What is order? Thought cannot create psychological order because thought itself is disorder, because thought is based on knowledge, which is based on experience. All knowledge is limited, and so thought is also limited, and when thought tries to create order it brings about disorder. Thought has created disorder through the conflict between "what is" and "what should be," the actual and the theoretical. But there is only the actual and not the theoretical. Thought looks at the actual from a limited point of view, and therefore its action must inevitably create disorder. Do we see this as a truth, as a law, or just an idea? Suppose I am greedy, envious; that is what is; the opposite is not. But the opposite has been created by human beings, by thought, as a means of understanding "what is" and also as a means of escaping from "what is." But there is only "what is," and when you perceive "what is" without its opposite, then that very perception brings order.
Our house must be in order, and this order cannot be brought about by thought. Thought creates its own discipline: do this, don't do that; follow this, don't follow that; be traditional, don't be traditional. Thought is the guide through which one hopes to bring about order, but thought itself is limited, therefore it is bound to create disorder. If I keep on repeating that I am British, or that I am French, or that I am Hindu, or a Buddhist, that tribalism is very limited, that tribalism causes great havoc in the world. We don't go to the root of it to end tribalism; we try to create better wars. Order can come into being only when thought, which is necessary in certain areas, has no place in the psychological world. The world itself is in order when thought is absent.
It is necessary to have a brain that is absolutely quiet. The brain has its own rhythm, is endlessly active, chattering from one subject to another, from one thought to another, from one association to another, from one state to another. It is constantly occupied. One is not aware of it generally, but when one is aware without any choice, choicelessly aware of this movement, then that very awareness, that very attention, ends the chattering. Please do it, and you will see how simple it all is.
The brain must be free, have space and psychological silence. You and I are talking to each other. Thought is being employed because we are speaking in a language. But to speak out of silence... There must be freedom from the word. Then the brain is utterly quiet, though it has its own rhythm.
Then what is creation, what is the beginning of all this? We are inquiring into the origin of all life, not only our life, but the life of every living thing: the whales in the depths, the dolphins, the little fish, the minute cells, vast nature, the beauty of a tiger. From the most minute cell to the most complex human---with all his inventions, with all his illusions, with his superstitions, with his quarrels, with his wars, with his arrogance, vulgarity, with his tremendous aspirations and his great depressions---what is the origin of all this?
Now, meditation is to come upon this. It is not that you come upon it. In that silence, in that quietness, in that absolute tranquillity, is there a beginning? And if there is a beginning, there must be an ending. That which has a cause must end. Whenever there is a cause, there must be an end. That is the law, that is natural. So is there a causation at all for the creation of man, the creation of all the way of life? Is there a beginning of all of this? How are we going to find out?
What is creation? Not of the painter, nor the poet, nor the man who makes something out of marble; those are all things manifested. Is there something that, because it is not manifested, has no beginning and no end? That which is manifested has a beginning, has an end. We are manifestations. Not of divine something or other, we are the result of thousands of years of so-called evolution, growth, development, and we also come to an end. That which is manifested can always be destroyed, but that which is not, has no time.
We are asking if there is something beyond all time. It has been the inquiry of philosophers, scientists, and religious people to find that which is beyond the measure of man, which is beyond time. Because if one can discover that, or see that, that is immortality. That is beyond death. Man has sought this, in various ways, in different parts of the world, through different beliefs, because when one discovers, realizes that, then life has no beginning and no end. It is beyond all concepts, beyond all hope. It is something immense.
Now to come back to earth. You see, we never look at life, our own life, as a tremendous movement with a great depth, a vastness. We have reduced our life to such a shoddy little affair. And life is really the most sacred thing in existence. To kill somebody is the most irreligious horror, or to get angry, to be violent with somebody.>
We never see the world as a whole because we are so fragmented, so terribly limited, so petty. We never have the feeling of wholeness, where the things of the sea, the things of the earth, nature, the sky, the universe, are part of us. Not imagined---you can go off into some kind of fancy and imagine that you are the universe, and then you become cuckoo. But break down into this small, self-centered interest, have nothing of that, and from there you can move infinitely.
And meditation is this, not sitting cross-legged, or standing on your head, or doing whatever one does, but having the feeling of complete wholeness and unity of life. And that can come only when there is love and compassion.
One of our difficulties is that we have associated love with pleasure, with sex, and for most of us love means jealousy, anxiety, possessiveness, attachment. That is what we call love. Is love attachment? Is love pleasure? Is love desire? Is love the opposite of hate? If it is the opposite of hate, then it is not love. All opposites contain their own opposites When I try to be courageous, that courage is born out of fear. Love cannot have an opposite. Love cannot be where there is jealousy, ambition, aggressiveness.
And where there is the quality of love, from that arises compassion. When there is that compassion, there is intelligence---but it is not the intelligence of self-interest, or the intelligence of thought, or the intelligence of a great deal of knowledge. Compassion has nothing to do with knowledge.
Only with compassion is there that intelligence that gives humanity security, stability, a vast sense of strength.
{J. Krishnamurti, "The Light In Oneself"}
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