The journal of Angel Patrick Boyar
"A System of Mediation is Not Meditation"
*The Meditative Mind, p.7
The root meaning of the word meditation is to measure. Who or what is doing the meditation and why do we want to or have a need to meditate?
It is not an assumption that humanity is a thinking being and that meditation implies that whatever we are giving thought to is meditation so there is a thinking process that is in motion and is taking place on its own without a thinker who is thinking thoughts up.
This thinker who is the same thoughts that it dwells upon or thinks about is a system of how one thinks about themselves so that we can say upon closer observation that our thinking process is a system of thought that functions with preconceived notions about who we think we should be or need to be.
This kind of measuring is going on mechanically, much like a machine that is geared toward operating as a system and this we are saying is not meditation but a dysfunctional way of thinking that 'gears' our lifes consciousness so that we are functioning more like automatons than free human beings.
A system of meditation is not meditation because thought as the entity who creates the fictitious thinker apart from itself and identifies it as being an abstract conscious reality all on its own is the system of thought which thought has created and to meditate upon this thinker/thought relationship is to give thought to what is keeping alive this system that is not an awareness of a genuine consciousness of life in which we are asserting that thought does not need to project in order for us to be aware of our own conscious state.
Thought, thinking itself up as the "I" or "ego" is not true self-awareness and when we meditate with the idea of going in and dismantling this system of thinking we have identified as false we actually (even with our good intentions) keep this dual way of thinking alive.
Thought through the fictitious thinker is giving itself its own blood transfusion and keeping itself alive through a system of thinking that is false. It is false because our Intuition which is the bodies own Intelligence is telling us that lifes energy cannot be an experience in which life, through whatever kind of consciousness it manifests itself cannot be divided against itself no more than leaves and branches have sap giving life flowing through them if they were some how disconnected from the trunk of the tree of life.
This system of thought in which thought has accidentally (or deliberately?) truncated itself has out our consciousness in crisis because it is an illusion that thought has fabricated about itself needing some 'idea' to be something other than it actually is, which is to say that thought meditating upon thought is not true meditation because the quiddity of thought is to divide itself or cut itself I two (why?); when looking inward upon itself this observation of thought dissects itself through introspection and analysis and the motive that sets this kind of meditation in motion all along was the idea to discover who we are through understanding thought and its nature; yet we are also negating thoughts nature to think up ideas about who or what it is - for we are already asserting that thought is life, and that life does not need to think itself into existence through a system of thought in which a fictitious entity called the "I" or "ego" is created in order for life as a mind to know that we exist.
Self-consciousness is the system of meditation that we take for normal or natural, yet it is not a natural self-consciousness where we are constantly in a fight and struggle to keep our ego's or sense of identity alive, as though if we stopped thinking about ourselves being somebody psychologically we would cease to exist or that life would somehow lose the meaning or value that we are trying to give to it. After-all, one of the main fruits of meditation is that through it we desire to receive the reward of a sound and silent mind, integrating our schizoid self, thinking that only when we are whole and complete human beings can our lives really take on some kind of meaning and value.
When we speak of a system of meditation not being meditation, it is because the truth of our mind is a pathless land and no roadmap can be laid down to bind up our thought life so that we know ahead of time where life is taking itself to because the future is now.
Thought is not thinking itself up and giving itself its own experience of life through any system of thinking beyond itself, because ultimately meditation is only real when we are living life spontaneously, from moment to moment: when out consciousness of life is an energy in which we are not using thought as a knife to cut life in two and making ourselves into schizophrenically sick human being because of out fear of being nobody, empty and alone!
Thought meditating upon thought is not meditation, but a system of thinking in which the "I" or "ego" has been set up as a prop on the stage of our mind which is putting on a show for itself because thought does not want to be alone and yet thought is by itself not beside itself and its nature is to create the illusion of separation because through division thought exists and finds its dialectical identity.
