Is Loneliness the Same as Aloneness?
We know loneliness, don’t we, the fear, the misery, the antagonism, the real fright of a mind that is aware of its own loneliness. We all know that. Don’t we? That state of loneliness is not foreign to any one of us. You may have all the riches, all the pleasures, you may have great capacity and bliss, but within, there is always the lurking shadow of loneliness. The rich man, the poor man who is struggling, the man who is writing, creating, the worshiper—they all know this loneliness. When it is in that state, what does the mind do? The mind turns on the radio, picks up a book, runs away from what is into something which is not. Sirs, do follow what I am saying—not the words, but the application, the observation of your own loneliness.
When the mind is aware of its loneliness, it runs away, escapes. The escape, whether into religious contemplation or going to a cinema, is exactly the same; it is still an escape from what is. The man who escapes through drinking is no more immoral than the one who escapes by the worship of God; they are both the same, both are escaping. When you observe the fact that you are lonely, if there is no escape and therefore no struggle into the opposite, then generally, the mind tends to condemn it according to the frame of its knowledge, but if there is no condemnation, then the whole attitude of the mind towards the thing it has called lonely has undergone a complete change, has it not?
Loneliness Is Depression: Aloneness Is Joy
After all, loneliness is a state of isolation, because the mind encloses itself and cuts itself away from every relationship, from everything. In that state the mind knows loneliness, and if, without condemning it, the mind be aware and not create the escape, then surely that loneliness undergoes a transformation. The transformation might then be called “aloneness”—it does not matter what word you use. In that aloneness there is no fear. The mind that feels lonely because it has isolated itself through various activities is afraid of that loneliness. But if there is awareness in which there is no choice—which means no condemnation—then the mind is no longer lonely, but it is in a state of aloneness in which there is no corruption, in which there is no process of self-enclosure. One must be alone, there must be that aloneness, in that sense. Loneliness is a state of frustration, aloneness is not, and aloneness is not the opposite of loneliness.
Surely, sirs, we must be alone, alone from all influences, from all compulsions, from all demands, longings, hopes, so that the mind is no longer in the action of frustration. That aloneness is essential, it is a religious thing. But the mind cannot come to it without understanding the whole problem of loneliness. Most of us are lonely, all our activities are the activities of frustration. The happy man is not a lonely man. Happiness is alone, and the action of aloneness is entirely different from the activities of loneliness.
Is It Possible to Live with Loneliness?
Are we not aware of a state of emptiness in us, a state of despair, of loneliness, the complete sense of not being able to depend on anything, not having anybody to look up to? Don’t we know a moment of extraordinary loneliness, of extraordinary sorrow, without reason, a sense of despair at the height of thought, at the height of love; don’t we know this loneliness? And is this loneliness not pushing us always to be somebody, to be well-thought-of?
Can I live with that loneliness, not run away from it, not try to fulfill through some action? Can I live with it and not try to transform it, not try to shape and control it? If the mind can, then perhaps it will go beyond that loneliness, beyond that despair, which does not mean into hope, into a state of devotion, but on the contrary. If I can understand and live in that loneliness—not run away from it, but live in that strange loneliness which comes when I am bored, when I am afraid, when I am apprehensive, not for any cause or with cause—when I know this sense of loneliness, is it possible for the mind to live with it, without trying to push it away?
Dependencies End If the Mind Can Be Still
Now, if the mind can stay in that very extraordinary sense of being cut off from everything, from all ideas, from all crutches, from all dependencies, then is it not possible for such a mind to go beyond, not theoretically, but actually? It is only when it can fully experience that state of loneliness, that state of emptiness, that state of nondependency, then only is it possible…that action is not the action through the narrow funnel of the ‘me’.
No Self, No Loneliness
The more you are conscious of yourself, the more isolated you are, and self-consciousness is the process of isolation. But aloneness is not isolation. There is aloneness only when loneliness comes to an end. Aloneness is a state in which all influence has completely ceased, both the influence from outside and the inner influence of memory; and only when the mind is in that state of aloneness can it know the incorruptible. But to come to that, we must understand loneliness, this process of isolation, which is the self and its activity. So, the understanding of the self is the beginning of the cessation of isolation, and therefore of loneliness.
