AM67T1 - To look without a concept is to be aware of the observer and the thing observed home
Amsterdam - 20 May 1967
Public Talk 1

Text-only version

0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s first public talk in Amsterdam, 1967.
0:09 Krishnamurti: I’m going to talk for a little while and then, perhaps, if you care to ask questions about what we have talked. In that way, perhaps, one can understand a little more deeply. And to ask right questions becomes almost impossible – but we’ll see.
1:00 To communicate about facts, information is comparatively easy. To communicate about theories, ideas, certain dogmas, theological concepts is perhaps a little more difficult. But to communicate at a deeper level, at the depth not of ideas and words, but at the depth of our human problems, at the centre of our human complexities, our miseries, our agonies, and all the confusion that man is heir to – there, to communicate requires attention, and care, and also a certain quality of listening.
2:47 Most of us hardly listen; we hear a great many words, we hear and translate what we hear into our own opinions, opposing or accepting. But to really listen without translation, without interpretation, without opinion; actually to listen without any sense of condemnation – which doesn’t necessarily mean acceptance. On the contrary, when we listen so attentively, and with care, which is really a sense of affection and love, because without attention and care it is not possible to listen to anything. 4:00 If you listen to music or to the wind among the leaves, you must give attention, and also you must care, care enormously, to actually listen to the breeze among the leaves. In the same way, to listen to what the speaker is going to say needs a great deal of attention; and there is no possibility of attention when your mind is occupied with judgement, opinion, comparison, condemnation or justification, but actually listening. And condemnation and judgement or comparison merely acts as a distraction, and therefore there is no listening. 5:18 And also one has to understand the words. Unfortunately one cannot speak Dutch but it is being translated immediately. What is said in words is not the fact; the word is never the fact, the thing. So one must go beyond the word in order to understand, in order to communicate; and that’s going to be our problem, among some many other problems: not only how to listen, but also to go beyond the word. And to go beyond the word is necessary because we have so many problems in life, in all our human existence, not only physically, but much more deeply, psychologically. We have got enormous problems, 6:54 not only the individual problem but the collective, the social problem. The individual is part of this social structure, and this structure the individuals have created throughout the world. The social structure outwardly is the result of inward, psychological structure of our human relationship.
7:37 And to understand deeply these problems one must have a very alert mind; not a sloppy mind, not a complex, erudite, very learned mind, but rather a mind that is willing to see very clearly, that’s willing to examine, explore – not in terms of its own particular idiosyncrasy, or inclination or temperament, but rather to examine things as they are. And to examine things as they are one has to have attention, care. And it seems to me that’s one of the most important things in not only our human relationships but also to enquire deeply within.
8:56 Because we have to enquire most profoundly because there must be a revolution, a psychological revolution – we’re not talking about communist, social or economic revolution, that has not fundamentally changed man. There have been many, many revolutions, wars, and they have had a superficial effect, a secondary effect. But basically, fundamentally, deep down, we human beings are the same as we have been for millions of years. There has been progress technologically, from the bullock-cart to the jet; but psychologically, inwardly, we have not changed at all, hardly, a little bit here and there, but basically, radically, fundamentally, deeply, we are what we have been: greedy, envious, full of antagonism, anxieties, despairs, with occasional flash of joy, affection. 10:45 It is there, it seems to me, that one has to change, change infinitely. And that’s what we are going to talk over together during all these five talks.
