March

March 1
A free mind has humility

Have you ever gone into the question of psychological dependence? If you go into it very deeply, you will find that most of us are terribly lonely. Most of us have such shallow, empty minds. Most of us do not know what love means. So, out of that loneliness, out of that insufficiency, out of the privation of life, we are attached to something, attached to the family; we depend upon it. And when the wife or the husband turns away from us, we are jealous. Jealousy is not love; but the love which society acknowledges in the family is made respectable. That is another form of defense, another form of escape from ourselves. So every form of resistance breeds dependence. And a mind that is dependent can never be free.

You need to be free, because you will see that a mind that is free has the essence of humility. Such a mind, which is free and therefore has humility, can learn—not a mind that resists. Learning is an extraordinary thing—to learn, not to accumulate knowledge. Accumulating knowledge is quite a different thing. What we call knowledge is comparatively easy, because that is a movement from the known to the known. But to learn is a movement from the known to the unknown—you learn only like that, do you not?

March 2
We never question the problem of dependence

Why do we depend? Psychologically, inwardly, we depend on a belief, on a system, on a philosophy; we ask another for a mode of conduct; we seek teachers who will give us a way of life which will lead us to some hope, some happiness. So we are always, are we not, searching for some kind of dependence, security. Is it possible for the mind ever to free itself from this sense of dependence? Which does not mean that the mind must achieve independence—that is only the reaction to dependence. We are not talking of independence, of freedom from a particular state. If we can inquire without the reaction of seeking freedom from a particular state of dependence, then we can go much more deeply into it...We accept the necessity for dependence; we say it is inevitable. We have never questioned the whole issue at all, why each one of us seeks some kind of dependence. Is it not that we really, deep down, demand security, permanency? Being in a state of confusion, we want someone to get us out of that confusion. So, we are always concerned with how to escape or avoid the state in which we are. In the process of avoiding that state, we are bound to create some kind of dependence, which becomes our authority. If we depend on another for our security, for our inward wellbeing, there arise out of that dependence innumerable problems, and then we try to solve those problems—the problems of attachment. But we never question, we never go into the problem of dependence itself. Perhaps if we can really intelligently, with full awareness, go into this problem, then we may find that dependence is not the issue at all—that it is only a way of escaping from a deeper fact.

March 3
There is some deeper factor that makes us depend

We know we depend—on our relationship with people or on some idea or on a system of thought. Why?

...Actually, I do not think dependence is the problem; I think there is some other deeper factor that makes us depend. And if we can unravel that, then both dependence and the struggle for freedom will have very little significance; then all the problems which arise through dependence will wither away. So, what is the deeper issue? Is it that the mind abhors, fears, the idea of being alone? And does the mind know that state which it avoids?...So long as that loneliness is not really understood, felt, penetrated, dissolved—whatever word you may like to use—so long as that sense of loneliness remains, dependence is inevitable, and one can never be free; one can never find out for oneself that which is true, that which is religion.

March 4
Become deeply aware

Dependence sets going the movement of aloofness and attachment, a constant conflict without comprehension, without a release. You must become aware of the process of attachment and dependence, become aware of it without condemnation, without judgment, and then you will perceive the significance of this conflict of opposites. If you become deeply aware and consciously direct thought to comprehend the full meaning of need, of dependence, your conscious mind will be open and clear about it; and then the subconscious with its hidden motives, pursuits and intentions, will project itself into the conscious. When this happens, you must study and understand each intimation of the subconscious If you do this many times, becoming aware of the projections of the subconscious after the conscious has thought out the problem as clearly as possible, then, even though you give your attention to other matters, the conscious and the subconscious will work out the problem of dependence, or any other problem. Thus there is established a constant awareness which will patiently and gently bring about integration; and if your health and diet are all right, this will in turn bring about fullness of being.

March 5
Relationship

Relationship based on mutual need brings only conflict. However interdependent we are on each other, we are using each other for a purpose, for an end. With an end in view, relationship is not. You may use me and I may use you. In this usage, we lose contact. A society based on mutual usage is the foundation of violence. When we use another, we have only the picture of the end to be gained. The end, the gain, prevents relationship, communion. In the usage of another, however gratifying and comforting it may be, there is always fear. To avoid this fear, we must possess. From this possession there arises envy, suspicion, and constant conflict. Such a relationship can never bring about happiness.

