Awareness of the wandering - Krishnamurti

Question: I have done a great many spiritual exercises to control the mind, and the image-creating process has become less powerful. But still I have not experienced the deeper implications of meditation. Would you please go into this.

Krishnamurti: Right meditation is important. But to discover what is the right kind of meditation is very difficult. Because we are so eager to still the mind, to find out something new, to experience something which the teachers, the books, the religious persons, have experienced. But perhaps this evening we can go into it and discover what is true meditation. And perhaps if we can experience it as we go along, step by step, we shall know how to meditate.

We think a petty mind, a small mind, a narrow mind, a greedy mind, by disciplining itself will become non-petty, something great. And is that not an illusion? A petty mind will always remain petty, however much it disciplines itself. That is so, is it not? If I am narrow, limited, and my mind is stupid, however much I may discipline I will still remain stupid; and my gods, my meditations, my exercises, will still be limited, stupid, narrow. So, first I have to realize that I have a petty mind, that my mind is prejudiced, that is seeking something as a reward, that it is escaping, - which are all indications of its narrowness. And how can such a mind, though it practises spiritual exercises, controls, disciplines, - how can such a mind be free? Surely it is only in freedom that you discover, not when your mind is bound, trained, controlled, shaped. So that is the first thing to realize, - that a mind seeking a reward, a result, however much it may train itself, will experience only its own projection. Its Masters, its gods, its virtues, are its own projections. That is the first thing to see the truth of, to realize.

Then we can proceed to the next thing, - which is, that a mind which has learned concentration is incapable of understanding the total, the whole. For concentration is a process of exclusiveness, is a process of discarding, putting aside, in search of a result. A mind that is merely narrowed down,
through effort, through the desire to achieve a result, a reward - surely such a mind can only be exclusive; it is not aware of its total process. But most of us are trained to concentrate, in our daily work. And those who are seeking so-called spiritual heights are equally as ambitious as the worldly people; they want to arrive, they want to experience. And it is this drive to experience that forces them to narrow down their consciousness, their thought, excluding all but the one thing they desire to attain, be it a phrase, an image, a picture, or an idea. Again, such a mind is incapable of comprehending the whole.

This does not mean the mind must wander all over the place. On the contrary, the moment there is awareness of the wandering, there is no resistance, there is the understanding of each wandering. Then each thought has its significance, and is understood, not excluded, not put down, suppressed. Then the mind, instead of being petty, narrow, greedy, is no longer fettered by its own compulsions. It is then beginning to be open, to inquire, to discover. Which means, really, that we must discard the whole process of what we have learned as meditation. Then meditation is not for a few minutes or an hour during the day, but is a constant process, all the time seeking, discovering, what is true.

Then, as you go deeper into the problem, you will see that the mind becomes extraordinarily quiet, - not disciplined, not the quietness of stagnation, of enclosure, but a quietness. a tranquillity, in which all movement of thought has ceased. And in that silence the entity who experiences has completely ceased. But what most of us want is to experience, to gather more. It is the desire for the more that makes us meditate, that makes us do spiritual exercises, and so on. But when all that is understood, when all that has dropped away, then there is a silence, then there is a tranquillity of the mind, in which the experiencer, the interpreter, is absent. Then only is there a possibility for that which is not nameable to come into being. It is not a reward for good deeds. Do what you will, be as selfless as you like, force yourself to do the good things, the noble things, to be virtuous, - all those are self-centred activities; and such a mind is only a stagnant mind. It can meditate; but it will not know that state of silence, quietness, in which the real can be.

And that reality is not the word; the word love is not love. One knows, in that silence, that which is love, without the word. And that love without the word is neither yours nor mine, neither personal nor impersonal. It is a state of being. There are no words to describe it. It is an experience which is not recognizable, because the recognizer is absent. You can call it what you like, - love, God, truth, what you will. It is that experience which puts an end to all conflict, to all misery.