Why Do We Not Love One Another?

The simple answer to my question in the title is, “Because we live in the mind and not in the heart.”

Let me unpack that.

J. Krishnamurti wrote in his book Freedom From the Known, “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”

Mind, you see, thinks in categories and concepts. All the things that J. Krishnamurti mentioned in the quote above, such as “Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European” are all actually not real flesh-and-blood entities but merely concepts/categories/classifications in the head, which actually prevent us from seeing the person in front of us. Same goes for other concepts/categories/classifications, such as beauty, wealth, intelligence, etc. Once we think in terms of them, we can no longer see the person in front of us as the person is but we can see only through the filters of these concepts/categories/classifications.

For instance, in our minds, it is no longer a person being hated, it becomes a Hindu or Muslim being hated; it is no longer a case of a person being abused but a poor man or Dalit being abused; it is no longer a case of one person killing another but a case of an Indian killing a Pakistani; and what have you. It is easier to hate/abuse/kill once we start seeing a Hindu/Muslim, a poor man or Dalit, or an Indian/Pakistani than a real flesh-and-blood person in front of you.

Once the categorization becomes lodged in our minds, we come up with sociological, political, historical, and economic theories as to why all those instances of hate, abuse, and killing are happening.

Such theories can be apprehended only by the mind because those are abstractions from the individual – categories, concepts, classifications, etc. The heart knows no such distinctions. The heart can only apprehend smiles and tears, pleasures and pains, saving and killing, which cannot be categorized as a Hindu/Muslim smile/tear, a Brahmin/Dalit pleasure/pain, an Indian/Pakistani saving/killing. The heart sees the individual, the flesh-and-blood incarnation, and responds as an individual.

Hence, I feel no sociologist, political scientist, economist, or historian can find the solution to the problems of humankind. The psychologist can come close to offering a solution. But, ultimately, the solution is found ONLY by the individual who understands the dangers of relating to others with the mind and not with the heart.

But, we keep on seeing indivdiuals through the categories and concepts of the mind and hence we cannot love one another.