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.Itis not like standing at the edge of a precipice physically, or beingconfronted by a poisonous snake.There you are; it is thereimmediately, it demands an immediate response.But probablymost of us have never confronted actually the state of fear, becausethey come to it through words, and words create the fear.Please gowith me.Take, for example, the word "death".I am not talking ofdeath; we will discuss it at another meeting.We are talking of theword, like God, like Death, like Communism and so on.The wordplays an extraordinarily important part.The word "death" evokesall kinds of images, all kinds of fears: the word or the symbol orthe thing that you have seen in the street, the dead body which is asymbol.So, the word creates that fear.So you understand what is involved in this extraordinaryprocess of fear - word, time, ideal, discipline, conformity and thisdivision between the experiencer and the thing being experienced.All that is involved when you begin to enquire into fear; and youhave to understand it totally, not in fragments.And if you havegone that far, you have to go much deeper still, into this wholequestion of the conscious and the unconscious.Most of us live on the surface.All our jobs, all our routine, allour sensations are on the surface.We never delve, go, to the verydepth of our consciousness and find out.And to find out, thesuperficial mind which is always active, must be quiet.The mind has to be totally free of fear, because if there is anyshadow of fear, at any level of your consciousness, unexplored,hidden, concealed, that will project an illusion that will darken.The mind that would really understand what is true, the real - theextraordinary state of mind that comprehends that thing called truth- must have, psychologically, no fear of any kind.There is thenatural fear when you meet a snake, you jump away from it - thatis quite natural; there must be that fear; otherwise, you will becomeneurotic; that is a normal reaction of a good, healthy mind.But weare talking of psychological fear, which is a neurotic state.A mindwhich would really understand, take a journey into the mostextraordinary thing called reality and go deeply into it - wherethere is no measure, no time, no illusion, no imagination - must becompletely free from fear.And, therefore, such a mind is alwaysliving, neither in the past nor in the future.Do not translate itimmediately as a thing in the present, as some of the biggerphilosophers, disappointed philosophers, talk about the present;that is to live completely in the present, to accept everything -good, bad, indifferent - in the present, to live there and make thebest of it.I do not want to name the particular philosophy - what Ihave said is good enough; we know what it is.So, a mind that is aware of all the things that are connected withfear, is not concerned with the past; but as the past arises, it dealswith it, not as a stepping stone to the future.Therefore such a mindis living in the active present, and therefore comprehends everymovement of thought, feeling, fear, as it arises.There is a greatdeal to learn.There is no end to learning.Therefore, there is nodespair, no anxiety.This you must have completely in your blood,so that you are never caught in the things that have been done orthat will be done in the future, so that you are never held in time asthought.It is only the mind that has emptied itself of all this fear,that is empty.Then in that emptiness it can understand that whichis supreme and nameless.January 19 1964MADRAS 4TH PUBLIC TALK 22ND JANUARY1964It seems to me that one of the major problems that confronts eachone of us is an utter lack of intense feeling.We have a certainemotional, sustained excitement about activities - what should bedone or what should not be done.But we are rather warm aboutthings that really do not matter at all.And it seems to me that thereis lack of passion - not for a particular end to be achieved, not forsome objective to be gained.I am talking of the sense of anintense, strong feeling.Most of us have petty minds - small, narrow minds fixed in apetty groove - that run along very smoothly unless there is somekind of an accident; and then there is trouble, and afterwards theyget back under another routine.The petty mind cannot faceproblems.It has innumerable problems, the whole problem ofliving.And it invariably translates these extraordinarily significantproblems of life into its own petty, narrow, limited understandingand tries to twist this enormous stream of existence, the stream oflife, into its own petty, little channels.And that is what we areconfronted with, now - probably always.But it is much more sonow, as the challenge is much greater and demands a responseequally intense, equally strong, equally living.This sense of passion is not a thing that you cultivate easily bytaking some kind of a drug, getting into a hypnotic state aboutsome ideals and so on.This passion comes naturally - it must.I amusing the word `passion' purposely.For most of us, passion isemployed only with regard to one thing, sex; or you sufferpassionately and try to resolve that suffering.But I am using theword `passion' in the sense of a state of mind, a state of being, astate of your inward core - if there is such a thing - that feels verystrongly, that is highly sensitive - sensitive alike to dirt, to squalor,to poverty, and to enormous riches and corruption, to the beauty ofa tree, of a bird, to the flow of water, and to a pond that has theevening sky reflected upon it.To feel all this intensely, strongly, isnecessary.Because without passion life becomes empty, shallow,and without much meaning.If you cannot see the beauty of a treeand love that tree, if you cannot care for it intensely, you are notliving.I am using the words `you are not living' deliberately,because, in this country probably, religion is utterly divorced frombeauty.Without being sensitive to this extraordinary beauty of life, thebeauty of a face, the line of a building, the shape of a tree, a bird onthe wing and the morning song - if one is not aware of all that, ifone does not feel all that very strongly, obviously, life, which is co-operation and relationship, has no meaning at all; then one merelyfunctions mechanically.So, I would like to talk about that, thisevening.That passion is not devotion, is not sentimentality; it hasnothing to do with sensation [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]