We are going to inquire together into this question of fear, what is fear? What is fear, how does it arise? Is there a fear at one level and not at another level? Is there fear at the conscious level or at the unconscious level? Or is there a fear totally? Now how does fear arise? Why does it exist in human beings? And human beings have put up with it for generations upon generations, they live with it. Fear distorts action, distorts clear perceptive thinking, objective efficient thinking, which is necessary, logical sane healthy thinking. Fear darkens our lives. I do not know if you have noticed it? If there is the slightest fear there is a contraction of all our senses. And most of us live, in whatever relationship we have, in that peculiar form of fear.
Our question is, whether the mind and our whole being can ever be free completely of fear. Education, society, governments, religions have encouraged this fear; religions are based on fear. And fear also is cultivated through the worship of authority – the authority of a book, the authority of the priest, the authority of those who know and so on. We are carefully nurtured in fear. And we are asking whether it is at all possible to be totally free of it. So we have to find out what is fear. Is it the want of something? – which is desire, longing. Is it the uncertainty of tomorrow? Or the pain and the suffering of yesterday? Is it this division between you and me, in which there is no relationship at all? Is it that centre which thought has created as the “me” – the me being the form, the name, the attributes – fear of losing that “me”? Is that one of the causes of fear? Or is it the remembrance of something past, pleasant, happy, and the fear of losing it? Or the fear of suffering, physiologically and psychologically? Is there a centre from which all fear springs? – like a tree, though it has got a hundred branches it has a solid trunk and roots, and it is no good merely pruning the branches. So we have to go to the very root of fear. Because if you can be totally free of fear, then heaven is with you.
What is the root of it? Is it time? Please we are investigating, questioning, we are not theorizing, we are not coming to any conclusion, because there is nothing to conclude. The moment you see the root of it, actually, with your eyes, with your feeling, with your heart, with your mind – actually see it – then you can deal with it; that is if you are serious. We are asking: is it time? – time being not only chronological time by the watch, as yesterday, today and tomorrow, but also psychological time, the remembrance of yesterday, the pleasures of yesterday, and the pains, the grief, the anxieties of yesterday.
We are asking whether the root of fear is time. Time to fulfil, time to become, time to achieve, time to realize God, or whatever you like to call it. Psychologically, what is time? Is there such a thing – please listen – as psychological time at all? Or have we invented psychological time? Psychologically is there tomorrow? If one says there is no time psychologically as tomorrow, it will be a great shock to you, won’t it? Because you say, “Tomorrow I shall be happy; tomorrow I will achieve something; tomorrow I will become the executive of some business; tomorrow I will become the enlightened one; tomorrow the guru promises something and I’ll achieve it”. To us tomorrow is tremendously important. And is there a tomorrow psychologically? We have accepted it: that is our whole traditional education, that there is a tomorrow. And when you look psychologically, investigate into yourself, is there a tomorrow? Or has thought, being fragmentary in itself, projected the tomorrow? Please, we will go into this, it is very important to understand.
One suffers physically, there is a great deal of pain. And the remembrance of that pain is marked, is an experience which the brain contains and therefore there is the remembrance of that pain. And thought says, ‘I hope I never have that pain again: that is tomorrow.’ There has been great pleasure yesterday, sexual or whatever kind of pleasure one has, and thought says, ‘Tomorrow I must have that pleasure again.’ You have a great experience – at least you think it is a great experience – and it has become a memory; and you realize it is a memory yet you pursue it tomorrow. So thought is movement in time. Is the root of fear time? – time as comparison with you, “me” more important than you, “me” that is going to achieve something, become something, get rid of something.
So thought as time, thought as becoming, is the root of fear. We have said that time is necessary to learn a language, time is necessary to learn any technique. And we think we can apply the same process to psychological existence. I need several weeks to learn a language, and I say in order to learn about myself, what I am, what I have to achieve, I need time. We are questioning the whole of that. Whether there is time at all psychologically, actually; or is it an invention of thought and therefore fear arises? That is our problem; and consciously we have divided consciousness into the conscious and the hidden. Again division by thought. And we say, ‘I may be able to get rid of conscious fears, but it is almost impossible to be free of the unconscious fears with their deep roots in the unconscious.’ We say that it is much more difficult to be free of unconscious fears, that is the racial fears, the family fears, the tribal fears, the fears that are deeply rooted, instinctive. We have divided consciousness into two levels and then we ask: how can a human being delve into the unconscious? Having divided it then we ask this question.
It is said it can be done through careful analysis of the various hidden fears, through dreams. That is the fashion. We never look into the whole process of analysis, whether it be self-introspective, or professional. In analysis is implied the analyser and the analysed. Who is the analyser? Is he different from the analysed, or is the analyser the analysed? And therefore it is utterly futile to analyse. I wonder if you see that? If the analyser is the analysed, then there is only observation, not analysis. But the analyser as different from the analysed – that is what you all accept, all the professionals, all the people who are trying to improve themselves – God forbid! – they all accept that there is a division between the analysed and the analyser. But the analyser is a fragment of thought which has created that thing to be analysed. I wonder if you follow this? So in analysis is implied a division and that division implies time. And you have to keep on analysing until you die.
