Meditation and its Artifices

"We train a child to focus his mind, to concentrate, because without concentration he cannot deal with life. Life requires this: the mind must be able to concentrate. But the moment the mind becomes able to concentrate, he becomes less aware.Awareness means a mind that is aware but not focused.Awareness is an awareness of whatever is happening.

Concentration is a choice. It excludes everything except its object of concentration: it is a narrowing. If you are walking down the street, you have to narrow your awareness to walk. Normally you cannot be aware of everything that is happening because if you are aware of everything that is happening you will be out of focus. So concentration is a must.

Concentration of mind is a necessity in life - to survive and exist. This is why every culture, in its own way, tries to narrow the mind of the child.

Children, as they are, are never focused; their consciousness is open on all sides. Everything is coming in, nothing is being excluded. The child is open to every sensation, every sensation is included in his consciousness.

And there's so much that goes in! That's why it is so fluctuating, so unstable. A child's unconditioned mind is a flux - a flux of sensations. But she won't be able to survive with that kind of mind. She has to learn to narrow her mind, to concentrate.

The moment you narrow your mind, you are particularly aware of one thing and simultaneously unaware of many other things. The greater the narrowing of the mind, the more successful it will be. You will become an expert, you will be an expert. But the whole process will consist of knowing more and more about less and less.

The narrowness is an existential necessity: nobody is responsible for it. As long as the mind exists, it is necessary, but it is not enough. It's utilitarian. Simply surviving is not enough. Just being utilitarian is not enough.

So when you become utilitarian and your awareness is narrowed, you deny your mind much of what it is capable of. You are not using the whole mind, you are using a very small part of it.

And the rest - the biggest part - will be unconscious.

In fact, there is no boundary between the conscious and the unconscious. There are not two minds. 'Conscious mind' means that part of the mind which was used in the narrowing process. 'Unconscious mind' means that part which has been neglected, ignored, closed. This creates a division, a split. Most of the mind becomes alien to you. You are cut off from your own self: you become a stranger to your totality.

A small part is identified as your self, and the rest is lost. But the unconscious part, which is left out, is always present as unused potential, unfulfilled possibilities, unlived adventures. This unconscious mind - this potential mind, this unused mind - will always struggle with the conscious mind; that is why there is always an inner conflict.

Everyone is in conflict because of this split between the unconscious and the conscious. But only if the potential, the unconscious, is allowed to flower, can you feel the bliss of existence - otherwise not.
If most of your potential remains unrealized, your life will be a frustration. This is why the more utilitarian a person is, the less he is fulfilled, the less he is happy. The more utilitarian the approach, the further a person is in business, the less he is living, the less ecstasy he knows. The part of the mind that cannot prove itself useful in the utilitarian world has to be discarded.
The utilitarian part of life is necessary, but at a great cost: you miss out on the festivity of life. Life becomes a festivity, a celebration, if all your potentialities come to flowering. Then life is a solemnity. That's why I always say that religion means the transformation of life into a celebration. The dimension of religion is the dimension of the festive, not the utilitarian.

The utilitarian mind is not to be taken as a whole, the remnant, the greater part, the whole mind, is not to be sacrificed for it. The utilitarian mind must not be the end. It will have to remain present, but as a means. The other - the remainder, the greater part, the potential - must be the end. Here's what I mean by 'a religious approach'.
With a non-religious approach, the business mind, the utilitarian becomes the end. When that happens, there is no possibility for the unconscious to realize the potential: the unconscious will be negated. If the utilitarian becomes the end, it means that the subordinate is playing the role of the boss.
Intelligence, the narrowing of the mind, is a means to survival, but not to life. Survival is not life.
Survival is a necessity - existing in the material world is a necessity - but the end is always to reach the flowering of a potential, of all that is meaningful to you. If you are completely fulfilled, if nothing is left in seed form within you, if everything becomes real, if you are a flowering, then and only then can you feel the bliss, the ecstasy of life.
The denied part of you, the unconscious part, can only become active and creative if you add a new dimension to your life - the festive dimension, the playful dimension.
So meditation is not work, it is joy. Praying is not a business, it is a joy. Meditation is not something to be done to achieve some goal - peace, bliss - but something to be enjoyed as an end in itself.
The festive dimension is the most important thing to understand - and we totally miss it. By festive, I mean the ability to enjoy, moment by moment, whatever comes to you.
We have become so conditioned and habits have become so mechanical that even when there is no business to be done, our mind is a dealer. When no narrowing is needed, you remain narrow. Even when you're playing cards, you're not having fun. Play for victory, and then play becomes work; so what happens is not important, only the result.
In business, the result is important. In festivity, the act itself is important. If you can make any act meaningful in itself, then you become festive and can celebrate it.
Whenever you are in celebration, the boundaries, the narrowing boundaries, are broken. They are not needed, they are deleted. you come out of your straitjacket, the tight jacket of concentration. Now you are not choosing, whatever comes you allow. And the moment you allow total existence to enter, you become one with it. There is a communion.
I call this communion - this celebration, this choiceless awareness, this non-dealing attitude - meditation.
Celebration is in the moment, in the act - not caring about the results, about achieving something.
There is nothing to be achieved; so you can enjoy what happens here and now.
But you can explain it this way: I am talking to you; if I am interested in the result, then speech becomes a business, it becomes a job. But if I talk to you without any expectations, without any desire for the outcome, then talking becomes fun. The act itself is the end. Narrowing is not necessary. I can play with words, I can play with thoughts. I can joke with your question, I can joke with my answer; so it's not something serious, but something light and cheerful.
And if you are listening to me without thinking of getting anything out of it, then you can be relaxed; you can allow me to commune with you, your consciousness will not narrow. So she is open - having fun, enjoying.
Any moment can be a business moment, any moment can be a meditative moment: the difference is in the attitude. If the attitude is that you have no choice, if you are enjoying the moment, it is meditative.
There are social needs and there are existential needs that have to be met. I will not say: 'Don't condition the children'. If you leave them totally unconditioned, they will be barbaric. They will not be able to exist. Survival needs conditioning, but it is not the end; thus, you must be able to turn your conditioning on and off. Just like you do with clothes: you can put them on, go out and do your business; and then come home and take them off. So, you exist.
If you are not identified with your clothes, with your conditioning, if you don't say, for example, 'I am my mind', it is not difficult - then you can change easily. But you get identified with your conditioning. You say, 'My conditioning is me' - and everything else other than your conditioning is negated. You think, 'Whatever is not my conditioning is not me, the unconscious is not me; I am the conscious, focused mind.' This identification is dangerous. This shouldn't be like that. A proper education is not conditioned, it is conditioned with the condition that the conditioning is a utilitarian necessity; you should be able to turn it on and off.
When you need it, you turn it on, and when you don't need it, you turn it off. Until it is possible to educate human beings so that they are not identified with their conditioning, they are not really human beings. It will be robots - conditioned, narrowed.