To meditate upon this way of thinking and see how and why thought is creating this division of itself and not try to do anything about it is meditation. We are watching without motive, just to see, not to tamper with or change what is going on in our thought process because then we begin to think about devising a system of meditation in which we can set out thinking straight and this system is itself the wrench thrown into the machine of thought that keeps our lives from runnig freely, smoothly and naturally.
>A system of meditation in not meditation because life is its own thinking process and the seer and the seen are one, not two separate entities. There is no meditator meditating upon itself as though life needed thought as a mirror to reflect upon the reality of its own self-sustained existence of awareness.
There is only meditation taking place as thought dies spontaneously to its own self-destructive thinking process naturally, not through any kind of force or discipline in which we futilely try to scare ourselves into thinking straight through promises of reward and fears of failure in the systematic efforts to integrate our personalities and thought life through systems of meditation that do not and have not worked in making us whole and complete human beings.
Meditation cannot be a system of meditation because life is free and no matter what we do through our prayers, chanting mantrams or contemplation we are not going to trick or deceive Life which is Intelligent into paying us with a consciousness of life that gives us an experience in which we are operating as sane people with sound minds, as life is not some commodity that can be earned, bought or sold but which we must all learn to live without pretense because real life is not a show, real life is not a system of mechanized thinking that cripples our lifes energy because of our fear that comes with the ambition that we are not anybody important in a world system that only rewards those who conform to its image: and we can see that the image of this world all revolves around out concept of 'self,' of keeping our ego's alive through being self-centered which means to be egotistically violent in one way or another!
There is no need to meditate upon thought -this is already taking place on its own because every moment of our lives we are caught up in the moment of a dysfunctional thinking process that is geared toward keeping alive this fictitious entity we call "I" or "ego." To look into or dwell upon this systematized form of thought is not meditation.
Thought is limited with capacity to think only about itself and thought is itself a form of meditation, yet thought as we know it to function is a measuring mental system that has to do with who we think we are or who we think we ought to be. This is not that meditation which is a movement in attention.
As thought is Life we are concerned with using our thought to measure our lives properly, to be on level with accurately making an assessment of who we are on a scale of being so that we are not being something less than we actually are not are we trying to be something more than we possibly can be.
Thought is the only plumbing we have to measure our lives and identity with but we cannot accurately measure our lives with a plumbline that itself if not level; and we are saying that this meditation that is concerned with developing a formula or system of meditation in order to measure who we are on a scale of being is not meditation at all but a movement of thought in comparison with itself that is making desperate efforts to keep itself alive even at the cost of a pyrrhic victory: by turning on itself and devouring its own life!
Life turning on itself as a system of meditation in which we build false and pseudo-identities and fight and struggle all of our lives to protect our fragile egos to keep our sense of identity is not a true consciousness of life.
Thought measuring thought only comes out to more of the same kind of thinking so this measuring can only tell us ad infinitum: the plumbline of our thinking process is not level!
We are concerned about coming upon meditation that sets our psychological house in order so that we are thinking straight and able to live and function as free and intelligent human beings.
Mediation is a Movement in Attention.
"Meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing birds or looking at the face of your wife or child."
*Freedom From the Known, 1969
"Mediation is a Movement in Attention."
*The Only Revolution p.96
The mind has created a lacuna between itself and Life, and through contemplation/concentration we are vainly attempting to bridge the gap through hoping, prayer and holding out our begging bowls to the animistic spirits of nature and supplicating the Deity to make us partakers of that divine nature that would impart us an experience of life and freedom.
This entity that inhabits the temple of our mind perceives itself a s separate reality from the source of our lifes energy which some call God and which others claim is a distorted perception of reality of simply not knowing how to make our eyes and mind work and see together; for at one time our intuition is telling us that we were one with Life - until some catabolical movement of thought that we now call self-consciousness broke away and we found ourselves thinking with energy being concentrated in the form of the "I" as though there was now an abstract metaphysical entity that could channel or harness the energy of life that it somehow deliberately or accidentally broke away from.
