Talks by Krishnamurti in India; November 1, 1964
(Verbatim Report) Madras, Bombay, New Delhi, Varanasi
The Question of Fear? part 4 of 5
Fear exists only in relationship to something else. I am afraid of public opinion, I am afraid of my wife, I am afraid of my boss, I am afraid of losing my job, I am afraid of death, I am afraid of pain; I am not healthy, I would like to be healthy, and I am frightened of going back, of falling ill again; I am frightened because I am lonely; I am frightened because nobody loves me, nobody has a warm feeling for me; I am frightened because I have to be nobody. There are various forms of fear, conscious and unconscious. If you are at all aware - aware, not in the narrow sense, but extensively - you can see the obvious fears: of losing a job and therefore playing up to the man above you, bearing all the boredom of it, his insults, his inhumanities; being frightened of not fulfilling; being frightened of not being somebody, being frightened of going wrong. So we have innumerable fears, and consciously we can know them quite easily. If you spend half an hour consciously, deliberately, to find out your fears, outwardly at least, you can easily stop them. But it is much more difficult to find out the unconscious fears, deep down within you, which have a greater importance and which during your sleep become dreams and all the rest of it. I am not going into all that now.
So one has to understand fear. Now, fear may take different forms: I am afraid of public opinion, I am afraid of falling ill, I am afraid of losing my wife, I am afraid of being nobody, I am afraid of being lonely - do you know what that word means? Have you ever been lonely, have you ever felt what it is to be lonely? Probably not, because you are surrounded by your family, you are always thinking about your job, reading a book, listening to a radio, listening to the infinite gossip of the newspapers. So probably you never know that strange feeling of being completely isolated. You may have occasional intimations of it, but probably you have never come into contact with it directly, as you have with pain, with hunger, with sex. But if you do not understand that loneliness which is the cause of fear, then you will not understand fear and be free of it.
Fear may express itself in many forms - as it does - but there is only one fear. Fear is fear, not how it shows, not what are the mediums through which you are aware of the existence of fear. I may be afraid of public opinion, of death, of losing my job, of a thousand other things; but the fear is the same. Now, whether that fear is conscious or unconscious, one has to find out, one has to go into it. Unfortunately, we have divided life - as has been done by the latest psychologists and so on - as the conscious and the unconscious. Please listen to this: you may not be interested, and probably you have not even thought about it. You might have read about it, if you are interested in psychology, or heard somebody talk about the conscious and the unconscious and so on. But it does not play a great part in your life, as hunger does, as losing a job does, as belonging to a certain class does. So we are going into it briefly for the moment. We are not going into any detail or to explore it at great depth; one can, but we are going into it briefly.
One has divided the mind as the conscious and the unconscious. The conscious mind is the educated mind, the modern technological mind that goes to the office every day, which is bored, which is fed up with all the routine of it, the lack of love of doing something for itself. So the conscious mind becomes the mechanical mind - watch it, sirs - it can think mechanically, it can go to the office and function. It does all the things mechanically - sex, affection, being mechanically conscious of everything, being kind when it pays, kicking when it does not pay; the whole thing, the strange phenomena of modern civilization. Then there is the unconscious which is very deep, which requires great penetration, understanding. Either one can understand the whole thing - both the conscious as well as the unconscious - immediately, with one look, or you take time through analysis, through analyzing all the intimations and hints of the unconscious which arise through dreams and so on. Please follow this.
As I said, you can understand this whole structure of consciousness which is `you', as a man or a woman, as a human being, the whole consciousness of two million years - not reincarnation - of man, who has evolved from the lowest to the present state. All that development, all that psychological structure of society can be understood immediately, and also the whole psychological structure of society with its greed, envy, ambition, despair, can be completely eliminated. Or you can analyze the whole process of consciousness, analyze it step by step. We feel - not feel, but it is so - that analysis will not free the mind. Then, what will free the mind from ambition, greed, envy, anger, jealousy, and the demand for power? - which are all animalistic. I do not know if you have watched animals. Go to a poultry yard where there are lots of chickens and observe the chickens. You will notice how one pecks the other and how they have established a social order. We also have all the animalistic instincts, consciously as well an unconsciously. And we can understand this whole psychological structure and be totally free of this animalistic, instinctual relationship of man with man, immediately - and this is the only way to do it, not through analysis.
But to understand this thing, to understand this consciousness, one has to be really free, totally, of fear. Fear is the essence of the animal. Now, to understand fear one must come directly into contact with it - that is, nonverbally. Please do take your fear. You are afraid of something: maybe of your wife, husband, children. Take it, look at it, bring it out - not suppress it, not accept it, not deny it, but take hold of it, look at it. To look at it demands a mind fully aware, not a vague, dull mind. Because when you look at fear, either you come directly into contact with it or you go off to an asylum as people do, or you know what to do with it. And we are going into it directly, nonabstractly, nonverbally so that you come directly into contact. We said there are many causes of fear, but fear is always fear. The objects of fear and their relationship with you may vary, but fear is always the same, though it expresses itself in different ways.
