I realise that love cannot exist when there is jealousy; love cannot exist when there is attachment. Now, is it possible for me to be free of jealousy and attachment? I realise that I do not love. That is a fact. I am not going to deceive myself; I am not going to pretend to my wife that I love her. I do not know what love is. But I do know that I am jealous and I do know that I am attached to her and that in attachment there is fear, there is jealousy, anxiety, and a sense of dependence. I do not like to depend, but I depend because I am lonely; I have been shoved around in the office, in the factory, and I come home and I want to feel comfort and companionship, to escape from myself. Now I ask myself, how am I to be free of this attachment? I am taking that just as an example.
First, I want to run away from the question. I do not know how it is going to end up with my wife. When I am detached from her, my relationship with her may change. She might be attached to me and I might not be attached to her or any other woman. But I am going to investigate. So I will not run away from what I imagine might be the consequence of being free of all attachment. I do not know what love is, but I see very clearly, definitely, without any doubt, that attachment to my wife means jealousy, possession, fear, and anxiety, and I want freedom from all that. So I begin to enquire; I look for a method, and I get caught in a system. Some guru says: “I will help you to be detached; do this and this; practise this and this.” I accept what he says because I see the importance of being free, and he promises me that if I do what he says, I will have a reward. But I see that way that I am looking for a reward. I see how silly I am: wanting to be free and getting attached to a reward.
I do not want to be attached, and yet I find myself getting attached to the idea that somebody, or some book, or some method, will reward me with freedom from attachment. So, the reward becomes an attachment. So I say: “Look what I have done; be careful, do not get caught in that trap.” Whether it is a woman, a method, or an idea, it is still an attachment. I am very watchful now, for I have learned something; that is, not to exchange attachment for something else that is still attachment. I ask myself: “What do I have to do to be free of attachment?” What is my motive in wanting to be free of attachment? Is it not that I want to achieve a state where there is no attachment, no fear, and so on? And I suddenly realise that motive gives direction and that direction will dictate my freedom. Why is there a motive? What is the motive? A motive is a hope, or a desire, to achieve something. I see that I am attached to a motive. Not only my wife, not only my idea, the method, but my motive has become my attachment! So I am time functioning within the field of attachment—the wife, the method, and the motive to achieve something in the future. To all this, I am attached. I see that it is a tremendously complex thing; I did not realise that to be free of attachment implied all this. Now, I see this as clearly as I see on a map the main roads, the side roads, and the villages; I see it very clearly. Then I say to myself: “Now, is it possible for me to be free of the great attachment I have for my wife and also of the reward which I think I am going to get and of my motive?” To all this, I am attached. Why? Is it that I am insufficient within myself? Is it that I am very very lonely and therefore seek to escape from that feeling of isolation by turning to a woman, an idea, or a motive, as if I must hold onto something? I see that it is so. I am lonely and escaping through attachment to something from that feeling of extraordinary isolation.
So I am interested in understanding why I am lonely, for I see it is that which makes me attached. That loneliness has forced me to escape through attachment to this or to that, and I see that as long as I am lonely, the sequence will always be this. What does it mean to be lonely? How does it come about? Is it instinctual, inherited, or is it brought about by my daily activity? If it is an instinct, if it is inherited, it is part of my lot; I am not to blame. But as I do not accept this, I question it and remain with the question. I am watching and I am not trying to find an intellectual answer. I’m not telling loneliness what it should do or what it is; I’m waiting for it to tell me. There is a wait for the loneliness to reveal itself. It will not reveal itself if I run away, if I am frightened, if I resist it. So I watched it. I watch it so that no thought interferes. Watching is much more important than thinking. And because my whole energy is concerned with the observation of that loneliness, thought does not come in at all. The mind is being challenged and it must answer. Being challenged is a crisis. In a crisis, you have great energy and that energy remains without being interfered with by thought. This is a challenge that must be answered.
I started out by having a dialogue with myself. I wondered what this strange thing called love was that everyone talks about and writes about; all the romantic poems, pictures, sex, and other aspects of it? I ask: Is there such a thing as love? I see it does not exist when there is jealousy, hatred, and fear.
So I am not concerned with love anymore; I am concerned with what is my fear, my attachment. Why am I attached? I see that one of the reasons-I do not say it is the whole reason-is that I am desperately lonely and isolated. The older I grow, the more isolated I become. So I watched it. This is a challenge to find out, and because it is a challenge, all energy is there to respond. That is simple. If there is some catastrophe, an accident, or whatever it is, it is a challenge and I have the energy to meet it. I do not have to ask: “How do I get this energy?” When the house is on fire, I have the energy to move; extraordinary energy. I do not sit back and say, “Well, I must get this energy” and then wait; the whole house will be burned by then.
