CHENNAI: One can talk endlessly, describing, piling words upon words, coming to various forms of conclusions, but out of all this verbal confusion, if there is one clear action, it is that action is worth ten thousand words. Most of us are afraid to act because we are confused, disorderly, contradictory and rather miserable. And we hope through this confusion, through this disarray, that some kind of clarity could come into being, a clarity that can never be clouded over, a clarity that is not of another, a clarity that is not given or induced or taken away, a clarity that keeps itself without any effort, without any volition, without any motive, alive; a clarity that has no end and therefore no beginning. Most of us do desire, or most of us, if we are at all aware of our inward confusion, want such clarity.
If we could go into this, it would be worthwhile to see for each one of us if we could be a light to ourselves, a light that has no dependence on another and that is completely free. To go into that one has to explore a rather complex problem. Either one can explore it intellectually, analytically, taking layer after layer of confusion and disorder, taking many days, many years, perhaps a whole lifetime — and then not finding it. Either you do that, this analytical process of cause and effect; or perhaps you can side-step all that completely and come to it directly — without the intermediary of any authority of the intellect, or of a norm. To do that requires that much-abused word — ‘meditation’. That word has unfortunately become a monopoly of the East and therefore utterly worthless.
I don’t know why the mysticism, if it is mysticism at all and not self-hypnosis and illusion, why the Orient, the East, has this peculiar dominance over the West about spirituality, as though they have it in their pocket and give it out to you. Most of them do at a considerable expense, you have to pay for it: or they use that as a means of exploiting you in the name of an idea or a promise. I don’t know why, both in India and those people who come out of that country, including myself — though I am not an Indian, I refuse to have any nationality — there is a peculiar feeling that being an old civilisation, having talked a great deal about this peculiar quality of spirituality, that they therefore have this authority.
I’m afraid they haven’t — they are just like you and me, they are as confused, dull, clever with their tongues, and they have learnt one or two tricks and try to convey to others the method, the system of meditation. To lay the foundation for that meditation, one must understand what living is. One should also be clear about these two facts: experience and following a method that promises a reward of vast transcendental experience. When one talks about experience, the word itself means, does it not, ‘to go through something, to be pushed through’. And to experience also implies, doesn’t it, a process of recognition. So one must be very cautious, and guarded about this word experience because you can only experience and remember that experience only when it has already happened to you. You cannot possibly experience truth.
As long as there is a centre of recollection as the ‘me’, as the thinker, truth is not. And when another says that he has had an experience of the real, distrust him, don’t accept his authority. We all want to accept somebody who promises something, because we have no light in ourselves and nobody can give you that light, no one — no guru, no teacher, no saviour, no one. Because we have accepted so many authorities in the past, we have put our faith in others, either they have exploited us or they have utterly failed. So one must distrust, deny all spiritual authority. Nobody can give us this light that never dies. — Jiddu Krishnamurti