MOST PEOPLE ARE afraid, both physically and inwardly. Fear exists only in relationship to something. I am afraid of illness, of physical pain. I’ve had it and I’m afraid of it. I’m afraid of public opinion. I’m afraid of losing a job. I’m afraid of not arriving, achieving, not being able to fulfil. I’m afraid of darkness, afraid of my own stupidity, afraid of my own pettiness. We have so many different fears, and we try to solve these fears in fragments. We don’t seem to be able to go beyond that. If we think we have understood one particular fear, and have resolved it, another fear comes up. When we are aware that we are afraid, we try to run away from it, try to find an answer, try to find out what to do, or try to suppress it.
We human beings have cunningly developed a network of escapes: God, amusement, drink, sex, anything. All escapes are the same, whether it is in the name of God or drink! If we are to live as human beings we have to solve the problem. If we live in fear, conscious or unconscious, it’s like living in darkness, with tremendous inward conflict and resistance. The greater the fear, the greater the tension, the greater the neuroticism, the greater is the urge to escape. If we do not escape, then we ask ourselves, ‘How are we to solve it?’ We seek ways and means of solving it, but always within the field of the known. We do something about it, and this action bred by thought is action within the field of experience, knowledge, the known, and therefore, there is no answer. That’s what we do, and we die with fear. We live throughout our lives with fear and die with fear. Now can a human being totally eradicate fear? Can we do anything, or nothing? The nothing does not mean that we accept fear, rationalize it, and live with it; that’s not the inaction of which we are talking.
We have done everything we can with regard to fear. We have analysed it, gone into it, tried to face it, come into direct contact with it, resisted it, done everything possible, and the thing remains. Is it possible to be aware of it totally, not merely intellectually, emotionally, but be completely aware of it, and yet not do something about it? We must come into contact with fear, but we don’t. The word fear has caused that fear. The word itself keeps us from being in contact with the fact.