Krishnamurti on Love and Loneliness
What I think I am
Posted by aplecompte on March 14th, 2009
This brief introduction establishes the metaphysical context.
God is Spirit, Mind, Love. God created Christ, His Son, as extension. When the mad idea of separation occurred, instead of laughing it off, the mind of the Son considered the possibility for an instant. God prevented anything from really changing, but the Son’s powerful mind dreamed up a whole world and then fell asleep into it. In the dream the thought of separation, the ego, could play out its fantasy. The ego split into fragments, attached each fragment to a body and then wiped its memory clear.
I am a thought fragment that identifies with a baby that was born in time and space. Unconsciously I feel very guilty, believing I separated from God, and fearful, believing God is angry with me. As I grew up I learned the fear-based ego thought system.
What I Think I Am
The following is an adaptation of thoughts expressed by Krishnamurti in On Love and Loneliness.
I find that I am very small, empty, limited, and that I struggle for two things: pleasure and to become something more. This struggle is the cause of sorrow. Pleasurable perceptions are recollected by thought and thought makes the pleasure; thought is responsible for the pursing of pleasure. Our society is based on pleasure, and all our relationship is based on that.
The feeling of the “me,” the “I,” is the ego mind itself. The mind is the process of thinking, of verbalization. Thought is the product of the past, the reaction of memory to stimulation. You cannot think without symbols, images, which are the prejudices, the previous knowledge, the apprehensions of the mind. These are projected upon the fact and out of that arises fear. The mind is the instrument of comparison. The very process of thought is self-enclosing and makes fear.
I am built on my judgments, my values and my relationships with others. But the “I,” the ego self, is always empty and can never be fulfilled. The ego self makes the constant loneliness that I live with. The very activity of the self with its self-enclosing process, to be different, more than, to use others for pleasure, is the way of isolation. Loneliness is the consciousness of the self without activity. It is this emptiness I crave to fill. All craving is similar. Without understanding the process of craving, illusion is inevitable.
Thinking is verbalization based on memory. But when the memory of my old interests/cravings meets the new, it brings about conflict, and so the chooser is born, establishing himself as an entity separate and distinct from craving. This observer/chooser is also empty. He too is loneliness. I cannot conquer or run away from loneliness, whether through God or through alcohol. The more I am conscious of myself, the more isolated I am, and self-consciousness is the process of isolation.
I am so concerned with this beastly little self, and that is part of my loneliness. This loneliness comes into being through daily activities of self-concern. I see that as long as my activity is self-centered and self-expressive, there must be this void. I am aware that any activity exerted to dispel the maker of this emptiness is only another form of self-centered activity. I see all that very clearly, objectively, and I realize suddenly that I cannot do anything about it. Before, I did something about it: I escaped, or I tried to fill it, I tried to understand it, to go into it, but they are all other forms of isolation. So I suddenly realize that I cannot do anything, that the more I try to do something about it, the more I am making and building walls of isolation. The mind itself realizes that it cannot do anything about it, that thought cannot touch it, because the moment thought touches it, it breeds emptiness again.
The man who has accumulated money or knowledge can never know love, because he lives with the things of the mind; his activities are of the mind, and whatever he touches he makes into a problem, a confusion, a misery. You cannot love when you are concerned about yourself, because you will have attachment. Attachment to a person means fear. Thought is the response of the past as knowledge and memory, so it is limited and time-bound. So thought is bringing about this isolation.
An attachment is a form of occupation for the mind. I am related to the image I have built about you. And the contract of these two images is called relationship. It is just a matter of convenience and exploitation. I am concerned about you in my self-centered way because I don’t want to lose you, I don’t want you to be free. So in attachment there is fear, jealousy, anxiety, and suffering. I am not so much concerned about the other. I am concerned about myself through the other.
Our whole life is based on desire, attachment and pleasure. We want to be happy through something, through a person, but loneliness always remains. We know love only as sensation. Our love is exclusive, personal, and possessive. Our love is a thing of the mind. There is no relationship between two human beings. There is only using each other. Thought in a relationship is destructive; it is possession; it is clinging to each other for comfort and safety; and all of that is not love. My mind has judged it by saying it is fearful. The moment you compare there is conflict.
The mind, working consciously and unconsciously, is the cause of my problems. Problems cease only when the self is forgotten, when the “me” is non-existent. The thinker is a fictitious entity, an illusion of the mind. The thinker ceases only when there is an understanding of the whole process. The non-action is to see it in its entirety and therefore have an insight into it. When you once see something as false you can never again go back to it.
It is thought that has created the image about yourself and that image has been hurt. The hurt is the image you have about yourself, and that image has been created by thought. What is hurt is the image, and that image has no reality. It is a verbal structure, a linguistic image, which has been fed by thought, and when the energy of thought is not active, then the image is not. Then there is no possibility of ever being hurt. Got it? Test it. Apply it—not tomorrow, now. The unconscious is tradition and one of the traditions is to accept hurt. You can deny that tradition.
To end sorrow is to face the fact of one’s loneliness, one’s attachment, one’s petty little demand for fame, one’s hunger to be loved. Your mind must be completely quiet. The solution is to stop struggling, to stop trying to run away and to take a deep look at what I think I am and what I think I’m doing. When verbalization ceases, when the observer is entirely lonely, he realizes that his relationship is in itself loneliness; he is himself that, and when he realizes that fully, that loneliness ceases to be.
So by carefully observing, objectively, I see this whole process, and the very seeing of it is enough. The mind sees very clearly how absurd it is. Thought becomes quiet. In that silence there is no loneliness. When there is that silence, that complete silence of the mind there is creativity and love.
Love comes into being when the mind is naturally quite, not made quiet; when we understand the total process of ourselves. Love is not a thing of the mind. Love can only be experienced when the process of thought is not functioning, only when the mind is no longer projecting itself, pursuing its particular sensations, demands, urges, and hidden fears. Love can be present only when the thought of the self is absent, and freedom from the self lies through self-knowledge.
How marvelous it is to love somebody wanting nothing from them. To end ambition, sorrow, fear, craving, it is necessary to die every day to everything that you have gathered psychologically. That is freedom. Otherwise you are a slave to choice, to time. Love is something totally new every day.
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See "What Am I? " in A Course in Miracles
