J Krishnamurti Ojai CA 1953
Krishnamurti Foundation
We have different kinds of fear, have we not? Fear exists at different levels of our being; there is the fear of the past, fear of the future, and fear of the present, which is the very anxiety of living.
Now, what is this fear? Is it not of the mind, of thought? I think of the future, of old age, of poverty, of disease, of death, and of that picture I am afraid. Thought projects a picture which awakens anxiety in the mind; so thought creates its own fear, does it not? I have done something foolish, and I don’t want my attention called to it, I want to avoid it, I am afraid of the consequences. This is again a thought process, is it not? I want to recapture the happiness of youth; or perhaps I saw something yesterday in the mountain sunlight which has now escaped me, and I want to experience that beauty again; or I want to be loved, I want to fulfil, I want to achieve, I want to become somebody; so there is anxiety, there is fear. Thought is desire, memory, and its responses to all this bring about fear, do they not? Being afraid of tomorrow, of death, of the unknown, we begin to invent theories, that we shall be reborn, that we shall be made perfect through evolution, and in these theories the mind takes shelter. Because we are everlastingly seeking security, we build churches around our hopes, our beliefs and dogmas, for which we are prepared to fight; and all this is still the process of thinking, is it not? And if we cannot resolve our fear, our psychological block, we turn for help to somebody else.
As long as I am thinking in terms of achieving, fulfilling, of not becoming, of dying, I am always caught in fear am I not? The process of thinking as we know it, with its self-enclosing desire to be successful not to be lonely, empty – that very process is the seat of fear. And can the mind which is occupied with itself, which is the product of its own fears, ever resolve fear?
Suppose one is afraid, and one knows the various causes that have brought about fear. Can that same mind, which has produced fear, put aside fear by its own effort? As long as the mind is occupied with fear, with how to get rid of it, with what to do and what not to do in order to surmount it, can it ever be free from fear? Surely, the mind can be free from fear only when it is not occupied with fear, which does not mean running away from fear, or trying to ignore it. First, one must be fully aware that one is afraid. Most of us are not fully aware, we are only vaguely aware of fear; and if we do come face to face with it, we are horrified, we run away from it and throw ourselves into various activities which only lead to further mischief.
Because the mind itself is the product of fear, whatever the mind does to put away fear only increases it further. So can one just be aware of one’s fear without being occupied with it, without judging or trying to alter it? To be aware of fear without condemnation does not mean accepting it, taking it to your heart. To be aware of fear without choice is just to look at it, to know there is fear and to see the truth of it; and seeing the truth of fear dissolves fear. The mind can not dissolve fear by any action of its own; in the face of fear it must be very quiet, it must know and not act. Please listen to this. One must know that one is afraid, be fully conscious of it, without any reaction, without any desire to alter it. The alteration, the transformation cannot be brought about by the mind: it comes into being only with the perception of truth, and the mind cannot perceive what is true if it is concerned with fear, if it condemns or desires to be rid of it. Any action of the mind with regard to fear only increases fear, or helps the mind to run away from it. There is freedom from fear only when the mind, being fully aware of its own fears, is not active towards them. Then quite a different state comes into being which the mind cannot possibly conceive or invent.