A society whose structure is based on mere need, whether physiological or psychological, must breed conflict, confusion and misery. Society is the projection of yourself in relation with another, in which the need and the use are predominant. When you use another for your need, physically or psychologically, in actuality there is no relationship at all; you really have no contact with the other, no communion with the other. How can you have communion with the other when the other is used as a piece of furniture, for your convenience and comfort? So, it is essential to understand the significance of relationship in daily life.

March 6
The “me” is the possession

Renunciation, self-sacrifice, is not a gesture of greatness, to be praised and copied. We possess because without possession we are not. Possessions are many and varied. One who possesses no worldly things may be attached to knowledge, to ideas; another may be attached to virtue, another to experience, another to name and fame, and so on. Without possessions, the “me” is not; the “me” is the possession, the furniture, the virtue, the name. In its fear of not being, the mind is attached to name, to furniture, to value; and it will drop these in order to be at a higher level, the higher being the more gratifying, the more permanent. The fear of uncertainty, of not being, makes for attachment, for possession. When the possession is unsatisfactory or painful, we renounce it for a more pleasurable attachment. The ultimate gratifying possession is the word God, or its substitute, the State.

...So long as you are unwilling to be nothing, which in fact you are, you must inevitably breed sorrow and antagonism. The willingness to be nothing is not a matter of renunciation, of enforcement, inner or outer, but of seeing the truth of what is. Seeing the truth of what is brings freedom from the fear of insecurity, the fear which breeds attachment and leads to the illusion of detachment, renunciation. The love of what is is the beginning of wisdom. Love alone shares, it alone can commune; but renunciation and self-sacrifice are the ways of isolation and illusion.

March 7
To exploit is to be exploited

As most of us seek power in one form or another, the hierarchical principle is established, the novice and the initiate, the pupil and the Master, and even among the Masters there are degrees of spiritual growth. Most of us love to exploit and be exploited, and this system offers the means, whether hidden or open. To exploit is to be exploited. The desire to use others for your psychological necessities makes for dependence, and when you depend you must hold, possess; and what you possess, possesses you. Without dependence, subtle or gross, without possessing things, people and ideas, you are empty, a thing of no importance. You want to be something, and to avoid the gnawing fear of being nothing you belong to this or that organization, to this or that ideology, to this church or that temple; so you are exploited, and you in your turn exploit.

March 8
The cultivation of detachment

There is only attachment; there is no such thing as detachment. The mind invents detachment as a reaction to the pain of attachment. When you react to attachment by becoming “detached,” you are attached to something else. So that whole process is one of attachment. You are attached to your wife or your husband, to your children, to ideas, to tradition, to authority, and so on; and your reaction to that attachment is detachment. The cultivation of detachment is the outcome of sorrow, pain. You want to escape from the pain of attachment, and your escape is to find something to which you think you can be attached. So there is only attachment, and it is a stupid mind that cultivates detachment. All the books say, “Be detached,” but what is the truth of the matter? If you observe your own mind, you will see an extraordinary thing—that through cultivating detachment, your mind is becoming attached to something else.

March 9
Attachment is self-deception

We are the things we possess, we are that to which we are attached. Attachment has no nobility. Attachment to knowledge is not different from any other gratifying addiction. Attachment is self-absorption, whether at the lowest or at the highest level. Attachment is self-deception, it is an escape from the hollowness of the self. The things to which we are attached—property, people, ideas—become all-important, for without the many things which fill its emptiness, the self is not. The fear of not being makes for possession; and fear breeds illusion, the bondage to conclusions. Conclusions, material or ideational, prevent the fruition of intelligence, the freedom in which alone reality can come into being; and without this freedom, cunning is taken for intelligence. The ways of cunning are always complex and destructive. It is this self-protective cunning that makes for attachment; and when attachment causes pain, it is this same cunning that seeks detachment and finds pleasure in the pride and vanity of renunciation. The understanding of the ways of cunning, the ways of the self, is the beginning of intelligence.

March 10
Face the fact and see what happens...