To understand this is to become aware of that part of the mind, the greater part, which has been denied light. And to be aware of that is to be aware that you are not the conscious mind. The conscious mind is only one part. 'I' am both, and most of it is unconditioned. But it is always there, waiting.
My definition of meditation is that it is simply an effort to jump into the unconscious. You cannot leap calculated, because all calculation is of the conscious, and the conscious mind will not allow it. She will take precautions: 'You will go crazy. Do not do this.'
The conscious mind is always afraid of the unconscious, because if the unconscious emerges, everything that is still and clear in the conscious will be swept away. Then everything will be dark, like in a forest.
It is similar to this: you have made a garden, a garden with a fence. Very little earth was disturbed, but you planted some flowers, and all was well - in order, clean.

It turns out, however, that the forest is always close by. She is wild, uncontrollable; and the garden is in constant fear of her. At any moment, the forest can come in, and then the garden will disappear. In the same way, you have cultivated a part of your mind.
You made it all clear. But the unconscious is always around, and the conscious mind is always afraid of it. The conscious mind says, 'Don't go into the unconscious; don't look at it, don't think about it.'
The path of the unconscious is dark and unknown. To reason he will appear unreasonable; to logic it will seem illogical. So if you have to think to go into meditation, you never will - because the thinking part won't let you.
This becomes a dilemma. You cannot do anything without thinking, and with thinking you cannot go into meditation.
What to do? Even if you think, 'I won't think', that too is thinking. It is the thinking part of the mind that says, 'I will not allow thinking.'
Meditation cannot be done by thinking: that is the dilemma - the greatest dilemma. Every seeker has to come to this dilemma; somewhere, sometime, the dilemma will be present. Those who know say: 'Jump! Do not think!' But you can't do anything without thinking. That's why unnecessary gimmicks were created - I say 'unnecessary gimmicks' because if you jump without thinking, no gimmicks are needed. But you cannot jump without thinking; thus a contrivance is necessary.
You can think about artifice, your thinking mind may be at ease about artifice, but not about meditation.
Meditation will be a leap into the unknown. You can work with a gimmick, and the gimmick will automatically push you into the unknown. The artifice is necessary only because of the training of the mind, otherwise it would not be necessary.
Once you've taken the leap, you'll say, 'The gimmick wasn't necessary, it wasn't necessary.' But this is retrospective knowledge: you will know later that the trick was not necessary. This is what Krishnamurti says: 'No artifice is needed; no method is required. Zen masters say, 'No effort is needed, it happens effortlessly'. But this is absurd for someone who has not crossed the barrier. And it's mostly being spoken to those who haven't crossed the barrier.
A gimmick is artificial. It is simply a trick to put your rational mind at ease so that you can be pushed into the unknown.
This is why I use vigorous methods. The more vigorous the method, the less your calculating mind is needed. The more vigorous he is, the more complete, because vitality is not just of the mind - it is of the body, of the emotions. It is your entire being.
Sufi dervishes use dance as a technique, as a gimmick. If you enter dance, you cannot remain intellectual, because dance is an arduous phenomenon: your whole being is needed in it. And, inevitably, there comes a time when the dance becomes mindless. The more vital, the more vigorous, the more you are in it, the less reason is there. Thus, the dance was intended as a technique to instigate. At some point you will not be dancing anymore - the dancing will take over, it will take over you. You will be dragged to the unknown source.
Zen masters use the method of koan. koans they are absurd puzzles by their very nature. They cannot be solved for the reason: you cannot think about them. Apparently, it's as if it's possible to think something about them - that's the ruse. It seems that something can be thought about the koans; then, you start to think. Your rational mind is at ease: something has been given to it to resolve. But it is something that cannot be resolved - it is of such a nature that it cannot be resolved, because the very nature of it is absurd.
There are hundreds of puzzles. The master will say: 'Think about soundless sound'. Verbally, it sounds like one can think about it. If you try hard enough, somehow, somewhere, a soundless sound can be discovered - it might be possible! Then at a certain point - and that point cannot be predicted: it is not the same for everyone - the mind runs out. She disappears. You are there, but the mind with all its conditioning is gone. You are just like a child: the conditioning is not there, you are simply aware - the narrowing concentration has disappeared. Now you know that the gimmick was not necessary - but this is later knowledge, it could not be said in advance.
