Show me how to dissolve the ‘I’ | J. Krishnamurti

Fourth Question: 'Show me how to dissolve the ‘I’, the ‘me’. Without that, everything else is futile. ' 'Show me how to dissolve the ‘I’, the ‘me’.

Without that, everything else is futile. ' The questioner says, ‘Show me’. One can point out various ways of denying, totally, the self, the ‘me’, the selfishness, the self-centred activity, but, apparently, man has tried so many different ways – religiously, politically, accepting the State and adjusting – you know all that.

Apparently, man has not been able to totally deny or put away the whole nature and the structure of the self. Let’s look at it first, why 'self' has become so important. Why 'me' first?

And many people have tried through meditation, through the repetition of certain idiotic words, tried to be free of all this 'self'. So, why has man given such extraordinary importance to the self? Why you – forgive me if I talk to you directly – why do you give importance to the self?

Has it become a habit? Is it that we are encouraged from childhood? Is it that all religions have maintained that the self exists but identify that self with something greater?

You know, all that business. Is it one feels, if there is no self, there is nothing? And one is afraid of being nothing.

So, the questioner says, 'Show me, help me to be free of this torture of the self. It is a torture, it's a battle that is going on, outwardly and inwardly. The self can have no relationship with anybody.

The self, in its very nature, is an isolating process. And it may be an abstraction, not actual reality – reality in the sense, that can be touched, looked at, objectively. Is it a series of structures put together by thought?

Because the self, the ‘me’, the egotistic action, is tearing the world apart. Perhaps we don’t see that. That self identifies itself as a Jew, as a Hindu, as a Muslim, as a Christian, as a scientist.

And so, in the very nature of the self, its movement is to be isolated. Are we meeting each other? And the questioner says, 'What am I to do?

I know all this. I have thought a great deal about all this. I've tried different ways.

I have meditated, tried to control, tried to deny myself of everything, but it is still there. ' Have you done, played with all this, some of you? If you have, then the question is, what is one to do?

It may be that there is nothing to be done. Do you understand my answer? Through complete negation, there is positive action.

I wonder if you understand all this. To negate. But we are afraid to negate, because we have identified ourselves with our body, the perpetual concern over the body, yoga, exercise, beauty, facial, you know, long hair, short hair, beard and no beard, go through the various fads that one goes through, all this is sustaining the self.

And, in meditation, the controller is the self. I wonder if you see all this! So, what is one to do?

One has tried ten thousand ways. One has tried many, many ways to be free of this torture, this isolating process of the ‘me’. I don’t know if you have tried it.

Probably not. But to do it demands tremendous alertness, watchfulness, attention. And in the self there is great pleasure.

The saints have done that – self-control, self-torture. But, at the end of it all, there is this self, deeply rooted. And is it ever possible to have no shadow of the self?

Which means no isolation. Which doesn’t mean, ‘I am the whole’, all those tricks. To have a sense of honest, absolute feeling that there is no isolation.

Please don’t go off to the other, which is, ‘I am the whole, therefore I'm not isolated’, which is just another trick of thought. The other day, there was a letter, a man saying, ‘I am truth, you are part of me, and you don’t accept me, therefore you're not whole. ' Such nonsense that goes on!

So, is it possible to eliminate altogether the feeling of isolation? And that may be love. And that may be the one central factor that totally dissipates the self.

But that word ‘love’ is such a misused word. It has been spat upon, made into such an ugly thing. ‘I love my husband but I fight with him.

’ ‘I love my wife, but I can’t tolerate her, I must have a divorce. ' You know all that. ‘I love my country, therefore I'm ready to kill everybody else.

’ ‘I love God and I will torture anybody who doesn’t believe in God. ’ The Catholics have been experts at that. Though that word is something very sacred – not the word but the content, the depth and the beauty and the utter reality of it.

That is sacred. And if we haven’t that, as the questioner says, everything else is futile. Then you might say, 'How am I to have that love?

' You can’t. It isn't something that you cultivate, day after day, being kind, generous, doing social work, going off to some unfortunate country and helping the poor and all that. You see, that's one of our strange things, we have lost all reverence.

It may be a bourgeois idea. We won’t go into that for the moment. That may be the only factor, the only thing that totally, completely dissolves the self.

Not, 'I love everybody'. That’s, again, another trick of the brain. 'I love one, therefore I can love all' – that’s another.

But to have the beauty of it in your heart, not in the word, not in the form. And when there is no sense of isolation, then the other, perhaps, is. And then the self is not.

When that is, the other is not.