This Light in Oneself: True Meditation by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Author:Jiddu Krishnamurti [Krishnamurti, Jiddu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

12 .A Sacred Life

Where there is the activity of the self, meditation is not possible. This is very important to understand, not verbally but actually. Meditation is a process of emptying the mind of all the activity of the self, of all the activity of the “me.” If you do not understand the activity of the self, then your meditation only leads to illusion, your meditation then only leads to self-deception, your meditation then will only lead to further distortion. So to understand what meditation is, you must understand the activity of the self.

The self has had a thousand worldly, sensuous, or intellectual experiences, but it is bored with them because they have no meaning. The desire to have wider, more expansive, transcendental experiences is part of the “me,” the self. When you have such experiences, or visions, you must be able to recognize those experiences, or those visions, but when you can recognize them, they are not new, they are projections of your background, of your conditioning, in which the mind delights as though they are something new. Don’t agree, but see the truth of it, then it is yours.

One of the demands, urges, desires of the mind, the self, is to change “what is” into “what should be.” It doesn’t know what to do with “what is” because it cannot resolve “what is,” therefore it projects an idea of “what should be,” which is the ideal. This projection is the antithesis of “what is,” and therefore there is a conflict between “what is” and “what should be.” That very conflict is the blood and the breath of the self.

Another activity of the self is the will—the will to become, the will to change. Will is a form of resistance in which we have been educated from childhood. Will has become extraordinarily important to us, economically, socially, and religiously. Will is a form of ambition, and from will arises the desire to control—to control one thought by another thought, one activity of thought by another activity of thought. “I must control my desire”: the “I” is put together by thought, a verbal statement as the “me” with its memories, experiences. That thought wants to control, shape, deny, another thought.

One of the activities of the self is to separate itself as the “me,” as the observer. The observer is the past, all the accumulated knowledge, experience, memories. So the “I,” the “me,” separates itself as the observer from the “you,” the observed. “We” and “they.” We the Germans, the communists, the Catholics, the Hindus, and they the heathens, and so on, and so on. As long as the activities of the self—as long as the “me” as the observer, as the controller, as will; the self demanding, desiring experience—exist, meditation becomes a means of self-hypnosis, an escape from daily life, an escape from all the misery and problems. As long as those activities exist, there must be deception. See the reality, not verbally, but actually, that a person who is

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