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Krishnamurti

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Now, when we say that we must inquire into something, is there in fact any inquiring to be done, or is there only direct perception? Do you understand? I hope I am making myself clear. Inquiry is generally a process of analyzing and coming to a conclusion. That is the function of the mind, of the intellect, is it not? The intellect says, ''I have analyzed, and this is the conclusion I have come to.'' From that conclusion it moves to another conclusion, and so it keeps going.
Surely, when thought springs from a conclusion, it is no longer thinking because the mind has already concluded. There is thinking only when there is no conclusion. This again you will have to ponder over, neither accepting nor rejecting it. If I conclude that communism or Catholicism or some other ism is so, I have stopped thinking. If I conclude that there is God or that there is no God, I have ceased to inquire. Conclusion takes the form of belief. If I am to find out whether there is God, or what is the true function of the state in relation to the individual, I can never start from a conclusion because the conclusion is a form of commitment.
So the function of the intellect is always, is it not, to inquire, to analyze, to search out; but because we want to be secure inwardly, psychologically, because we are afraid, anxious about life, we come to some form of conclusion to which we are committed. From one commitment we proceed to another, and I say that such a mind, such an intellect, being slave to a conclusion, has ceased to think, to inquire.
I do not know if you have observed what an enormous part the intellect plays in our life. The newspapers, the magazines, everything about us is cultivating reason. Not that I am against reason. On the contrary, one must have the capacity to reason very clearly, sharply. But if you observe, you find that the intellect is everlastingly analyzing why we belong or do not belong, why one must be an outsider to find reality, and so on. We have learned the process of analyzing ourselves. So there is the intellect with its capacity to inquire, to analyze, to reason and come to conclusions; and there is feeling, pure feeling, which is always being interrupted, colored by the intellect. And when the intellect interferes with pure feeling, out of this interference grows a mediocre mind. On the one hand we have intellect, with its capacity to reason based upon its likes and dislikes, upon its conditioning, upon its experience and knowledge; and on the other, we have feeling, which is corrupted by society, by fear. And will these two reveal what is true? Or is there only perception, and nothing else? I am afraid I am not making myself clear. I will explain what I mean.
To me there is only perception - which is to see something as false or true immediately. This immediate perception of what is false and what is true is the essential factor - not the intellect, with its reasoning based upon its cunning, its knowledge, its commitments. It must sometimes have happened to you that you have seen the truth of something immediately, such as the truth that you cannot belong to anything. That is perception: seeing the truth of something immediately, without analysis, without reasoning, without all the things that the intellect creates in order to postpone perception. It is entirely different from intuition, which is a word that we use with glibness and ease. And perception has nothing to do with experience. Experience tells you that you must belong to something; otherwise, you will be destroyed, you will lose your job, or your family, or your property, or your position and prestige.
So the intellect, with all its reasoning, with its cunning evaluations, with its conditioned thinking, says that you must belong to something, that you must commit yourself in order to survive. But if you perceive the truth that the individual must stand completely alone, then that very perception is a liberating factor; you do not have to struggle to be alone. To me there is only this direct perception - not reasoning, not calculation, not analysis. You must have the capacity to analyze; you must have a good, sharp mind in order to reason, but a mind that is limited to reason and analysis is incapable of perceiving what is truth. To perceive immediately the truth that it is folly to belong to any religious organization, you must be able to look into your heart of hearts, to know it thoroughly, without all the obstructions created by the intellect. If you commune with yourself, you will know why you belong, why you have committed yourself; and if you push further, you will see the slavery, the cutting down of freedom, the lack of human dignity which that commitment entails. When you perceive all this instantaneously, you are free; you don't have to make an effort to be free. That is why perception is essential. All efforts to be free come from self-contradiction. We make an effort because we are in a state of contradiction within ourselves, and this contradiction, this effort, breeds many avenues of escape which hold us everlastingly in the treadmill of slavery.
So it seems to me that one must be very serious, but I do not mean serious in the sense of being committed to something. People who are committed to something are not serious at all. They have given themselves over to something in order to achieve their own ends, in order to enhance their own position or prestige. Such people I do not call serious. The serious man is he who wants to find out what is freedom, and for this he must surely inquire into his own slavery. Don't say you are not a slave. You belong to something, and that is slavery, though your leaders talk of freedom. So did Hitler, so does Khrushchev. Every tyrant, every guru, every president or vice-president, everyone in the whole religious and political setup talks of freedom. But freedom is something entirely different. It is a precious fruit without which you lose human dignity. It is love, without which you will never find God, or truth, or that nameless thing. Do what you will - cultivate all the virtues, sacrifice, slave, search out ways to serve man - without freedom, none of these will bring to light that reality within your own heart. That reality, that immeasurable something, comes when there is freedom - the total inward freedom which exists only when you have not committed yourself, when you do not belong to anything, when you are able to stand completely alone without bitterness, without cynicism, without hope or disappointment. Only such a mind-heart is capable of receiving that which is immeasurable.
It seems strange that we cannot find a way of living in which there is neither conflict, nor misery, nor confusion but a great abundance of love and consideration. We read books by intellectual people which tell us how society should be organized economically, socially and morally. Then we turn to books by religious people and theologians with their speculative ideas. Apparently it seems very difficult for most of us to find a way of living which is alive, peaceful, full of energy and clarity, without depending on others. We are supposed to be very mature and sophisticated people. Those of us who are older have lived through two appalling wars, through revolutions, upheavals, and every form of unhappiness. And yet here we are, on a beautiful morning, talking about all these things, perhaps waiting to be told what to do, to be shown a practical way of living, to follow somebody who may give us some key to the beauty of life and the greatness of something beyond the daily round.
I wonder - and so may you - why we listen to others. Why is it that we cannot find clarity for ourselves in our own minds and hearts, without any distortion; why need we be burdened by books? Can we not live unperturbed, fully, with great ecstasy and really at peace? This state of affairs seems to me very odd indeed, but there it is. Have you ever wondered if you could live a life completely without any effort or strife? We are endlessly making effort to change this, to transform that, to suppress this, to accept that, to imitate, to follow certain formulas and ideas.
And I wonder if we have ever asked ourselves if it is possible to live without conflict - not in intellectual isolation or in an emotional, sentimental, rather woolly way of life - but to live without any kind of effort at all. Because effort, however pleasant (or unpleasant), gratifying or profitable, does distort and pervert the mind. It is like a machine that is always grinding, never running smoothly and so wearing itself out very quickly. Then one asks - and I think it is a worthwhile question - whether it is possible to live without effort, but without becoming lazy, isolated, indifferent, lacking in sensitivity, without becoming a sluggish human being. All our life, from the moment we are born till we die, is an endless struggle to adjust, to change, to become something. And this struggle and conflict make for confusion, dull the mind and our hearts become insensitive.
So is it possible - not as an idea, or as something hopeless, beyond our measure - to find a way to live without conflict, not merely superficially but also deep down in the so-called unconscious, within our own depths? Perhaps this morning we can go into that question very deeply.
First of all, why do we invent conflicts, either pleasurable or unpleasurable, and is it possible to end this? Can we end this and live a totally different kind of life, with great energy, clarity, intellectual capacity, reason, and have a heart that is full of abundant love in the real sense of the word? I think we should apply our minds and our hearts to find out, get involved in this completely.