Again, we are asserting that this separate self-conscious individual is a ghost, an illusions that cannot be an entity in its own right different from Life because all that has conscious existence is an extension of lifes energy, and that to perceive that we are some different, separate and distinct entity from Life itself is a false way of thinking and seeing.
Because we perceive ourselves as some entity cut off from God, nature or Life we think that through communion with 'them' or beholding the nature of holymen like Buddha or Christ who contain our pristine original nature, that we will, because of their mercy and compassion be reintegrated back into the spontaneous flow of lifes energy. However, this life and freedom promised to us by Christ of the Buddha is contingent upon the dharma, in absorbing and incorporating the truth these wise men taught, believing it and making it our own. To meditate upon the 'words' these enlightened ones spoke was somehow supposed to infuse us with the light of lifes energy, awaken us and set us free because we would be reconnected to the tree of our lifes trunk.
Concentrated thinking is what gives form to the demonic "I" and is a destructive movement that separates us from God, nature and Life so that no matter how much, how long or how intensely we contemplate upon any sacred teachings or holy men - this is not going to bridge the gap, dissolve our egos, end our self-centered activity and make us contemplate human beings with natures that are holy and divine, meaning that we have stopped being evil and violent people,
Contemplation is also a system of meditation in which we are forcing ourselves to concentrate by making ourselves believe or think a certain way [or else] we will lose out on the promise of life and freedom is we do not see eye to eye with those teaching us the Tao of the way of life that is said to set free only those who practice the truths being taught. As the back of contemplation is the fear that we are not going to reach the moral stature of the enlightened and holy one's which is why only this meditation which is a movement in attention will set us absolutely free and give us a genuine experience of life.
Meditation is attention flowing freely without a center of lifes energy being concentrated through the I-process, it is an aesthetic perception in which there is that Beauty of the silent mind because the beholder is not.
When we are not forcing ourselves to accept or believe in any person, Deity, truth or philosophy of life then there is this mediation that is a movement in attention.
We do not experience life or freedom through a compulsory education of life, as life is not a dictatorial teacher threatening us with failure or death if we do not learn the lessons that life is teaching us all.
Life is calling and inviting us all to meditation by giving attention to Life and when we are hearing and seeing what Life is so plainly teaching us we are in a state of learning, and this learning is with the simplicity and humility of a child whose heart is pure and innocent and does not know or think evil.
When we are giving attention to what life is teaching us we al meditating with that creatively empty and silent mind that demands nothing from life by way of seeking come kind of experience to make us feel that we are free and alive.
Contemplation/concentration demand payment of the experience we are looking for but Life is a gift that offers itself freely as a bird that flys through the airy sky without force or effort.
The problem with contemplation/concentrations is that through these techniques and methods of premeditated meditation we are hypnotizing and mesmerizing ourselves into states of mind that fabricate silence and peace of mind, especially so since we go into this kind of bogus meditation with the motive that God or Life owe us freedom and a living.
Giving attention to Life and understanding it through our own experience is meditation. This movement in attention that is meditation is without a center and motive in which there is a natural and spontaneous falling away of the seeker and the sought.
One is aware or enlightened to the fact that w are our own lifes energy and with this aesthetic perception, eye's and mind work and see together, untieing the Gordian knot of our thought life that was bound and tied up through beliefs, images and ideas about a life we were nvere actually separated from to begin with.
When we actually perceive from moment to moment that we are not a self-inclosed separate unit of energy from Life, this meditative mind is a moment in attention.
"Meditation is Destruction to Security."
*Krishnamurti Notebook p.82
The movement of thought as the I-process is a treadmill motion of seeking a security to protect, preserve and prolong one's life, a feeling one wants to have that life is not our enemy; that by way of faith or practicing some belief or adhering to some truth or obeying some ism that we are going to secure our lives against disaster, and if we are good enough in this lifetime, having worked off bad karma through good deeds we will be rewarded with eternal life in some other dimension of existence where life will be life in the truest sense of the word.