11:11 One observes throughout the world and actually there is no East or West, that’s all sentimental, emotional division, which isn’t accurate at all, we are human beings, though we live in India, in the Extreme Orient, or in America, or in Russia, we are human beings, with our human problems, miseries, conflicts, despairs. And each part of the world has invented a philosophy, a theory, which has nothing to do with actual daily, intolerable living, and it’s that daily living, the everyday loneliness, the everyday boredom, the everyday routine, going to the office, the ugliness or the beauty of sex, the constant conflict within – it is there that we have to change. And as we were saying, one observes throughout the world 12:56 there are two fundamental issues: violence and sorrow. And that violence and sorrow is not limited to the Orient or the Occident, to the West or to the East; it is part of the human structure, psychologically. And violence we have accepted as a way of life – wars, in our business, in our social outward structure; competition, and all the things we know of: how we hate, get angry, violent, dislike. We are familiar with that and we have accepted that as the way of life. That is, though we talk endlessly about love and loving the neighbour, but we are actually in the office, in business, we cut his throat. 14:33 And there is war going on – there have been thousands of wars, and we have accepted war, conflict, violence, as the way of life. And also we have accepted sorrow; the sorrow of everyday life, everyday misery, everyday quarrels, conflicts, unfulfilment; the sorrow of loneliness, despair, the sorrow of not having loved, the sorrow of death, and the endless complexities of our psyche. And having accepted that, not knowing how to resolve it totally, we worship sorrow as the Christians do: put a cross and a figure on it, and you think by worshipping you have solved it. 16:04 In the Orient they do it differently. They say, well, perhaps next life everything will be better.
16:18 So human beings, not being able to find a way out of this violence, out of this misery, out of this sorrow, endless sorrow – from the moment we are born till we die, we know nothing except violence and sorrow, with an occasional day of light among the trees, with an occasional flash of joy and ecstasy, which again becomes memory and therefore loses its significance. So what we are concerned with is, whether it is possible at all for human beings, living in this rotten society, in this society built by man through his greed and envy, his violence, his despairs, this society in which religion is merely an idea, belief, dogma, authority and acceptance – which is not religion at all. 18:00 An organised religion in any form ceases to be religion; when there is a priest, it’s no longer a religion. When you have to go to a church to worship God, then it means there is no God in the church. Because in our hearts, in our minds, we are a violent, sick people. And a tortured mind, a brutal mind, a sorrowful mind, can never find that which man has been seeking, trying to understand through millennia.
18:56 So it seems to me what is important is whether it is possible at all to change the whole psychological structure of ourselves totally, completely. That is, to change, to bring about a fundamental revolution in the psyche, which means, in the mind, in the heart, in the very structure of our being, so that there is no possibility ever of being violent, or never enter into the field of sorrow. It’s a fundamental question, not a question that you casually ask and pass by. It’s a question that one must ask, but unfortunately when we do ask we are merely satisfied by explanations, as the analysts, the psychoanalysts with their peculiar theories. 20:59 The analysts seek and find a cause of one’s disarrangement, neurotic states, and so on and so on and so on. And that process of analysis obviously does not radically change the human mind; it helps him perhaps to be free from certain neurotic states, but obviously such analysis does not fundamentally change the human mind. So that is our problem, our basic, it seems to me, fundamental problem, whether the human mind, which is the result of many million years, which has evolved from the animal, of which we still are – we are still part of the animal with its fears, with its antagonisms, with its instinct to hoard, and so on – whether such a mind that has invented gods, saviours, theories, endlessly talk about unrealities, invent philosophies, whether such a mind, however complex, whether it is possible to fundamentally, deeply bring about a revolution, a mutation.
23:41 That is the issue. Either one investigates through oneself, investigates in oneself what one is – the animal, the highly sophisticated, educated, technological mind, with all the background of its conditioning, as a Christian, as a Hindu, as a Buddhist, as a Muslim, God knows what, or, the latest, Communism – whether such a mind, so heavily conditioned, whether it can change by actually analysis, taking endless years examining, exploring layer after layer of its consciousness. Which one has done. And all that implies time, not only time, but also any error of examination, any error in examination distorts every other fact. And all the religions throughout the world have said: to be free from the human bondage, from the human sorrow, you must control, practise, meditate, deny, be harsh to yourself; give up this, and give up that; follow this, and follow that, accept authority, obey, take vows. That is, create habits, other forms of conditioning, add to the already existing conditioning, add some more conditioning.