We have all had the experience of tremendous loneliness, where books, religion, everything is gone and we are tremendously, inwardly, lonely, empty. Most of us can’t face that emptiness, that loneliness, and we run away from it. Dependence is one of the things we run to, depend on, because we can’t stand being alone with ourselves. We must have the radio or books or talking, incessant chatter about this and that, about art and culture. So we come to that point when we know there is this extraordinary sense of self-isolation. We may have a very good job, work furiously, write books, but inwardly there is this tremendous vacuum. We want to fill that and dependence is one of the ways. We use dependence, amusement, church work, religions, drink, women, a dozen things to fill it up, cover it up. If we see that it is absolutely futile to try to cover it up, completely futile—not verbally, not with conviction and therefore agreement and determination—but if we see the total absurdity of it...then we are faced with a fact. It is not a question of how to be free from dependence; that’s not a fact; that’s only a reaction to a fact...Why don’t I face the fact and see what happens?

The problem now arises of the observer and the observed. The observer says, “I am empty; I don’t like it,” and runs away from it. The observer says, “I am different from the emptiness.” But the observer is the emptiness; it is not emptiness seen by an observer. The observer is the observed. There is a tremendous revolution in thinking, in feeling, when that takes place.

March 11
Attachment is escape

Just try to be aware of your conditioning. You can only know it indirectly, in relation to something else. You cannot be aware of your conditioning as an abstraction, for then it is merely verbal, without much significance. We are only aware of conflict. Conflict exists when there is no integration between challenge and response. This conflict is the result of our conditioning. Conditioning is attachment: attachment to work, to tradition, to property, to people, to ideas, and so on. If there were no attachment, would there be conditioning? Of course not. So why are we attached? I am attached to my country because through identification with it I become somebody. I identify myself with my work, and the work becomes important, I am my family, my property; I am attached to them. The object of attachment offers me the means of escape from my own emptiness. Attachment is escape, and it is escape that strengthens conditioning.

March 12
To be alone

To be alone, which is not a philosophy of loneliness, is obviously to be in a state of revolution against the whole setup of society—not only this society, but the communist society, the fascist, every form of society as organized brutality, organized power. And that means an extraordinary perception of the effects of power. Sir, have you noticed those soldiers rehearsing? They are not human beings any more, they are machines, they are your sons and my sons, standing there in the sun. This is happening here, in America, in Russia, and everywhere—not only at the governmental level, but also at the monastic level, belonging to monasteries, to orders, to groups who employ astonishing power. And it is only the mind which does not belong that can be alone. And aloneness is not something to be cultivated. You see this? When you see all this, you are out, and no governor or president is going to invite you to dinner. Out of that aloneness there is humility. It is this aloneness that knows love—not power. The ambitious man, religious or ordinary, will never know what love is. So, if one sees all this, then one has this quality of total living and therefore total action. This comes through self-knowledge.

March 13
Craving is always craving

To avoid suffering we cultivate detachment. Being forewarned that attachment sooner or later entails sorrow, we want to become detached. Attachment is gratifying, but perceiving the pain in it, we want to be gratified in another manner, through detachment. Detachment is the same as attachment as long as it yields gratification. So what we are really seeking is gratification, we crave to be satisfied by whatever means.

We are dependent or attached because it gives us pleasure, security, power, a sense of wellbeing, though in it there is sorrow and fear. We seek detachment also for pleasure, in order not to be hurt, not to be inwardly wounded. Our search is for pleasure, gratification. Without condemning or justifying we must try to understand this process, for unless we understand it there is no way out of our confusion and contradiction. Can craving ever be satisfied, or is it a bottomless pit? Whether we crave for the low or for the high, craving is always craving, a burning fire, and what can be consumed by it soon becomes ashes; but craving for gratification still remains, ever burning, ever consuming, and there is no end to it. Attachment and detachment are equally binding, and both must be transcended.

March 14
Intensity free of all attachment

In the state of passion without a cause, there is intensity free of all attachment; but when passion has a cause, there is attachment and attachment is the beginning of sorrow. Most of us are attached; we cling to a person, to a country, to a belief, to an idea, and when the object of our attachment is taken away or otherwise loses its significance, we find ourselves empty, insufficient. This emptiness we try to fill by clinging to something else, which again becomes the object of our passion.

