The Book of Yourself Newsletter
Issue 45: August 2025
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Meditation is at the heart of K’s teachings. You could say that their core intent is to develop or unfold the quality of perceptiveness that culminates in the emptying of consciousness of its psychological content and the consequent emergence of an inner dimension of vast space and silence. He tended to define meditation precisely as the emptying of consciousness, so it is not a means to an end but the end is the means, i.e. the emptiness is in the emptying. There is a substantial difference, but their essence is the same. That is why he denied that meditation was a form of achievement. For him meditation had nothing to do with method, system or practice. He dismissed the usual schools of meditation as involving concentration, resistance and control with the aim of attaining a particular goal, thus operating from the known to the known, making such practices a form of pre-meditation. From his public talks and writings, it is generally understood that for him meditation was something far more spontaneous, involving an awareness of what is from moment to moment, awareness that then opened up ever deeper and more expansive areas of attention and insight. But for K meditation was part of life and therefore an integral aspect of a holistic education and he urged the students and teachers in his schools to experiment with it. To that end, he made a number of clear and concrete suggestions. These suggestions could easily be taken for a method, but the point is to begin to learn the art of seeing things as they are, without judgement, sublimation or control, in what he called ‘choiceless awareness’. This sense of awareness opens the way to the dissolution of the duality of the observer and the observed, which is the key to the quality of space and silence at the core of meditation.
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First of all, sit completely quiet, comfortably, sit very quietly, relax; I will show you. Now, look at the trees, at the hills, the shape of the hills, look at them, look at the quality of their colour, watch them. Do not listen to me. Watch and see those trees, the yellowing trees, the tamarind, and then look at the bougainvillea. Look not with your mind but with your eyes. After having looked at all the colours, the shape of the land, of the hills, the rocks, the shadow, then go from the outside to the inside and close your eyes, close your eyes completely. You have finished looking at the things outside, and now with your eyes closed you can look at what is happening inside. Watch what is happening inside you; do not think, but just watch; do not move your eyeballs, just keep them very, very quiet, because there is nothing to see now; you have seen all the things around you, now you are seeing what is happening inside your mind; and to see what is happening inside your mind, you have to be very quiet inside. And when you do this, do you know what happens to you? You become very sensitive, you become very alert to things outside and inside. Then you find out that the outside is the inside, then you find out that the observer is the observed.
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This is the kind of general instruction that he imparted to the staff and students in his schools. In fact I remember him teaching us something very much along these lines when I first arrived as a student at Brockwood in the summer of 1975. He told us to sit comfortably and quietly, with our legs crossed and our backs straight so the blood would flow easily to the brain, which needed to be properly oxygenated. He suggested that we first listen to and look at our surroundings. In this paragraph, to judge by what the listeners would see if they looked, he was speaking at one of his Indian schools. Then, having seen, we should close our eyes so we move from looking out to looking in. He suggested that to facilitate this inward observation we should not move the eyeballs, not only because there is nothing to see now but because, as he explained to us, the movement of the eyeball is closely related to the movement of thought, so if we keep the eye from moving we already reduce the incitement to thought. In this passage he says that to see what is happening inside the mind we have to be inwardly very quiet and that when we do that we become very sensitive. But, from my recollection of what he told us at Brockwood fifty years ago to the day, there is a part missing from this description, namely that the mind is far from quiet, for there is a constant movement of thoughts about this, that and the other running over each other. What is going on inwardly is this noisy stream of consciousness. So he proposed we watch it like we would watch a river or a natural phenomenon, without judging the thoughts as good or bad, in other words, without the censor, in what he called ‘choiceless awareness’. The suspension of the censoring observer is the quietness of the observation. He said that there was no good or bad thought, but just thought. Thought was a movement, a natural process, like that of a flower that is born, blooms and dies. As we do not interfere with the movement of thought, it completes itself. As each thought is allowed to end, the volume of the flow diminishes and the current slows down. This is important in that as thought slows down it can be more readily perceived. As this choiceless awareness is sustained, there comes a point at which there is no thought, the stream of consciousness dries out and we discover a dimension in which there is no inner and outer, no observer and observed.
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Meditation is something extraordinary, if you know how to do it. I am going to talk a little about it. First of all, sit very quietly; do not force yourself to sit quietly, but sit or lie down quietly without force of any kind. Do you understand? Then watch your thinking. Watch what you are thinking about. You find you are thinking about your shoes, your saris, what you are going to say, the bird outside to which you listen; follow such thoughts and enquire why each thought arises. Do not try to change your thinking. See why certain thoughts arise in your mind so that you begin to understand the meaning of every thought and every feeling without any enforcement. And when a thought arises, do not condemn it, do not say it is right, it is wrong, it is good, it is bad. Just watch it, so that you begin to have a perception, a consciousness which is active in seeing every kind of thought, every kind of feeling. You will know every hidden secret thought, every hidden motive, every feeling, without distortion, without saying it is right, wrong, good or bad. When you look, when you go into thought very, very deeply, your mind becomes extraordinarily subtle, alive. No part of the mind is asleep. The mind is completely awake. That is merely the foundation. Then your mind is very quiet. Your whole being becomes very still. Then go through that stillness, deeper, further – that whole process is meditation.