26:32 And this is what we have accepted as the norm of life – to follow, to obey, to accept the authority either of the priest or of the analyst or of the theologian. Or as one has done in the Orient as well as the Occident, accept the priest as the final authority between God and yourself – which is obviously absurd. So we know this, that is, we know a way of gradually peeling off, gradually exploring till we come, hoping to come upon that something which will give us total freedom, total freedom from all anxiety, despair, sorrow and misery, confusion. And that’s the way we live. That is, we think gradually through time 28:07 there will be freedom from war, from national moorings, from national disasters. You know, it is one of the most peculiar things, it has taken centuries to bring about a Common Market in Europe, and yet there are people who are preventing that happening. And it shows how extraordinarily dull our minds are that we can live peacefully – that means living peacefully daily, in our daily life, not in some heaven, or somewhere else, but in our daily – every moment of our life, to live peacefully; which means no nationality, no war, no competition. And we have taken centuries just to come to this most obvious thing: to break down national barriers, economic barriers, because really we don’t want to break down these barriers. We take great pleasure 29:59 in our national spirit, in our uniforms, in our queens, in our generals, in our peculiar, religious, theoretical ideas – we are Christians or Hindus and we divide ourselves. And this has been going on for centuries and centuries. And is it possible then, one asks, to bring about a change radically, a total revolution in the psyche itself, not through time?
31:04 Because actually the question of time is very important to understand. Is there actually tomorrow? I know chronologically, by the watch, there is tomorrow – tomorrow happens to be a Sunday, a holiday. But psychologically, inwardly, is there tomorrow at all, or is it an invention of the mind, the tomorrow, because today is not satisfactory? Today is a miserable day, unhappy, unfulfilled; tomorrow perhaps it’ll be better, there’ll be better opportunity, a better way of looking at the tree, at the face, at a bird. But actually is there a tomorrow at all psychologically? Or is there only today and only today that matters – not in the Existentialist sense, because they have also their theories, their inventions, invented by people who are very clever, who are utterly in despair, and to them today, the now matters enormously because there is no meaning to life at all. 33:07 Therefore, live as well as you can for today and tomorrow doesn’t matter. But to live completely today means one has to understand the totality of the past; because we are the past, with all our memories, the scars of memories, the longings, the whole structure of ourselves is the past.
33:54 And the question then is: if time is not the way to bring about a fundamental revolution, a mutation – and obviously it’s not the way – mere revolt against the present system, the established order doesn’t bring freedom. Revolt is never freedom, revolt is merely a reaction, and reaction creates other sets of reactions and patterns. That’s what’s actually happening throughout the world, among the younger generation. They are in revolt, long-hair, dirty, and all the rest of it, drugs. But they are also setting their own pattern of life, which becomes the norm, in which they will be caught, and therefore there is no freedom in reaction at all.
35:27 So, is it possible to be free? Not economically, free to go about – I don’t mean that. We mean free from violence, free from sorrow, so that a mind that is free is never again touched by violence, never again knows what sorrow is. Is it possible at all, having lived a million, or two million, or three million years, is it at all possible to be free? And what do we mean by freedom? Most of us want to be free; one wants to be free from the agony, from despair, from the aching loneliness, and the boredom and the viciousness of life. One wants to be free. And is it possible?
36:56 Is freedom a thing to be achieved through a gradual process of time, through discipline, control, suppression? Or is freedom at the beginning, not at the end? I think it is always at the beginning, never at the end. That is, to examine there must be freedom. To actually look at this microphone, or look at your neighbour, to look at the tree, or the bird, the light on a canal, to actually see it, there must be freedom. And this freedom doesn’t lie at the end of one’s miserable life, but it lies at the beginning. And there is freedom when you realise for yourself 38:26 that to see, to examine, to explore, to question, to question this whole sociological structure, to question the psyche, and to understand by that very questioning there must be freedom. When one demands it because the urgency is there because you want to understand immediately, then with that urgency comes attention, care, and therefore that attention and care is beauty and love, and that is freedom – not a concept.
39:27 One of our peculiar states of our existence is that we live according to concepts, formulas, ideas, theories. If you examine your own mind, if you look at yourself without too much prejudice, you will see how extraordinarily your mind works in theories, in ideas. So the first and last freedom is really when the mind is totally free from concepts and the mechanical process of building a concept, a formula. To look at a tree, at the sunset, or the cloud full of light and glory, to merely look, there must be freedom – freedom from your ideas, from your memories, to look. 41:11 But very few can so look, because they have images about the thing which they are looking at; so these images, symbols, knowledge, prevent the actual act of looking. I think it’s fairly simple when you observe what actually takes place in human relationship.