Ultimately, security is sought because we recognize our vulnerabilities and weaknesses as human beings who can suffer, feel pain, go through all kinds of angst and die. Because of all these vulnerabilities we attempt to secure our lives and put off the inevitable by doing everything we can to avoid psychological and physical death.
We walk this philosophical treadmill of seeking security and because we feel mental motion we think there is some progress being made in securing our lives, yet like ostriches filled with dread and anxiety when facing danger we are putting our heads in the hole of the ground of wishful thinking, hoping that if we cannot see the problems of life we are facing that they will magically disappear by turning a blind eye to them with the stoical and indifferent attitude that we do not care whether we live or die.
However, the fact of the matter is, we do cared whether we live or die, and all real philosophies of life are concerned with the genuine attempt to make us care for and value our lives as an experience worth going through and living. Yet, we can be secure in life in a way that we are not seeking a false security that cannot deliver what we are hoping for.
It is a conundrum that all we "think" and "do" still does not make life different, what we want it to be for us. All of the thinking and doing in our lives for thousands of years have only been vain autistical repetitions of building castles in the air; so we are looking to come upon a meditative action in our lives in which we step off and out of this treadmill motion of seeking to secure ourselves against a life that is our own life and let it do with us whatever it wants to and take us wherever it is taking us or in the words of Nikos Kazantzakis:
"To obey a harsh signal and abandon ourselves with confidence to the high forces around and within us, visible and invisible, unshakeable in our faith that these know everything and we noting - this is the one and only road to fertility. All others are sterile and deceptive, because they do not lead anywhere, but simply bring us back to the miserable, accursed self after vain and presumptuous meanderings." -Report to Greco p 362
Since there is nothing we can accomplish in our vain meanderings to secure ourselves from this experience we call life there is only one action left to take that we have been avoiding with trepidation and let life destroy what we are holding on to which is life itself. This is also the first step which is the last step because life is a movement of meditation that is destroying our security as Life is an experience we must freely engage and go through but cannot hold on to: life is devouring and feeding upon itself in an act of meditation that is intuitively teaching us all to let go of everything we are holding on to because this holding on to is not life!
Meditation is destruction to security because life is not a "thing" or "object" to be held on to be keeping our experience of all that we are going through alive. This experience in which we operate from the past must all be left behind and can easily be discarded as we live life in the moment as all we ever do have is this moment that is secure in itself because it is a living experience without a past to weigh us down and without a future we do not need because we are alive now, not needing to arrive to some place (in time) of security called heaven - because space, time and life which are all eternally in the moment of living that is always bridging the gap with this meditative and silent mind that is destruction to security.
Security that is dependent upon hopes for a better future that takes time to get "there" is a false security because the space between ourselves and life is imaginary, for not time and no spatial dimensions can create any gaps between ourselves and life. This understanding is that meditation which is destruction to manmade security because we are 'ever living in the moment secure in itself.
"Meditation is the Movement That Destroys the Observer."
*Krishnamurti Notebook p.91
We have identifies the ego or self as the fictitious entity that is the observer that is perceiving itself as a reality separate from the Silent Ground of our being which we are saying is a consciousness of lifes energy that is indivisible, that though projecting the thinker onto the field of existence as a truncated unit of energy encapsulated in the I-process of self-consciousness is the observer which is to be destroyed in meditation because the real conscious energy of life includes the totality of existence not an isolated individual consciousness that can exist as an island entity cut off from the ocean of lifes energy.
The ideas and images we have about ourselves is not the life we actually are. For example, we are corporeal and mortal beings who suffer and die but we deny our corporality and mortality and create a fictitious image of being or having some immortal immaterial soul; yet the reality of our experience of life is plainly telling us we are mortal/material creatures: this observation by the observer that creates a bogus philosophy of life around the fear of knowing we are corporeal and mortal beings who own and have a life hat we must hold on to has to die because it is not true that who we really are is some intangible soulful entity inhabiting the temple of our body/mind that can go on living forever!
