I am going to let J. Krishnamurti (K) explain this one. First we have to find out what is the essence of that ‘center’ that we live with.
‘Thought is really, if one goes into it, if one observes it, the response of memory; and without memory there is no thought, no thinking. Whatever we are asked, whatever the challenge, whatever the response to that challenge – all that is still the recording, the response of the past, of the memory, of all the experiences that one has gathered. And that past has always a center from which we think; and that center is more emphasized in our life, has more importance; that center becomes profitable, that center assures security. From that center we think, we act. That center is more or less static; though its challenge takes a different form, a different shape, though things are added to it and taken away from it, it is still there. That center has become important for each one of us. That center might be the family; that center gives me comfort, gives me pleasure; that is the thing round which I have gathered so many things in order to protect myself. So, there is this center which is created by thought, thought being the mechanism of the past. Until we understand thought and the thinker, there must be duality, there must be conflict; and all conflict wastes energy, deteriorates the quality of the mind.’
I am only interested in how all this works with the artist. He has created a center from where he makes art. The center is created with time as an expression of his experiences: it is a reflection of his past.
‘We have a center, and that center is created by thought; that center is the background. That background is very extensive and historical and has also plenty of mythology and moral values of society. However extensive that background is, there is always a center in it, the ‘me’, which is more important than history. That ‘me’, that self, is created by thought, because if there is no thinking, there will be no ‘me’. The ‘me’ is not created by some supernatural entity; the ‘me’ is created by everyday incident, by every accident, by every experience, by the innumerable assertions and denials and pursuits.’
So the artist constructs his form with the assistance of all his idiosyncrasies: his past.
But the ‘new’ in art does not come from the known.
When it comes to the final solution: let’s face it: art is made to transform and only the ‘new’ in art can do this. So can you work from no center: the magic question.
‘Is it possible to have no center at all? Do not translate this into your own language, into what you have read in the Gita or some other book; forget all that, and look at the issue. Do not interpret it in your own peculiar language – then you lose the vitality of perception.’
So what is the ‘self’ like with no center. No center does not mean no ‘self’. Thought is inherent part of the ‘self’. It is not going to go away. ‘The observer is the observed.’ All you observe is not going to cease when there is no center. Stillness is not nothingness. Stillness is to allow happenings to continue as they are, but you do not do anything about them. You only observe them. Choiceless observation.
‘Meditation is actually this process of investigation into oneself. If you go into it deeply yourself, you are bound to come across all this, where it is possible to think without the center, to see without the center, to act so completely without idea and approximation, to love without the center and therefore without thought and feeling. And, when you have gone through all that, you find out for yourself a mind that is completely free and has no borders, no frontiers – a mind that is free, which has no fear and which does not come about through discipline. And if one has gone that far, one begins to see – or rather, the mind itself begins to observe the thing itself which unfolds thought – that the quality of time, the quality that is yesterday, today, and tomorrow, has completely changed, and therefore action is not in terms of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Such action has no motive – all motive has its root in the past, and any action born out of that motive is still an approximation.’
A center that does not churn up its past for an idea but keeps it free for something new to show itself. Observing the happenings without intervention is to be still.
‘So, meditation is the total awareness of every movement of thought and never denying thought – which means letting every thought flower in freedom; and it is only in freedom that every thought can flower and come to an end. So out of this labor – if it can be called labor, which is really out of this observation – the mind has understood all this. Such a mind is a quiet mind; such a mind knows what it is really to be quiet, to be really still. And in that stillness, there are various other forms of movement which can only be verbal to people who have not even thought about this.’
‘……the mind in that state of aloneness is capable of total individual action – individual in the sense that it is not related to a particular society or culture. Such a mind becomes silent, completely still, and in that very stillness there is an extraordinary movement, a movement which is not put together by the mind. That movement without any center, without any direction or objective, is creation; that movement is the real, beyond the measure of time and man.’
The ‘new’ in art comes out of this stillness and for that center to cease completely is the only revolution, but that revolution cannot come about through any effort on the part of the conscious or the unconscious. You cannot think yourself into your center ceasing. There is no method to make it cease. ‘Choiceless observation is the only way: by complete cessation of all choice. Then the mind becomes extraordinarily quiet, utterly still, and in that stillness there is a revolution at the center. Only then is there a possibility of being truly individual because then the mind is alone, uninfluenced. That state is creativeness.’
Look at it this way: that choiceless center kind of mind, sits at the center of the room. When you live only by choiceless observation you remain at the center. If you start to make all your observations an experience you move towards a corner and ‘become’. If you finally sit facing one of the corners, you are blinded of the other 3 corners and of the Truth of things. You start to think off the corner you are facing. At the center there is only stillness through observation with no judgement.
And out of this stillness of ‘choiceless observation’, the ‘new’ in mind is born in action.