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LO61T5 - Can the mind free itself from fear?
London - 11 May 1961
Public Talk 5



0:00 This is J Krishnamurti’s fifth public talk in London, 1961.
0:07 Krishnamurti: If I may, I’d like to continue with what we were discussing day before yesterday evening, and if you will permit me, I’ll go on, talk for a while and then we’ll discuss.
0:33 We were talking about fear and whether it’s at all possible for the mind to be totally free of it; not partially, not gradually, but to throw it out entirely.
1:18 I would like to go into it much more deeply, if we can, this evening.
1:32 Our minds are so influenced by what we read, by the books, by the climate, by the food, by the clothes, by tradition, by the innumerable challenges and responses, the impressions, the conditionings of environment, and most of us are not aware of this fact, that we are the result of influence: the good and the bad, the superficial and the deep, un-thought out, unrecognized, unknown influences.
2:45 Nothing mysterious; I don’t mean by the word... when I use the word ‘unknown’, I don’t mean anything mysterious.
2:52 We are not aware of it, riding in a bus, in the underground, the noises, the advertisements, the propaganda, the newspapers, the political speeches, the books we read – we are shaped by all these things.
3:30 And it’s rather terrifying, rather disturbing, when one is aware of them, and whether the mind is ever capable of really being free of influence, the conscious influences and the unconscious.
4:19 They are trying, I think, in America, in the cinemas and elsewhere, on the radio, to advertise and say things so fast that the conscious mind couldn’t take it in, but the imprint of it was there all the same. It was called subliminal propaganda, and fortunately, the government stopped it.
5:10 But unfortunately we are also slaves to this unconscious, subliminal – if I can use that word – propaganda all the time.
5:22 We pass it on to our children from generation to generation, and we are held in the framework of influence.
5:38 After all, that’s propaganda. I’m not doing propaganda, let’s be very clear on this, because to me, every form of influence is destructive to the understanding of what is true.
6:01 If the mind is to discover the unknowable, the thing that cannot be measured, the thing that is not put together by the mind, then one must penetrate through all these influences and discover if the mind can be free. Because I think fear has its roots in the imprint of time, and goodness cannot flower in the field of time.
7:00 And can one inquire into influence, whether the mind is capable of it?
7:20 The influence of a word, the word ‘communist’, the word ‘non-believer’, the social word – we are slave to all these, and whether the mind can free itself of the word, of the symbol.
8:05 I think it is important to inquire into this.
8:17 I wonder what we mean by inquiry. How do we inquire?
8:29 How do you... how does one penetrate into things?
8:40 What does inquiry imply?
8:47 Do you consciously look into fear, into the various forms of influences, into the hypnotic state of a word?
9:06 Do you consciously, deliberately look?
9:20 And when you do so look, does it reveal anything, or there is another form of seeing, looking, inquiring?
9:43 Through the exercise of will, the urge, the desire, the compulsion to inquire, to look, to search out, will you find it? Will you find all the implications of fear?
10:11 Will you gather it little by little, page by page, chapter by chapter, or will you understand the whole thing at once, totally?
10:28 Surely, there are two ways of inquiry, aren’t there? I don’t know if you have thought about it.
10:41 Either through the positive process, deliberately setting about to search out every form of fear, analytically being aware of every movement of thought, watching every step, every word, which becomes an extraordinary process, very destructive process, this constant tearing to pieces to find out, which is the analytical process, the introspective process, or is there another way of inquiry?
12:14 Please, I’m not trying to influence you.
12:22 We’re not trying to make you think in a certain direction, which is what the propagandist does.
12:39 But to see for oneself what is true and what is false without any influence, without any verbal directive; to see the truth in the false, and what is true as true.
13:16 Will the analytical process of inquiry really free the mind from every form of fear?
13:36 And is it possible at all to be free from fear?
13:55 There is the self-protective fear, physically, when you meet a snake, mad dog, and all the rest of it. That self-protective fear is sanity, surely, to protect against the onrushing bus.
14:44 And apart from that, every form of protective reaction is the cause of fear, and can the mind, through this positive inquiry, unravel the ways and the means and the knot of fear?
15:27 Please, I think we ought to be very clear on this point, because I want to take the next... if one is not clear on this issue, I’m afraid you won’t understand what I’m going to say afterwards.
15:43 It isn’t a question of your accepting what I’m saying, or not accepting. We’re not thinking in terms of arguments, whether you are right or I’m right, but what is the fact.
16:03 About a fact you don’t have to argue or to be convinced.
16:13 Can the mind free itself through analysis, through introspective examination, through will, effort, discover, unravel the causes of fear, and step out of it?
16:41 You have tried, I’m sure, to discipline yourself against fear, haven’t we?
16:54 Fear of darkness, fear of what people say, fear of a dozen things, not only discipline oneself against fear, but also rationalize it.
17:09 We’ve done all this, and yet it’s there.
17:16 Resistance will not wipe it away.
17:29 So how, if the so-called positive inquiry, which is... if I may use one word now, analytical process, is not right, is not the means, the way, the process which will free the mind, then what is the other... is there another way?
18:09 I’m using the word ‘way’, not with the implication of gradualness leading to somewhere, way implying distance from here to there.
18:45 In the so-called positive way there is the space, ‘in the meantime’: I will eventually arrive, I will be free, it has to be conquered.
19:08 There is always an interval between the fact of ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’.
19:38 To me, that will not at all free the mind because all that implies time and time is the very fact of fear.
20:03 If there was no such thing as tomorrow, as yesterday, and all the influences of yesterday through today to tomorrow, which involves not only a chronological time but psychological time – the will to achieve, the will to arrive, the will to conquer, which implies a distance from here to there – then there is no fear because then there is only the moment, the gap in which time is not.