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Curiously enough, here K, who denied system, method and practice, talks about the ‘how’ of meditation. Meaning, of course, is contextual and this word that K rejects on principle may find its meaning in the limited context of giving indications as to how to go about exploring something that in essence can never be reduced to a method because at its core lies the creative action of the direct perception of what is. While this paragraph would seem to be almost identical to the one quoted earlier, it brings out some complementary aspects. The first, which we did not mention, is the quality of unforced quietness. This was part of the non-methodical approach. No forcing, no effort, no control. In other words, no duality and the exercise of will to achieve a premeditated goal. Then, when it comes to watching the movement of thinking, he not only invites us to follow each thought without judgement or control but to find out why it arises. In the discovery of the reason for the arising of thought and feeling we begin to understand its meaning. Our thought-feelings move with an apparent and a hidden meaning. K says that through the non-judgemental awareness of the movement of consciousness every hidden motive will be revealed, every secret will be exposed. This deepening inquiry of awareness into the shadowy depths of thought-feeling makes the mind extraordinarily subtle, quiet and awake until, as he says, no part of it is asleep. This, he says, is merely the foundation. For there are further depths to be discovered by delving deeper into the stillness. This would seem to describe a beautiful journey of awakening into ever deepening inwardness. And this process is meditation.
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Have you ever sat very quietly with closed eyes and watched the movement of your own thinking? Have you watched your mind working – or rather, has your mind watched itself in operation, just to see what your thoughts are, what your feelings are, how you look at the trees, at the flowers, at the birds, at people, how you respond to a suggestion or react to a new idea? Have you ever done this? If you have not, you are missing a great deal. To know how one’s mind works is a basic purpose of education. If you don’t know how your mind reacts, if your mind is not aware of its own activities, you will never find out what society is. You may read books on sociology, study social sciences, but if you don’t know how your mind works you cannot actually understand what society is, because your mind is part of society; it is society. Your reactions, your beliefs, your going to the temple, the clothes you wear, the things you do and don’t do and what you think – society is made up of all this, it is the replica of what is going on in your own mind. So your mind is not apart from society, it is not distinct from your culture, from your religion, from your various class divisions, from the ambitions and conflicts of the many. All this is society, and you are part of it. There is no ‘you’ separate from society.
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This Matter of Culture, pp. 78-80
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This is another aspect of this exercise in self-awareness, namely the discovery of the mirror relation of mind and society, which is part of the perception in meditation that the inner and the outer are in a tidal movement of ebb and flow. He states that to know how one’s mind works is a basic purpose of education, not only in schools but in the education that is relationship, that is life. In finding out how our minds work, we come to understand society, for society is the replica of the mind. In fact, the mind and society are one and the same. This awareness of the unitary movement of mind and society dissolves one of the major causes of suffering, which is the sense of separateness and struggle between one human being and another. In this way, meditation is not only a purifying inward movement but a healing factor in relationship.
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These explorations of meditation would require a specific time and place, whereas K’s general intent was to awaken a quality of awareness that would be sustained throughout the day and bring order into it. These indications, therefore, could be seen, in a simile that David Bohm employed at that time to explain this apparent discrepancy, as learning to ride a bicycle. When one begins, one chooses a quiet back street in which to practice until one feels confident enough to join the traffic on the main road. Perhaps this is not exact, but it might perhaps be helpful in dissolving the apparent contradiction, which can prove paralizing, between meditating as a specific activity and meeting life with a meditative state of mind. One other aspect that might encourage the type of experimentation K is proposing, is that, while the inner is the outer, and therefore meditation is not to be treated as a separate fragment of daily life, these are invitations to enter a space of stillness, aloneness and self-recollection in which the mind can be aware of itself and discover its conscious and unconscious content, reaching ever further into the depths of silence. There is much more to this, of course, so we might take it up again another time.
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Be well, amigos, and let’s take K’s invitation to learn the great art of meditation,
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P.S.: I have been offered a residency by the KECC (https://krishnamurti-canada.ca/) for the whole month of October at their centre on Vancouver Island, with an open programme of organised and informal meetings which you are all most welcome to join. For further information, please contact Ralph Tiller: ralph@krishnamurti-canada.ca.
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Photos by Friedrich Grohe: 1. KECC Swanwick Centre, Vancouver Island, Canada ; 2. Seashore near KECC Swanwick Centre, Vancouver Island, Canada. Both photos date from March 2010.
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