@macdougdoug
so, unconscious meditation
unconscious here points to lack of premeditated intention
unconscious is than strongly related to …attention and awareness ?
I thought I might share here a couple of extracts where Krishnamurti talks about this (one is from a conversation with Bohm from 1983, and the other a conversation also with Bohm from 1975):
K: Meditation is really an unconscious process, it is not a conscious process.
DB: How are you able to say that meditation takes place then if it is unconscious?
K: It is taking place when the brain is quiet.
The second extract (from 1975) is a little more strange - read to the end!
K: You see, I wake up in the middle of the night, very often, meditating. It is a peculiar form of meditation because it is totally unimaginative, something pre-unmeditated. (Laughs) I couldn’t have imagined such a thing existed…
DB: Well, you say you wake up in a state of meditation – is that it?
K: Yes…
DB: Yes, well, would you think that that state might be in your sleep as well?
K: Yes. Oh, definitely.
DB: So the state is in your sleep, then you wake up – I think you mentioned that somewhere.
K: Oh, definitely…
DB: And does this state imply anything near a loss of consciousness or anything like that, would you say?
K: A little bit…
DB: … it is not quite the ordinary state of consciousness.
K: No, it is not…
DB: But I am saying, would it be something that somebody could think of as in some way a tendency to loss of consciousness, or losing it?
K: I have lost consciousness.
DB: Yes, well that’s the sort of…
K: I was unconscious I believe for three weeks.
DB: When was that?
K: At Ojai…
!!
1 Like
@James
Yes
I recognize now the passages you shared…
K also said that he used to take long walks at Ojai and had to “remember” to itself he must return home (I am paraphrasing).
Yes. He talks about unconscious meditation in his journals too, and also with Pupul Jayakar (though I forget where).
1 Like
…”life and death are not divided; they are one, because you are dying every minute of the day in order to live”…. K says.
In the same way, conscious and unconscious….are not divided …? There is no threshold to cross between the 2…
If it were possible to know what it is, it wouldn’t be unconscious, would it?
Might be worth looking at what it isn’t instead. His use of the word ‘unconscious’ signals to me that it isn’t about our ideas. Ideas, necessary as they are, inform the conscious. Die to love, Krishnamurti once said, by which I take it mean our idea of love (or meditation or observation or …) is corrupt.
I don’t know @Dev - … but the fact K mentions of “unconscious mediation” it may mean that there is an awareness of the unconscious ---- or another kind of “being” (not in the sense of paranormal )
In fact, I think K talks about being aware of the conscious and the unconscious…
And maybe, this “unconscious mediation” is not using the senses…@James
Guess I don’t see the connection, @crina. Unconscious is being used as an adjective in the first instance and as a noun in the second. I have no idea what he means by being “aware of the unconscious” in that sense and can only take him at his word that that is a reality for him and therefore a possibility for the rest of us. Other than that I don’t know what to do with that statement.
Unconscious meditation on the other hand is more understandable as a concept and as my interest is in acquiring a clear, unbiased, rational and, yes, intellectual understanding of what Krishnamurti is proposing, it piqued my interest as it was an unusual turn of phrase. To me it conjures an image of teetering on the precipice of the rational - a passageway, perhaps, from meditation of the head to that of the heart. Unknowingness. Awareness at its most simple.
1 Like
May I ask, what is meditation without purpose?
1 Like
There is maybe a danger, Crina, of confusing the ordinary usage of the word unconscious (as in ‘unconscious trauma’, 'unconscious ‘desires’, or ‘having an unconscious’) with K’s specific use of it here.
When K talks about unconscious meditation he is talking about a meditation in which the meditator - the one supposedly ‘doing’ the meditation - along with any ideas about meditation, is absent.
Conscious meditation is clearly pre-meditated: one sets up a plan of how to meditate, follows the right steps, and hopes to achieve a result. Whereas in unconscious meditation there is no plan, no conscious effort, no meditator striving to achieve a result.