There is obviously conflict because of contradiction in ourselves, which expresses itself outwardly in society, in the activity of the `me' and the `not me.' That is, the `me' with all its ambitions, drives, pursuits, pleasures ,anxieties, hate, competition and fears, and the `other' which is `not me.' There is also the idea about living without conflict or opposing contradictory desires, pursuits and drives. If we are aware of this tension, we can see this in ourselves, the pulls of contradictory demands, opposing beliefs, ideas and pursuits. contradictions that bring about conflict. I think that is fairly clear, if we watch it in ourselves. The pattern of it is repeated over and over again, not only in daily life but also in so-called religious living - between heaven and hell, the good and the bad, the noble and ignoble, love and hate and so on. If I may suggest, please do not merely listen to the words but observe yourselves non-analytically, using the speaker as a mirror in which you see yourselves factually, so that you become aware of the workings of your own mind and heart, as you look into that mirror. One can see how any form of division, separation or contradiction, within or outside oneself, inevitably brings conflict between violence and non-violence. Realizing this state of affairs as it is actually, is it possible to end it, not only at the superficial level of our consciousness, in our daily living, but also deep down at the very roots of our being, so that there is no contradiction, no opposing demands and desires, no activity of the dualistic fragmentary mind? Now how is this to be done? One builds a bridge between the `me' and the `not me' - the `me' with all its ambitions, drives and contradictions, and the `not me' which is the ideal, which is the formula, the concept. We are always trying to build a bridge between `what is' and `what should be'. And in that there is contradiction and conflict and all our energies are wasted in this way. Can the mind stop dividing and remain entirely with what is? In the understanding of what is, is there any conflict at all?
I would like to go into this question, looking at it differently, in relation to freedom and fear. Most of us want freedom, though we live in self-centred activity and our days are spent in concern about ourselves, our failures and fulfilments. We want to be free - not only politically, which is comparatively easy, except in the world of dictatorships - but also free from religious propaganda. Any religion, ancient or modern, is the work of propagandists and is therefore not religion at all. The more serious one is, the more one is concerned with the whole business of living, the more one seeks freedom and is questioning, without accepting or believing. One wants to be free in order to find out whether there is such a thing as reality, whether there is something eternal, timeless, or not. There is this extraordinary demand to be free in every relationship, but that freedom generally becomes a self-isolating process and therefore is not true freedom.
In the very demand for freedom there is fear. Because freedom may involve complete, absolute insecurity and one is frightened of being completely insecure. Insecurity seems a very dangerous thing - every child demands security in its relationships. And as we grow older we keep on demanding security and certainty in all relationships - with things, with people and with ideas. That demand for security inevitably breeds fear and being afraid we depend more and more on the things to which we are attached. So there arises this question of freedom and fear and whether it is at all possible to be free of fear; not only physically, but psychologically, not only superficially but deep down in the dark corners of our mind, in the very secret recesses into which no penetration has been made. Can the mind be utterly, completely free from all fear? It is fear that destroys love - this is not a theory - it is fear that makes for anxiety, attachment, possessiveness, domination, jealousy in all relationships, it is fear that makes for violence. As one can observe in the overcrowded cities with their exploding populations, there is great insecurity, uncertainty, fear. And it is partly this that makes for violence. Can we be free of fear, so that when you leave this hall you walk out without any shadow of the darkness that fear brings?
To understand fear we must examine not only physical fears but the vast network of psychological fears. Perhaps we can go into this. The question is: how does fear arise - what keeps it sustained, gives it duration, and is it possible to end it? Physical fears are fairly easy to understand. There is instant response to physical danger and that response is the response of many centuries of conditioning, because without this there would not have been physical survival, life would have ended. Physically one must survive and the tradition of thousands of years says `be careful,' memory says `be careful there is danger, act immediately.' But is this physical response to danger fear? please do follow all this carefully, because we are going to go into something quite simple, yet complex, and unless you give your whole attention to it we shall not understand it. We are asking whether that physical, sensory response to danger involving immediate action is fear? Or is it intelligence and therefore not fear at all? And is intelligence a matter of the cultivation of tradition and memory? If it is, why doesn't it operate completely, as it should, in the psychological field, where one is so terribly frightened about so many things? Why doesn't that same intelligence which we find when we observe danger, operate when there are psychological fears? Is this physical intelligence applicable to the psychological nature of man? That is, there are fears of various kinds which we all know - fear of death, of darkness, what the wife or the husband will say or do, or what the neighbour or the boss will think - the whole network of fears. We are not going to deal with the details of various forms of fear; we are concerned with fear itself, not a particular fear. And when there is fear and we become aware of it, there is a movement to escape from it; either suppressing it, running away from it, or taking flight through various forms of entertainment, including religious ones, or developing courage which is resistance to fear. Escape, entertainment and courage are all various forms of resistance to the actual fact of fear.
The greater the fear the greater the resistance to it and so various neurotic activities are set up. There is fear, and the mind - or the `me' - says `there must be no fear, ' and so there is duality. There is the `me' which is different from fear, which escapes from fear and resists it, which cultivates energy, theorizes or goes to the analyst; and there is the `not me'! The `not me' is fear; the `me' is separate from that fear. So there is immediate conflict between the fear, and the `me' that is overcoming that fear. There is the watcher and the watched. The watched being fear, and the watcher being the `me' that wants to get rid of that fear. So there is an opposition, a contradiction, a separation and hence there is conflict between fear and the `me' that wants to be rid of that fear. Are we communicating with each other?
So the problem consigns of this conflict between the `not me' of fear and the `me' who thinks it is different from it and resists fear; or who tries to overcome it, escape from it, suppress it or control it. This division will invariably bring conflict, as it does between two nations with their armies and their navies and their separate sovereign governments.
So there is the watcher and the thing watched - the watcher saying `I must get rid of this terrible thing, I must do away with it.' The watcher is always fighting, is in a state of conflict. This has become our habit, our tradition, our conditioning. And it is one of the most difficult things to break any kind of habit, because we like to live in habits, such as smoking, drinking, or sexual or psychological habits; and so it is with nations, sovereign governments which say `my country and your country,' `my God and your God,' `my belief and your belief.' It is our tradition to fight, to resist fear and therefore increase the conflict and so give more life to fear.
If this is clear, then we can go on to the next step, which is: is there any actual difference between the watcher and the watched, in this particular case? The watcher thinks he is different from the watched, which is fear. Is there any difference between him and the thing he watches or are they both the same? Obviously they are both the same. The watcher is the watched - if something totally new comes along then there is no watcher at all. But because the watcher recognizes his reaction as fear, which he has known previously, there is this division. And as you go into it very, very deeply, you discover for yourself - as I hope you are doing now - that the watcher and the watched are essentially the same. Therefore if they are the same, you eliminate altogether the contradiction, the `me' and the `not me,' and with them you also wipe away all kind of effort totally. But this does not mean that you accept fear, or identify yourself with fear.
There is fear, the thing watched, and the watcher who is part of that fear. So what is to be done? (Are you working as hard as the speaker is working? If you merely listen to the words, then I am afraid you will not solve this question of fear deeply.) There is only fear - not the watcher who watches fear, because the watcher is fear. There are several things that take place. First, what is fear and how does it come about? We are not talking about the results of fear, or the cause of fear, or how it darkens one's life with its misery and ugliness. But we are asking what fear is and how it comes about. Must one analyze it continuously to discover the endless causes of fear? Because when you begin to analyze, the analyzer must be extraordinarily free from all prejudices and conditionings; he has to look, to observe. Otherwise if there is any kind of distortion in his judgment, that distortion increases as he continues to analyze.