No method is causal: no method is the cause of meditation. This is why many methods are possible. Every method is just a gimmick, but every religion says its method is the way and no other method will do. They all think in terms of causality.
When heating water, it evaporates. Heat is the cause: without heat, water will not evaporate. This is causal. Heat is a necessity that must precede evaporation. But meditation is not causal; thus, any method is possible. Every method is just a gimmick: it is just creating the situation for the event, not causing it.
For example: beyond the confines of this room is the limitless, open sky. You've never seen him before. I can talk to you about the sky, about its coolness, about the sea, about everything beyond this room, but you haven't seen anything. You don't know anything about it. You laugh; thinks I'm making it all up. You say, 'This is all fantastic. You are a dreamer!' I cannot convince you to go out there because everything I say about it is not meaningful to you.
So I say, 'The house is on fire!' It's meaningful to you - it's something you understand.
Now I don't have to give you any explanation. I simply run; you follow me. The house isn't on fire, but when you're outside, you won't ask me why I lied. The meaning is there: the sky is there. Now then, you will thank me. Any lie will do. The lie was just a ruse. It was just a ruse to get him out. She was not the cause of existence from the outside.
Every religion is based on a lie-artifice. All methods are lies: they just create the situation, they are not causal. New devices can be created; new religions can be created. The old devices are flat, an old lie is flat, and more new ones are needed. You've been told so many times that the house was on fire, when it wasn't, that the lie has become useless. Now someone has to come up with a new gimmick.
If something is the cause of something else, it never becomes useless. But an old device is always useless: new devices are needed. This is why every new prophet will have to fight with the old prophets. He is doing the same work as they did, but he will have to oppose their teachings, because he will have to deny the old devices, which have become flat and meaningless.
All the great ones - Buddha, Christ, Mahavira - created huge lies out of pure compassion, just to drive you out of the house. If you can be pushed out of the mind by any means, that is all that is needed. Your mind is bondage, your mind is fatal: it is bondage.
I said: this dilemma is bound to happen - that's the nature of life - you will have to learn to narrow your mind. This narrowing will help you when you leave the house, but it will be fatal inwardly. It will be useful in your relationship with others; and it will be suicidal to yourself.
You have to exist with others and with yourself. Any life that is one-sided is deformed. You must exist among others with a conditioned mind, but you must exist with yourself with a totally unconditioned consciousness. Society creates narrow consciousness, but consciousness itself means expansion: it is limitless. Both are necessary, and both must be accomplished.
I call a person wise who can fulfill both needs. Either extreme is unwise; either extreme is harmful. So live in the world with the mind, with your conditioning, but live with yourself without the mind, without training. Use your mind as a means, don't make it an end: get out of it the moment you get the chance. The moment you are alone, get out of the mind, turn it off. So celebrate the moment; celebrate existence itself, being itself.
Simply being is a huge celebration if you know how to turn off the conditioning. This 'turning off' you will have to learn through Dynamic Meditation. It will not be caused, it will come to you without a cause. Meditation will create the situation in which you will reach the unknown: in a short time you will be pushed out of your usual, mechanical, robotic personality. Be brave: practice Dynamic Meditation vigorously, and everything else will unfold. It will not be your doing, it will be an event.
You cannot bring the divine, but you can hinder its coming. You cannot bring the sun into your house, but you can close the door. Negatively the mind can do a lot, positively nothing. Every positive thing is a gift, every positive thing is a blessing: it comes to you; while every negative thing is your own doing.
Meditation and all the gimmicks of meditation can do one thing: push you out of your negative barriers. It can bring you out of the prison that is the mind; and when you are gone you will laugh. It was so easy to leave, it was right there. Only one step was needed. But we go around in circles, and that step is always missed... the only step that can take one to the center.
You live walking in circles, on the periphery, repeating the same thing. Somewhere the continuity must be broken. That's all that can be done by any method of meditation. If the continuity is broken, if you are discontinuous with your past, then at that very moment there is an explosion. In that very moment you are centered, centered in your being, and then you will know all that was ever yours, all that was simply waiting for you."

Extracted from the book
Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy