Talks by Krishnamurti in India; November 1, 1964
(Verbatim Report) Madras, Bombay, New Delhi, Varanasi
The Question of Fear? part 3 of 5
Sirs, you are not listening to a lecture. This is not a harangue, a moralizing talk. We are communicating with each other. We are trying to understand this complex problem of living together, and it is a very complex problem. It needs a fresh mind every day to understand your family, your wife or husband, or your children; it needs a fresh mind to learn your job efficiently. So we are trying to understand the problems. They are your problems, and therefore you are not merely listening to words, rejecting, or accepting, or saying it is this, or having opinions. We are together looking, together understanding, together trying to explore this complex problem. So you are as active as the speaker, if not much more active.
So one has to differentiate, when one understands authority, as to why one obeys the law, why one obeys psychologically. One has also to understand function and status because through function one wants status. What we are more concerned with is not function but status. Because status gives us certain privileges, status becomes much more important than function. But if you are only regarding function - not status at all - then the cook is as important as the prime minister. They are merely doing functions, and therefore you approach the two with quite a different mind - you do not kick the cook, nor do you lick the shoes of the prime minister. You treat them as functionaries - and therefore not as machines - as human beings liable to make mistakes. But the moment you think of status, then disrespect comes in; and the moment disrespect comes in, then you are lost; then you show respect to one and disrespect to another. A mind that understands this whole complex, psychological problem of authority must go into all this because that is one of the roots of fear.
We all demand self-fulfillment, we all want to be somebody. Probably you want to be sitting here instead of me; it is there in the mind. Because we all want to be somebody, to be known, to be famous, to have our names appear in the papers, we want to express ourselves - by writing a book, by painting a picture, or through the family, through the wife, through the children, through the work. Through everything, we want to express ourselves. We never question if there is such a thing as self-expression, but we want to express. The moment you begin to question this whole problem of expression, especially of oneself, then you will see that a mind that is seeking self-expression is always in conflict, is always inviting despair and therefore always frightened and therefore resisting, aggressive. So, you have to know, you have to learn, you have to be aware of this urge to self-express. What do you want to express? What do you mean by self-expression? It essentially comes down to this: to be known by the world - which means what? - to be recognized as a big man, as somebody important, somebody who is very clever, who has attained enlightenment, and all that stuff. And we are craving everlastingly to express ourselves in little things, in big things; and therefore there is competition. Out of this competition there is ruthlessness. And we think that this ruthless capacity, efficiency, is progress. Do watch yourselves, please! You are not listening. Please watch your own life. Then you see how the more capacity, the more intelligence, the more drive you have, the more deeply, the more longingly you want to fulfill, you want to be somebody. When you want to be somebody, this desire is to self-fulfill, either in God or in an idea - for God is an idea - or in a state or in the family. What is implied in this self-expression? You want to be, and the ``you'' is merely an idea, an abstraction, a memory; and that is one of the great sources of fear. So there is ambition, authority, self-expression, and there is the fear of the tomorrow.
Now, what is fear? Fear cannot exist by itself. It is not an abstraction. An abstraction comes into being only when one runs away from fear into an idea, into a concept, into certain activities. Suppose one is afraid, and one's mind is incapable of facing it and seeks an escape from it; then any thought, any activity arising from that escape, from that flight from the fact of fear, breeds an abstraction, a life of contradiction; and a life of contradiction brings more fear, more conflict - all the complexities of existence. So you have to understand fear because fear breeds illusions, fear makes the mind dull. I do not know if you have not noticed, when you are frightened for various reasons, how your mind absolutely withdraws, isolates itself and looks immediately to somebody to help it out; how it builds a wall round itself through various activities, through lies, through every form of activity except facing that fact.
So, we are going to face the fact, this evening - not the speaker's fear, but your fear. How is one to understand that fear? The understanding of that fear is freedom from that fear, and we are going into that. We are going to take a journey, we are going together to commune with that thing which we call fear, because one has to see the importance of understanding fear. It is a necessity to understand it. A mind that lives in fear is a dead mind, is a dull mind; it is a mind that cannot look, see, hear clearly, directly. So, it is very important to understand one's relationships with others, with society, with everything, and to be free of fear, totally - not partially, not fragmentarily, not on various occasions, but completely. I say it is possible, and we will go into that. So, fear is not an abstraction, it is not a thing from which you can run away; it is there. Whether you run away for a day, for a year, for some time, it catches you up wherever you are, and goes with you. You may turn your eyes away from it, but it is there.