So analysis in order to end fear is not the ending of it. I hope there are some analysts here! Because in discovering the cause of fear and acting upon that discovery, the cause becomes the effect, and the effect becomes the cause. The effect, and acting upon that effect in order to find the cause, and discovering the cause and acting according to that cause, becomes the next stage. It becomes both effect and cause in an endless chain. If we put aside the understanding of the cause of fear and the analysis of fear, then what is there to do?
You know, this is not an entertainment but there is great joy in discovery, there is great fun in understanding all this. So what makes fear? Time and thought make fear - time as yesterday, today and tomorrow; there is the fear that tomorrow something will happen - the loss of a job, death, that my wife or my husband will run away, that the disease and pain that I have had many days ago will come back again. This is where time comes in. Time, involving what my neighbour may say about me tomorrow, or time which up to now has covered up something which I did many years ago. I am afraid of some deep secret desires which might not be fulfilled. So time is involved in fear, fear of death which comes at the end of life, which may be waiting around the corner and I am afraid. So time involves fear and thought. There is no time if there is no thought. Thinking about that which happened yesterday, being afraid that it may happen again tomorrow - this is what brings about time as well as fear.
Do watch this, please look at it for yourself - don't accept or reject anything; but listen, find out for yourself the truth of this, not just the words, not whether you agree or disagree, but go on. To find the truth you must have feeling, a passion for finding out, great energy. Then you will find that thought breeds fear; thinking about the past or the future - the future being the next minute or the next day or ten years hence - thinking about it makes it an event. And thinking about an event which was pleasurable yesterday, sustains or gives continuity to that pleasure, whether that pleasure be sexual, sensory, intellectual or psychological; thinking about it, building an image as most people do, gives to that event in the past a continuity through thought and breeds more pleasure.
Thought breeds fear as well as pleasure; they are both matters of time. So thought engenders this two-sided coin of pleasure and pain - which is fear. Then what is there to do? We worship thought which has become so extraordinarily important that we think the more cunning it is, the better it is. In the business world, in the religious world, or in the world of the family, thought is used by the intellectual who indulges in the use of this coin, in the garland of words. How we honour the people who are intellectually, verbally clever in their thinking! But thinking is responsible for fear and the thing called pleasure.
We are not saying we shouldn't have pleasure. We are not being puritanical, we are trying to understand it, and in the very understanding of this whole process, fear comes to an end. Then you will see that pleasure is something entirely different, and we shall go into this if we have time. So thought is responsible for this agony - one side is agony, the other side is pleasure and its continuance: the demand for and the pursuit of pleasure, including the religious and every other form of pleasure. Then what is thought to do? Can it end? Is that the right question? And who is to end it? - is it the `me' who is not thought? But the `me' is the result of thought. And therefore you have again the same old problem; the me, and the `not me' which is the watcher who says, `If only I could end thought then I'd live a different kind of life.' But there is only thought and not the watcher who says, `I want to end thought,' because the watcher is the product of thought. And how does thought come into being? One can see very easily, it is the response of memory, experience and knowledge which is the brain, the seat of memory. When anything is asked of it, it responds by a reaction which is memory and recognition. The brain is the result of millennia of evolution and conditioning - thought is always old, thought is never free, thought is the response of all conditioning.
What is to be done? When thought realizes that it cannot possibly do anything about fear because it creates fear, then there is silence; then there is complete negation of any movement which breeds fear. Therefore the mind, including the brain, observes this whole phenomenon of habit and the contradiction and struggle between the `me' and the `not me.' It realizes that the watcher is the watched. And seeing that fear cannot be merely analyzed and put aside, but that it will always be there, the mind also sees that analysis is not the way.
Then one asks: what is the origin of fear? How does it arise?
We said that it came about through time and thought. Thought is the response of memory and so thought creates fear. And fear cannot end through the mere control or suppression of thought, or by trying to transmute thought, or indulging in all the tricks one plays on oneself. Realizing this whole pattern choicelessly, objectively, in oneself, seeing all this thought itself says, `I will be quiet without any control or suppression,' `I will be still.
So then there is the ending of fear, which means the ending of sorrow and the understanding of oneself - self-knowing. Without knowing oneself there is no ending of sorrow and fear. It is only a mind that is free from fear that can face reality.
Perhaps you would now care to ask questions. One must ask questions - this asking, this exposing of oneself to oneself here is necessary, and also when you are by yourself in your room or in your garden, sitting quietly in the bus or walking - you must ask questions in order to find out. But one has to ask the right question, and in the very asking of the right question is the right answer
here is a creeper - I think, it is called the morning glory - which has that extraordinary pale blue color that only flowers have, or a deep purple with a touch of mauve, or a peculiar white. Only living flowers have those colors. They come, they bloom in the morning - the trumpet-shaped flowers - and then within a few hours they die. You must have seen those flowers. In their death they are almost as beautiful as when they are alive. They bloom for a few hours and cease to be, and in their death they do not lose the quality of a flower. And we live for thirty, forty, sixty, eighty years in great conflict, in misery, in passing pleasures, and we die rather miserably without delight in our heart, and in death we are as ugly as in life.
I am going to talk this evening about time, sorrow, and death. We must, I think, be very clear that we are not talking about ideas, but only about facts. That flower, blooming, full of beauty, delicate, with delicate fragrance - that is a fact. And the dying of it after a few hours when the wind comes and the sun rises, and the beauty of it even in death - that is also a fact. So we are going to deal with facts and not with ideas.
You can imagine, if you have got imagination, the color of those flowers. Have a picture, mentally conjure up an image of that creeper with its delicate colors, the flowers of delicate colors, the extraordinary beauty of the flowers. But your image, your idea about the creeper, your feeling about the creeper, is not the creeper. The creeper with its flowers is a fact. And your idea about the flowers, though it is a fact, is not actual. You are not actually in contact with the flower through an idea. I think this must be borne in mind throughout this talk: that we are dealing with facts and not with ideas, and that you cannot touch intimately, directly, concretely, come into contact with a fact through an idea. Death cannot be experienced. One cannot come directly into contact with it through an idea. Most of us live with ideas, with formulas, with concepts, with memory; and so we never come into contact with anything. We are mostly in contact with our ideas, but not with the fact.
And I am going to discuss, rather I am going to talk about, time, sorrow, and that strange phenomenon called death. One can either interpret them as ideas, as conclusions, or come directly into contact with the whole problem of time and the dimension of time. One can come directly into contact with sorrow - that is, that sense of extraordinary grief. And also one can come directly into contact with that thing called death. Either we come directly into contact with time, sorrow, love, and death, or we treat them as a series of conclusions - the inevitableness of death or the explanations. The explanations, the conclusions, the opinions, the beliefs, the concepts, the symbols have nothing whatsoever to do with the reality - with the reality of time, with the reality of sorrow, with the reality of death and love. And if you are going merely to live or look or come, or hope to come into contact with the dimension of time, sorrow, or death through your idea, through your opinion, then what we are going to say will have very little meaning altogether. In fact, you would not be listening at all, you would be merely hearing words; and being in contact with your own ideas, with your own conclusions, opinions, you would not be in direct contact.