So there is this tremendous energy to answer the question: Why is there this loneliness? I have rejected ideas, suppositions, and theories that it is inherited, that it is instinctual. All that means nothing to me. Loneliness is ‘what is’. Why is there this loneliness which every human being, if he is at all aware, goes through, superficially or most profoundly? Why did it come into being? Is it that the mind is doing something which is bringing it about? I have rejected theories as to instinct and inheritance, and I am asking: is the mind, the brain itself, bringing about this loneliness, this total isolation? Is the movement of thought doing this? Is this thought in my daily life creating this sense of isolation? In the office, I am isolating myself because I want to become a top executive; therefore, thought is working all the time isolating itself. I see that thought is all the time operating to make itself superior. The mind is working itself towards this isolation.
So the problem then is: why does thought do this? Is it the nature of thought to work for itself? Is it the nature of thought to create this isolation? Education brings about this isolation; it gives me a certain career, a certain specialization, and so, isolation. Thought, being fragmentary, being limited and time-bound, is creating this isolation. In that limitation, it has found security by saying: “I have a special career in my life; I am a professor; I am perfectly safe.” So my concern is then: why does thought do it? Is it in its very nature to do this? Whatever one thinks must be limited. Now the problem is: can thought realise that whatever it does is limited, fragmented, and therefore isolating, and that whatever it does will be thus? This is a very important point: can thought itself realise its limitations? Or am I telling it that it is limited? This, I see, is very important to understand; this is the real essence of the matter. If thought realises itself that it is limited, then there is no resistance, no conflict; it says, “I am that.” But if I am telling it that it is limited, then I become separate from the limitation. Then I struggle to overcome the limitation. There is conflict and violence, not love.
So does thought realise itself that it is limited? I have to find out. I am being challenged. Because I am challenged, I have great energy. Put it differently, does consciousness realise its content is itself? Or is it that I have heard another say: “Consciousness is its content; its content makes up consciousness”? Therefore, I say, “Yes, it is so.” Do you see the difference between the two? The latter, created by thought, is imposed by the’me’. If I impose something on thought, then there is conflict. It is like a tyrannical government imposing on someone, but here that government is what I have created.
So I am asking myself: has thought realised its limitations? Or is it pretending to be something extraordinary, noble, and divine? which is nonsense because thought is based on memory. I see that there must be clarity about this point: that there is no outside influence imposing on thought, saying it is limited. Then, because there is no imposition, there is no conflict; it simply realises it is limited; it realises that whatever it does—its worship of God and so on—is limited, shoddy, petty—even though it has created marvellous cathedrals throughout Europe in which to worship.
So there has been in my conversation with myself the discovery that loneliness is created by thought. Thought has now realised that it is limited and so cannot solve the problem of loneliness. Does loneliness exist if it cannot solve the problem of loneliness? Thought has created this sense of loneliness, this emptiness, because it is limited, fragmentary, and divided, and when it realises this, loneliness is not, therefore there is freedom from attachment. I have done nothing; I have watched the attachment, what is implied in it, greed, fear, loneliness, all that, and by tracing it, observing it, not analysing it, but just looking, looking and looking, there is the discovery that thought has done all this.
Thought, because it is fragmentary, has created this attachment. When it realises this, attachment ceases. There is no effort made at all. For the moment, there is effort—conflict is back again.
If there is love, there is no attachment. If there is attachment, there is no love. There has been the removal of the major factor through the negation of what it is not, through the negation of attachment.
I know what it means in my daily life: no remembrance of anything my wife, my girlfriend, or my neighbour did to hurt me; no attachment to any image thought has created about her; how she has bullied me, how she has given me comfort, how I have had pleasure sexually; all the different things of which the movement of thought has created images; attachment to those images has gone.
And there are other factors: must I go through all those steps one by one? Or is it all over? Must I go through, must I investigate-as I have investigated attachment-fear, pleasure, and the desire for comfort? I see that I do not have to go through all the investigation of all these various factors; I see it at one glance.
I have captured it. So, through the negation of what is not love, love is. I do not have to ask what love is. I do not have to run after it. If I run after it, it is not love, it is a reward. So I have negated, I have ended, in that enquiry, slowly, carefully, without distortion, without illusion, everything that it is not-the other is.