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Jiddu Krishnamurti on Overcoming Loneliness

Questioner: How am I to overcome loneliness?
Jiddu Krishnamurti: Can you overcome loneliness? Whatever you conquer has to be conquered again and again, does it not? What you understand comes to an end, but that which you conquer can never come to an end...

Now, what is this loneliness of which most of us are aware? We know it, and we run away from it, do we not? We take flight from it in every form of activity. We are empty, lonely, and we are afraid of it, so we try to cover it up by some means or other - meditation, the search for God, social activity, the radio, drink, or what you will - we would do anything rather than face it, be with it, understand it.

Running away is the same, whether we do it through the idea of God, or through drink. As long as one is escaping from loneliness, there is no essential difference between the worship of God and addiction to alcohol. Socially, there may be a difference; but psychologically, the man who runs away from himself, from his own emptiness, whose escape is his search for God, is on the same level as the drunkard.

What is important, then, is not to overcome loneliness, but to understand it, and we cannot understand it if we do not face it, if we do not look at it directly, if we are continually running away from it...

Source: from book "On Love and Loneliness, Seattle, 6 August 1950" by Jiddu krishnamurti