21:04 So the so-called positive approach, inquiry, activity, is essentially prolongation of fear.
21:27 I don’t know if we really comprehend that; comprehend not what I am saying – that is not important – but the fact.
22:28 Now, if that is not the releasing factor, then what is? Now, the inquiry into ‘what is’ is not a reaction to the positive fact, to the positive process.
22:49 I don’t know if you... I must make it very clear. Wait, please, just a minute, just a minute.
23:05 I’m thinking aloud. I haven’t thought all this out before, I’m thinking aloud, so we must also give each other time, not just rattle along.
23:29 As I said just now, the inquiry which we know as the positive process does not free the mind from fear, for it maintains time, time as tomorrow, which is shaped by the influences of the past through the present, and that process can never free the mind.
24:28 Please, don’t accept what I’m talking, saying. See it. If you see the truth of it, or the falseness of it, then your inquiry into something else is not a reaction to that. I don’t know if that’s clear.
24:51 You know what I mean by reaction: I don’t like Christianity for a dozen reasons, I become a Buddhist, or I don’t like the capitalist system with all its... etc., etc., or I can’t reach the immense riches – whatever that is – and so I become, as a reaction, a fascist or a communist or something else.
25:28 Being afraid, I react and develop courage; it’s still a reaction and therefore still within the same field.
25:58 So a fact emerges from this, which is, when you see something as false, which is not a reaction, then a new process comes into being – not a... a new seed is born.
26:29 I don’t know if you’re getting what I’m talking... if I’m making myself clear. It is rather hot in here, I don’t know... It’s all right, the windows are open.
26:55 You see, first of all, to see something false requires a very alert mind – or to see something true – a mind that is completely free of any motive.
27:45 Now, if one sees the falseness or the truth of this analytical process – now we understand what we mean by the analytical process – if one sees the falseness or the truth of it, or see the truth in the false, then how will you tackle fear?
28:26 You understand what I’m...? If that is not the way, if... is not the way, then you have to turn your whole back against it, haven’t you?
28:48 The turning your back against it isn’t... has no motive, but you have seen that’s false, therefore you’ve turned. I don’t know if you see...
29:13 And the turning away is not a reaction, therefore you can never go back to that. Please... hm?
29:27 I think this is very important to understand this because this... you cut at the root of effort and will.
30:05 So if you have turned away from the analytical process, with all its implications...
30:24 and I’ve explained all the... I can go into more in detail the implications, but that’s enough.
30:37 Now, what is the state of your mind which has turned away?
30:52 Please do look at your own mind, not what I am saying.
31:06 Questioner: The mind that is completely uncertain...

K: No, no, sir, sir, don’t answer me, please. Don’t give verbal expression yet. Wait... please.
31:23 Don’t express it yet, even to yourself, because it’s something new – you follow? – and therefore you have no words for it yet.
31:41 If you have words, you’re still... you’re not looking. I don’t know...
32:07 You see, that is the revolution, isn’t it, the revolt which is not a reaction, but the revolt from the whole tradition of how to free, how to achieve, how to arrive.
32:34 I don’t know if you capture this.
33:17 So, what is the mind that has turned its back upon tradition?
33:31 You understand?
34:02 Now, let’s change a little bit; let that simmer for a little while.
34:32 You know, most of us feel guilty, have guilt and anxiety – to put on clean clothes when millions in the East have no clothes at all; to have a good meal when millions have no meals, and you don’t know that feeling. Living in a prosperous country where you’re safe from the womb to the tomb, you know what that feeling is.
35:29 There is not only the collective guilt of the race, there is the guilt of the family, the name, the big name and the little name, the guilt of the VIPs and the guilt of nobodies, the guilt of the individual, the things that he has done wrong, the anxiety...
36:08 this guilt and anxiety, the sense of despair – I’m sure you all know it.
36:27 And out of this despair we do most extraordinary things: rush around, joining this and doing that, becoming this and denying that, hoping to wipe away the despair.
37:09 And despair again has its root in fear, and the many philosophies which despair breeds, many thoughts, many deaths that one goes through.
37:39 I’m not being dramatic or romantic or... this is the ordinary thing that everybody goes through, intensely, or very, very superficially.
37:53 When one goes through it, one turns on the radio, picks up a book or goes to a cinema or goes to a church, or goes to look at a parade.
38:08 When it is very deep, one goes off the deep end and becomes a neurotic; or one joins one of these new, fashionable movements of the intellect.
38:41 This is what is happening in the world because we have denied... there is no more God, churches have lost their meaning and the authority of the priest has washed up.
39:07 And the more you think, the more you cleanse the mind of all these absurdities.
39:35 And so you’ve got to tackle, you’ve got to understand fear – you follow? – you’ve got to find out, not only fear of the husband or wife – you know? – fear, the fear of the things that you have done and the fear of the things that you’ve not done.
40:07 And as despair born of fear or boredom, anxiety and guilt – these are all the expressions of fear.
40:31 You... the mind has to find out, if it is not to deteriorate, if it is to be alive, active, rich, it has got to wipe away fear.
41:00 Until we do that, I don’t think we know what it means to love.
41:07 I don’t think we’ll ever know what it means to have peace – not political, and all the rest of that bilge, but real inward sense of quietness, untouched, incorruptible, something that is not put together by the mind, called peace.
41:46 So it is imperative to be free of fear in order... to be free of fear, and it’s only then the mind can discover if there is something beyond, something which man has been seeking for centuries, millennia; he calls it God, he calls it something else... Technician: Owing to a technical fault the remainder of this session, which lasted about 30 minutes, is not included in the recording.