41:47 You know, what we are talking about are not theories, not some Oriental mystification, and all that rubbish, but what we are talking are actual facts, and when you examine, look at a fact you can’t have opinions. When you actually examine something, examination ceases when you look with a particular opinion, judgement, evaluation, condemnation, and so on. So what we are saying is: look at your relationship, and you’ll soon understand how extraordinary it is. 42:58 The relationship you have between you and your wife, or your wife and husband, or your neighbour, or your queen or king – this relationship is based on images. The image you have about your wife and the wife has about you, and the relationship is between these two images, which is no relationship at all. Which is, we have concepts. Please do observe it in your own mind, don’t merely listen to a lot of words and then agree or disagree, but actually examine as you are listening, look at your own mind, you’ll soon find out how burdened we are with concepts, with ideas, with formulas, the good, the bad, ‘this is right’, ‘this is wrong’, ‘this is God’, ‘this is evil’, ‘this is sin’. 44:12 And with this background we look. And obviously when we do look we look at nothing; we look at our own projections.
44:31 So, when you look at yourself, and one must, because self-knowledge, the knowing of oneself, is the beginning of wisdom – knowing oneself as one actually is, is the ending of sorrow. And you cannot look at yourself if you have formulas, concepts – those are the images, the symbols, the background that looks.
45:09 So we are talking of freedom. And obviously to live in this world completely, totally, there must be freedom. As we said, freedom is entirely different from revolt; freedom demands great maturity, great sensitivity and intelligence. You know, when we use the word ‘intelligence’ we want a definition of that word. What do you mean by intelligence? And we think we are very intelligent if we can define that word and accept that word – that is, the definition. The very explanation of what intelligence is, and the definition of intelligence, ceases to be intelligent. 46:24 But to find out for oneself what is intelligence, because freedom demands intelligence, like peace demands that you live peacefully every day, every minute, otherwise you contribute to war, contribute to violence. And is it possible for human beings, with their structure of violence and sorrow, not only at the conscious level, but at the unconscious level, there, whether totally – whether consciousness can ever be free from violence? And who is the entity who is setting up the mechanism that is going to operate, which will free him? You understand?
48:01 I want to be free from sorrow, from violence. I mean that’s an obvious demand, an obvious necessity, because we have had so many wars; there have been two appalling wars in these countries. And one asks after being tortured, butchered, brutality, violence, everything that is implied in war, one asks: is it possible to be free from violence, right through? And to enquire into the possibility there must be freedom to merely enquire – not say, it is not possible, or it is possible, which becomes merely sentimental and has no value at all. But to actually examine; that is, go into the psychological structure of our whole being, because we have produced wars, each one of us, through our national, economic, our divisions as the family, as the country, as my God and your God. 49:47 And as we are totally responsible for these wars, to find out whether it is possible to be free from this violence, one must actually be free now to examine. And I think that becomes one of the most difficult things: to actually be free to look. That is, to look implies freedom from concepts. It is the concept that has built the psychological structure of society. My concept as a Hindu, or as a Buddhist, or as a Christian; my concept that I’m much more important than somebody else – my ambition, my greed, my envy, my brutality, is a concept. And to actually enquire into that concept I must be free to examine it. 51:21 But you see, freedom implies danger, insecurity. Because you don’t know by examining what is going to come, so one is frightened. And so we don’t want freedom to examine, to change, to radically uproot the whole psychological structure of our being, because we don’t know then what will happen to our very existence. So there is fear.
