‘The Seeker’

Questioner: What is it I’m seeking? I really don’t know, but there is a tremendous longing in me for something much more than comfort, pleasure and the satisfaction of fulfilment. I happen to have had all these things, but this is something much more – something at an unfathomable depth that is crying to be released, trying to tell me something. I’ve had this feeling for many years but when I examine it I don’t seem to be able to touch it. Yet it is always there, this longing to go beyond the mountains and the skies to find something. But perhaps this thing is there right in front of me, only I don’t see it. Don’t tell me how to look: I’ve read many of your writings and I know what you mean. I want to reach out my hand and take this thing very simply, knowing very well that I cannot hold the wind in my fist. It is said that if you operate on a tumour neatly you can pluck it out in one pocket, intact. In the same way I should like to take this whole earth, the heavens and the skies and the seas in one movement, and come upon that blessedness on the instant. Is this at all possible? How am I to cross to the other shore without taking a boat and rowing across the waters? I feel that’s the only way.

Krishnamurti: Yes, that’s the only way – to find oneself strangely and unaccountably on the other shore, and from there to live, act and do everything that one does in daily life.

Questioner: Is it only for the few? Is it for me? I really don’t know what to do. I’ve sat silent; I’ve studied, examined, disciplined myself, rather intelligently I think, and of course I’ve long ago discarded the temples, the shrines and the priests. I refuse to go from one system to another; it is all too futile. So you see I have come here with complete simplicity.

Krishnamurti: I wonder if you really are so simple as you think! From what depth are you asking this question, and with what love and beauty? Can your mind and heart receive this? Are they sensitive to the slightest whisper of something that comes unexpectedly?

Questioner: If it is as subtle as all that, how true is it, and how real? Intimations of such subtlety are usually fleeting and unimportant.

Krishnamurti: Are they? Must everything be written out on the blackboard? Please, sir, let us find out whether our minds and hearts are really capable of receiving immensity, and not just the word.

Questioner: I really don’t know, that’s my problem. I’ve done almost everything fairly intelligently, putting aside all the obvious stupidities of nationality, organized religion, belief – this endless passage of nothings. I think I have compassion, and I think my mind can grasp the subtleties of life, but that surely is not enough? So what is needed? What have I to do or not to do?

Krishnamurti: Doing nothing is far more important than doing something. Can the mind be completely inactive, and thereby be supremely active? Love is not the activity of thought; it is not the action of good behaviour or social righteousness. As you cannot cultivate it, you can do nothing about love.

Questioner: I understand what you mean when you say that inaction is the highest form of action – which doesn’t mean to do nothing. But somehow I cannot grasp it with my heart. Is it perhaps only because my heart is empty, tired of all action, that inaction seems to have an appeal? No. I come back to my original feeling that there is this thing of love, and I know, too, that it is the only thing. But my hand is still empty after I have said that.

Krishnamurti: Does this mean that you are no longer seeking, no longer saying to yourself secretly: “I must reach, attain, there is something beyond the furthest hills?”

Questioner: You mean I must give up this feeling I have had for so long that there is something beyond all the hills?

Krishnamurti: It is not a question of giving up anything, but, as we said just now, there are only these two things: love, and the mind that is empty of thought. If you really have finished, if you really have shut the door on all the stupidities which man in his search for something has put together, if you really have finished with all these, then, are these things – love and the empty mind – just two more words, no different from any other ideas?

Questioner: I have a deep feeling that they are not, but I am not sure of it. So again I ask what I am to do.

Krishnamurti: Do you know what it means to commune with what we have just said about love and the mind?

Questioner: Yes, I think so.

Krishnamurti: I wonder if you do. If there is communion with these two things then there is nothing more to be said. If there is communion with these two things then all action will be from there.

Questioner: The trouble is that I still think there is something to be discovered which will put everything else in its right place, in its right order.

Krishnamurti: Without these two things there is no possibility of going further. And there may be no going anywhere at all!

Questioner: Can I be in communion with it all the time? I can see that when we are together I can be somewhat in communion with it. But can I maintain it?

Krishnamurti: To desire to maintain it is the noise, and therefore the losing of it.