Meditation is emptying the mind of the known. The known is the past. The emptying is not at the end of accumulation but rather it means not to accumulate at all. What has been is emptied only in the present, not by thought but by action, by the doing of what is. The past is the movement of conclusion to conclusion, and the judgment of what is by the conclusion. All judgment is conclusion, whether it be of the past or of the present, and it is this conclusion that prevents the constant emptying of the mind of the known; for the known is always conclusion, determination.
     The known is the action of will, and the will in operation is the continuation of the known, so the action of will cannot possibly empty the mind. The empty mind cannot be purchased at the altar of demand; it comes into being when thought is aware of its own activities - not the thinker being aware of his thought.
     Meditation is the innocency of the present, and therefore it is always alone. The mind that is completely alone, untouched by thought, ceases to accumulate. So the emptying of the mind is always in the present. For the mind that is alone, the future - which is of the past - ceases. Meditation is a movement, not a conclusion, not an end to be achieved.
     The forest was very large, with pine trees, oaks, shrubs and redwood. There was a little stream that went by down the slope, making a constant murmuring. There were butterflies, small ones, blue and yellow, which seemed to find no flowers to rest on, and they drifted down towards the valley.
     This forest was very old, and the redwoods were older still. They were enormous trees of great height, and there was that peculiar atmosphere which comes when man is absent - with his guns, his chattering and the display of his knowledge. There was no road through the forest. You had to leave the car at some distance and walk along a track covered with pine needles.
     There was a jay, warning everybody of human approach. The warning had effect, for all animal movement seemed to stop, and there was that feeling of the intensity of watching. It was difficult for the sun to penetrate here, and there was a stillness which you could almost touch.
     Two red squirrels, with long bushy tails, came down the pine tree, chattering, their claws making a scratching sound. They chased each other round and round the trunk, up and down, with a fury of pleasure and delight. There was a tension between them - the chord of play, of sex, and fun. They were really enjoying themselves. The top one would suddenly stop and watch the lower one who was still in movement, then the lower one too would stop, and they would look at each other, with their tails up and their noses twitching, pointed towards each other. Their sharp eyes were taking each other in, and also the movement around them. They had scolded the watcher, sitting under the tree, and now they had forgotten him; but they were aware of each other, and you could almost feel their utter delight in each other's company. Their nest must have been high up, and presently they got tired; one ran up the tree and the other along the ground, disappearing behind another tree.
     The jay, blue, sharp and curious, had been watching them and the man sitting under the tree, and he too flew off, loudly calling.
     There were clouds coming up and probably in an hour or two there would be a thunderstorm.
     She was an analyst with a degree, and was working in a large clinic. She was quite young, in modern dress, the skirt right above the knee; she seemed very intense, and you could see that she was very disturbed. At the table she was unnecessarily talkative, expressing strongly what she thought about things, and it seemed that she never looked out of the big window at the flowers, the breeze among the leaves, and the tall, heavy eucalyptus, gently swaying in the wind. She ate haphazardly, not particularly interested in what she was eating.
     In the adjoining small room, she said: "We analysts help sick people to fit into a sicker society and we sometimes, perhaps very rarely, succeed. But actually any success is nature's own accomplishment. I have analysed many people. I don't like what I am doing, but I have to earn a living, and there are so many sick people. I don't believe one can help them very much, though of course we are always trying new drugs, chemicals and theories. But apart from the sick, I am myself struggling to be different - different from the ordinary average person."
     Aren't you, in your very struggle to be different, the same as the others? And why all this struggle?
     "But if I don't struggle, fight, I'll be just like the ordinary bourgeois housewife. I want to be different, and that's why I don't want to marry. But I am really very lonely, and my loneliness has pushed me into this work."
     So this loneliness is gradually leading you to suicide, isn't it?
     She nodded; she was almost in tears.
     Isn't the whole movement of consciousness leading to isolation, to fear, and to this incessant struggle to be different? It is all part of this urge to fulfil, to identify oneself with something, or to identify oneself with what one is. Most of the analysts have their teachers according to whose theories and established schools they operate, merely modifying them and adding a new twist to them.
     "I belong to the new school; we approach without the symbol and face reality actually. We have discarded the former masters with their symbols and we see the human being as he is. But all this is something that is also becoming another school, and I am not here to discuss various types of schools, theories and masters, but rather to talk about myself. I don't know what to do."
     Are you not just as sick as the patients whom you are trying to cure? Aren't you part of society - which is perhaps more confused and more sick than yourself? So the issue is more fundamental, isn't it?
     You are the result of this enormous weight of society, with its culture and its religions, and it is driving you, both economically and inwardly. Either you have to make your peace with society, which is to accept its maladies and live with them, or totally refute it, and find a new way of living. But you can't find the new way without letting go of the old.
     What you really want is security, isn't it? That's the whole search of thought - to be different, to be more clever, more sharp, more ingenious. In this process you are trying to find a deep security, aren't you? But is there such a thing at all? Security denies order. There is no security in relationship, in belief, in action, and because one is seeking it one creates disorder. Security breeds disorder, and when you face the evermounting disorder in yourself, you want to end it all.
     Within the area of consciousness with its wide and narrow frontiers, thought is ever trying to find a secure spot. So thought is creating disorder; order is not the outcome of thought. When disorder ends there is order. Love is not within the regions of thought. Like beauty, it cannot be touched by the paintbrush. One has to abandon the total disorder of oneself.
     She became very silent, withdrawn into herself. It was difficult for her to control the tears that were coming down her cheeks.