I mean by contact: I can touch this table, I am directly in contact with the table. But I am not in contact with the table if I have ideas of how I should touch the table. So the idea prevents me from coming directly, intimately, forcefully in contact. And during this hour, if you are not directly in contact with what is being said, then you will continue living a wasteful life. We have this life to live. We are not discussing the future life - we will come to that presently. We have this life to live. We have lived waste-fully, without life itself having any significance. We live in travail, in misery, in conflict, and so on, and we have never been in contact with life itself. And it would be a thousand pities - at least I think so - if you are merely in contact with ideas and not with facts.
We are going to talk about time, first. I do not know if you have thought at all about this thing called time - not abstractly, not as an idea, not as a definition - if you have actually come into contact with time. When you are hungry, you are in contact directly with hunger. But what you should eat, how much you should eat, the pleasure you want to derive from eating, and so on - those are ideas. The fact is one thing and the idea is another. So to understand this extraordinary question of time, you must be intimately in contact with it - not through ideas, not through conclusions, but intimately, directly, with tremendous intimacy with time. Then you will be able to go into the question of time, and see whether the mind can be free from time.
There is obviously the question of time by the watch, chronological time. That, obviously, is necessary. In that is involved the question of memory, planning, design, and so on. We are not discussing that time, the chronological time of every day. But we are going to talk about time which is not by the watch. We do not live only by chronological time; we live much more by a time which is not by the watch. For us, time which is not chronological is much more important, has much more significance, than time by the watch. That is, though chronological time has importance, what has much more importance, greater significance, greater validity for most people is psychological time - time as continuity; time as yesterday, a thousand yesterdays and traditions; and time not only as the present but as the future.
So we have time as the past - the past being the memory, the knowledge, the tradition, the experiences, the things remembered - and the present, which is the passage of yesterday to the time of tomorrow, which is shaped, controlled by the past through the present. For us that has tremendous significance, not the time by the watch; and in that dimension of time we live. We live with the past, in conflict with the present, which creates the tomorrow. This is an obvious fact. There is nothing complex about it. So there is time as continuity and there is time as the future and the past; and the past shapes our thinking, our activity, our outlook, and so conditions the future.
We use time as a means of evolving, as a means of achieving, as a means of gradual changing. We use time because we are indolent, lazy. Because we have not found the way of transforming ourselves immediately, or because we are frightened of immediate change and the consequences of the change, we say, ''I will gradually change.'' Therefore we use time as a means of postponement, time as a means of gradually achieving, and time as a means of change. We need time by the watch to learn a technique; to learn a language we need time, a few months. But we use time - psychological time, not time by the watch - as a means of changing, and so we introduce the gradual process: ''I will gradually achieve; I will become; I am this and I will become that, through time.''
And time is the product of thought. If you did not think about tomorrow or look back in thought to the past, you would be living in the now; there would be neither the future nor the past; you would be completely living for the day, giving to the day your fullest, richest, complete attention. As we do not know how to live so completely, totally, fully, with such urgency, in today, bringing about a complete transformation in today, we have invented the idea of tomorrow: ''I will change tomorrow; I will; I must conform tomorrow, and so on.'' So, thought creates psychological time, and thought also brings fear.
Please follow all this. If you do not understand these things of which I am talking now, you won't understand them at the end. They will be just words, and you will be left with ashes.
Most of us have fears: fear of the doctor, fear of disease, fear of not achieving, fear of being left alone, fear of old age, fear of poverty; these are outward fears. Then there are a thousand and one inward fears: the fear of public opinion, of death, of being left completely alone so that you have to face life without a companion, the fear of loneliness, the fear of not reaching what you call God. So, man has a thousand and one fears. And being frightened, he either escapes in a vast network, subtle or crude; or he rationalizes these fears; or he becomes neurotic because he cannot understand it, he cannot resolve it; or he completely runs away from fear, from various fears, through identification or social activities, reformation, joining a political party, and so on.
Please, I am talking not of ideas but of what actually is taking place in each one of you. So you are not merely listening to my words, but through the words that are being used, you are looking at yourself. You are looking at yourself, not through ideas, but by coming directly into contact with the fact that you are frightened - which is entirely different from the idea that you are frightened.
So unless you understand the nature of fear and are completely free of it totally, your gods, your escapes, your doing of all kinds of social work, and so on, have no meaning because you are then a destructive human being, exploiting, and you cannot resolve this fear. A neurotic human being with his innumerable fears, in whatever he does - however good it may be - is always bringing to his action the seed of destruction, the seed of deterioration, because his action is an escape from the fact.
Most of us are frightened, have secret fears; and being afraid, we run away from them. The running away from the fact implies that the objects to which you run away become much more important than the fact. You understand? I am frightened; I have escaped from it through drink, through going to the temple, God, and all the rest of it; so the god, the temple, the pub become far more important than the fear. I protect the god, the temple, the pub much more vigorously because to me, they have become extraordinarily important, they are the symbols which give me the assurance that I can escape from fear. The temple, the god, nationalism, the political commitment, the formulas that one has become far more important than the resolution of the fear. So unless you totally resolve fear, you cannot possibly understand what fear is, what love is, or what sorrow is.
A mind that is really religious, a mind that is really socially minded, a mind that is creative, has completely, totally, to put away, or understand, or resolve this problem of fear. If you live with fear of any kind, you are wasting your life because fear brings darkness. I do not know if you have noticed what happens to you when you are frightened of something. All your nerves, your heart, everything becomes tight, hard, frightened. Haven't you noticed it? There is not only physical fear but also psychological fear, which is much more. Physical fear, which is a self-protective physical response, is natural. When you see a snake, you run away from it, you jump - that is a natural, self-protective fear. It is not really fear; it is merely a reaction to live, which is not fear because you recognize the poison, and you move away. We are talking not only of physical fear but much more of the fear that thought has created.
We are going into this question of fear. Unless you follow it step by step, you won't be able to resolve it. We are going to come into contact directly with fear - not what you are frightened about. What you are frightened about is an idea, but fear itself is not an idea. Suppose one is frightened - as most people, the young and the old, are - of public opinion, of death. It does not matter what they are frightened of; take your own example. I will take death. I am frightened of death. Fear exists only in relationship with something. Fear does not exist by itself but only in relation to something. I am frightened of public opinion. I am frightened of death, I am frightened of darkness, I am frightened of losing a job. So fear arises in connection with something.
Let us say I am frightened of death. I have seen death. I have seen bodies being burned. I have seen a dead leaf falling to the ground. I have seen so many dead things. And I am frightened of dying, coming to an end. Now there is this fear in relation to death, loneliness, a dozen things. How do I look at, or come into contact with, fear as I come into contact with this table? Am I making myself clear? To come directly into contact with fear - I hope you are doing it, not merely listening - to come directly into contact with that emotion, with that feeling called fear, the word, the thought, the idea must not come in at all. Right? That is, to come into contact with a person, I must touch his hand, I must hold his hand. But I do not come into contact with that person, though I may hold his hand, if I have ideas about him, if I have prejudices, if I like or dislike. So, in spite of my holding his hand, the image, the idea, the thought, prevents me from coming into contact directly with that man. So, in the same way, to come directly into contact with your fear - with your particular fear, conscious or unconscious fear - you must come into contact with it, not through your idea. So one must first see how the idea interferes with coming into contact. When you understand that the idea interferes with coming into contact, you no longer fight the idea. When you understand the idea - the idea being the opinion, the formula, and so on - you are then directly in contact with your fear, and there is no escape, either verbal or through a conclusion, or through an opinion, or through any form of escape. When you are in contact with fear, in that sense, then you will find - as you are finding when we are discussing what we are talking about - that fear altogether disappears. And the mind must be free of all fears, not only the secret fears, but the open fears, the fears of which you are conscious. Then only can you look at the thing called sorrow.
