Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

by J. Krishnamurti

Is there a meditation which is not determined, practiced? There is, but that requires enormous attention. That attention is a flame and that attention is not something that you come to; it is attention now to everything, every word, every gesture, every thought; it is to pay complete attention, not partial. If you are listening partially now, you are not giving complete attention. When you are completely attentive there is no self, there is no limitation. The brain now is full of information, cluttered up, there is no space in it, and one must have space. Space means energy. When there is no space, your energy is very limited. The brain is now so heavily laden with knowledge, with theories, with power, position, so everlastingly in conflict and cluttered up, that it has no space. And freedom, complete freedom, is to have that limitless space. The brain is extraordinarily capable, has infinite capacity, but we have made it small and petty. When there is that space and emptiness and, therefore, immense energy—energy is passion, love and compassion and intelligence—then there is that truth which is most holy, most sacred, that which man has sought from time immemorial. That truth does not lie in any temple, in any mosque, in any church. And it has no path to it except through one’s own understanding of oneself, inquiring, studying, learning. Then there is that which is eternal.