With 6 Billion People on Earth, Is Loneliness an Actuality or an Attitude?
Then, if we go still more deeply into it, the problem arises of whether that which we call loneliness is an actuality or merely a word. Is loneliness an actuality or merely a word which covers something that may not be what we think it is? Is not loneliness a thought, the result of thinking? That is, thinking is verbalization based on memory, and do we not, with that verbalization, with that thought, with that memory, look at the state which we call “lonely?” So, the very giving of a name to that state may be the cause of fear which prevents us from looking at it more closely; and if we do not give it a name, which is fabricated by the mind, then is that state lonely?
Be Alone without Escapes: See What Happens
Have you ever tried to be alone? When you do try, you will feel how extraordinarily difficult it is and how extraordinarily intelligent we must be to be alone, because the mind will not let us be alone. The mind becomes restless, it busies itself with escapes, so what are we doing? We are trying to fill this extraordinary void with the known. We discover how to be active, how to be social; we know how to study, how to turn on the radio. We are filling that thing which we do not know with the things we know. We try to fill that emptiness with various kinds of knowledge, relationship or things. Is that not so? That is our process, that is our existence. Now when you realize what you are doing, do you still think you can fill that void? You have tried every means of filling this void of loneliness. Have you succeeded in filling it? You have tried cinemas and you did not succeed and therefore you go after your gurus and your books or you become very active socially. Have you succeeded in filling it or have you merely covered it up? If you have merely covered it up, it is still there; therefore it will come back. If you are able to escape altogether then you are locked up in an asylum or you become very, very dull. That is what is happening in the world.
The Fact Is, We Are Empty
Can this emptiness, this void, be filled? If not, can we run away from it, escape from it? If we have experienced and found one escape to be of no value, are not all other escapes therefore of no value? It does not matter whether you fill the emptiness with this or with that. So-called meditation is also an escape. It does not matter much that you change your way of escape.
How then will you find what to do about this loneliness? You can only find what to do when you have stopped escaping. Is that not so? When you are willing to face what is—which means you must not turn on the radio, which means you must turn your back to civilization—then that loneliness comes to an end, because it is completely transformed. It is no longer loneliness.
Depression : Life Lived inside the Self
Questioner: What is the difference between awareness and introspection? And who is aware in awareness?
Krishnamurti: Let us first examine what we mean by introspection. We mean by introspection looking within oneself, examining oneself. Why does one examine oneself? In order to improve, in order to change, in order to modify. You introspect in order to become something, otherwise you would not indulge in introspection. You would not examine yourself if there were not the desire to modify, change, to become something other than what you are. That is the obvious reason for introspection. I am angry and I introspect, examine myself, in order to get rid of anger or to modify or change anger. Where there is introspection, which is the desire to modify or change the responses, the reactions of the self, there is always an end in view; when that end is not achieved there is moodiness, depression. Therefore introspection invariably goes with depression.
Self-Analysis Brings Depression
I don’t know if you have noticed that when you introspect, when you look into yourself in order to change yourself, there is always a wave of depression. There is always a moody wave which you have to battle against; you have to examine yourself again in order to overcome that mood and so on. Introspection is a process in which there is no release because it is a process of transforming what is into something which it is not. Obviously that is exactly what is taking place when we introspect, when we indulge in that peculiar action. In that action, there is always an accumulative process, the ‘I’ examining something in order to change it. So there is always a dualistic conflict and therefore a process of frustration. There is never a release; and realizing that frustration, there is depression.
Awareness is entirely different. Awareness is observation without condemnation. Awareness brings understanding, because there is no condemnation or identification but silent observation. If I want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure. There must merely be the silent observation of a fact. There is no end in view but awareness of everything as it arises. That observation and the understanding of that observation cease when there is condemnation, identification, or justification.
Introspection or Awareness?
