FROM CHILDHOOD WE are hurt. There is always the pressure, always the sense of being rewarded and punished. You say something to me that I get angry about and that hurts me—right? So we have realized a very simple fact that from childhood we are hurt, and for the rest of our life we carry that hurt—afraid of being hurt further, or attempting not to be hurt, which is another form of resistance. So, are we aware of these hurts and of therefore creating a barrier round ourselves, the barrier of fear? Can we go into this question of fear? Shall we? Not for my pleasure, for it is you I am talking about. Can we go into it very, very deeply and see why human beings, which is all of us, have put up with fear for thousands of years? We see the consequences of fear—fear of not being rewarded, fear of being a failure, fear of your weakness, fear of your own feeling that you must come to a certain point and not being able to. Are you interested in going into this problem? It means going into it completely to the very end, not just saying, ‘Sorry, that is too difficult’. Nothing is too difficult if you want to do it. The word difficult prevents you from further action. But if you can put away that word then we can go into this very, very complex problem.
First, why do we put up with it? If you have a car that goes wrong, you go to the nearest garage, if you can, and then the machinery is put right and you go on. Is it that there is no one we can go to who will help us to have no fear? You understand the question? Do we want help from somebody to be free of fear—from psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, or the priest, or the guru who says, ‘Surrender everything to me, including your money, then you will be perfectly all right’? We do this. You may laugh, you may be amused, but we are doing this all the time inwardly.
Do we want help? Prayer is a form of help; asking to be free from fear is a form of help. The speaker telling you how to be free of fear is a form of help. But he is not going to tell you how, because we are walking together, we are giving energy to discover for ourselves the causation of fear. If you see something very clearly, then you don’t have to decide, or choose, or ask for help—you act—right? Do we see clearly the whole structure, the inward nature of fear? You have been afraid and the memory of it comes back and says that is fear.
So let’s go into this carefully—not the speaker going into it and then you agreeing, or disagreeing, but you yourself taking the journey with the speaker, not verbally or intellectually, but delving, probing, investigating. We are finding out; we want to delve as you dig in the garden or to find water. You dig deep, you don’t stand outside on the earth and say, ‘I must have water’. You dig or go to the river. So first of all, let’s be very clear: Do you want help in order to be free of fear? If you want help then you are responsible for establishing an authority, a leader, a priest. So one must ask oneself before we go into this question of fear, whether you want help. Of course you go to a doctor if you have pain, or a headache, or some kind of disease. He knows much more about your organic nature so he tells you what to do. We are not talking about that kind of help. We are talking about whether you need help, somebody to instruct you, to lead you, and to say, ‘Do this, do that, day after day, and you will be free of fear’. The speaker is not helping you. That is one thing certain, because you have dozens of helpers, from the great religious leaders—God forbid!—to the lowest, the poor psychologist round the corner. So let us be very clear between ourselves that the speaker doesn’t want to help you in any way psychologically. Would you kindly accept that? Honestly accept it? Don’t say yes; it is very difficult. In all your life you have sought help in various directions, though some say, ‘No, I don’t want help’. It requires not only outward perception to see what the demand for help has done to humanity. You ask for help only when you are confused, when you don’t know what to do, when you are uncertain. But when you see things clearly—see, observe, perceive, not only externally, but much more inwardly—when you see things very, very clearly you don’t want any help; there it is. And from that comes action. Are we together in this? Let’s repeat this if you don’t mind. The speaker is not telling you how. Never ask that question how, for then there is always somebody giving you a rope. The speaker is not helping you in any way, but together we are walking along the same road, perhaps not at the same speed. Set your own speed and we will walk together.
