The Search - Part 5
Fall in Love with Yourself

by J. Krishnamurti

The simple union with the Beloved, the direct way of attainment, which is the eternal way, gives ecstasy to life. If you search for Truth in the realms of maya, in the realm of the intellect or of mere emotionalism, or in the physical sense-world alone, you will never find it. Yet when you have found it you realize that it is contained in them all. You cannot separate life from any expression of life and yet you must be able to distinguish between life and its expressions. Because at first I tried to separate life from the goal, because to me life was one thing and knowledge another, everything became confused and I turned for support to tradition, to comfort, to self-contentment and satisfaction. When you perceive the light of your goal, you are guided by it as a ship is guided by a lighthouse on a dark shore. When you have seen that vision of perfection, that hidden beauty which cannot be explained in words, which is beyond intellectual theories and mere emotional excitement, it will act as your eternal guide, it will shed its light upon your path and whatever your experience or lack of experience may be, you will attain. Attainment is not for the few but for all, at whatever stage of evolution they may be. You can perceive the Beloved when you have learnt to translate the ordinary sorrows and pleasures of life into terms of eternal Truth. If you can interpret all experience in the light of your goal, then you will become united with that goal.

Because I am united eternally, inseparably, with my Beloved - who is the Beloved of all, who is yourself - I would show you the way, because you are in pain, in sorrow, in doubt. But I can only be a signpost for you. You must have the strength of your own desire to attain. You must experience the pain and the sorrow in your own self. You must strive for yourself. Your desire must come from your very soul. It must be the result of your own experience, for by that alone will you attain.

By telling you of my attainment I do not wish to create authority because if I create authority in your mind I shall destroy your own perception of the Truth. I want to make you breathe the fresh air of the mountains, but if you seek my authority you will remain in your dark valley of limitation. It is much easier for you to follow and worship blindly than to understand and so become truly free.

Until I was able to identify myself with the goal, which is the Beloved of all, which is the Source and the End of all, I did not want to say that I had found and, in finding, had become the Beloved. Till I was able to unite with the eternal I could not pass on the Truth to others; till I was certain of having found the lasting goal I did not want to say that I was the Teacher. Now that I have found, now that I have established the Beloved within myself, now that the Beloved is myself, I would give you of the Truth - not that it should be received with authority, but with understanding. It does not matter whether you accept or reject it. When a flower opens and gives its scent, it does not heed if the passer-by does not delight in its fragrance.

I have painted my picture on the canvas and I want you to examine it critically, not blindly. I want you to create because of that picture a new picture for yourself. I want you to fall in love with the picture, not with the painter, to fall in love with the Truth and not with him who brings the Truth. Fall in love with yourself and then you will fall in love with everyone.