You know, man has lived with sorrow for millennia, many thousands, millions of years. You have lived with sorrow, you have not resolved it. Either you worship sorrow as a means to enlightenment or you escape from sorrow. You put sorrow on a pedestal, symbolically identified with a person, or you rationalize it, or you escape from it. But sorrow is there.
I mean by sorrow the loss of someone, the sorrow of failure, the sorrow that comes upon you when you see that you are inefficient, incapable, the sorrow that you find when you have no love in your heart, that you live entirely by your ugly little mind; there is the sorrow of losing someone whom you think you love. We live with this sorrow night and day, never going beyond it, never ending it. Again, a mind burdened with sorrow becomes insensitive, becomes enclosed; it has no affection, it has no sympathy; it may show words of sympathy, but in itself, in its heart, it has no sympathy, no affection, no love. And sorrow breeds self-pity. Most of us carry this burden all through life, and we do not seem to be able to end it. And there is the sorrow of time. You understand? We carry this sorrow to the end of our life, not being able to resolve it. There is a much greater sorrow: to live with something which you cannot understand, which is eating your heart and mind, darkening your life. There is also the sorrow of loneliness, being completely alone, lonely, companionless, cut off from all contacts, ultimately leading to a neurotic state and mental illness and psychosomatic diseases.
So, there is vast sorrow, not only of a human being, but also the sorrow of the race. How do you resolve sorrow? You have to resolve it, just as you resolve fear. There is no future - you can invent a future. There is no future for a man who is living with intelligence, who is sensitive, alive, young, fresh, innocent. Therefore you must resolve fear, you must end sorrow.
Again, to end sorrow is to come into contact with that extraordinary feeling, without self-pity, without opinion, without formulas, without explanation - just to come directly into contact with it, as one would come into contact with a table. And that is one of the most difficult things for people to do: to put away ideas and to come into direct contact.
Then, there is the problem of death - and with the problem of death, the problem of old age. You all know that death is inevitable - inevitable through senility, through old age, through disease, through accident. Though scientists are trying to prolong life by another fifty years or more, death is inevitable. Why they want to prolong this agonizing existence, God only knows! But that is what we want. And to understand death, we must come into contact with death; it demands a mind that is not afraid, that is not thinking in terms of time, that is not living in the dimension of time - which I have explained. To live with death - I am going to go into it.
You know, we have put death at the end of life - it is somewhere there, in the distance. And we are trying to put it as far away as possible, as long away as possible. We know there is death. And so we invent the hereafter. We say, ''I have lived, I have built a character, I have done things. Will all things end in death? There must be a future.'' The future, the afterlife, reincarnation - all that is an escape from the fact of today, from the fact of coming into contact with death.
Think of your life, what is it? Actually look at your life which you want to prolong! What is your life? A constant battle, a constant confusion, an occasional flash of pleasure, boredom, sorrow, fear, agony, despair, jealousy, envy, ambition - that is your life actually, with diseases, with pettiness. And you want to prolong that life after death!
And if you believe in reincarnation - as you are supposed to believe, as your scriptures talk about it - then what matters is what you are now. Because what you are now is going to condition your future. So what you are, what you do, what you think, what you feel, how you live - all this matters infinitely. If you do not even believe in reincarnation, then there is only this life; then it matters tremendously what you do, what you think, what you feel, whether you exploit or whether you do not exploit, whether you love, whether you have feeling, whether you are sensitive, whether there is beauty. But to live like that, you have to understand death and not put it far away at the end of your life - which is a life of sorrow, a life of fear, a life of despair, a life of uncertainty. So you have to bring death close; that is, you have to die.
Do you know what it is to die? You have seen death enough. You have seen a man being carried to the burning place where he will be destroyed. You have seen death. Most people are frightened of that. Death is as that flower dies, as that creeper dies with all the morning glories. With that beauty, with that delicacy, it dies without regret, without argument; it comes to an end. But we escape from death through time - which is, it is over there. We say, ''I have a few more years to live, and I shall be born next life''; or, ''This is the only life, and therefore let me make the best of it; let me have all the greatest fun, let me make it the greatest show.'' And so, we never come into contact with that extraordinary thing called death. Death is to die to everything of the past, to die to your pleasure.
Have you ever tried without argument, without persuasion, without compulsion, without necessity, to die to a pleasure? You are going to die inevitably. But have you tried to die today, easily, happily, to your pleasure, to your remembrances, to your hates, to your ambitions, to your urgency to gather money? All that you want of life is money, position, power, and the envy of another. Can you die to them, can you die to the things that you know, easily, without any argument, without any explanation? Please bear in mind that you are not hearing a few words and ideas, but you are actually coming into contact with a pleasure - your sexual pleasure, for example - and dying to it. That is what you are going to do anyhow. You are going to die - that is, die to everything you know, your body, your mind, the things that you have built up. So, you say, ''Is that all? Is all my life to end in death?'' All the things you have done - the service, the books, the knowledge, the experiences, the pleasures, the affection, the family - all end in death; that is facing you. Either you die to them now or you die inevitably when the time comes. Only an intelligent man who understands the whole process is a religious man.
The man who takes the sannyasi's robes, grows a beard, goes to the temple and runs away from life - he is not a religious man. The religious man is one who dies every day and is reborn every day. That is, his mind is young, innocent, fresh. To die to your sorrow, die to your pleasure, die to the things that you hold secretly in your heart - do it; thus you will see you will not waste your life; then you will find something that is incredible, that no man has ever perceived. This is not a reward. There is no reward either. You die willingly, or you die inevitably. You have to die naturally, every day, as the flower dies, blooming, rich, full, and then to die to that beauty, to that richness, to that love, experience, and knowledge - to die so that, every day, you are reborn, so that you have a fresh mind.
You need a fresh mind; otherwise, you do not know what love is. If you do not die, your love is merely memory; your love is then caught in envy, jealousy. You have to die, every day, to everything you know - to your hatred, to your insults, to flatteries. Die to them; then you will see that time has no meaning; there is no tomorrow then, there is only the now that is beyond the yesterday and the today and the tomorrow. And it is only in the now that there is love.
A human being that has no love cannot approach truth. Without love, do what you will - do all your sacrifices, your vows of celibacy, your social work, your exploitations - nothing has any value. And you cannot love without dying every day to your memory. For love is not of memory; it is a living thing. A living thing is a movement, and that movement cannot be caged in words, or in thought, or in a mind that is merely self-seeking. Only the mind that has understood time, that has ended sorrow, that has no fear - only such a mind knows what death is, and therefore for such a mind there is life.
here is a creeper - I think, it is called the morning glory - which has that extraordinary pale blue color that only flowers have, or a deep purple with a touch of mauve, or a peculiar white. Only living flowers have those colors. They come, they bloom in the morning - the trumpet-shaped flowers - and then within a few hours they die. You must have seen those flowers. In their death they are almost as beautiful as when they are alive. They bloom for a few hours and cease to be, and in their death they do not lose the quality of a flower. And we live for thirty, forty, sixty, eighty years in great conflict, in misery, in passing pleasures, and we die rather miserably without delight in our heart, and in death we are as ugly as in life.