What is the cause of fear? Go slowly, please. Cause—if you can discover the cause then you can do something about it, you can change the cause, right? If a doctor tells the speaker he has cancer—which he hasn’t—but suppose he tells me that and says, ‘I can remove it easily and you will be all right’. I go to him. He removes it and the cause comes to an end. So the cause can always be changed, rooted out. If you have a headache you can find the cause of it; you may be eating wrongly, or smoking, or drinking too much. Either you stop your drinking, smoking, and all the rest, or you take a pill to stop it. The pill then becomes the effect, which stops for the moment the causation, right? So cause and effect can always be changed, immediately or you take time over it. If you take time over it, then during that interval other factors enter into it. So you never change the effect, you continue with the cause. Are we together in this? So what is the cause of fear? Why haven’t we gone into it? Why do we tolerate it, knowing the effect of fear, the consequences of fear? If you are not at all afraid psychologically, have no fear at all, you would have no gods, you would have no symbols to worship, no personalities to adore. Then you are psychologically, extraordinarily free. Fear also makes one shrink, apprehensive, wanting to escape from it, and therefore the escape becomes more important than the fear. Are you following? So we are going to go over it together to find out what the cause of fear is—the root cause of it. And if we discover it for ourselves, then it is over. If you see the causation, or many causes, then that very perception ends the cause. Are you listening to me, the speaker, to explain the causation? Or have you never even asked such a question? I have borne fear, as has my father, my grandfather, the whole race in which I am born, the whole community; the whole structure of gods and rituals is based on fear and the desire to achieve some extraordinary state.
So, let us go into this. We are not talking about the various forms of fear—fear of darkness, fear of one’s husband, wife, fear of society, fear of dying, and so on. It is like a tree that has many, many branches, many flowers, many fruits, but we are talking about the very root of that tree. The root of it—not your particular form of fear. You can trace your particular form to the very root. So we are asking: Are we concerned with our fears, or with the whole fear? With the whole tree, not just one branch of it? Because unless you understand how the tree lives, the water it requires, the depth of the soil, and so on, merely trimming the branches won’t do anything; we must go to the very root of fear.
So what is the root of fear? Don’t wait for me to answer. I am not your leader, I am not your helper, I am not your guru—thank God! We are together, as two brothers, and the speaker means it, it is not just words. As two good friends who have known each other from the beginning of time, walking along the same path, at the same speed, looking at everything that is around you and in you, so together we will go into it together. Otherwise it becomes just words, and at the end you will say, ‘Really, what am I to do with my fear?’
Fear is very complex. It is a tremendous reaction. If you are aware of it, it is a shock, not only biologically, organically, but also a shock to the brain. The brain has a capacity, as one discovers, not from what others say, to remain healthy in spite of a shock. I don’t know all about it, but the very shock invites its own protection. If you go into it yourself, you will see. So fear is a shock—momentarily, or continuing in different forms, with different expressions, in different ways. So we are going to the very, very, very root of it. To understand the very root of it, we must understand time, right? Time as yesterday, time as today, time as tomorrow. I remember something I have done, of which I am shy, or nervous, or apprehensive, or fearful; I remember all that and it continues to the future. I have been angry, jealous, envious—that is the past. I am still envious, slightly modified; I am fairly generous about things, but envy goes on. This whole process is time, isn’t it?
What do you consider time is? By the clock, sunrise, sunset, the evening star, the new moon with the full moon coming a fortnight later? What is time to you? Time to learn a skill? Time to learn a language? Time to write a letter? Time to go to your house from here? All that is time as distance, right? I have to go from here to there. That is a distance covered by time. But time is also inward, psychological: I am this, I must become that. Becoming that is called evolution. Evolution means from the seed to the tree. And also I am ignorant but I will learn. I don’t know, but I will know. Give me time to be free of violence. You are following all this? Give me time. Give me a few days, a month, or a year, and I will be free of it. So we live by time—not only going to the office every day from nine to five, God forbid, but also time to become something. Look, you understand all this? Right? Time, the movement of time? I have been afraid of you and I remember that fear; that fear is still there and I will be afraid of you tomorrow. I hope not, but if I don’t do something very drastic about it I will be afraid of you tomorrow. So we live by time. Please, let’s be clear about this. We live by time, which is, I am living, I will die. I will postpone death as long as possible; I am living and I am going to do everything to avoid death, though it is inevitable. So psychologically as well as biologically we live by time.