The closest language I can find for this is the Chinese phrase wu wei, meaning non action, non doing (which, paradoxically, is true action).
1 Like
I like this way of putting it.
I also read a nice description this week: ‘Heartfullness’. 
Meditation ideas
What about the (non-)meditation (non-)method in which you simply sit quietly and let whatever happens happen, without any resistance or effort. No effort to be aware or non-aware, attentive or non-attentive, observe/not-observe, analyze/not-analyze, let go or hold on. Just flow, without making the effort to flow, be without striving to be. Non-meditation!
Stranger: The meditation in which you strive to remain unconscious, but awake. It’s like anti-meditation. Normally you strive for conscious awareness and when you find yourself drifting from that you gently bring your mind back to it. In anti-meditation you strive for unconscious awareness and when you find yourself getting conscious you return to unconsciousness.
Both meditation types are ‘doable’ sitting down or in everyday life.
Based on how you describe unconscious meditation then K’s talks, dialogues, writings, were/are all unconscious meditations.
For me unconscious in K context, goes beyond no meditator no effort no agenda
When are you back in live dialogues @James ?
I mean - K talks about being unconscious for 3 weeks in Ojai…!!! So K unconscious is something more then no premeditated mediation
Hi Crina - I had no intention to limit what K may have meant by ‘unconscious meditation’ to just no method, no meditator, etc; I simply wanted to make clear that there are different ways of using the word ‘unconscious’, and that most of them may not be relevant in this context.
When K talks about being unconscious for 3 weeks, or being in danger of losing consciousness when going on long walks, I take him to mean that this is a very rare and unusual state of (unconscious) consciousness - not merely the ordinary unconsciousness that someone has when they are knocked out or very drunk. Nor do I take him to mean the unconscious that psychoanalysts talk about, full of repressed drives, hidden traumas, etc.
Although I can only speculate, I know that in the Buddhist tradition they sometimes talk about a state of consciousness called nirodha-samapatti - a state that is beyond perception and non-perception - but there are many different views about it, probably because it is so rare and can be confused with other states of unconsciousness or nothingness.
I hadn’t thought about this. I’m not sure… Maybe at some point in the future?
1 Like
Yes, this sounds about right. There seems to be some overlap between Krishnamurti’s choiceless awareness, the ‘doing-nothing’ of Zen (shikantaza), and the ‘meditationless meditation’ written about in Dzogchen and Mahamudra.
Maybe the anti-meditation you describe is an attempt to be free of the (conscious presence of) the ‘meditator’ during meditation?
The thing about shikantaza is there is one rule: Just sit. Is that intended as a pointer to no rules?
Definitely! Good find, James. 
Oh no…another precipice metaphor.
Is rational thinking (practical thought) a precipice because it can fall into the pit of psychological thought when pushed by emotion?
An aspect of what I take to be ‘unconscious meditation’ is that it remains a secret even from the meditator. A lovely extract from K’s ‘Meditations’ shines a light on this inner-secrecy:
You know, you should never meditate in public, or with another, or in a group: you should meditate only in solitude, in the quiet of the night or in the still, early morning.
When you meditate in solitude, it must be solitude. You must be completely alone, not following a system, a method, repeating words, or pursuing a thought, or shaping a thought according to your desire…
And then, in quiet secrecy in which all communication has come to an end, in which there is no observer with his anxieties, with his stupid appetites and problems only then, in that quiet aloneness, meditation becomes something that cannot be put into words…
I don’t know if you have ever meditated, if you have ever been alone, by yourself, far away from everything… so that in yourself there is nothing recognizable, nothing that you touch by thought or feeling, so far away that in this full solitude the very silence becomes the only flower, the only light…
So meditate alone. Get lost. And don’t try to remember where you have been… meditate in the very secret recesses of your heart and mind, where you have never been before.
2 Likes
“Get lost”
J.Krishnamurti