March 15
Relationship is a mirror

Surely, only in relationship the process of what I am unfolds, does it not? Relationship is a mirror in which I see myself as I am; but as most of us do not like what we are, we begin to discipline, either positively or negatively, what we perceive in the mirror of relationship. That is, I discover something in relationship, in the action of relationship, and I do not like it. So, I begin to modify what I do not like, what I perceive as being unpleasant. I want to change it—which means I already have a pattern of what I should be. The moment there is a pattern of what I should be, there is no comprehension of what I am. The moment I have a picture of what I want to be, or what I should be, or what I ought not to be—a standard according to which I want to change myself—then, surely, there is no comprehension of what I am at the moment of relationship.

I think it is really important to understand this, for I think this is where most of us go astray. We do not want to know what we actually are at a given moment in relationship. If we are concerned merely with self-improvement, there is no comprehension of ourselves, of what is.

March 16
The function of relationship

Relationship is inevitably painful, which is shown in our every day existence. If in relationship there is no tension, it ceases to be relationship and merely becomes a comfortable sleep-state, an opiate—which most people want and prefer. Conflict is between this craving for comfort and the factual, between illusion and actuality. If you recognize the illusion then you can, by putting it aside, give your attention to the understanding of relationship. But if you seek security in relationship, it becomes an investment in comfort, in illusion and the greatness of relationship is its very insecurity. By seeking security in relationship you are hindering its function, which brings its own peculiar actions and misfortunes.

Surely, the function of relationship is to reveal the state of one’s whole being. Relationship is a process of self-revelation, of self-knowledge. This self-revelation is painful, demanding constant adjustment, pliability of thought-emotion. It is a painful struggle, with periods of enlightened peace...

But most of us avoid or put aside the tension in relationship, preferring the ease and comfort of satisfying dependency, an unchallenged security, a safe anchorage. Then family and other relationships become a refuge, the refuge of the thoughtless. When insecurity creeps into dependency, as it inevitably does, then that particular relationship is cast aside and a new one taken on in the hope of finding lasting security; but there is no security in relationship, and dependency only breeds fear. Without understanding the process of security and fear, relationship becomes a binding hindrance, a way of ignorance. Then all existence is struggle and pain, and there is no way out of it save in right thinking, which comes through self-knowledge.

March 17
How can there be real love?

The image you have about a person, the image you have about your politicians, the prime minister, your god, your wife, your children—that image is being looked at. And that image has been created through your relationship, or through your fears, or through your hopes. The sexual and other pleasures you have had with your wife, your husband, the anger, the flattery, the comfort, and all the things that your family life brings—a deadly life it is—have created an image about your wife or husband. With that image you look. Similarly, your wife or husband has an image about you. So the relationship between you and your wife or husband, between you and the politician is really the relationship between these two images. Right? That is a fact. How can two images which are the result of thought, of pleasure and so on, have any affection or love?

So the relationship between two individuals, very close together or very far, is a relationship of images, symbols, memories. And in that, how can there be real love?

March 18
We are that which we possess

To understand relationship, there must be a passive awareness, which does not destroy relationship. On the contrary, it makes relationship much more vital, much more significant. Then there is in that relationship a possibility of real affection; there is a warmth, a sense of nearness, which is not mere sentiment or sensation. And if we can so approach or be in that relationship to everything, then our problems will be easily solved—the problems of property, the problems of possession. Because, we are that which we possess. The man who possesses money is the money. The man who identifies himself with property is the property, or the house, or the furniture. Similarly with ideas, or with people; and when there is possessiveness, there is no relationship. But most of us possess because we have nothing else, if we do not possess. We are empty shells if we do not possess, if we do not fill our life with furniture, with music, with knowledge, with this or that. And that shell makes a lot of noise, and that noise we call living; and with that we are satisfied. And when there is a disruption, a breaking away of that, then there is sorrow because then you suddenly discover yourself as you are—an empty shell, without much meaning. So, to be aware of the whole content of relationship is action; and from that action there is a possibility of true relationship, a possibility of discovering its great depth, its great significance, and of knowing what love is.

