Questioner: Can one love truth without loving man? Can one love man without loving truth? Which comes first?
Krishnamurti Surely, sir, love comes first. Because to love truth you must know truth, and to know truth is to deny it. What is known is not truth because what is known is already encased in time; therefore it ceases to be truth. Truth is in constant movement and therefore cannot be measured in time or in words; it cannot be held in your fist. So to love truth is to know truth—you cannot love something that you do not know. But truth is not to be found in books, in idolatry, in temples. It is to be found in action, in living, in thinking; and so love comes first—which is obvious, the very search for the unknown is love itself, and you cannot search for the unknown without being in relationship with others. You cannot seek out reality, God, or what you will, by withdrawing into isolation. You can find the unknown only in relationship, only when man is related to man. Therefore the love of man is the search for reality.
Without loving man, without loving humanity, there cannot be a search for the real; because when I know you—at least when I try to know you in relationship—in that relationship I am beginning to know myself. Relationship is a mirror in which I am discovering myself, not my ‘higher’ self, but the whole, total process of myself. The ‘higher’ self and the ‘lower’ self are still within the field of the mind; and without understanding the mind, the thinker, how can I go beyond thought, and discover? The very relationship is the search for the real because that is the only contact I have with myself; therefore the understanding of myself in relationship is the beginning of life, surely. If I do not know how to love you, you with whom I am in relationship, how can I search for the real, and therefore love the real? Without you, I am not, am I? I cannot exist apart from you, I cannot be in isolation. Therefore in our relationship, in the relationship between you and me, I am beginning to understand myself; and the understanding of myself is the beginning of wisdom, is it not? Therefore the search for the real is the beginning of love in relationship. To love something you must know it, you must understand it, mustn’t you? To love you I must know you, I must inquire, I must find out, I must be receptive to all your moods, your changes, and not merely enclose myself in my ambitions, pursuits, and desires. And in knowing you I am beginning to discover myself. Without you, I cannot be; and if I do not understand that relationship between you and me, how can there be love? And surely without love there is no search, is there? You cannot say that one must love truth; because to love truth, you must know truth. Do you know truth? Do you know what reality is? The moment you know something, it is already over, is it not? It is already in the field of time, therefore it ceases to be truth.
Our problem is: How can a dry heart, an empty heart, know truth? It cannot. Truth is not something distant. It is very near, but we do not know how to look for it. To look for it, we must understand relationship, not only with man but with nature, with ideas. I must understand my relationship with the earth and my relationship with ideation, as well as my relationship with you; and in order to understand, surely there must be openness. If I want to understand you, I must be open to you, I must be receptive, I must not withhold anything, there cannot be an isolating process. In understanding there is truth, and to understand there must be love; for without love, there cannot be understanding. So it is not man or truth that comes first, but love; and love comes into being only in understanding relationship, which means that one is open to relationship, and therefore open to reality. Truth cannot be invited, it must come to you. To search for truth is to deny truth. Truth comes to you when you are open, when you are completely without a barrier, when the thinker is no longer thinking, producing, manufacturing, when the mind is very still—not forced, not drugged, not mesmerized by words, by repetition. Truth must come. When the thinker goes after truth, he is merely pursuing his own gain. Therefore truth eludes him. The thinker can be observed only in relationship; and to understand there must be love. Without love, there is no search.
Q: You never mention God. Has he no place in your teachings?
K: You talk a great deal about God, don’t you? Your books are full of it. You build churches, temples, you make sacrifices, you do rituals, perform ceremonies, and you are full of ideas about God, are you not? You repeat the word, but your acts are not godly, are they? Though you worship what you call God, your ways, your thoughts, your existence, are not godly, are they? Though you repeat the word God, you exploit others, do you not? You have your gods—Hindu, Moslem, Christian, and all the rest of it. You build temples, and the richer you get, the more temples you build. (Laughter.) Don’t laugh, you would do the same yourself—only you are still trying to become rich that is all.
So you are very familiar with God, at least with the word; but the word is not God, the word is not the thing. Let us be very clear on that point: The word is not God. You may use the word God or some other word, but God is not the word that you use. Because you use it, it does not mean that you know God; you merely know the word. I don’t use that word for the very simple reason that you know it. What you know is not the real. And besides, to find reality, all verbal mutterings of the mind must cease, must they not? You have images of God, but the image is not God, surely. How can you know God? Obviously not through an image, not through a temple. To receive God, the unknown, the mind must be the unknown. If you pursue God, then you already know God, you know the end. You know what you are pursuing, don’t you? If you seek God, you must know what God is; otherwise, you wouldn’t seek him, would you? You seek him either according to your books, or according to your feelings, and your feelings are merely the response of memory. Therefore that which you seek is already created, either through memory or through hearsay, and that which is created is not the eternal—it is the product of the mind. If there were no books, if there were no gurus, no formulas to be repeated, you would only know sorrow and happiness, wouldn’t you?—constant sorrow and misery, and rare moments of happiness. And then you would want to know why you suffer. You couldn’t escape to God—but you would probably escape in other ways, and soon invent gods as an escape. But if you really want to understand the whole process of suffering, as a new man, a fresh man, inquiring and not escaping, then you will free yourself from sorrow, then you will find out what reality is, what God is. But a man in sorrow cannot find God or reality; reality can be found only when sorrow ceases, when there is happiness, not as a contrast, not as an opposite, but that state of being in which there are no opposites.
So the unknown, that which is not created by the mind, cannot be formulated by the mind. That which is unknown cannot be thought about. The moment you think about the unknown, it is already the known. Surely you cannot think about the unknown, can you? You can think only about the known. Thought moves from the known to the known; and what is known is not reality, is it? So, when you think and meditate, when you sit down and think about God, you only think about what is known, and what is known is in time; it is caught in the net of time, and is therefore not the real. Reality can come into being only when the mind is free from the net of time. When the mind ceases to create, there is creation. That is, the mind must be absolutely still, but not with an induced, a hypnotized stillness, that is merely a result. Trying to become still in order to experience reality is another form of escape. There is silence only when all problems have ceased. As the pool is quiet when the breeze stops, so the mind is naturally quiet when the agitator, the thinker, ceases. To put an end to the thinker, all the thoughts that he manufactures must be thought out. It is no good erecting a barrier, a resistance against thought, because thoughts must be felt out.
When the mind is still, reality, the indescribable, comes into being. You cannot invite it. To invite it, you must know it, and what is known is not the real. So the mind must be simple, unburdened by belief, by ideation. And when there is stillness, when there is no desire, no longing, when the mind is absolutely quiet with a stillness that is not induced, then reality comes. And that truth, that reality, is the only transforming agent; it is the only factor that brings a fundamental, radical revolution in existence, in our daily life. And to find that reality is not to seek it, but to understand the factors that agitate the mind, that disturb the mind itself. Then the mind is simple, quiet, still. In that stillness the unknown, the unknowable, comes into being. And when that happens, there is a blessing.