Theos-Talk Archives (May 1996 Message tl00880)

Hi
Followup message.

...doss


> Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 14:20:16 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Dairenn Lombard <piero@ab.com>
> Subject: Krishnamurti/Rohit Mehta Quote on Meditation

Krishnamurti/Rohit Mehta Quote On Meditation

     It is my intention to show the correlation between the broad
depictions of meditation (as stated by Rohit Mehta and Krishnamurti)
and real-life situations.  I'll begin by quoting a segment of the
epilogue taken from Mr. Mehta's book, "J. Krishnamurti And The Nameless
Experience."  Following the quotation, I will post my commentary in
response to this quotation on a separate post, entitled, "The Practical
Necessity of Meditation."

     "Many people associate meditation with certain un-usual
experiences--seeing of colours and designs or hearing of certain
sounds.  In fact, people sit in meditation with an expectation that
such experiences will come--and if they do not come, one gets
disappointed saying that their meditation has failed.  But meditation
has nothing to do with this--this is mere romanticism introduced in
the subject of meditation.  As Krishnamurti says meditation has nothing
to do with a particular posture whether of the mind or the body.
To expect something to happen or to recognise something as having
happened are mere tricks of the mind.  In fact, mind can find no
entrance in the sacred precincts of meditation  Krishnamurti says
in THE ONLY REVOLUTION:

     'Meditation is not the repetition of the word, nor the
     experiencing of a vision, nor the cultivating of silence.
     The bead and the word do quieten the chattering mind, but
     this is a form of self-hypnosis.  You might as well take
     a pill.'

     "Meditation is not self-hypnosis, and so it has nothing to do
with what goes by the term Positive Thinking.  There is a craze about
Positive Thinking; it is almost becoming a cult--but it is no better
than self-hypnosis.  It may dull the mind, and one often mistakes
the passivity of a dull mind with silence.  Meditation is not
cultivation of silence.  In fact, there is no goal to be achieved.
In goal achieving one sets a goal and then evolves a discipline for
realizing that goal.  It is the mind that sets the goal, and it is
once again the mind that evolves methods and practices for the
attainment of the goal.  Very often man sets 'silence' as the goal
of meditation, and having done so tries to cultivate silence.  But
such cultivated silence is always oppressive both to one who practices
and one who becomes a witness to it.  In such silence there is
suffocation, for anything that is cultivated in the psychological
sphere is oppressive and suffocating, be it virtue or be it silence.
Anything that is cultivated is a product of thought.  Similarly
anything that the mind recognises is also a product of thought.
Krishnamurti once again says in his book THE ONLY REVOLUTION:

     'It is not silence which the observer can experience.
     If he does experience it, it is no longer silence.  The
     silence of the meditative mind is not within the borders
     of recognition, for the silence has no frontier  There is
     only silence--in which the space of division ceases.'

     "Mind with a centre is eternally engaged in choice.  We seem
to be thinking that choice is the characteristic of a clear and an
enlightened mind.  And we believe that meditation gives us the ability
to come to right choice in the midst of the perplexing situation of
life.  Krishnamurti says in his book TRUTH AND ACTUALITY:

     '...we think that having the capacity to choose
     give us freedom, Choice is the very denial of
     freedom.  You choose when you are not clear, when
     there is no direct perception... I can choose
     between this cloth and that cloth, and so on; but
     psychologically we think we are free when we have
     the capacity to choose...  We are saying that choice
     is born out of confusion, out of the structure of
     thought, and therefore it is not free.'

     "Meditation is not a movement from a wrong choice to one that
is right.  Meditation is freedom from all choices at the psychological
level where comparison has no validity.  While dealing with measurable
quantities choice is essential; but when we come to something that
is immeasurable, something that cannot be quantified or computerised,
choice has no meaning whatsoever.  Meditation is indeed a state of
Choicelessness.  To be choicelessly aware is the very essence of
meditation.  Choice presupposes a centre from where to compare and
contrast, it knows only relative space, not space that is absolute-
-the space with a centre and not without any centre.  In the book
THE ONLY REVOLUTION, Krishnamurti says:

     'Thought cannot conceive or formulate to itself
     the nature of space.  Whatever it formulates has
     within it the limitations of its own boundaries.
     This is not the space which meditation comes upon.
     Thought has always a horizon.  The meditative mind
     has no horizon.  The mind cannot go from the limited
     to the immense.  The one has to cease for the other
     to be.  Meditation is opening the door to spaciousness
     which cannot be imagined or speculated upon.  Thought
     is the centre round which there is the space of idea,
     and this space can be expanded by further ideas.  But
     such expansion through stimulation in any form is not
     the spaciousness in which there is no centre.
     Meditation is the understanding of this centre and so
     going beyond it.  Silence and spaciousness go together.
     The immensity of silence is the immensity of the mind
     in which a centre does not exist.'"

                                                      by:  Rohit Mehta
                                               quoted by:  Valerie


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Note:

See my response to this quotation on the post entitled
"The Practical Necessity of Meditation."

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