Socrates gives you the key to the Self
— ‘an unexamined life is not worth living’
Socrates said that “an unexamined life is not worth living.” He was one in a long line of teachers who advocated knowing oneself at the deepest level.
Many people have asked what type of meditation is best to uncover the Self that you are, beneath or beyond this “I,” this egoic mind. For many years I practiced self-inquiry, which is the meditation that looks at the conditioned mind as the source of most suffering. It is an arduous, attentive practice that is not for everyone. But it leads to the realization of who you are beyond the self.
Of course there are other kinds of meditation than self-inquiry (self-enquiry), and most of these have to do with settling the mind, trying to control the mind, trying to find more happiness, trying to be a better person, trying to increase awareness, and so on. But these did not interest me for several reasons. I discovered that ‘trying’ to do anything is by use of the mind, and I wanted to move past this mind. And, I didn’t want to just reconditioned a conditioned mind.
Krishnamurti’s teachings
Clearly, Jiddu Krishnamurti (12 May 1895–17 February 1986) was one of the most outspoken and direct teachers of self-inquiry. He painstakingly led audiences all over the world, for more than 60 years, through the process of self-inquiry. I learned much from him and applied his teaching to myself with great success.
Krishnamurti said, “Meditation is something extraordinary, if you know how to do it…sit or lie down quietly without force of any kind. Do you understand? Then watch your thinking. Watch what you are thinking about. You find you are thinking about your shoes, your saris, what you are going to say, the bird outside to which you listen; follow such thoughts and enquire why each thought arises. Do not try to change your thinking. See why certain thoughts arise in your mind so that you begin to understand the meaning of every thought and feeling without any enforcement. And when a thought arises, do not condemn it, do not say it is right, it is wrong, it is good, it is bad. Just watch it, so that you begin to have a perception, a consciousness which is active in seeing every kind of thought, every kind of feeling. You will know every hidden secret thought, every hidden motive, every feeling, without distortion, without saying it is right, wrong, good or bad. When you look, when you go into thought very very deeply, your mind becomes extraordinarily subtle, alive. No part of the mind is asleep. The mind is completely awake. That is merely the foundation. Then your mind is very quiet. Your whole being becomes very still. Then go through that stillness, deeper, further — that whole process is meditation. Meditation is not to sit in a corner repeating a lot of words; or to think of a picture and go into some wild, ecstatic imaginings. To understand the whole process of your thinking and feeling is to be free from all thought, to be free from all feeling so that your mind, your whole being becomes very quiet. And that is also part of life and with that quietness, you can look at the tree, you can look at people, you can look at the sky and the stars. That is the beauty of life.” (J. D. Krishnamurti, “On Education,” first published 1974, Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd., London, p. 58)
The mind fragments consciousness
Now, if we can see the difference between this self-inquiry and other types of meditation then we can begin to understand who we are as the conditioned mind as well as what lies behind it, which is also who we are. We call this consciousness. But if our minds are obsessed with thinking, judging, analyzing, force, making descriptions, dreaming, taking trips down memory lane, scheming, imagining, visualizing, and so on, then we remain trapped by this same mind that’s causing all the suffering, and we cannot get out of it — we cannot see the forest for the trees.
The nature of the mind is to fragment the wholeness of reality — of consciousness — into pieces. And certain kinds of meditation merely reinforce this fragmentation. If you are visualizing, for example, then your mind is focusing on parts of the whole. Similarly, if you are focusing on your breath, then the mind is not free to see take in the whole; it is focused, and focusing involves homing in on one thing in particular. If you are staring at your watch while walking down the sidewalk you will run into a light pole or another pedestrian. To stay safe you need to take in the whole scene instead of putting all your attention on only one object, phenomenon, or idea at a time.
The paradox of self-inquiry and the mind
The practice of self-inquiry meditation is easy, yet paradoxically it is made difficult by our preconceived notions of what meditation is supposed to be, based upon what we have been exposed to — images of monks sitting with their legs crossed and zoning out, or self-help leaders telling us we have to stifle all thoughts. True meditation is zoning in, not out. It is complete involvement, not detachment from the world. It is the recognition that you are the world in all of its apparent good and bad. It is seeing what is in front of you and what you are made of so that you can know what you are not.
Krishnamurti said, “It is the natural act of meditation that brings about the harmonious movement of the whole. To divide the body from the mind and to control the body with intellectual decisions is to bring about contradiction, from which arise various forms of struggle, conflict and resistance. Every decision to control only breeds resistance, even the determination to be aware.”