I am going to talk this evening about time, sorrow, and death. We must, I think, be very clear that we are not talking about ideas, but only about facts. That flower, blooming, full of beauty, delicate, with delicate fragrance - that is a fact. And the dying of it after a few hours when the wind comes and the sun rises, and the beauty of it even in death - that is also a fact. So we are going to deal with facts and not with ideas.
You can imagine, if you have got imagination, the color of those flowers. Have a picture, mentally conjure up an image of that creeper with its delicate colors, the flowers of delicate colors, the extraordinary beauty of the flowers. But your image, your idea about the creeper, your feeling about the creeper, is not the creeper. The creeper with its flowers is a fact. And your idea about the flowers, though it is a fact, is not actual. You are not actually in contact with the flower through an idea. I think this must be borne in mind throughout this talk: that we are dealing with facts and not with ideas, and that you cannot touch intimately, directly, concretely, come into contact with a fact through an idea. Death cannot be experienced. One cannot come directly into contact with it through an idea. Most of us live with ideas, with formulas, with concepts, with memory; and so we never come into contact with anything. We are mostly in contact with our ideas, but not with the fact.
And I am going to discuss, rather I am going to talk about, time, sorrow, and that strange phenomenon called death. One can either interpret them as ideas, as conclusions, or come directly into contact with the whole problem of time and the dimension of time. One can come directly into contact with sorrow - that is, that sense of extraordinary grief. And also one can come directly into contact with that thing called death. Either we come directly into contact with time, sorrow, love, and death, or we treat them as a series of conclusions - the inevitableness of death or the explanations. The explanations, the conclusions, the opinions, the beliefs, the concepts, the symbols have nothing whatsoever to do with the reality - with the reality of time, with the reality of sorrow, with the reality of death and love. And if you are going merely to live or look or come, or hope to come into contact with the dimension of time, sorrow, or death through your idea, through your opinion, then what we are going to say will have very little meaning altogether. In fact, you would not be listening at all, you would be merely hearing words; and being in contact with your own ideas, with your own conclusions, opinions, you would not be in direct contact.
I mean by contact: I can touch this table, I am directly in contact with the table. But I am not in contact with the table if I have ideas of how I should touch the table. So the idea prevents me from coming directly, intimately, forcefully in contact. And during this hour, if you are not directly in contact with what is being said, then you will continue living a wasteful life. We have this life to live. We are not discussing the future life - we will come to that presently. We have this life to live. We have lived waste-fully, without life itself having any significance. We live in travail, in misery, in conflict, and so on, and we have never been in contact with life itself. And it would be a thousand pities - at least I think so - if you are merely in contact with ideas and not with facts.
We are going to talk about time, first. I do not know if you have thought at all about this thing called time - not abstractly, not as an idea, not as a definition - if you have actually come into contact with time. When you are hungry, you are in contact directly with hunger. But what you should eat, how much you should eat, the pleasure you want to derive from eating, and so on - those are ideas. The fact is one thing and the idea is another. So to understand this extraordinary question of time, you must be intimately in contact with it - not through ideas, not through conclusions, but intimately, directly, with tremendous intimacy with time. Then you will be able to go into the question of time, and see whether the mind can be free from time.
There is obviously the question of time by the watch, chronological time. That, obviously, is necessary. In that is involved the question of memory, planning, design, and so on. We are not discussing that time, the chronological time of every day. But we are going to talk about time which is not by the watch. We do not live only by chronological time; we live much more by a time which is not by the watch. For us, time which is not chronological is much more important, has much more significance, than time by the watch. That is, though chronological time has importance, what has much more importance, greater significance, greater validity for most people is psychological time - time as continuity; time as yesterday, a thousand yesterdays and traditions; and time not only as the present but as the future.
So we have time as the past - the past being the memory, the knowledge, the tradition, the experiences, the things remembered - and the present, which is the passage of yesterday to the time of tomorrow, which is shaped, controlled by the past through the present. For us that has tremendous significance, not the time by the watch; and in that dimension of time we live. We live with the past, in conflict with the present, which creates the tomorrow. This is an obvious fact. There is nothing complex about it. So there is time as continuity and there is time as the future and the past; and the past shapes our thinking, our activity, our outlook, and so conditions the future.
We use time as a means of evolving, as a means of achieving, as a means of gradual changing. We use time because we are indolent, lazy. Because we have not found the way of transforming ourselves immediately, or because we are frightened of immediate change and the consequences of the change, we say, ''I will gradually change.'' Therefore we use time as a means of postponement, time as a means of gradually achieving, and time as a means of change. We need time by the watch to learn a technique; to learn a language we need time, a few months. But we use time - psychological time, not time by the watch - as a means of changing, and so we introduce the gradual process: ''I will gradually achieve; I will become; I am this and I will become that, through time.''
And time is the product of thought. If you did not think about tomorrow or look back in thought to the past, you would be living in the now; there would be neither the future nor the past; you would be completely living for the day, giving to the day your fullest, richest, complete attention. As we do not know how to live so completely, totally, fully, with such urgency, in today, bringing about a complete transformation in today, we have invented the idea of tomorrow: ''I will change tomorrow; I will; I must conform tomorrow, and so on.'' So, thought creates psychological time, and thought also brings fear.
Please follow all this. If you do not understand these things of which I am talking now, you won't understand them at the end. They will be just words, and you will be left with ashes.
Most of us have fears: fear of the doctor, fear of disease, fear of not achieving, fear of being left alone, fear of old age, fear of poverty; these are outward fears. Then there are a thousand and one inward fears: the fear of public opinion, of death, of being left completely alone so that you have to face life without a companion, the fear of loneliness, the fear of not reaching what you call God. So, man has a thousand and one fears. And being frightened, he either escapes in a vast network, subtle or crude; or he rationalizes these fears; or he becomes neurotic because he cannot understand it, he cannot resolve it; or he completely runs away from fear, from various fears, through identification or social activities, reformation, joining a political party, and so on.
Please, I am talking not of ideas but of what actually is taking place in each one of you. So you are not merely listening to my words, but through the words that are being used, you are looking at yourself. You are looking at yourself, not through ideas, but by coming directly into contact with the fact that you are frightened - which is entirely different from the idea that you are frightened.
So unless you understand the nature of fear and are completely free of it totally, your gods, your escapes, your doing of all kinds of social work, and so on, have no meaning because you are then a destructive human being, exploiting, and you cannot resolve this fear. A neurotic human being with his innumerable fears, in whatever he does - however good it may be - is always bringing to his action the seed of destruction, the seed of deterioration, because his action is an escape from the fact.