(Verbatim Report) Madras, Bombay, New Delhi, Varanasi
The Question of Fear? part 3 of 5
Sirs, you are not listening to a lecture. This is not a harangue, a moralizing talk. We are communicating with each other. We are trying to understand this complex problem of living together, and it is a very complex problem. It needs a fresh mind every day to understand your family, your wife or husband, or your children; it needs a fresh mind to learn your job efficiently. So we are trying to understand the problems. They are your problems, and therefore you are not merely listening to words, rejecting, or accepting, or saying it is this, or having opinions. We are together looking, together understanding, together trying to explore this complex problem. So you are as active as the speaker, if not much more active.
So one has to differentiate, when one understands authority, as to why one obeys the law, why one obeys psychologically. One has also to understand function and status because through function one wants status. What we are more concerned with is not function but status. Because status gives us certain privileges, status becomes much more important than function. But if you are only regarding function - not status at all - then the cook is as important as the prime minister. They are merely doing functions, and therefore you approach the two with quite a different mind - you do not kick the cook, nor do you lick the shoes of the prime minister. You treat them as functionaries - and therefore not as machines - as human beings liable to make mistakes. But the moment you think of status, then disrespect comes in; and the moment disrespect comes in, then you are lost; then you show respect to one and disrespect to another. A mind that understands this whole complex, psychological problem of authority must go into all this because that is one of the roots of fear.
We all demand self-fulfillment, we all want to be somebody. Probably you want to be sitting here instead of me; it is there in the mind. Because we all want to be somebody, to be known, to be famous, to have our names appear in the papers, we want to express ourselves - by writing a book, by painting a picture, or through the family, through the wife, through the children, through the work. Through everything, we want to express ourselves. We never question if there is such a thing as self-expression, but we want to express. The moment you begin to question this whole problem of expression, especially of oneself, then you will see that a mind that is seeking self-expression is always in conflict, is always inviting despair and therefore always frightened and therefore resisting, aggressive. So, you have to know, you have to learn, you have to be aware of this urge to self-express. What do you want to express? What do you mean by self-expression? It essentially comes down to this: to be known by the world - which means what? - to be recognized as a big man, as somebody important, somebody who is very clever, who has attained enlightenment, and all that stuff. And we are craving everlastingly to express ourselves in little things, in big things; and therefore there is competition. Out of this competition there is ruthlessness. And we think that this ruthless capacity, efficiency, is progress. Do watch yourselves, please! You are not listening. Please watch your own life. Then you see how the more capacity, the more intelligence, the more drive you have, the more deeply, the more longingly you want to fulfill, you want to be somebody. When you want to be somebody, this desire is to self-fulfill, either in God or in an idea - for God is an idea - or in a state or in the family. What is implied in this self-expression? You want to be, and the ``you'' is merely an idea, an abstraction, a memory; and that is one of the great sources of fear. So there is ambition, authority, self-expression, and there is the fear of the tomorrow.
Now, what is fear? Fear cannot exist by itself. It is not an abstraction. An abstraction comes into being only when one runs away from fear into an idea, into a concept, into certain activities. Suppose one is afraid, and one's mind is incapable of facing it and seeks an escape from it; then any thought, any activity arising from that escape, from that flight from the fact of fear, breeds an abstraction, a life of contradiction; and a life of contradiction brings more fear, more conflict - all the complexities of existence. So you have to understand fear because fear breeds illusions, fear makes the mind dull. I do not know if you have not noticed, when you are frightened for various reasons, how your mind absolutely withdraws, isolates itself and looks immediately to somebody to help it out; how it builds a wall round itself through various activities, through lies, through every form of activity except facing that fact.
So, we are going to face the fact, this evening - not the speaker's fear, but your fear. How is one to understand that fear? The understanding of that fear is freedom from that fear, and we are going into that. We are going to take a journey, we are going together to commune with that thing which we call fear, because one has to see the importance of understanding fear. It is a necessity to understand it. A mind that lives in fear is a dead mind, is a dull mind; it is a mind that cannot look, see, hear clearly, directly. So, it is very important to understand one's relationships with others, with society, with everything, and to be free of fear, totally - not partially, not fragmentarily, not on various occasions, but completely. I say it is possible, and we will go into that. So, fear is not an abstraction, it is not a thing from which you can run away; it is there. Whether you run away for a day, for a year, for some time, it catches you up wherever you are, and goes with you. You may turn your eyes away from it, but it is there.
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