Krishnamurti - This Light in Oneself: True Meditation

This Light in Oneself: True Meditation

Copyright 1999 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd.

Edited by Ray McCoy

T HIS L IGHT

IN O NESELF

True Meditation

J. K RISHNAMURTI

Contents

Foreword

Approaching the end of what most of the Western world has chosen to call the second millennium amid busy plans for celebration, we look about us and see the astounding advances in science, medicine, technology, access to information, and knowledgeand war, poverty, starvation, political and religious corruption, turmoil, despoliation of the environment, terrorism, and great sorrow even among the most affluent. For thousands of years we have looked outward, to experts who now amass and manipulate information of incredible complexity, and to counselors, therapists, educators, and religious leaders to solve our personal and social upheavals. Yet the fundamental problems of fear, conflict, relationship, lives without meaning, remain.

In his many years of discussions with people from all parts of society and in public talks to large audiences all over the world, Krishnamurti spoke of the need to look inward, to know oneself, if we are to understand individual, and therefore societys, deeply rooted conflicts, for we are the world; our individual chaos creates the global disorder.

From previously unpublished talks, the pages that follow offer Krishnamurtis timeless insights into where the source of humanitys true freedom, wisdom, and goodness is to be discoveredby each of us.

R AY M C C OY

Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

A New Consciousness

A new consciousness and a totally new morality are necessary to bring about a radical change in the present culture and social structure. This is obvious, yet the Left and the Right and the revolutionary seem to disregard it. Any dogma, any formula, any ideology is part of the old consciousness; they are the fabrications of thought whose activity is fragmentationthe Left, the Right, the center. This activity will inevitably lead to bloodshed of the Right or of the Left or to totalitarianism. This is what is going on around us. One sees the necessity of social, economic, and moral change but the response is from the old consciousness, thought being the principal actor. The mess, the confusion, and the misery that human beings have got into are within the area of the old consciousness, and without changing that profoundly, every human activitypolitical, economic or religiouswill only bring us to the destruction of each other and of the earth. This is so obvious to the sane.

One has to be a light to oneself; this light is the law. There is no other law. All the other laws are made by thought and so are fragmentary and contradictory. To be a light to oneself is not to follow the light of another, however reasonable, logical, historical, and however convincing. You cannot be a light to yourself if you are in the dark shadows of authority, of dogma, of conclusion. Morality is not put together by thought; it is not the outcome of environmental pressure, it is not of yesterday, of tradition. Morality is the child of love and love is not desire and pleasure. Sexual or sensory enjoyment is not love.

Freedom is to be a light to oneself; then it is not an abstraction, a thing conjured up by thought. Actual freedom is freedom from dependency, attachment, from the craving for experience. Freedom from the very structure of thought is to be a light to oneself. In this light all action takes place and thus it is never contradictory. Contradiction exists only when that light is separate from action, when the actor is separate from action. The ideal, the principle, is the barren movement of thought and it cannot coexist with this light; one denies the other. Where the observer is, this light, this love, is not. The structure of the observer is put together by thought, which is never new, never free. There is no how, no system, no practice. There is only the seeing that is the doing. You have to see, not through the eyes of another. This light, this law, is neither yours nor that of another. There is only light. This is love.

The Miracle of Attention

Can we put away all ideas, concepts, and theories and find out for ourselves if there is something sacrednot the word, because the word is not the thing, the description is not the describedto see if there is something real, not an imagination, not something illusory, fanciful, not a myth but a reality that can never be destroyed, a truth that is abiding?

To find that out, to come upon it, all authority of any kind, especially spiritual, must be totally set aside, because authority implies conformity, obedience, acceptance of a certain pattern. A mind must be capable of standing alone, of being a light to itself. Following another, belonging to a group, following methods of meditation laid down by an authority, by tradition, is totally irrelevant to one who investigates into the question of whether there is something eternal, timeless, something that is not measurable by thought, that operates in our daily life. If it does not function as part of our daily life, then meditation is an escape and absolutely useless. All this implies that one must stand alone. There is a difference between isolation and aloneness, between loneliness and being able to stand by yourself clearly, unconfused, uncontaminated.

We are concerned with the whole of life, not one segment of it, one fragment of it, but the whole of what you do, what you think, what you feel, how you behave. As we are concerned with the whole of life, we cannot possibly take a fragment that is thought, and through thought resolve all of our problems. Thought may give authority to itself to bring all the other fragments together, but thought has created these fragments. We are conditioned to think in terms of progress, of gradual achievement. People believe in psychological evolution, but is there such a thing as the me psychologically achieving anything other than the projection of thought?

To find out if there is something that is not projected by thought, that is not an illusion, a myth, we must ask whether thought can be controlled, whether thought can be held in abeyance, whether thought can be suppressed, so that the mind is completely still. Control implies the controller and the controlled, doesnt it? Who is the controller? Is that not also created by thought, one of the fragments of thought, which has assumed authority as the controller? If you see the truth of that, then the controller is the controlled, the experiencer is the experienced, the thinker is the thought. They are not separate entities. If you understand that, then there is no necessity to control.

If there is no controller because the controller is the controlled, then what happens? When there is a division between the controller and the controlled, there is conflict, there is a wastage of energy. When the controller is the controlled there is no wastage of energy. Then there is the accumulation of all that energy that had been dissipated in suppression, in resistance, brought about through division as the controller and the controlled. When there is no division, you have all that energy to go beyond that which you thought must be controlled. In meditation it must be clearly understood that there is no control of thought, no disciplining of thought, because the one who disciplines thought is a fragment of thought, the one who controls thought is a fragment of thought. If you see the truth of that, then you have all the energy that has been dissipated through comparison, through control, through suppression, to go beyond what actually is.

We are asking whether the mind can be absolutely still, because that which is still has great energy. It is the summation of energy. Can the mindwhich is chattering, always in movement; which is thought always looking back, remembering, accumulating knowledge, constantly changingbe completely still? Have you ever tried to find out if thought can be still? How are you going to find out how to bring about this stillness of thought? You see, thought is time and time is movement, time is measurement. In daily life you measure, you compare, both physically and psychologically. That is measurement, comparison means measurement. Can you live without comparison in daily life? Can you cease to compare altogether, not in meditation but in daily life? You do compare when you are choosing from two materials, this cloth or that cloth, when you compare two cars, when you compare parts of knowledge, but psychologically,