. To understand these demands, urges, responses, you must not condemn. If you do, then you don’t understand. It’s like condemning a child, because that’s the easiest way to deal with the child. We condemn, and we think we understand, but we do not.
We have to find out why we condemn. Why do you condemn? Why do you rationalise? Why do you justify? Condemnation, justification, rationalisation are forms of escape from the fact. The fact is there, it is what is; it is there. Why should I rationalise it? Why should I condemn it? Why should I justify it? When I do that, I am wasting energy. Therefore, to understand the fact, you must live with it completely, without any distance between the mind and the fact, because the fact is the mind.
You have rejected drugs and the urge for experience, because you understand that when you want to escape from this ugly, monstrous world into something extraordinary, such experiences become escapes from the fact. Since the mind and the brain are the result of the past, one has to understand the conscious as well as the unconscious past. One can understand it immediately, not take time, months, years, going to an analyst or analysing oneself. One can understand the whole thing immediately, with one look, if one knows how to look. So we are going to find out how to look.
One cannot look if there is any sense of condemnation, any sense of justification of what one sees. That must be completely clear. To understand a child, you can’t condemn it; you must watch it, watch it while it is playing, crying, laughing, sleeping. What is more important is not the child, but how you watch the child. We are not considering now a method of looking. We are trying to understand whether it is possible, by one look – not with your vision, not with your eyes only, but an inward look-to understand the whole structure and be free of it. That is what we mean by meditation – nothing else.
The mind has come to this point because it has rejected drugs, experiences, authority, following, repetition of words, control, forcing oneself in one direction. It has looked at it, studied it, gone into it, observed it, not said it is right or wrong. What has happened? The mind has now become naturally alert and sensitive, not through drugs, not through any form of stimulant. It has become exceedingly sensitive.
Let’s go into that word sensitive. Do you want to ask questions? Are you listening to the speaker, or are you listening to yourself as the things are being said. We are now trying to see what we mean by sensitivity. This is of great importance-sensitivity of the body, the organism, the brain, total sensitivity, The essence of sensitivity is to be vulnerable inwardly in the sense of not having any resistance, not having any image, any formula, not saying “This is the line l draw” and reacting from that line. That is merely a resistance. Such a mind, such an inward state of defence, resistance, acceptance, obedience, following authority, makes the mind insensitive. And fear of any kind – one of the most difficult things to be free from makes the mind invulnerable, makes it dull and insensitive. Also, there is no sensitivity when you are seeking fame, when you are dogmatic, when you are violent, when you are in a position of authority and misuse that authority by being rude, vulgar, oppressive. All that obviously makes the mind, the whole being, insensitive. Only a mind that is vulnerable is capable of affection, love-not a mind that is jealous, possessive, dominating. So we understand now, without going into too much detail, more or less what sensitivity means. It is another thing to be in that state, not just intellectually agree or ask, “How am I to come to that state where I’m totally vulnerable, and therefore totally sensitive?” You can’t come to it by some trick; you’ll come to it naturally, sweetly, easily, without effort, if you understand all that we have said previously about drugs, experience, ambition, greed, envy.
There is sensitivity only when there is freedom. Freedom implies freedom per se, not freedom from something. Having understood the past, we are now considering how by one look one is free of the whole structure. To look, to observe, to be aware of the whole structure instantly, there must be sensitivity. That sensitivity is denied if there is any form of image about oneself or about what one should be, that image being based on pleasure. The mind that is seeking pleasure in any form is inviting sorrow.
The mind that is sensitive, in the sense that we are using the word, not only neurologically and biologically, but totally vulnerable inwardly, without any resistance, has an extraordinary strength, vitality, and energy, because it is not battling with life, neither accepting life nor rejecting it. When one understands this whole phenomenon, when one has gone through it all, then one look is enough to destroy the whole structure. This whole process is meditation. In understanding meditation, one has to understand control and identification. Control of thought implies resistance to every other form of thought. I want to think about one thing, but thought wanders away, like a leaf wandering aimlessly, I concentrate, I control, I make a tremendous effort to push all thought away, except that one thought. That one thought is based on an ultimate pleasure. Concentration implies exclusion, narrowness, focusing on one thing, and keeping everything else in darkness. But when one understands what it is to be attentive, with the body, the nerves, the eyes, the ears, the brain, the whole, total being … to be attentive to colour, to thought, to one’s speech, then, in that attention, there is a concentration which is not exclusion. I can attend, I can look, I can work on something without exclusion.
One must also understand identification. A child is absorbed by a toy. The toy is more fascinating than anything else, and the child is completely lost in that fascination; he becomes quiet, not mischievous, not naughty, he doesn’t tear and run about. The toy has become a thing that absorbs his mind, his body, everything. The toy has absorbed him. And we also, like the child, want to be absorbed by an idea, by our images, or by the images that have been presented to us, such as Buddha or Jesus Christ. Where the mind is being absorbed, either by a drink, or by an image made by the hand or by the mind, there is no sensitivity, and therefore there is no love.
The mind that is free is really an empty mind, We only know emptiness as space with an object in it. We only know this emptiness here in the tent, because there is the outward structure of the tent, and that we call emptiness. We do not know space – not between the Earth and Mars, we are not talking about that without an object, and therefore, we don’t know what emptiness is. A mind that is not totally empty, without an object, is never free. One can understand intellectually that all desire, all relationship, all action, takes place within the space created by the object, or by the centre, or by the image. In that space there is never freedom. (It’s like a goat tied to a post, who can wander only the length of its tether.
To understand the nature of freedom, one must understand the nature of emptiness and space, and again, all that is meditation. Only when the mind is totally empty and there is no centre which creates space, and therefore there is space, is the mind completely quiet The mind then is extraordinarily still1 and it is only in stillness, which can only take place in the emptiness which is space without the object, that all energy – all energy comes into being without movement.
When energy is no longer dissipated and comes about without any movement, there must be action. A kettle that is boiling, if it has no escape, must burst. Only when the mind is completely still, not the stillness of stagnation, but of tremendous vitality and energy, is there an event, an explosion which is creation. Writing a book, writing a poem, becoming famous, is not creation. The world is filled with books. I believe four thousand or more books are produced every week. Self-expression in no manner is meditation. And a mind that is not in that state of creation is a dead mind. One must begin, if one would understand meditation, right from the beginning. And the beginning is self-knowledge. Self-knowing is the beginning of wisdom, and the ending of sorrow is the beginning of a new life.