52:25 Now is it possible, living in this world, in a society which is so corrupt, a society which is based on acquisitiveness, and this problem of fear, is it possible for a human being to be free totally from fear? Because otherwise one is not free from fear, one lives in darkness. You may have marvellous theories, you may invent gods by the hundred, one saviour or ten saviours but as long as there is fear in any form there must be confusion. Which means a state of mind that realises when it is free from fear it is no longer seeking security in any form psychologically. 53:57 Of course, obviously, outwardly there must be security, to have food, clothes and shelter, that’s an obvious thing; but psychologically, inwardly, ‘inside the skin’ to be free from fear means clarity. And when there is clarity, no problem exists. For that which is light, there is no darkness. And there is darkness when there is fear, and hence the problems. So is it possible to be free from fear? Not in some future day, but actually to be free from fear every day? This is a question that demands, like every other human problem which is of great complexity, we must approach very simply. 55:39 You know, our human problems are very, very complex, and anything that is complex we have to learn about, we have to learn about it; and to learn about it we must be very simple. We must come to it very simply, not with our complex ideas that we must be free, that this is wrong – you know, just to look.
56:14 And when we are talking about fear, what do we mean by that word? Please, as we said just now, don’t merely listen to a lot of words because they have no meaning, but through the word examine yourself. Look at yourself and see what you are afraid of, actually what you are afraid of: darkness, your wife, your husband, your neighbour, or your death, or not having success, not being loved, whatever it is – fear of authority, fear of brutality, fear of being dominated. We are afraid, and do you know what that means? 57:23 Have you ever been in contact with fear? Or – please listen – have you ever been in contact with fear, or are you in contact with the image you have about fear? The two things are different, aren’t they? I have an image about you, and you have an image about me and our contact is between these two images, and therefore there is no contact at all; there is no relationship at all, it’s merely a relationship of ideas, memories.
58:15 So when one looks at fear, if you have ever done it, several things are involved in looking at that fear. Your mind must not only be very quiet to look, it must be full of attention. It must have a tremendous care to look, because otherwise you can’t see the infinite details. So have you ever been actually in contact with fear – fear being danger, as one is afraid of a precipice, of a snake, and so on, or the policeman – has one actually come into direct contact with fear? Or the word ‘fear’, the word itself, with all its associations, that blocks your coming into contact? 59:53 If you have no concept, image of fear, then you are directly in contact with it, aren’t you? Does the word ‘fear’ create fear? Do please listen, go into this with me, if you will, because we are enquiring whether it’s at all possible, radically, right through our being, to be free from this enormous burden of fear. And to enquire, as we said, there must be freedom to look, and you cannot look if you have an image about fear. That means if the word itself projects fear, with all its associations, like one is afraid of death – which we’ll discuss another time, another morning or evening – like death, one is afraid of death. We have pictures, symbols, ideas of something unknown, 1:01:25 and there is fear of death; fear of being healthy and knowing what it is to have good health, and fear of falling ill. Or, being ill, the fear of never being able to become healthy again. So is the fear that exists in each one, is it the fear created by the word, by the symbol, by a concept, by an image? Or can the mind directly come into contact with that fact?
1:02:22 This is very important to understand and realise – how you look at a fact. How do you look at a tree? There is the objective tree outside of you. How do you look at it? Do you look at it with the memories, with the knowledge, with the symbols, with the botanical knowledge of that tree? That is, the background that looks at that tree; or without the background you look at that tree? The look with the background, with thought, is entirely different from looking at the tree without thought. 1:03:25 Then, when you look, you are directly in contact; that means there is no space between you and the tree, which doesn’t mean you become the tree, or you identify yourself with the tree, that’s all too trivial, too immature, childish! But when you look, to look without a single concept, which is without a single memory. So can you look at fear? Please follow this closely, otherwise it’ll mean nothing.
1:04:14 Can you look without a concept about that fear? And there is fear and the observer, isn’t there? Please follow this step by step. There is what we call the fear of something, and fear doesn’t exist by itself, it is because of something. There is fear, and you say I am afraid. So you are the observer of that fear. Right? You are the observer, and the thing observed is fear. So there is a space between you and the thing observed, as when you look at a tree you have the space, the observer, ‘I am looking at that tree’. 1:05:19 And that space is created by thought – thought being the whole response of memory, and memory is always old, and therefore thought is always old. There is no new thought, there is no freedom in thought. You can think what you like, but it is still from the past.
