Quotes by Krishnamurti

When one says ‘I know you’, one means, ‘I know you as you were yesterday; I don’t know you actually now.’ Oneself is the past, living in the present touched by the past, overshadowed by the past, and tomorrow is waiting, which also is part of the observer. All that is within the field of time in the sense of yesterday, today and tomorrow. That is all one knows and with this state of mind, as the observer, one looks at fear, at jealousy, at war, at the family – that enclosing entity called the family – and with that one lives. The observer is always trying to solve the problem of the thing which is observed, which is the challenge, which is the new, and one is always translating the new in terms of the old, one is everlastingly, until one comes to an end, in conflict. One cannot understand intellectually, verbally, argumentatively, or through explanations, a state of mind in which the observer has no longer the space between himself and the thing observed, in which the past is no longer interfering, at any time, yet it is only then that the observer is the observed and only then that fear comes totally to an end.

Where do we begin to understand ourselves? Here am I, and how am I to study myself, observe myself, see what is actually taking place inside myself? I can observe myself only in relationship because all life is relationship. It is no use sitting in a corner meditating about myself. I cannot exist by myself. I exist only in relationship to people, things and ideas, and in studying my relationship to outward things and people, as well as to inward things, I begin to understand myself. Every other form of understanding is merely an abstraction and I cannot study myself in abstraction; I am not an abstract entity; therefore I have to study myself in actuality.

In the inquiry into what is meditation, I see that any wastage of energy is caused by friction in my relationship with another. Is it possible to have a relationship with another in which there is no friction whatsoever? That is possible only when I understand what love is, and the understanding of what love is, is the denial of what love is not. Love is not – as we went into the other day – anger, jealousy, ambition, greed, self-centred activity, you know, all that. Obviously that’s not love. So, when in the understanding of myself there is the total setting aside of all that which is not love, then it is.

Relationship between human beings is based on the image-forming, defensive mechanism. In all our relationships each one of us builds an image about the other and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves. The wife has an image about the husband – perhaps not consciously but nevertheless it is there – and the husband has an image about the wife. One has an image about one’s country and about oneself, and we are always strengthening these images by adding more and more to them. And it is these images which have relationship. The actual relationship between two human beings or between many human beings completely end when there is the formation of images. Relationship based on these images can obviously never bring about peace in the relationship because the images are fictitious and one cannot live in an abstraction. And yet that is what we are all doing: living in ideas, in theories, in symbols, in images which we have created about ourselves and others and which are not realities at all. All our relationships, whether they be with property, ideas or people, are based essentially on this image-forming, and hence there is always conflict. How is it possible then to be completely at peace within ourselves and in all our relationships with others?

I am jealous, which is, someone is depriving me of my stability, my security when they go away and talk to somebody else, or look at somebody else, or does something or other with somebody else – I am at a loss. They have deprived me of my identity, driven me to my loneliness. And I hate all that. So I am jealous of them. Jealousy implies hate, anger, violence, beating. And I can’t let them go and they can’t let me go, and we live like that. Jealousy, distrust, feeling lonely deeply inside but trying to escape from it, that’s my life, and that is what we call relationship, and that is what we call love.

So one asks a much deeper question: is love desire? Is love pleasure? You have to answer, not I. It is your life not my life. And can each of us see this fact, what possession, domination, power, does to each of us? Will he or she listen to each other, the basis of it, being afraid to lose? Afraid of losing one’s security in relationship. And when that security is shaken I am jealous. Will my wife listen to me? And I say to her, ‘I love you but I don’t possess you’ – could you say that? ‘I am free of you and you are free of me.’ Which doesn’t mean free love and going off, you know, changing every year a new man or a new woman, but seeing the whole problem, not just jealousy, how to get rid of jealousy, or distrust, but seeing the whole problem of relationship, which is very complex, which demands subtlety, sensitivity.