Observe your fear | Krishnamurti

Can you, as a human being, observe your fear? Sitting there, you know your fears, can you observe it, very carefully? Take time, we have got plenty of time.

Observe it. Fear of death, fear of loneliness, fear of tomorrow, fear of losing a job, fear of losing your wife, or your girl, or your boy, losing your position, losing the vitality, the energy, fear of not being as intellectual, verbal or clever as another. To be aware of it, to observe it.

Now, listen to this carefully, if you don’t mind. Does the word 'fear' create fear, or fear exists without the word? You've understood my question?

Does the word ‘fear’ awaken fear? Or, without the word, this thing called fear exists? Please, this is very important for you to find out if you're serious about the freedom from fear, total freedom from fear, psychologically.

Then we can, if one understands the freedom, psychologically, from fear, then the biological fears become a totally different thing. Don’t they? If there is freedom from fear, inwardly, then biologically there is the activity of intelligence which says, 'Do this and don’t do that', which we'll discuss after.

First, we must have a dialogue about psychological fear. So, we're asking, when you observe your fear you use the word ‘fear’, instantly, and the word is not the thing. The word ‘tent’ is not the actual tent.

So, the word is not the thing. Right? Come on!

So, is the word 'fear' the actuality? Or the actuality exists without the word? It's very important to find out because we are caught in words.

Words and their symbols and their meanings have become tremendously important. So, can you separate the word from the fact – the word ‘tent’ and the actuality? I use the word ‘tent’ to describe this, to communicate, but the communication, the word, the description is not the thing.

Right? So, similarly, the word, is it fear? Or is the word separate from the feeling?

This is tremendously important to find out because every human being is caught in this fear, of tomorrow, of yesterday’s misfortunes, of guilt, what he has done, or not done, what he hopes to do and he may not be able to do. He wants to succeed and fails, you know, the constant dread of pain, psychological pain, psychological demands and frustrations, all that, because we live with it. We have lived with it for a million years.

Man has not been able to solve it, he postpones it, he avoids it, he runs away from it. So, here we're asking, can you separate the word from the feeling? Or the word has created the feeling, and without the word, there may be no feeling, and if there is feeling, what is it?

You understand? Please, do understand this. Suppose I'm afraid of not being able to talk to an audience – to you – because I have cancer or something – I haven’t got it, don’t worry, or doesn’t matter if you worry, I haven’t got it.

Suppose I have cancer and I'm frustrated because I want to express, if I'm silly enough to want to express. I'm frightened, I lose… And I'm afraid, not only of biological pain but also frustrated, deeply wounded, hurt by not being able to communicate, because that has been my… I've been doing this for the last fifty years or more, so I'm frightened – I'm not, but I'm supposing. Now, that fear – I'm asking myself, is the word making the fear?

Or does this feeling exist by itself? If the feeling exists by itself, what is that feeling? The feeling is no tomorrow – you understand?

– pain and all the rest of it. So, the feeling is sensation, isn’t it? Without the word the feeling is a sensation, but with the word it becomes fear.

I wonder if you capture it! Do you get it? It must be in your blood!

I will repeat it once more. See it. You see, we associate always the word with the thing.

The moment you use the word ‘tent’, you have a picture of the tent – small, big, coloured, you know, whatever it is, you have a picture of it, instantly. To separate the word from the fact. The fact – this – is not the word.

Right? That's simple. Fear, we all know, every human being, right through the world, knows this appalling thing called fear, and that has burdened man for a million years.

And when you're frightened you shrink, you become blind, you are paralysed, you have lost everything. You know that feeling, I'm sure of it. So, you have to find out – for yourself, not repeat what the speaker is saying, that's of no value – find out for yourself whether the feeling is separate from the word, the word being 'fear', and find out, also, if the word is creating this feeling.

If there is a separation of the word from the feeling, then you have the feeling. But the moment you name that feeling, it becomes fear. And when you don’t name it, it is a sensation.

Right? And, look at that sensation with the totality of all your senses. You understand what I'm talking about?