If you did not know a thing about meditation—either the Indian or the Tibetan or the Zen form, then you would be curious to find out. But most of you have heard of it or have practiced some kind of meditation. Therefore, your minds are already caught in a pattern, in a network of concepts and conclusions. You never ask what is implied in that word, and what its actions and movements are. What is the structure, the nature, the beauty, and the deep significance of what is implied in that word? 2,400 words.

The brain can function effectively, naturally, and easily, only when there is harmony, non-contradiction and complete stability, that is, only when there is real order. Maybe you haven’t seen that before, if you think that you are enjoying the overcoming of adversity?  This order is not a blueprint to be sketched out and then conformed to. Rather, it is the awareness and understanding of the disorder in which you already live. In all your relationships there is some disorder, contradiction; and part of meditation—only a small part of it—is to bring about this order. Without order, you cannot meditate. Without that there is no meaning in sitting and breathing, and doing all kinds of techniques, like trying to awaken your kundalini. What has meaning is to bring order, honestly and deeply into your daily lives, and you cannot bring about order without understanding the disorder in which you live.

The whole “technological structure” in which the west lives, is based on the technological principle of measurement. The Asiatic world, including India, said, ‘Measurement is an illusion’ and, to find the immeasurable, you cannot use measurement. But they used thought, which still is measurement, to find the immeasurable. So, they are both the same, though one says, ‘Measurement is necessary’, and the other says, ‘Measurement is an illusion’ and therefore, to find the immeasurable, measurement must come to an end.

The instrument of measurement is obviously thought. Measurement implies comparison, distance and, also, conformity. I conform to the pattern that either I or society, (through propaganda), have created. Measurement is the movement of thought. Thought is the response of memory, experience, and then called knowledge.  Thought always has its roots in the past, because all judgments are pre-packaged. Thought can project a future, but that future will still be the past. The future, the present and the past are the measurement of time, as a movement of thought.

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That you must control thought has been one of the edicts of meditation, and you have accepted it mechanically. Right from childhood, in every school, you have been told, ‘Control your thought’, (look in the book, and not out the window), but you have never asked yourself or another, ‘Who is the controller?’ Is not the controller part of the same thought? Thought wants you to sit quietly and to observe, but really it’s thought that wanders off in various directions. And as you have this pattern established through tradition that you must control thought, you spend the rest of your life controlling it. When you have a tremendous control over thought, you think that at last you have got something.

You are educated to control, but let’s question this whole process of control, not only of thought, but also of desire, pleasure, and all the mental urges.  Who is the controller? Is it not one fragment of thought which says, ‘If I control my thought, I will achieve peace or experience some extraordinary state’? Thought has created this division of the controller and the controlled and so, the conflict between the controller and the controlled is endless. So you ask, (if you are seriously looking into it), ‘Is it possible never to control, but to find a way of living in which there is not one shadow of control?’

Is it possible never to compare yourself with another, not only physiologically but also psychologically? Let’s say that it IS possible. Now, what happens when you don’t compare? Do you become a vegetable? Do you stagnate, or does something totally different take place? Do you realize that you have carried a tremendous burden all your life, and that when you do not compare you are free of that burden? Therefore, you see what you actually are and not what you ‘should be’, or what you ‘have been’, or what you ‘will become’. Which means that when there is no comparison, you do not know what you are.

From there you can start. From not knowing what you are, but wanting to find out, arises the question of whether you can live—a daily life—without any control. Of course, that does not mean that you can do what you like—you are doing that anyhow. This demands a skill in action which is an art to be learned; and the very learning of it is its own discipline. You don’t bring a discipline to it, but the very observation of how to live without control brings its own order. DO IT; you will see how extraordinarily simple it is. Putting it into words makes it complicated, but it’s really very, very simple.

The next question is: Is it possible for thought, which brings about fragmentation, to come to an end? — uncontrolled, and not driven to make itself come to an end. What you are all doing in meditation is trying to stop, to control, and to subjugate thought. Therefore, your minds are perplexed, twisted, tortured, and you live in perpetual conflict. It is obvious—that a tortured, distorted, neurotic and imbalanced mind can never find truth. So, can thought end (in a still mind) and, yet, function when it’s necessary? Thought, as we said, is measurement, knowledge, and memory. It is obvious that thought as knowledge is absolutely essential. Thought must function in the technological world. You must have knowledge to speak a language, and to find out where your house is, to drive a car.

But you use that knowledge to try to bring about a psychological change in yourself. The question which arises from that is: Can knowledge transform man and his society? — We see that knowledge has never transformed man, psychologically. Since history began there have been thousands of wars, but have you learned anything from them? You have learned only how to kill more efficiently, but not how not-to-kill. You know, from various professors, from various books, and so on, the obvious fact that where people are divided, there must be conflict and, yet, you go on. You know the cause of your suffering, but you go on suffering. So basically, fundamentally, knowledge is not the factor of the transformation of man. There must be some other factor. And that, partly, is the process of meditation.