Most of us are frightened, have secret fears; and being afraid, we run away from them. The running away from the fact implies that the objects to which you run away become much more important than the fact. You understand? I am frightened; I have escaped from it through drink, through going to the temple, God, and all the rest of it; so the god, the temple, the pub become far more important than the fear. I protect the god, the temple, the pub much more vigorously because to me, they have become extraordinarily important, they are the symbols which give me the assurance that I can escape from fear. The temple, the god, nationalism, the political commitment, the formulas that one has become far more important than the resolution of the fear. So unless you totally resolve fear, you cannot possibly understand what fear is, what love is, or what sorrow is.
A mind that is really religious, a mind that is really socially minded, a mind that is creative, has completely, totally, to put away, or understand, or resolve this problem of fear. If you live with fear of any kind, you are wasting your life because fear brings darkness. I do not know if you have noticed what happens to you when you are frightened of something. All your nerves, your heart, everything becomes tight, hard, frightened. Haven't you noticed it? There is not only physical fear but also psychological fear, which is much more. Physical fear, which is a self-protective physical response, is natural. When you see a snake, you run away from it, you jump - that is a natural, self-protective fear. It is not really fear; it is merely a reaction to live, which is not fear because you recognize the poison, and you move away. We are talking not only of physical fear but much more of the fear that thought has created.
We are going into this question of fear. Unless you follow it step by step, you won't be able to resolve it. We are going to come into contact directly with fear - not what you are frightened about. What you are frightened about is an idea, but fear itself is not an idea. Suppose one is frightened - as most people, the young and the old, are - of public opinion, of death. It does not matter what they are frightened of; take your own example. I will take death. I am frightened of death. Fear exists only in relationship with something. Fear does not exist by itself but only in relation to something. I am frightened of public opinion. I am frightened of death, I am frightened of darkness, I am frightened of losing a job. So fear arises in connection with something.
Let us say I am frightened of death. I have seen death. I have seen bodies being burned. I have seen a dead leaf falling to the ground. I have seen so many dead things. And I am frightened of dying, coming to an end. Now there is this fear in relation to death, loneliness, a dozen things. How do I look at, or come into contact with, fear as I come into contact with this table? Am I making myself clear? To come directly into contact with fear - I hope you are doing it, not merely listening - to come directly into contact with that emotion, with that feeling called fear, the word, the thought, the idea must not come in at all. Right? That is, to come into contact with a person, I must touch his hand, I must hold his hand. But I do not come into contact with that person, though I may hold his hand, if I have ideas about him, if I have prejudices, if I like or dislike. So, in spite of my holding his hand, the image, the idea, the thought, prevents me from coming into contact directly with that man. So, in the same way, to come directly into contact with your fear - with your particular fear, conscious or unconscious fear - you must come into contact with it, not through your idea. So one must first see how the idea interferes with coming into contact. When you understand that the idea interferes with coming into contact, you no longer fight the idea. When you understand the idea - the idea being the opinion, the formula, and so on - you are then directly in contact with your fear, and there is no escape, either verbal or through a conclusion, or through an opinion, or through any form of escape. When you are in contact with fear, in that sense, then you will find - as you are finding when we are discussing what we are talking about - that fear altogether disappears. And the mind must be free of all fears, not only the secret fears, but the open fears, the fears of which you are conscious. Then only can you look at the thing called sorrow.
You know, man has lived with sorrow for millennia, many thousands, millions of years. You have lived with sorrow, you have not resolved it. Either you worship sorrow as a means to enlightenment or you escape from sorrow. You put sorrow on a pedestal, symbolically identified with a person, or you rationalize it, or you escape from it. But sorrow is there.
I mean by sorrow the loss of someone, the sorrow of failure, the sorrow that comes upon you when you see that you are inefficient, incapable, the sorrow that you find when you have no love in your heart, that you live entirely by your ugly little mind; there is the sorrow of losing someone whom you think you love. We live with this sorrow night and day, never going beyond it, never ending it. Again, a mind burdened with sorrow becomes insensitive, becomes enclosed; it has no affection, it has no sympathy; it may show words of sympathy, but in itself, in its heart, it has no sympathy, no affection, no love. And sorrow breeds self-pity. Most of us carry this burden all through life, and we do not seem to be able to end it. And there is the sorrow of time. You understand? We carry this sorrow to the end of our life, not being able to resolve it. There is a much greater sorrow: to live with something which you cannot understand, which is eating your heart and mind, darkening your life. There is also the sorrow of loneliness, being completely alone, lonely, companionless, cut off from all contacts, ultimately leading to a neurotic state and mental illness and psychosomatic diseases.
So, there is vast sorrow, not only of a human being, but also the sorrow of the race. How do you resolve sorrow? You have to resolve it, just as you resolve fear. There is no future - you can invent a future. There is no future for a man who is living with intelligence, who is sensitive, alive, young, fresh, innocent. Therefore you must resolve fear, you must end sorrow.
Again, to end sorrow is to come into contact with that extraordinary feeling, without self-pity, without opinion, without formulas, without explanation - just to come directly into contact with it, as one would come into contact with a table. And that is one of the most difficult things for people to do: to put away ideas and to come into direct contact.
Then, there is the problem of death - and with the problem of death, the problem of old age. You all know that death is inevitable - inevitable through senility, through old age, through disease, through accident. Though scientists are trying to prolong life by another fifty years or more, death is inevitable. Why they want to prolong this agonizing existence, God only knows! But that is what we want. And to understand death, we must come into contact with death; it demands a mind that is not afraid, that is not thinking in terms of time, that is not living in the dimension of time - which I have explained. To live with death - I am going to go into it.
You know, we have put death at the end of life - it is somewhere there, in the distance. And we are trying to put it as far away as possible, as long away as possible. We know there is death. And so we invent the hereafter. We say, ''I have lived, I have built a character, I have done things. Will all things end in death? There must be a future.'' The future, the afterlife, reincarnation - all that is an escape from the fact of today, from the fact of coming into contact with death.
Think of your life, what is it? Actually look at your life which you want to prolong! What is your life? A constant battle, a constant confusion, an occasional flash of pleasure, boredom, sorrow, fear, agony, despair, jealousy, envy, ambition - that is your life actually, with diseases, with pettiness. And you want to prolong that life after death!
And if you believe in reincarnation - as you are supposed to believe, as your scriptures talk about it - then what matters is what you are now. Because what you are now is going to condition your future. So what you are, what you do, what you think, what you feel, how you live - all this matters infinitely. If you do not even believe in reincarnation, then there is only this life; then it matters tremendously what you do, what you think, what you feel, whether you exploit or whether you do not exploit, whether you love, whether you have feeling, whether you are sensitive, whether there is beauty. But to live like that, you have to understand death and not put it far away at the end of your life - which is a life of sorrow, a life of fear, a life of despair, a life of uncertainty. So you have to bring death close; that is, you have to die.
Do you know what it is to die? You have seen death enough. You have seen a man being carried to the burning place where he will be destroyed. You have seen death. Most people are frightened of that. Death is as that flower dies, as that creeper dies with all the morning glories. With that beauty, with that delicacy, it dies without regret, without argument; it comes to an end. But we escape from death through time - which is, it is over there. We say, ''I have a few more years to live, and I shall be born next life''; or, ''This is the only life, and therefore let me make the best of it; let me have all the greatest fun, let me make it the greatest show.'' And so, we never come into contact with that extraordinary thing called death. Death is to die to everything of the past, to die to your pleasure.