March 19
Being related

Without relationship, there is no existence: to be is to be related...Most of us do not seem to realize this—that the world is my relationship with others, whether one or many. My problem is that of relationship. What I am, that I project; and obviously, if I do not understand myself, the whole of relationship is one of confusion in ever-widening circles. So, relationship becomes of extraordinary importance, not with the so called mass, the crowd, but in the world of my family and friends, however small that may be—my relationship with my wife, my children, my neighbor. In a world of vast organizations, vast mobilizations of people, mass movements, we are afraid to act on a small scale; we are afraid to be little people clearing up our own patch. We say to ourselves, “What can I personally do? I must join a mass movement in order to reform.” On the contrary, real revolution takes place not through mass movements but through the inward revaluation of relationship—that alone is real reformation, a radical, continuous revolution. We are afraid to begin on a small scale. Because the problem is so vast, we think we must meet it with large numbers of people, with a great organization, with mass movements. Surely, we must begin to tackle the problem on a small scale, and the small scale is the “me” and the “you.” When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.

March 20
You and I are the problem, not the world

The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to understand the world we must understand ourselves. That world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world’s problems.

March 21
There is no such thing as living alone

We want to run away from our loneliness, with its panicky fears, so we depend on another, we enrich ourselves with companionship, and so on. We are the prime movers, and other become pawns in our game; and when the pawn turns and demands something in return, we are shocked and grieved. If our own fortress is strong, without a weak spot in it, this battering from the outside is of little consequence to us. The peculiar tendencies that arise with advancing age must be understood and corrected while we are still capable of detached and tolerant self-observation and study; our fears must be observed and understood now. Our energies must be directed, not merely to the understanding of the outward pressures and demands for which we are responsible, but to the comprehension of ourselves, of our loneliness, our fears, demands, and frailties.

There is no such thing as living alone, for all living is relationship; but to live without direct relationship demands high intelligence, a swifter and greater awareness for self-discovery. A “lone” existence, without this keen and flowing awareness, strengthens the already dominant tendencies, thus causing unbalance, distortion. It is now that one has to become aware of the set and peculiar habits of thought-feeling which come with age, and by understanding them make away with them. Inward riches alone bring peace and joy.

March 22
Freedom from fear

Is it possible for the mind to empty itself totally of fear? Fear of any kind breeds illusion; it makes the mind dull, shallow. Where there is fear there is obviously no freedom, and without freedom there is no love at all. And most of us have some form of fear; fear of darkness, fear of public opinion, fear of snakes, fear of physical pain, fear of old age, fear of death. We have literally dozens of fears. And is it possible to be completely free of fear?

We can see what fear does to each one of us. It makes one tell lies; it corrupts one in various ways; it makes the mind empty, shallow. There are dark corners in the mind which can never be investigated and exposed as long as one is afraid. Physical self-protection, the instinctive urge to keep away from the venomous snake, to draw back from the precipice, to avoid falling under the tramcar, and so on, is sane, normal, healthy. But I am asking about the psychological self-protectiveness which makes one afraid of disease, of death, of an enemy. When we seek fulfillment in any form, whether through painting, through music, through relationship, or what you will, there is always fear. So, what is important is to be aware of this whole process of oneself, to observe, to learn about it, and not ask how to get rid of fear. When you merely want to get rid of fear, you will find ways and means of escaping from it, and so there can never be freedom from fear.

March 23
Dealing with fear?

One is afraid of public opinion, afraid of not achieving, not fulfilling, afraid of not having the opportunity; and through it all there is this extraordinary sense of guilt—one has done a thing that one should not have done; the sense of guilt in the very act of doing; one is healthy and others are poor and unhealthy; one has food and others have no food. The more the mind is inquiring, penetrating, asking, the greater the sense of guilt, anxiety...Fear is the urge that seeks a Master, a guru; fear is this coating of respectability, which every one loves so dearly—to be respectable. Do you determine to be courageous to face events in life, or merely rationalize fear away, or find explanations that will give satisfaction to the mind that is caught in fear? How do you deal with it? Turn on the radio, read a book, go to a temple, cling to some form of dogma, belief?

Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas and beliefs. If you see that fear is destructive, then how do you proceed to wipe the mind clean? You say that by probing into the cause of fear you would be free of fear. Is that so? Trying to uncover the cause and knowing the cause of fear does not eliminate fear.