The destruction of the observer is necessary because we are not directly in contact with Life through ideas and images that the observer has built up about itself [like] the observer having convinced itself that its ideas it has created about its own self-contained psychological image is an actual metaphysical entity that exists 'inside' the mind/body as some spiritual being that is only a dweller on or in the threshold of consciousness that is an indestructible soul.
Because all of lifes energy as consciousness is a material brain cell process and who we are a life is our corporeal mortal bodies and minds we are dying, and because we do not want to die we invent religions and belief systems that promise us continuity in another life after death.
The observer is a mortal physical entity that deliberately creates illusions and deceives itself about possessing and having a nature and attributes that make thought an omnipotent - immortal being, which is an ideal image we have built-up about ourselves out of fear - the fear that we are going to die - yet in reality thought as a material process is a vulnerable human being who would be an all-knowing and immortal God. We do not even want to consider the possibility the perhaps life as it is did not ever [mean] for us to be some indestructible self, but still the observer wants to go on living forever.
So, because the observer is itself a fictitious entity its only power is also to create illusions about being something other that it is not. Fictitious when our thinking process is 'geared' toward thinking ourselves to b something other [the indestructible self] when in actuality we are mortal and dying.
We are not disclaiming that we do not have conscious existence, only that the observer who is perceiving itself as a being a separate abstract psychological entity is not an independent seer [looking out] or at a cut off existence, universe or life, that what we are seeing as life, inside of us and outside of us is all the same consciousness of lifes energy.
Life still goes on when the observer is destroyed in the meditational movement which is an eternal glance of seeing the truth of this false entity.
The ego or I-process has no life apart from the life we give to it. Since we are giving this observer the life it has we can also destroy it with the aesthetic perception of seeing ourselves as being one with the movement of lifes conscious energy that can never be a reality disconnected from itself as the individual consciousness we claim is exclusively ours through a dubious and illusory I-process.
Life is potential/tangible experience as concrete as our physicality and there is no experience of life and freedom outside of ourselves: to actually understand this is to destroy the observer in seeing life with those eyes of life embedded in our human face.
You Are the World
"The fist step is the seeing of the false in the false and this seeing of the false is the truth. How different is this from the egoic notion that one can look on truth, goodness and beauty, bare. In the strict sense there is no I here who makes a pure act of attention upon an object over there. Thus there is no contradiction between subject and object - the contradiction that since time out of mind generated endlessly tiresome debates over how we know what we know and the conundrum of free will. Life lived genuinely meditatively, i.e., with an abiding pure act of attention is not embarrassed by such questions since even upon entertaining them it is lived free from a conflict of motives."
-Alan W. Anderson -- Krishnamurti 100 Years p.220
"You Are the World"
*Jiddu Krishnamurti
What does it mean to be the world? Obviously a planet devoid of sentient life, of thinking human beings would not be a world as we are speaking of it. People populating the planet is the world and we have often heard the saying that it is people who make the world go 'round. The world is not 'just' some inanimate blue floating ball in infinite space.
When we speak of ourselves being the world, we are speaking of earth people, of folks whose origin springs from this balled star called earth we are living on.
The earth as a living world is a single wholistic organism, i.e., mineral, plant, animal and human life are all indivisibly linked together with lifes energy animating our lifes consciousness.
The world is not some abstract entity separate from who we are as human beings - the natural world and us being in it and of it is why we are the world! As we are an extension of the earth, the world also has to be who we are. The world/earth is not something we are existentially sticking out of as though we could be alienated from life and live as strangers in a foreign world that gave birth to our being.
We are the world not because we imagine to be so nor because we are philosophizing through ideation, but we are the world simply because we are here and alive on this earth and because we make the planet earth what it is through our behavior, actions and attitude, through being who we are as human beings. It cannot be said more simply than you are the world.