So where analysis is totally false – I am using the word “false” in the sense of incorrect, having no value – then you are only concerned with observation. To observe! – we have to understand what is observation. You are following all this? We started out by inquiring if there is a different kind of energy. I am sorry we must go back so that it is in your mind – not in your memory, then you could read a book and repeat it to yourself, which is nothing. So we are concerned with, or inquiring into energy. We know the energy of thought which is mechanical, a process of friction, because thought in its very nature is fragmentary, thought is never the whole. And we have asked if there is a different kind of energy altogether and we-are investigating that. And in inquiring into that we see the whole movement of desire. Desire is the state of wanting something, longing for something. And that desire is a movement of thought as time and measure: “I have had this, and I must have more”. And we said in the understanding of fear, the root of fear may be time as movement. If you go into it you will see that it is the root of it: that is the actual fact. Then, is it possible for the mind to be totally free of fear? For the brain, which has accumulated knowledge, can only function effectively when there is complete security – but that security may be in some neurotic activity, in some belief, in the belief that you are the great nation; and all belief is neurotic, obviously, because it is not actual. So the brain can only function effectively, sanely, rationally, when it feels completely secure, and fear does not give it security. To be free of that fear, we asked whether analysis is necessary. And we see that analysis does not solve fear. So when you have an insight into the process of analysis, you stop analysing. And then there is only the question of observation, seeing. If you don’t analyse, what are you to do? You can only look. And it is very important to And out how to look.
What does it mean to look? What does it mean to look at this question of desire as movement in time and measure?
How do you see it? Do you see it as an idea, as a formula, because you have heard the speaker talking about it? Therefore you abstract what you hear into an idea and pursue that idea – which is still looking away from fear. So when you observe, it is very important to find out how you observe.
Can you observe your fear without the movement of escaping, suppressing, rationalizing, or giving it a name? That is, can you look at fear, your fear or not having a job tomorrow, of not being loved, a dozen forms of fear, can you look at it without naming, without the observer? – because the observer is the observed. I don’t know if you follow this? So the observer is fear, not he is observing fear.
Can you observe without the observer? – the observer being the past. Then is there fear? You follow? We have the energy to look at something as an observer. I look at you and say, ‘You are a Christian, a Hindu, Buddhist,’ whatever you are, or I look at you saying, ‘I don’t like you’ or ‘I like you.’ If you believe in the same thing as I believe in you are my friend; if I don’t believe the same thing as you do, you are my enemy. So can you look at another without all those movements of thought, of remembrance, of hope, all that, just look? Look at that fear which is the root of time. Then is there fear at all? You understand? You will And this out only if you test it, if you work at it, not just play with it.
Then there is the other form of desire, which not only creates fear but also pleasure. Desire is a form of pleasure. Pleasure is different from joy. Pleasure you can cultivate, which the modem world is doing, sexually and in every form of cultural encouragement – pleasure, tremendous pleasure and the pursuit of pleasure. And in the very pursuit of pleasure there must be fear also, because they are the two sides of the same coin. joy you cannot invite; if it happens then thought takes charge of it and remembers it and pursues that joy which you had a year ago, or yesterday, and which becomes pleasure. And when there is enjoyment – seeing a beautiful sunset, a lovely tree, or the deep shadow of a lake – then that enjoyment is registered in the brain as memory and the pursuit of that memory is pleasure.
There is fear, pleasure, joy. Is it possible – this is a much more complex problem – is it possible to observe a sunset, the beauty of a person, the lovely shape of an ancient tree in a solitary field, the enjoyment of it, the beauty of it – observe it without registering it in the brain, which then becomes memory, and the pursuit of that tomorrow? That is, to see something beautiful and end it, not carry it on.
There is another principle in man. Besides fear and pleasure, there is the principle of suffering. Is there an end to suffering? We want suffering to end physically, therefore we take drugs and do all kinds of yoga tricks and all that. But we have never been able to solve this question of suffering, human suffering, not only of a particular human being but the suffering of the whole of humanity. There is your suffering, and millions and millions of people in the world are suffering, through war, through starvation, through brutality, through violence, through bombs. And can that suffering in you as a human being end? Can it come to an end in you, because your consciousness is the consciousness of the world, is the consciousness of every other human being? You may have a different peripheral behaviour but basically, deeply, your consciousness is the consciousness of every other human being in the world. Suffering, pleasure, fear, ambition, all that is your consciousness. So you are the world. And if you are completely free of fear you affect the consciousness of the world. Do you understand how extraordinarily important it is that we human beings change, fundamentally, because that will affect the consciousness of every other human being? Hitler, Stalin affected all the consciousness of the world, what the priests have achieved in the name of somebody has affected the world. So if you as human beings radically transform, are free of fear, you will naturally affect the consciousness of the world.