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On Love and Loneliness
Jiddu Krishnamurti
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On Love and Loneliness
Jiddu Krishnamurti
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About This Book
In 1950 Krishnamurti said: "It is only when the mind is not escaping in any form that it is possible to be in direct communion with that thing we call lonliness, the alone, and to have communion with that thing, there must be affection, there must be love."
On Love and Lonliness is a compelling investigation of our intimate relationships with ourselves, others, and society. Krishnamurti suggests that "true relationship" can come into being only when there is self-knowledge of the conditions which divide and islolate individuals and groups. Only by renouncing the self can we understand the problem of lonliness, and truly love.
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Filosofía de la religiónDiscussion with Professor Maurice Wilkins, Brockwood Park, 12 February 1982
Maurice Wilkins2: It seems to me that thought is part of a creative relationship, but it is only a component in the whole thing.
Krishnamurti: Yes, but is thought love?
MW: No, it isn’t, but I do wonder a little bit whether thought doesn’t come into love somewhat? I mean, it is bound to, to some extent.
K: No. I wonder if love is thought.
MW: No, certainly not.
K: So is it possible to love another without thought? To love somebody means no thought; that brings about a totally different relationship, a different action.
MW: Yes, well I think there can be a great deal of thought in a loving relationship, but thought is not primary.
K: No, when there is love, thought can be used, but not the other way round.
MW: Not the other way round, yes. The basic trouble is that it tends to be the other way round. We are like computers which are being run by our programmes. For a minute I was trying to transpose what you were saying about thought coming to an end to relationship, and wondering what kind of relationship there is without thought.
K: Just see what takes place without thought. I have a relationship with my brother or my wife, and that relationship is not based on thought but basically, deeply, on love. In that love, in that strange feeling, why should I think at all? Love is comprehensive; but when thought comes into it, it is divisive, and it destroys the quality, the beauty of it.
MW: But is love comprehensive? Is it not all-pervasive rather than comprehensive, because surely love can’t express itself adequately without thought?
K: Comprehensive in the sense of whole. I mean, love is not the opposite of hate.
MW: No.
K: So in itself it has no feeling of duality.
MW: I suppose love is much more a quality of the relationship, and a quality of being which pervades it.
K: Yes. When thought comes into it, then I remember all the things she did, or I did; all the troubles, the anxieties creep in. One of our great difficulties is that we really haven’t understood or felt this love that is not possessiveness, attachment, jealousy, hatred, and all that.
MW: Isn’t love largely awareness of the unity?
K: Would you say love has no awareness; it is love. It isn’t that love is aware that we are all one. It’s like a perfume. You can’t dissect the perfume, or analyse the perfume. It is marvellous perfume; and the moment you analyse it, you dissipate it.
MW: Yes, if you say it is a perfume, then it is somewhat like a quality. But then quality is associated with this sense of unity, is it not?
K: But you are giving it a meaning.
MW: I am talking around it! I am not trying to pin it down. But can there be love without any awareness of this unity?
K: It is much more than that.
MW: All right, it is more than that. But can it exist if that sense of unity is not there?
K: Just a minute. Can I be a Catholic, and say I love, I have compassion? Can there be compassion, love, when there is this deep-rooted belief, idea, prejudice? Love must exist with freedom. Not the freedom to do what I like—that is nonsense; freedom of choice, and so on, has no value in what we are talking about—but there must be total freedom to love.
MW: Yes, but the Catholic might have quite a lot of love but it has limits to it in certain situations.
K: Yes, of course.
MW: But it is like asking if you can have an egg that is only partly bad! This sense of unity is part of the whole business, is it not?
K: If we have love, there is unity.
MW: Yes, all right, inevitably. I agree with you that having a sense of unity won’t turn love on.
K: You see, all religions and people who are religiously minded have always attached love and devotion to a particular object, or a particular idea, a symbol; it isn’t love without any hindrance to it. That’s the point, sir. Can love exist when there is the self? Of course not.
MW: But if you say the self is a fixed image, then love can’t exist with anything fixed because it has no limits.
K: That’s right, sir.
MW: But it seems to me that in the relationship of the dialogue and movement between two minds with no sense of limit—and necessarily outside time, because time would be putting a limit—then something new can come up.
K: Ah, but can two minds ever meet? Are they like two parallel railway lines that never meet? Is our relationship with each other as human beings, wife and husband, and so on, always parallel, each pursuing his own line, and never actually meeting in the sense of having real love for another, or even of love without an object?
MW: Well, in practice there always is some degree of separation.
K: Yes, that’s all I am saying.
MW: If the relationship can be on a different level, then there are no longer lines separated in space.
K: Of course, but to come to that level seems almost impossible. I am attached to my wife, I tell her I love her, and she is attached to me. Is that love? I possess her, she possesses me, or she likes being possessed, and so on, all the complications of relationship. But I say to her, or she says to me, ‘I love you’, and that seems to satisfy us. I question whether that is love at all.
MW: Well, it makes people feel more comfortable for a time.
K: And is comfort love?
MW: It is limited, and when one partner dies, the other is miserable.
K: Yes, with loneliness, tears, suffering. We really should discuss this thing. I used to know a man to whom money was God. He had plenty of money, and when he was dying, he wanted to look at all the things he possessed. The possessions were him; he was dying to the possessions outwardly, but the outward possessions were himself. And he was frightened, not of this state of coming to an end, but of losing that. Do you understand? Losing that, not losing himself and finding something new.
MW: Could I just ask a question about death? What about a man who is dying and wants to see all the people he has known, all his friends, before he dies; is that an attachment to these relationships?
K: Yes, that is attachment. He is going to die and death is rather lonely, it is a most exclusive club, exclusive action. In that state I want to meet my wife, children, grandchildren, because I know I am going to lose them all; I am going to die, end. It’s a terrifying thing. The other day I saw a man who was dying. Sir, I have never seen such fear, such absolute fear of ending. He said, ‘I am frightened of separation from my family, from the money I have had, from the things I have done. This is my family. I love them, and I’m scared stiff of losing them’.
MW: But I suppose the man might want to see all his friends and his family to say…
K: ‘Goodbye, old boy, we will meet on the other side’! That’s another matter.
MW: Possibly.
K: I knew a man, sir, who told his family, ‘Next year, in January, I am going to die on such and such a date’. And on that date he invited all his friends and his family. He said, ‘I am dying today’, and made the will. ‘Please leave me’. They all trooped out of the room, and he died!
MW: Yes, well, if the relationships with all these other people were important to him and he was going to die, he would just like to see them the last time, and now it is finished. ‘I am finished, I die’. That was not an attachment.
K: No, of course not. The consequence of attachment is painful, anxious; there is a certain sense of agony, of losing.
MW: Constant insecurity, fear.
K: Insecurity, and all the rest, follows. And that I call love. I say I love my wife, and deep inside I know all the travail of this attachment, but I can’t let go.
MW: But you still feel distressed that your wife would be sad when you die.
K: Oh yes, that is part of the game, part of the whole business. She soon gets over it and marries somebody else, and carries on the game.
MW: Yes, one would hope so, but one could be worried and afraid of other people’s sorrow.
K: Yes, sir.
MW: Presumably the acceptance of one’s own death would reduce their sorrow.
K...