Because we are the world it is our responsibility to live sanely and to take care of our planet that belongs to all of us - it is the ship we are all sailing on across this vast ocean of life - pilgrims on a journey, destination unknown: but we do know that if the ship sinks because of our childish squabbles over who of us have tapped into lifes energy and are living by a genuine philosophy of life, we all go down with the spaceship earth!
Meditation is the Ending of the Self
"We have to bring about a psychological transformation in our relationship with the society in which we live. Therefore, there is no escape from it into the Himalayas, into becoming a monk or a nun, and taking up social service, and all the rest of such juvenile business. We have to live in this world, we have to bring about a radical transformation in our relationship with each other; not in some distant future, but now."
----Bombay, Feb 14, 1965
"Meditation is the Ending of the Self."
-Saaen 1982: Talk #6
The self we are talking about ending is also the observer that is destroyed in the movement of meditation, so that when the observer is destroyed the self with all of its ambitions and machinations also comes to an end.
There is not a myriad of entities as the I, ego, self and observer that are different entities arising as some ontogenesis gives birth to another or new Individual as one entity is killed off. The ending of the self is also the destruction of the observer simultaneously, meditation not to be confused with as an intermittent series of meditational bullets being shot as one entity is destroyed and another comes up.
The self is also that entity that is a "bundle of psychological memories," a knowledge of the history of all that we have gone through in our experience of life: literally a past that is a dead self we are vainly holding on to and trying to give the breath of life to by keeping the memory of our self alive!
A life is a living, moving experience, the self has to die to each moment of life it goes through and not carry over what 'was' or we will be left with a stale, stiff and stagnant repetition of going through the same old experience over and over again.
Since the self is always meeting the present experience with the image of our memories we do not leave ourselves open to experience the new - our life with all of its petty problems becomes a bored routine and we remain stuck in a lifetime of repetitious self-destructive behavior.
In order for life to be fresh and new the self cannot be what we dwell upon or we will spend our life in vain trying to resuscitate the dead corpse of memory - reliving the past by projecting the film of thought as memory onto the screen of our minds , and like actors on the stage of life, following the same old programmed script of a life where we are caught up in playing out the same old self that we think is some developing character that has matured in time but has never really learned the art of living and moving with the moment of life.
This self is really a dead memory of a still life picture framed by ideas and images that shut life out - it is the lifeless image inside of the mirror of a thinking that is so abstract that we take the image for reality: while we who are the living, breathing person in some bizarre transference become as dead as the image we are always staring at in the mirror of our own mind reflected from the past!
So, this self has to die (because it is dead already) and is coming to an end whether we want it to or not. We can bring it to an end now simply by seeing it for what it is - nothing! We hold on to it because we know that without it as the past we are absolutely nothing and nobody because there is no historical psychological identity.
Life is always here and now, not then and there. For this reason the self is to end in meditation.
Meditation is the Dying for the Known
"The true artist is beyond the vanity of the self and its ambitions."
-J. Krishnamurti
"Meditation is the Dying of the Known"
*Krishnamurti's Notebook p.207
Certainly dying to the known does not mean that in emptying the content of our consciousness that we revert to an atavistic animal like state or that our minds become that blank Aristotelian tabula rasa where meditation is acting like an eraser and wiping our slate of consciousness clean or make corrections in some misspelled consciousness of words that have no meaning as language or definitions and that is causing us to be more ignorant in our knowledge of the known than to have become more wise through the experience that we assert is the only medium to learn and gain wisdom from.
Knowledge of the past gained through experience evidently is not that wisdom of 'meditation that lights the way for action." Again, the known is also the memory of ourselves and all that we have gone through, so the dying of the known evidently means also to die to the memory of ourselves because who we are in what we have gone through is the known, but not now who we are in the moment of living life spontaneously.
As our experience of life is written down on the book of our hearts consciousness we become fixed in a static identity of a history written down in time that we say cannot be changed, so we are sort of here as dead inanimate letters reading the history of our lives from a heart knowledge that has no more living, moving character because we cannot see past who we were [the known] and there is no possibility in this state of mind to give birth to some new person or different way of being and living that does not eviscerate us of lifes energy because of this closed-circuit knowledge that feeds on itself by reliving the same experience over and over again, moving from the known to the known.
