Jiddu Krishnamurti - Thought destroys feeling. How to feel without thinking

Questioner: We know that thought destroys feeling. How to feel without thinking?

Jiddu Krishnamurti : We know that rationalization, calculation, bargaining, destroy love. Love is dangerous, for love might lead you to all unpremeditated action. You control it by rationalizing, and thereby bring it to the market-place. Where there is thought process, which is naming or terming, love is destroyed.

You have a feeling of pain or pleasure. By terming it, by giving it a name - that is, by thinking about it - you have modified it and therefore reduced it. When you feel generous and open, your mind comes in and begins to rationalize your generosity; then you become charitable through organizations and avoid direct action. As love is dangerous, you begin to think about and so minimize it, and slowly destroy it.

Is it possible to love without thinking? What do you mean by thinking? Thinking is a response to memories of pain or pleasure. There is no thinking without the residue which incomplete experience leaves. Love is different from emotion and feeling. Love cannot be brought into the field of thought, whereas feeling and emotion can be brought. Love is a flame without smoke, ever fresh, creative, joyous.

Such love is dangerous to society, to relationship. So, thought steps in, modifies, guides it, legalizes it, puts it out of danger; then one can live with it. Do you not know that when you love someone, you love the whole of mankind? Do you not know how dangerous it is to love man? Then, there is no harrier, no nationality; then, there is no craving for power and position, and things assume their values. Such a man is a danger to society.

For the being of love, the process of memory must come to an end. Memory comes into being only when experience is not fully, completely understood. Memory is only the residue of experience; it is the result of a challenge which is not fully comprehended. Life is a process of challenge and response.

Challenge is always new but the response is ever old. This response, which is conditioning, which is the result of the past, must be understood and not disciplined or condemned away. It means living each day anew, fully and completely. This complete living is possible only when there is love, when your heart is full, not with the words nor with the things made by the mind. Only where there is love, memory ceases; then every movement is a rebirth.

Source - Jiddu Krishnamurti talk February 22, 1948

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