 12. Anxiety, Depression |
KRISHNAMURTI
On Fear
How to get rid of fear, which influences all activities?
It is the mind (the mentality or mental process of the psychological Ego-I) that creates fear, the mind (lower mind, egoic) being the process of thinking. Thinking is verbalization. You cannot think without words, without symbols, images; these images, which are the prejudices, the previous knowledge, the apprehensions of the mind (lower mind, egoic), are projected upon the fact, and out of that there arises fear. There is freedom from fear only when the MIND (true mind, with intuition, the "witness" process of the true SELF or spiritual SELF) is capable of looking at the fact without translating it, without giving it a name, a label. This is quite difficult, because the feelings, the reactions, the anxieties that we have, are promptly identified by the mind (brain, bio-computer) and given a word. The feeling of jealousy is identified by that word. Is it possible not to identify a feeling, to look at that feeling without naming it? It is the naming of the feeling that gives it continuity, that gives it strength. The moment you give a name to that which you call fear, you strengthen it; but if you can look at that feeling without terming it, you will that it withers away. Therefore if one would be completely free of fear it is essential to understand this whole process of terming, of projecting symbols, images, giving names to facts. There can be freedom from fear only when there is SELF-knowledge. SELF-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, which is the ending of fear. (edited)
Note: SELF-knowledge means the same as SELF-realization.
