On Love and Loneliness

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JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI was born in India in 1895 and, at the age of thirteen, was taken up by the Theosophical Society, which considered him to be the vehicle for the ”world teacher” whose advent it had been proclaiming. Krishnamurti was soon to emerge as a powerful, uncompromising, and unclassifiable teacher, whose talks and writings were not linked to any specific religion and were of neither the East nor the West but for the whole world. Firmly repudiating the messianic image, in 1929 he dramatically dissolved the large and monied organization that had been built around him and declared truth to be “a pathless land,” which could not be approached by any formalized religion, philosophy, or set.

For the rest of his life Krishnamurti insistently rejected the guru status that others tried to foist upon him. He continued to attract large audiences throughout the world but claimed no authority, wanted no disciples, and spoke always as one individual to another. At the core of his teaching was the realization that fundamental changes in society can be brought about only by a transformation of individual consciousness. The need for self-knowledge and understanding of the restrictive, separative influences of religious and nationalistic conditionings was constantly stressed. Krishnamurti pointed always to the urgent need for openness, for that “vast space in the brain in which there is unimaginable energy.”

This seems to be have been the wellspring of his own creativity and the key to his catalytic impact on such a wide variety of people.

Krishnamurti continued to speak all over the world until he died in 1986 at the age of ninety. His talks and dialogues, journals and letters, have been preserved in over sixty books and hundreds of recordings. From that vast body of teachings this series of theme books has been compiled. Each book focuses on an issue that has particular relevance to and urgency in our daily lives.

On love and loneliness, another volume in the series of ‘Theme books’, 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 isolate individuals and groups. ‘It is only when the mind is not escaping in any form that it is possible to be in direct communion with that thing which we call loneliness, the alone, and to have communion with that thing, there must be affection, there must be love,’ says Krishnamurti.