"Don't you love some people more than others?" I asked. "After all, even a person like yourself is bound to have emotional preferences." Krishnamurti's voice was very quiet when he began to speak again. "I must first say something before I can give you a satisfactory reply to your question. Otherwise you may not be able to accept it in the spirit in which it is offered. I want you to know that these talks are quite as important to me as they can possibly be to you. I don't speak to you merely to satisfy the curiosity of an author who happens to be writing about me, or to help you personally. I talk mainly to clarify a number of things for myself. This I consider one of the great values of conversation. You must not think therefore that I ever say anything unless I believe it with my whole heart. I am not trying to impress, to convince or to teach you. Even if you were my oldest friend or my brother I should speak in just the same way. I am saying all this because I want you to accept my words as simple statements of opinion and not as attempts to convert or persuade. You asked me just now about personal love, and my answer is that I no longer know it. Personal love does not exist for me. Love is for me a constant inner state. It does not matter to me whether I am now with you, with my brother or with an utter stranger-I have the same feeling of affection for all and each of you. People sometimes think that I am superficial and cold, that my love is negative and that it is not strong enough to be directed to one person only. But it is not indifference, it is merely a feeling of love that is constantly within me and that I simply cannot help giving to everyone I come into touch with." He paused for a second, as though wondering whether I believed him, and then said: "People were shocked by my recent behaviour after Mrs. Besant's death. I did not cry, I did not seem distressed but was serene; I went on with my ordinary life, and people said that I was devoid of all human feeling. How could I explain to them that, as my love went to everyone, it could not be affected by the departure of one individual, even if this was Mrs. Besant. Grief can no longer take possession of you when love has become the basis of your entire being". "There must be people in your life who mean nothing to you or whom you even dislike?" Krishnamurti smiled: "There aren't any people I dislike. Don't you see that it is not I who directs my love towards one person, strengthening it here, weakening it there? Love is simply there like the colour of my skin, the sound of my voice, no matter what I do. And therefore it is bound to be there even when I am surrounded by people I don't know or people whom I 'should' not care for. Sometimes I am forced to be in a crowd of noisy people that I don't know; it may be some meeting or a lecture or perhaps a waiting room in a station, where the atmosphere is full of noise, smoke, the smell of tobacco and all the other things that affect me physically. Even then my feeling of love for everyone is as strong as it is under this sky and on this lovely spot. People think that I am conceited or a hypocrite when I tell them that grief and sorrow and even death do not affect me. It is not conceit. Love that makes me like that is so natural to me that I am always surprised that people can question it. And I feel this unity not only with human beings. I feel it with trees, with the sea, with the whole world around me. Physical differentiations no longer exist. I am not speaking of the mental images of a poet; I am speaking of reality." When Krishnamurti stopped his eyes were shining, and there was in him that specific quality of beauty which easily appears sentimental or artificial when described in words, and yet is so convincing when met with in real life. It did not seem magnetism that radiated from him but rather an inner illumination that is hard to define, and that manifests itself as sheer beauty. I now experienced the feeling we sometimes have when confronted by strong impressions of Nature. Reaching the top of a mountain, or the soft breezes of early spring, with the promise of daffodils and leafy woods, can produce occasionally such states of unsophisticated contentment. Unkown source |