Introspection is self-improvement and therefore introspection is self-centeredness. Awareness is not self-improvement. On the contrary, it is the ending of the self, of the ‘I’, with all its peculiar idiosyncrasies, memories, demands and pursuits. In introspection there is identification and condemnation. In awareness there is no condemnation or identification; therefore there is no self-improvement. There is a vast difference between the two.
The man who wants to improve himself can never be aware. Because improvement implies condemnation and the achievement of a result. Whereas in awareness there is observation without condemnation, without denial or acceptance. That awareness begins with outward things, being aware, being in contact with objects, with nature. First, there is awareness of things about one, being sensitive to objects, to nature, then to people, which means relationship; then .there is awareness of ideas. This awareness, being sensitive to things, to nature, to people, to ideas, is not made up of separate processes, but is one unitary process. It is a constant observation of everything, of every thought and feeling and action as they arise within oneself.
Do We Need Psychoanalysts to Solve Our Confusion?
Questioner: It is now a well-established fact that many of our diseases are psychosomatic, brought on by deep inner frustrations and conflicts of which we are often unaware. Must we now run to psychiatrists as we used to run to physicians, or is there a way for man to free himself from this inner turmoil?
Krishnamurti: Which raises the question: What is the position of the psychoanalysts? And what is the position of those of us who have some form of disease or illness? Is the disease brought on by our emotional disturbances, or is it without emotional significance? Most of us are disturbed. Most of us are confused, in turmoil, even the very prosperous who have refrigerators, cars, and all the rest of it; and as we do not know how to deal with the disturbance, inevitably it reacts on the physical and produces an illness, which is fairly obvious. And the question is: Must we run to psychiatrists to help us to remove our disturbances and thereby regain health, or is it possible for us to find out for ourselves how not to be disturbed, how not to have turmoil, anxieties, fears?
Why are we disturbed, if we are? What is disturbance? I want something, but I can’t get it, so I’m in a state. I want to fulfill through my children, through my wife, through my property, through position, success, and all the rest of it, but I am blocked, which means that I am disturbed. I am ambitious, but somebody else pushes me aside and gets ahead; again I am in chaos, in turmoil, which produces its own physical reaction.
What Is Confusion?
Now, can you and I be free of all this turmoil and confusion? Do you understand? What is confusion? Confusion exists only when there is the fact plus what I think about the fact: my opinion about the fact, my disregard of the fact, my evasion of the fact, my evaluation of the fact, and so on. If I can look at the fact without the additive quality, then there is no confusion. If I recognize the fact that a certain road leads to Ventura, there is no confusion. Confusion arises only when I think or insist that the road leads somewhere else—and that is actually the state that most of us are in.
Our Opinions Confuse the Facts
Our opinions, our beliefs, our desires, ambitions, are so strong, we are so weighed down by them, that we are incapable of looking at the fact.
So, the fact plus opinion, judgment, evaluation, ambition, and all the rest of it, brings about confusion. And can you and I, being confused, not act? Surely, any action born of confusion must lead to further confusion, further turmoil, all of which reacts on the body, on the nervous system, and produces illness. Being confused, to acknowledge to oneself that one is confused requires, not courage, but a certain clarity of thought, clarity of perception. Most of us are afraid to acknowledge that we are confused, so out of our confusion we choose leaders, teachers, politicians; and when we choose something out of our confusion, that very choice must be confused, and therefore the leader must also be confused.
Understanding Confusion Is Clarity
Is it possible, then, to be aware of our confusion, and to know the cause of that confusion, and not act? When confused mind acts, it can only produce further confusion; but a mind that is aware that it is confused and understands this whole process of confusion need not act because that very clarity is its own action. I think this is rather difficult for most people to understand because we are so used to acting, doing…
You Can See All This for Yourself
And I do not think any analyst can solve this problem. He may temporarily help you to conform to a certain pattern of society which he calls normal existence, but the problem is much deeper than that, and no one can solve it except yourself. You and I have made this society; it is the result of our actions, of our thoughts, of our very being, and as long as we are merely trying to reform the product without understanding the entity that has produced it, we shall have more diseases, more chaos, more delinquency. The understanding of the self brings about wisdom and right action.