This dying of the known, destroying the observer, ending the self is actually an end to acting out from the past and learning to live meditatively in the present, of being born anew, not once and for all, but being born again every moment of our lives, of not using the past as a mirror to reflect who we are now; knowing that we can see what we have been, but dying to that experience so that knowledge of ourselves is not contained as a fixed identity where we are no longer free to lean and grow in wisdom and stature.
Dying of the known is dying to the self, of living an aesthetic perception of life without division in which we are not knowing ourselves through the dualistic mirror of thought, but knowing ourselves in the mirror of relationship where affection that is truly supreme wisdom is demonstrated in not holding our past against ourselves and each other through comparison.
Dying of the known is essential because the known is always an image, an idea, a memory, a word that is getting in the way and stopping the natural flow of lifes energy: dying of the known is simultaneously the destruction of the observer and ending of the self. We are no longer seeing ourselves through eyes of the known which is the past.
"In yourself lies the whole world, and if you know how to look and learn, then the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either that key or the door to open except yourself."
*You are the World 1972
"The Silence of the Mind is the True Religious Mind… In This Silence There is Bliss and Laughter"
-The Only Revolution p31
The silence of the mind as diametrically opposed to the noise of thought is not that silent mind that is the religious mind. The silence of the mind is not put together by thought which is 'ever caught up in the confusion of its own making, trying to bring into fruition a religious mind by "being still and knowing God."
The religious mind is a silent mind in and of itself, not because God or someone has blessed us with the benediction of bestowing us with a silent mind and made our thoughts still enough to know the sacred and the real.
Religion (the practice of it) and the religious mind is not what we have thought it to be since time immemorial, worshipping the Deity and prayer; this activity where we are giving out thought life to worship/prayer in contemplation of the sacred and holy Other, be it God, Nature or some other Divinity in or outside of us.
The religious mind is a silent mind because we are no longer using thought as the word of our mind to bridge the gap between ourselves and the life we were never separate from to begin with.
The noise of thought that it is making is the conjuring up of fearful ideas and images that we are cut off from life, that God has kicked us out of the Garden of Life and now we are crying philosophy, trying to figure out a way back to the bliss and laughter that must have been ours before Thought as self-consciousness came in and broke up the silent mind of lifes wholistic energy, that pristine state of the totality of Existence where thought as life knew no conflict or division, for to know or perceive ourselves as being some[thing] different or separate from life brings sorrow, not the bliss and laughter that comes from being life itself.
The religious mind that is the silent mind is only a reality when we are life itself, not some experience we are seeking outside of ourselves, for all traditional religion tells us that through our mental efforts of contemplating the Deity that we take on and have the religious mind through meditational prayers that never work in making our thoughts still, for prayer is thought chattering on and on and thought is never still enough to know God, the sacred, the real hat we are all seeking.
Only when thought as the seeker and the sought spontaneously comes to an end is there this silent mind which is the religious mind for we see that thought is the entity that has created the division between itself and that which it seeks, and when it is there is only the noise of conflict and confusion because thought is its own fear, and as long as there is fear there can be no experience of life, no bliss and no genuine laughter.
The noise of thought is not the bliss and laughter of life, but the religious mind that is the silent mind in a state of psychological revolution in itself not against something, for the religious mind is a revolt of negating everything that would come between ourselves and being absolutely free and alive.
This negation is a meditative act of gently pulling thought in its place or seeing its proper function and letting it be, but we are saying that thought does not have its place/function in creating anything outside of itself through images/ideas and calling it life that we then have to vainly seek for the rest of our lives and capture it in order to be free and alive.