So, it is imperative for a man who is really serious, and who wants to go into this question of meditation, to find out whether thought can have its own place, but not move into all the other realms. It IS possible for thought to have a place and yet, not move into other areas, ONLY when the controller realizes that that which he is trying to control is not different from himself, namely, that the controller IS the controlled. You will see, if you have gone into it with sufficient depth, that thought cannot possibly understand what truth is. Truth cannot be described in symbols. When truth is described, it is not the truth; it is merely a verbal description of something. The description is not the described, but unfortunately, you are caught in this description.

To find out, without effort, whether thought can have its own place, and not move in any other direction, you have to go into the question of time. Time is movement—movement from here to there. Physically you need time to go from here, to your house over there—it may be two minutes or may be an hour but, as a movement from here to there, it is a movement of physical time.

✓‘I will be’, ✓‘I will attain’, ✓‘I will succeed’, ✓‘I will become nobler’, are also movements from here to there; movements in psychological time. To achieve that end you must exercise will, and the exercise of the will to achieve something is the movement of thought or desire in time, into the future.

So, can the mind be free of this psychological, inward movement? It can, only when you see the fact that this movement from here to there, psychologically, is the illusion of thought. You need energy for that insight, but that energy is now dissipated in conflict, in imitation, in conformity, in the movement of trying to overcome and to escape from what-you-are into what you-should-be. When there is no escape, no suppression, no rationalization of what actually is, and when you remain with it, there will then be the energy to go beyond it. Therefore, there will be a transformation of ‘what-is’ without any effort. This is really very important to understand, because all your life, from childhood till you die, you make a tremendous effort. And where there is effort, there is always violence. When you see the truth of it, you will have the energy to go beyond it without a single control or conflict. This is not a gimmick which you can learn and then practice; it is a thing that moves and lives all the time. So, in meditation there is no direction. Direction means a movement from here to there; (‘there’ being enlightenment), truth, or whatever you like to call it. In meditation the mind has no direction. The moment you have a direction, space will be restricted.

I do not know if you have ever realized, when you look at your own mind, how little space there is in yourself. Your consciousness, your mind, is constantly being bombarded—not only by the propaganda of the gurus, the politicians, and the union leaders, the Internet, but also by your education. Therefore, you have very little space. Having little space, you set a direction to have more space—which you call freedom, – enlightenment. Where there is no direction and no exercise of the will to achieve any goal of that direction, then out of that deep realization and insight, there will be space; and space is necessary. When you live in these high-rise buildings—in a flat—with two thousand people, and with the noise all around, you inevitably, because there is no space, become violent. I do not know if you have noticed, in an evening, the swallows sitting on a telephone wire. If you have watched them, you would have found that there is an exact space between them. Space is necessary, for otherwise you will not be able to see, you will not be able to feel, and you will not be free. And freedom is absolutely necessary; otherwise, you will be a prisoner of thought forever.

On the other hand, when the mind has space—which means no direction, no operation of the will, and therefore, no fear of not attaining what is willed—there will be silence. Then the mind will really be quiet, and not made quiet through any techniques or tortuous means. Then there will be an actual silence of which you will not be aware, because the moment you are aware that you are silent, that is not silence. Therefore, meditation is part of this freedom from the experience of being silent. Meditation takes place when you are not there. When you understand this, you try through various means to wipe ‘yourself’ away, to destroy the ‘me’. You think that the identification of the self, with the nation or with an ideal or with a cause, is a form of melting or destroying the self. Therefore, you play on all these strategies in order to get rid of ‘yourself’. But there are no tricks. Just to look at yourself without the observer who condemns, judges, evaluates is already the ending of the self. This is one of the most difficult things to do.

When you see the river of a morning or an evening, and the beauty of those extraordinary nuances of light and color, it leaves a mark, an imprint on your brain. That becomes memory. That memory operates the next time you observe the river. To just look at the river, and not let it make an imprint—that is beauty. Beauty is not memory, like love is not memory. So, this space in which silence exists is necessary, because it is only in silence in which there is no self, no ‘me’ as the experiencer, that a totally different energy, activity or movement which is not of time, takes place. Therefore, the mind can operate fully in the field of technology and yet, at the same time, be silent. It is like two streams running together harmoniously. If you go into it very, very deeply, you will find out that it does take place.

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And the further question is: Is there a reality which the mind has not created? Is there something immeasurable, un-nameable, which thought has never touched? Is there something which is totally out of the realm of time, which cannot possibly be experienced, and which thought cannot contaminate? Man has, from time immemorial, asked this question. Perhaps some have come upon that, but are silent about it, for how can that question be answered? The description is not the described. And the one who describes cannot know; because he will be caught in the description, and not in reality.

You see, out of that silence there is nothing to be told. Truth is not an experience. It is not something that one can remember or recognize. Therefore, one can never say, ‘I know’, or ‘I have reached’, or ‘I have found it’. Truth has no abiding place. It is not something static to which many paths are possible. To have many paths and to say, ‘You take your path, I’ll take my path, and we will eventually meet THERE’, is one of your jokes. ‘Over THERE’ is a fixed point. But a living thing is not a fixed point; you are not a fixed point. Life is a movement not only in time, but also in NO-time. From this arises a great sense of responsibility. When you realize this, you will be answerable to nobody—to no government, to no guru, to no authority. However, as being responsible does mean being answerable, you will be answerable. And you can only answer when there is compassion. Responsibility implies freedom; it implies compassion.

And the whole of this, is meditation.

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