1:05:44 So, to look without a concept is to be aware of the observer and the thing observed. And is the observer different from the thing observed? That is, I say I am afraid, there is fear outside of me, and I am the observer of that fear. Is that a fact? Or the observer is the fear? Please, this is not intellectual or highfalutin stuff. We are just examining what actually is. So, with most of us there is always the observer, the centre from which we look. And that centre is memory, thought, our conditioning, our experiences, our knowledge. So when we are confronted with fear, 1:07:28 that fear has its own associations, which are memories, and with these memories we look at that fact which we call fear, and therefore we are never directly in contact with it. You can only be directly in contact with anything, with your neighbour, with your wife, with your husband, with a tree, with anything, a cloud, directly in contact, only when the observer is not – the observer being thought, with all the ramifications of thought. You can try this for yourself when you look at a tree – there it’s fairly simple, because it’s an objective thing. It doesn’t want a thing from you; 1:08:28 all that it wants is that you leave it alone. And if you can look at that tree, to look at it without any concept, without any thought, which doesn’t mean your mind is blank, vacant, empty, on the contrary, because then it is really free to look, and therefore it’s a tremendous attention.
1:09:10 And in the same way, to look at fear without the observer. It’s only then there is the ending of fear; not escaping from fear, not suppression from fear, through drink, through sex, through amusement, through gods, through going to churches, and all that idiotic, infantile business.
1:09:48 So, it is an art to look, which is much more important than any art in the world, any painting, any music, any book; because then, when we can look so totally and completely, whether it be your wife or your husband, the tree, or the cloud, or our own miserable conditioning – then being directly in contact with it, there is the ending of it.
1:10:47 Perhaps now, if you will, we can ask questions and discuss what we have talked about. You know, sir, to ask a question is one of the most difficult things – which doesn’t mean I am preventing you from asking. To ask a right question is still more difficult, because most of us ask such superficial questions, and when we do ask we are waiting for somebody to tell us; some authority will explain, some technician who has reached, God knows what, Heaven, or whatever it is, he is going to tell you all about it. So when we ask, we are waiting for someone to tell us. 1:12:07 But when we ask the right question, the right question, fundamental question – to ask that very right question demands a great deal of intelligence, because it means you have thought about it, you have gone into it, you have searched out, enquired the urgency of it. Like a man who watches his house on fire, he acts, he doesn’t discuss about the ways and means of putting that fire out, or who set the house on fire. So to ask the right question is not only important but necessary, which means you are doubting, questioning. We must question, we must doubt everything; from the gods that man has invented and the priests that have sustained those gods; question our whole psychological structure, never accepting anybody’s authority and that’s one of the most difficult things to do – including the authority of the speaker – because there is no authority, except the authority of the policeman, the government and the law. 1:14:15 So, if you are willing, if I haven’t stopped you from asking, perhaps we can discuss easily without the intervention of time and space.
1:14:44 Questioner: If one has cancer, how can one be free from death?
1:14:57 K: If one has cancer, how can one be free from the fear of death. Isn’t it, not from death? Is that right? From the fear. The questioner wants to know if one has a cancer, if one has cancer, how can one be free from it and also from the fear of dying, with all the pain, with all the anxiety, you know, all that one goes through. Right, is that the question, sir?
1:15:49 Q: Yes.
1:15:53 K: Now. Sir, sir, wait a minute. He has asked a question, I must answer that. May I say something here? In understanding one question – it doesn’t matter who puts it – we’ll understand a great deal, but if you are occupied with your own question, then you won’t even listen to the first question. And most of us are occupied with our own problems and therefore we never see the vastness of problems.