Have you ever tried without argument, without persuasion, without compulsion, without necessity, to die to a pleasure? You are going to die inevitably. But have you tried to die today, easily, happily, to your pleasure, to your remembrances, to your hates, to your ambitions, to your urgency to gather money? All that you want of life is money, position, power, and the envy of another. Can you die to them, can you die to the things that you know, easily, without any argument, without any explanation? Please bear in mind that you are not hearing a few words and ideas, but you are actually coming into contact with a pleasure - your sexual pleasure, for example - and dying to it. That is what you are going to do anyhow. You are going to die - that is, die to everything you know, your body, your mind, the things that you have built up. So, you say, ''Is that all? Is all my life to end in death?'' All the things you have done - the service, the books, the knowledge, the experiences, the pleasures, the affection, the family - all end in death; that is facing you. Either you die to them now or you die inevitably when the time comes. Only an intelligent man who understands the whole process is a religious man.
The man who takes the sannyasi's robes, grows a beard, goes to the temple and runs away from life - he is not a religious man. The religious man is one who dies every day and is reborn every day. That is, his mind is young, innocent, fresh. To die to your sorrow, die to your pleasure, die to the things that you hold secretly in your heart - do it; thus you will see you will not waste your life; then you will find something that is incredible, that no man has ever perceived. This is not a reward. There is no reward either. You die willingly, or you die inevitably. You have to die naturally, every day, as the flower dies, blooming, rich, full, and then to die to that beauty, to that richness, to that love, experience, and knowledge - to die so that, every day, you are reborn, so that you have a fresh mind.
You need a fresh mind; otherwise, you do not know what love is. If you do not die, your love is merely memory; your love is then caught in envy, jealousy. You have to die, every day, to everything you know - to your hatred, to your insults, to flatteries. Die to them; then you will see that time has no meaning; there is no tomorrow then, there is only the now that is beyond the yesterday and the today and the tomorrow. And it is only in the now that there is love.
A human being that has no love cannot approach truth. Without love, do what you will - do all your sacrifices, your vows of celibacy, your social work, your exploitations - nothing has any value. And you cannot love without dying every day to your memory. For love is not of memory; it is a living thing. A living thing is a movement, and that movement cannot be caged in words, or in thought, or in a mind that is merely self-seeking. Only the mind that has understood time, that has ended sorrow, that has no fear - only such a mind knows what death is, and therefore for such a mind there is life.
Shall we go on from where we left off yesterday? We were talking about fear and the necessity of knowing oneself. I don't know if one sees the great, the utter importance of understanding the nature and the structure of oneself. As we said, if there is no comprehension, not intellectual or verbal, but actually understanding what one is, and the possibility of going beyond it, we must inevitably bring about confusion, contradiction in ourselves, activities that will lead to a great deal of mischief and sorrow. So it behoves and it is absolutely essential that one should understand, not only the superficial layers of oneself, but the total entity, all the hidden parts. And I hope in communicating with each other, that is, in understanding together this whole problem we shall be able actually, not theoretically, to see if through self-knowledge the mind can go beyond its own conditioning, its own habits, its own prejudices and so on.
And we were talking yesterday about learning, learning about oneself; learning implies a non-accumulative movement. There is no movement if it is accumulation. If a river is flowing and it ends up in a lake there is no movement. There is a movement only when there is a constant movement, a constant flow, a strong current. And learning implies that. Learning not only about outward things, scientific facts, but also learning about oneself, because oneself is a constant, changing, dynamic, volatile being. And to learn about it the past experiences in no way help, on the contrary past impedes learning, puts an end to learning and therefore to a complete action. I hope when we discussed this point yesterday we saw this very clearly; that we are dealing with a constant, living movement of life, the movement which is the 'me'. And to understand that 'me', to learn about that 'me', which is so very subtle, there needs to be an intense curiosity, a persistent awareness, a sense of non-accumulative comprehension. I hope we were able to communicate this with each other yesterday, this whole question of learning. And that is where our trouble is going to be, because our mind likes to function in grooves, in patterns, from a fixed conclusion, or a prejudice, or knowledge. It is tethered to a particular belief and from there it tries to understand this extraordinary movement of the 'me'. And therefore there is a contradiction between the 'me' and the observer.
And we were talking yesterday about fear, which is part of this movement, part of this total movement of the 'me', the 'me' which breaks up life as a movement, the 'me' that separates as the 'you' and the 'me. And we said, what is fear? And we are going to learn non-accumulatively about fear. The very word 'fear' prevents coming into contact with that feeling of danger which we call fear.
Look sirs, maturity implies a total, natural development of a human being; a total, natural development of a human being - natural in the sense non-contradictory, harmonious, which has nothing to do with age. And the factor of fear prevents this natural, total development of the mind. I'll go on a little and then we will discuss about all this.
When one is afraid, not only of physical things, but also of psychological factors, then in that fear what takes place? You understand? There is fear: I am afraid, not only of physically falling ill, dying - you know physical fears that one has - darkness, you know the innumerable fears that one has both biologically as well as psychologically. Now what does that fear do to the mind, the mind which has created these fears? You understand my question? Please, don't immediately answer me yet, let's look at ourselves - I have fear. What is the effect of that on the mind, on one's whole life, living? Or we are so used to fear, we have accustomed ourselves to fear which has become a habit, we are unaware of its effects. If I am accustomed to the dogma, to the beliefs, to the national feeling of the Hindu, I am totally unaware, enclosed in this conditioning, of what the effects of it are. I only see what that nationalism, that calling myself a Hindu, that feeling that arouses in me and I am satisfied with that. I identify myself with the country, with the belief and so on and so on, and all the rest of it. But we don't see the effect of such a conditioning all around. In the same way, we don't see what fear does, both psychologically as well as biologically, physically, psychosomatically. What does it do?
Of course. How is it possible to examine fear totally when it has so many facets - fear of death, fear of losing money, fear of public opinion, fear of not... - so many ways of fear. Now is there a central root of fear? And these are all facets, manifestations of that central root - you understand? - because it is like a tree, having many branches but it is only the trunk that makes all the branches. So can we find out the central root of fear? And then in the discovery of it I see the totality of fear. You understand, sir? Now can we look and find out for ourselves, not because somebody else says so, find out for ourselves what is the root of fear.
I am asking myself, why is there this fear, what is the central factor of it? Right? Please, one moment. I am asking, madam, I am investigating myself, so please I am trying to show how to investigate. My mind says, I know I am afraid - I am afraid of water, darkness, I am afraid of somebody, I am afraid of having told a lie being discovered, I want to be tall, beautiful, and I am not, I am afraid. I am investigating. So I have got many, many, many fears. Just a minute. I know there are deep fears which I have not even looked at, there are superficial fears. Now I want to find out the fears, both that are hidden and open, I want to find out how they exist, how they come into being, what is the root of it. Just a minute. Now how does one find out? I am going step by step into it. How does one find out? I can only find out if the mind sees that to live in fear is not only neurotic, but it's very, very destructive. Right? The mind must see that first, that it is neurotic and therefore neurotic activity will go on, destructive, and a mind that is frightened is never honest, a mind that is frightened will invent any experience, anything to hold on to. So I must first see the necessity clearly, wholly, that as long as there is fear there must be misery. Right? Now do you see that? That is the first requisite. That is the first truth, that as long as there is fear there is darkness, and whatever I do in that darkness is still darkness, is still confusion. Do I see that very clearly, wholly, not partially?