Silence is here and comes to us uninvited, on its own, not because we have begged or prayed for it or imagined it into existence, for silence is not a thing or object or experience to be grasped with the hands of thinking. Silence doe not come because we searched for it and found it, rather, silence just is, whether we think about it or not. Our thinking does not give the silent mind life, it is life in itself that is giving itself freely to us all, and it gives itself to us in a way that is not of our own making.
It is not through or with thought that we still the troubled waters of our own mind and take on the revolutionary mind that is silent; it is only as we receive life in the way it is making itself known to us through the natural experience of ourselves: life and the experience of it is no something separate from who we are as living beings! Seeing this there come a silence that calms the storm of thoughts noise.
When all that thought has created through imagination, belief, ideas and images it has created about itself comes to an end: lifes energy which is a religiously silent mind produces bliss and laughter because life is laughter and a bliss that comes from not knowing.
"To know is to be ignorant. Not tot know is the beginning of wisdom."
-J. Krisnamurti
"Meditation Includes the Whole Field of Existence"
-A Wholly Different Way of Living p243
What is this meditation that includes the whole field of existence? Evidently meditation is not something that we "do" or "know" through some movement of thought, yet thought is also in that stream of consciousness which is a part of the whole field of existence. By field of existence we mean to say that all that is, including thought as our self-consciousness, is lifes energy, so that thought to has its place in existence.
We are not destroying thought itself in meditation but finding out its proper use and pace in life and o include it as a reality to be reckoned with in meditation - for thought is life and is to be included into the whole field of existence. Without thought as lifes consciousness there would no be any field of existence to speak of in the first place. All we are saying is that thought is not a separately distinct entity in the field of existence which is a field of indivisible energy that includes all of life in itself.
Thought is more of a xenolith than a salient entity protruding itself out of the field of existence and saying or declaring to itself, "Look, here I am," this we are saying is not a necessary action of thought for us to feel/think ourselves into existence.
An entity of life that is as real as our own flesh and bones does not have to make any statements about the reality of its own being, but a false and fictitious entity that has no real life and doubts whether it is or it is not is involved with making proverbal statements that have nothing to do with anything except proving its own dubious and illusory existence to itself.
Thought as life is its own witness and testifys to the reality of its own existence, but it is not speaking to some other entity apart from itself and tell it, "Look, here I am," and if it is it can only be speaking to another part of itself that is also in the awareness of its own mind for thought in the 'other' is still thought in itself not two different thinkers as God and man.
As thought gives life to thought our only concern is that we see how thought divides itself into the 'other' and perceive outside of time that the seer and the seen are one and the same entity.
Thought ahs deliberately split itself in two so that it does not have to be alone but let us ponder that Christ also testified: "I am my Father are one."
This is no different that saying that we and life are one not two separate independent realities giving life to each other in a dual thinking process that makes the chemical energy of life a dialectical process in which the only way to know ourselves in life is through a separate self-awareness, division and clashing molecules in our brain.
The whole field of existence means that totality of life where nothing is excluded from what is taking place in life as we know it through our experience.
As we are dying in life death cannot be looked upon as some separate thing to be avoided for if life is itself taking us to death and utter extinction there is nothing we can do about it by way of belief, ideas and philosophies of life. Therefore death must also be a part of the whole field of existence or else we would not be dying.
Life and death are not illusions, they are the two solid philosophical absolutes of existence. We can do nothing about the reality of life and death in the way they are playing themselves out in the field of existence, so in this light when we speak of that timeless meditation of an experience of life without fear and anxiety, we are speaking of this in between silent place of how we are living our lives while facing death in life.
If we are full of fear and sorrow, always having some kind of mental disease and psychological problems then it were far better to be dead than alive and living always in a state of fear and anxiety.
Meditation is not a way of escape from all our problems in life, butt w are wanting to simply face the reality of what is, so that in seeing and facing the fats of life perhaps our existence can be changed, no longer held in the grip of thoughts fear and anxiety and we begin a wholly different way of living.
"Meditation is that light in the mind which lights the way for action; and without that light there is no love."
-The Only Revolution, 1970