Is time a factor of fear? Please inquire. Time—that is, I have told a lie, I don’t want you to know; but you are very smart, you look at me and say, ‘You have told a lie’. ‘No, no, I have not’—I protect myself instantly because I am afraid of your finding out that I am a liar. I am afraid because of something I have done, that I don’t like you to know. Which is what? Thought, isn’t it? I have done something that I remember, and that remembrance says, be careful, don’t let him discover that you told a lie, because you have got a good reputation as an honest man, so protect yourself. So, thinking and time are together. There is no division between thought and time. Please be clear on this matter, otherwise you will get rather confused later. The causation of fear, the root of it, is time/thought.
Are we clear that time, that is, the past, with all the things that one has done, and thought, whether pleasant or unpleasant, especially if it is unpleasant, is the root of fear? This is an obvious fact, a very simple verbal fact. But to go behind the word and see the truth of this, you will inevitably ask: How is thought to stop? It is a natural question, no? If thought creates fear, which is so obvious, then how am I to stop thinking? ‘Please help me to stop my thinking’. I would be an ass to ask such a question but I am asking it. How am I to stop thinking? Is that possible? Go on, sir, investigate, don’t let me go on. Thinking. We live by thinking. Everything we do is through thought. We went into that carefully the other day. We won’t waste time going into the cause, the beginning of thinking, how it comes—experience, knowledge, which is always limited, memory, and then thought. I am just briefly repeating it.
So, is it possible to stop thinking? Is it possible not to chatter all day long, to give the brain a rest, though it has its own rhythm, the blood going up to it, its own activity? Its own, not the activity imposed by thought—you understand?
May the speaker point out that that is a wrong question. Who is it that stops thinking? It is still thought, isn’t it? When I say, ‘If I could only stop thinking then I would have no fear’, who is it that wishes to stop thought? It is still thought, isn’t it, because it wants something else?
So, what will you do? Any movement of thought, to be other than what it is, is still thinking. I am greedy, but I must not be greedy—it is still thinking. Thinking has put together all the paraphernalia, all that business that goes on in churches. Like this tent, it has been carefully put together by thought. Apparently thought is the very root of our existence. So we are asking a very serious question, seeing what thought has done, invented the most extraordinary things, the computer, the warships, the missiles, the atom bomb, surgery, medicine, and also the things it has made man do, go to the moon, and so on. Thought is the very root of fear. Do we see that? Not how to end thought, but see actually that thinking is the root of fear, which is time? Seeing, not the words, but actually seeing. When you have severe pain, the pain is not different from you and you act instantly, right? So do you see as clearly as you see the clock, the speaker, and your friend sitting beside you, that thought is the causation of fear? Please don’t ask: ‘How am I to see?’ The moment you ask how, someone is willing to help you, then you become their slave. But if you yourself see that thought/time are really the root of fear, it doesn’t need deliberation or a decision. A scorpion is poisonous, a snake is poisonous—at the very perception of them you act.
So one asks, why don’t we see? Why don’t we see that one of the causes of war is nationalities? Why don’t we see that one may be called a Muslim, and another a Christian—why do we fight over names, over propaganda? Do we see it, or just memorize or think about it? You understand, sirs, that your consciousness is the rest of mankind. Mankind, like you and others, goes through every form of difficulty, pain, travail, anxiety, loneliness, depression, sorrow, pleasure—every human being goes through this—every human being all over the world. So our consciousness, our being, is the entire humanity. This is so. How unwilling we are to accept such a simple fact, because we are so accustomed to individuality—I, me first. But if you see that your consciousness is shared by all other human beings living on this marvellous earth, then your whole way of living changes. Argument, persuasion, pressure, propaganda, are all terribly useless because it is you who must see this thing for yourself.
So, can we, each of us, who are the rest of mankind, who are mankind, look at a very simple fact? Observe, see, that the causation of fear is thought/time? Then the very perception is action. And from that you don’t rely on anybody. See it very clearly. Then you are a free person.