excerpts

Question: All my life I have been dependent for happiness on some other person or persons. How can I develop the capacity to live with myself and stand alone?

Krishnamurti: Why do we depend on another for our happiness? Is it because in ourselves we are empty, and we look to another to fill that emptiness?

And, is that emptiness, that loneliness, that sense of extraordinary limitation, to be overcome by any capacity?

If it is to be overcome, that emptiness, through any system or capacity or idea, then you will depend on that idea or on that system.

Now, I depend perhaps on a person. I feel empty, lonely, - a complete sense of isolation, - and I depend on somebody. And if I develop or have a method which will help me to overcome that dependence, then I depend on that method. I have only substituted a method for a person.

So, what is important in this is to find out what it means to be empty. After all, we depend on someone for our happiness because in ourselves we are not happy. I do not know what it is to love, therefore I depend on another to love me.

Now, can I fathom this emptiness in myself, this sense of complete isolation, loneliness? Do we ever come face to face with it at all? Or, are we always frightened of it, always running away from it?

The very process of running away from that loneliness, is dependence. So can my mind realize the truth that any form of running away from "what is' creates dependence, from which arises misfortune and sorrow?

Can I just understand that - that I depend on another for my happiness because in myself I am empty? That is the fact - I am empty, and therefore I depend. That dependence causes misery. Running away in any form from that emptiness is not a solution at all - whether we run away through a person, an idea, a belief, or God, or meditation, or what you will.

To run away from the fact of `what is' is of no avail. In oneself there is insufficiency, poverty of being. Just to realize that fact, and to remain with that fact - knowing that any movement of the mind to alter the fact is another form of dependence - in that there is freedom.

After all, however much you may have of experience, knowledge, belief, and ideas, in itself, if you observe, the mind is empty. You may stuff it with ideas, with incessant activity, with distractions, with every form of addiction; but the moment you cease any form of that activity, one is aware that the mind is totally empty.

Now, can one remain with that emptiness? Can the mind face that emptiness, that fact, and remain with that fact?

It is very difficult and arduous, because the mind is so used to distraction, so trained to go away from `what is', to turn on the radio, to pick up a book, to talk, to go to church, to go to a meeting - anything to enable it to wander away from the central fact that the mind in itself is empty.

However much it may struggle to cover up that fact, it is empty in itself. When once it realizes that fact, can the mind remain in that state, without any movement whatsoever?

I think most of us are aware, - perhaps only rarely, since most of us are so terribly occupied and active, - but I think we are aware sometimes that the mind is empty. And, being aware, we are afraid of that emptiness.

We have never inquired into that state of emptiness, we have never gone into it deeply, profoundly; we are afraid, and so we wander away from it.

We have given it a name, we say it is `empty', it is `terrible', it is `painful; and that very giving it a name has already created a reaction in the mind, a fear, an avoidance, a running away.

Now, can the mind stop running away, and not give it a name, not give it the significance of a word such as `empty' about which we have memories of pleasure and pain?

Can we look at it, can the mind be aware of that emptiness, without naming it, without running away from it, without judging it, but just be with it?

Because, then that is the mind. Then there is not an observer looking at it; there is no censor who condemns it; there is only that state of emptiness - with which we are all really quite familiar, but which we are all avoiding, trying to fill it with activity, with worship, with prayer, with knowledge, with every form of illusion and excitement.

But when all the excitement, illusion, fear, running away, stops, and you are no longer giving it a name and thereby condemning it, is the observer different then from the thing which is observed?

Surely by giving it a name, by condemning it, the mind has created a censor, an observer, outside of itself. But when the mind does not give it a term, a name, condemn it, judge it, then there is no observer, only a state of that thing we have called `emptiness'.

Perhaps this may sound abstract. But if you will kindly follow what has been said, I am sure you will find that there is a state which may be called emptiness but which does not evoke fear, escape, or the attempt to cover it up.

All that stops. when you really want to find out. Then, if the mind is no longer giving it a name, condemning it, is there emptiness? Are we then conscious of being poor and therefore dependent, of being unhappy and therefore demanding, attached?

If you are no longer giving it a label, a name, and thereby condemning it, - the state which is perceived, is it any longer emptiness, or is it something totally different?

If you can go into this very earnestly you will find that there is no dependence at all, on anything - on any person, on any belief, on any experience, any tradition.

Then, that which is beyond emptiness is creativeness - the creativity of reality; not the creativity of a talent or capacity, but the creativity of that which is beyond fear, beyond all demand, beyond all the tricks of the mind.

Question: Will evolution help us to find God?

Krishnamurti: I do not know what you mean by evolution, and what you mean by God.

I think this is a fairly important question to go into, because most of us think in terms of time - time being the distance, the interval, between what I am and what I should be, the ideal.

What I am is unpleasant, something to be changed, to be moulded into something which it is not. And to shape it, to give it respectability, to give it beauty, I need time. That is, I am cruel, greedy, or what you will, and I need time to transform that into the ideal - the ideal may be called what you will, that is not of great importance. So, we are always thinking in terms of time.

And the questioner wants to know, if through time, that which is beyond time can be realized. We do not know what is beyond time. We are slaves to time; our whole mind thinks in terms of yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

And being caught in that, the questioner wants to know if the I [the soul] can be reached through the process of time.

There is obviously some form of evolution, growth - from the simple car to the jet-plane, from the oil-lamp to electricity, the acquiring of more knowledge, more technique, developing and exploiting the earth, and so on.

Obviously, technologically there is progress, evolution, growth. But, is there a growth or evolution beyond that?

Is there something in the mind which is beyond time - the spirit, the soul, or whatever you like to call it?

That which is capable of growth, of evolving, becoming, obviously is not part of the eternal, of something which is beyond time; it is still in time.

If the soul, the spiritual entity, is capable of growth, then it is still the invention of the mind.

If it is not the invention of the mind, it is of no time, therefore we need not bother about it.

What we do have to be concerned with is, whether through time the inward nature, the inward being, changes at all.

The mind is obviously the result of time; your mind and my mind are the result of a series of educations, experiences, cultures, a variety of thoughts, impressions, strains, stresses, all of which has made us what we are now.

And with that mind we are trying to find out something which is beyond time. But surely God, or truth, or whatever it is, must be totally new, must be something inconceivable, unknowable by the mind which is the result of time.

So, can that mind which is the result of time, of tradition, of memory, of culture - can that [conditioned] mind come to an end? - voluntarily, not by being drilled, not by being put into a straight-jacket. Can the mind, which is the result of time, bring about its own end?

After all, what is the mind? Thought, the capacity to think. And thinking is the reaction of memory, of association, of the various values, beliefs, traditions, experiences, conscious or unconscious; that is the background from which all thought springs.

Can one be really aware of all that, and thereby enable thought to come to an end? Because thought is the result of time; and thinking obviously cannot bring about or reveal that which is beyond itself.

Surely, only when the mind, as thought, as memory, comes to an end, only when it is completely, utterly still, without any movement, then alone is it possible for that which is beyond the responses of the mind to come into being.