1:16:46 I have cancer; if I have cancer, what do I do? I go to a doctor and if it is rather hopeless, then what am I to do? Accept it – pain, agony. That’s a fact; you accept it – you have to. But something else steps in. That is fear; fear of not only pain, the anxious nights, the endless days – you know what it all is. And the fear of death, coming to an end. So, if it is incurable, you put up with it. But to put up with it requires a great deal of intelligence, because that pain, that anxiety, distorts the mind. 1:18:07 You can’t see anything clearly, it makes the mind bitter, or sentimental, or afraid. But to accept it healthily, accept healthily something which is unhealthy, is intelligence, part of that intelligence. Then there is the question of fear, the question of dying. That’s one of the most important questions, a fundamental question: why one is afraid of death. I think it would be proper that we go into this question at another time, this question of the fear of death. We just now in the talk 1:19:13 went into this problem of fear somewhat, not totally; but to be free from the fear of death one must spend really a whole hour to go into it, some time, and perhaps we can do it in one of these talks that are to follow – which doesn’t mean we are avoiding answering that question.
1:19:54 Q: Sir, this question of being in contact with fear: a strong emotion of fear arises, and one acts at once, either you attack or you run. How do you mean that you are not in contact with that fear?
1:20:12 K: You are from California, aren’t you, sir?
1:20:15 Q: Yes, sir.
1:20:18 K: And you have seen wild animals there, haven’t you? Now what do you do? You don’t go and hunt them, you move away from them. Now, either you move out of fear or you move out of intelligence. Follow this, sir. If you move out of fear, run away from fear, there is a danger of that animal attacking you, because animals smell fear. Right? Because fear brings about certain activity of the glands, and perspiration, and so on, which the animals smell and perhaps will attack you. But if you look at it, and are not afraid, but walk away, as the speaker has done with several animals, it is very simple. It does not attack because you are not afraid, 1:21:24 and if it does attack you, will protect yourself. Right? But there are other forms of fear which we are talking about. That is, the psychological fear, and it is this psychological fear that’s far more significant, far more important to understand than physical fears, because the psychological fear is this demand, everlasting demand to be secure, psychologically. One must be physically secure, have enough money, clothes, food, shelter – that’s an obvious human necessity. But the psychological demand to be secure in all relationships, with your wife, with your husband – the urgency to be secure – and we never question whether there is such a thing as security psychologically. 1:22:42 And there is no such thing, ever, to have psychological security. There can only be security psychologically between two dead things, not two living, moving things. What we demand is the security of dead things, because we ourselves are dead in our search for security.
1:23:20 Q: Regardless of the feeling, Krishnaji, if you feel fear, then how is it that you are not in contact with that fear?
1:23:29 K: I explained just now, sir, how to be in contact with that fear. There is an immediate fear arises – right? – about something: that you will insult me, that you will be angry with me – yes! Now when that arises, to look at it without all the mechanism of memories, associations intervening. Which demands a great deal in itself, discipline. We’ll discuss this another time. I think we have talked enough for this morning, haven’t we? You can’t take more than a certain amount, can you?
1:24:21 Q: May I ask just one question? Since fear seems to be a chemical reaction of some tissue in your body, is it then possible that in an instant through attention, the attention you’re talking about, to change that chemical reaction, so change the tissue of your body?
1:24:54 K: Yes, madam, I understand. If you take certain chemicals like LSD, other forms of chemicals you have no fear – many cases have taken place in America where people who have taken these drugs like LSD, they think they can fly and so jump out of the window and drop. Or there have been known cases, they feel tremendously vital and all-powerful and they stand in front of a rushing bus and try to stop it. Of course, chemically, physiologically, chemistry does act: it’s an obvious fact. You take some pills, you become extraordinarily brave, physically. 1:25:46 Or you take rum on the battlefield and you go and are willing to kill your friend across the way. But the chemical reaction of a physical state not only reacts on the psychological state, but the psychological state reacts on the physical. It’s an inter-relationship, it’s a psychosomatic thing, it isn’t just physical fear which reacts on the psychological fear, or the psychological fear – it is constant inter-relationship. Life is inter-relationship. To be is to be related, and to divide these psychic fears and physiological fears becomes impossible, because they are so closely related. But when we examine the psychological fears, 1:26:53 then you will begin to understand the physical fears, and therefore establish a right relationship between the two. But without understanding the psychological fears, but merely concentrate on the chemical fears of the body, leads nowhere. I’m sorry we’ll have to stop. We’ll meet again tomorrow.
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