Now, must we not be alone? At present we are not alone - we are merely a bundle of influences. We are the result of all kinds of influences - social, religious, economic. hereditary, climatic. Through all those influences, we try to find something beyond; and if we cannot find it, we invent it, and cling to our inventions. But when we understand the whole process of influence at all the different levels of our consciousness, then, by becoming free of it, there is an aloneness which is uninfluenced; that is, the mind and heart are no longer shaped by outward events or inward experiences. It is only when there is this aloneness that there is a possibility of finding the real. But a mind that is merely isolating itself through fear, can have only anguish; and such a mind can never go beyond itself. With most of us, the difficulty is that we are unaware of our escapes.
We are so conditioned, so accustomed to our escapes, that we take them as realities. But if we will look more deeply into our selves, we will see how extraordinarily lonely, how extraordinarily empty we are under the superficial covering of our escapes. Being aware of that emptiness, we are constantly covering it up with various activities, whether artistic, social, religious or political. But emptiness can never finally be covered: it must be understood. To understand it, we must be aware of these escapes; and when we understand the escapes, then we shall be able to face our emptiness. Then we shall see that the emptiness is not different from ourselves, that the observer is the observed. In that experience, in that integration of the thinker and the thought, this loneliness, this anguish, disappears.
The Collected Works Vol. IX Paris 5th Public Talk 7th May 1950
JKrishnamurti