March 24
The door to understanding

You cannot wipe away fear without understanding, without actually seeing into the nature of time, which means thought, which means word. From that arises the question: Is there a thought without word, is there a thinking without the word which is memory? Sir, without seeing the nature of the mind, the movement of the mind, the process of self-knowing, merely saying that I must be free of it, has very little meaning. You have to take fear in the context of the whole of the mind. To see, to go into all this, you need energy. Energy does not come through eating food—that is a part of physical necessity. But to see, in the sense I am using that word, requires an enormous energy; and that energy is dissipated when you are battling with words, when you are resisting, condemning, when you are full of opinions which are preventing you from looking, seeing—your energy is all gone in that. So in the consideration of this perception, this seeing, again you open the door.

March 25
Fear makes us obey

Why do we do all this—obey, follow, copy? Why? Because, we are frightened inwardly to be uncertain. We want to be certain—we want to be certain financially, we want to be certain morally—we want to be approved, we want to be in a safe position, we want never to be confronted with trouble, pain, suffering, we want to be enclosed. So, fear, consciously or unconsciously, makes us obey the Master, the leader, the priest, the government. Fear also controls us from doing something which may be harmful to others, because we will be punished. So behind all these actions, greeds, pursuits, lurks this desire for certainty, this desire to be assured. So, without resolving fear, without being free from fear, merely to obey or to be obeyed has little significance; what has meaning is to understand this fear from day to day and how fear shows itself in different ways. It is only when there is freedom from fear that there is that inward quality of understanding, that aloneness in which there is no accumulation of knowledge or of experience, and it is that alone which gives extraordinary clarity in the pursuit of the real.

March 26
Face-to-face with the fact

Are we afraid of a fact or of an idea about the fact? Are we afraid of the thing as it is, or are we afraid of what we think it is? Take death, for example. Are we afraid of the fact of death or of the idea of death? The fact is one thing and the idea about the fact is another. Am I afraid of the word death or of the fact itself? Because I am afraid of the word, of the idea, I never understand the fact, I never look at the fact, I am never in direct relation with the fact. It is only when I am in complete communion with the fact that there is no fear. If I am not in communion with the fact, then there is fear, and there is no communion with the fact so long as I have an idea, an opinion, a theory, about the fact, so I have to be very clear whether I am afraid of the word, the idea, or the fact. If I am face-to-face with the fact, there is nothing to understand about it: the fact is there, and I can deal with it. If I am afraid of the word, then I must understand the word, go into the whole process of what the word, the term, implies.

It is my opinion, my idea, my experience, my knowledge about the fact, that creates fear. So long as there is verbalization of the fact, giving the fact a name and therefore identifying or condemning it, so long as thought is judging the fact as an observer, there must be fear. Thought is the product of the past; it can only exist through verbalization, through symbols, through images. So long as thought is regarding or translating the fact, there must be fear. Thought is the product of the past, it can only exist through verbalization, through symbols, through images; so long as thought is regarding or translating the fact, there must be fear.

March 27
Contacting fear

There is physical fear. You know, when you see a snake, a wild animal, instinctively there is fear; that is a normal, healthy, natural fear. It is not fear, it is a desire to protect oneself—that is normal. But the psychological protection of oneself—that is, the desire to be always certain—breeds fear. A mind that is seeking always to be certain is a dead mind, because there is no certainty in life, there is no permanency...When you come directly into contact with fear, there is a response of the nerves and all the rest of it. Then, when the mind is no longer escaping through words or through activity of any kind, there is no division between the observer and the thing observed as fear. It is only the mind that is escaping that separates itself from fear. But when there is a direct contract with fear, there is no observer, there is no entity that says, “I am afraid.” So, the moment you are directly in contact with life, with anything, there is no division—it is this division that breeds competition, ambition, fear.

So what is important is not “how to be free of fear?” If you seek a way, a method, a system to be rid of fear, you will be everlastingly caught in fear. But if you understand fear—which can only take place when you come directly in contact with it, as you are in contact with hunger, as you are directly in contact when you are threatened with losing your job—then you do something; only then will you find that all fear ceases—we mean all fear, not fear of this kind or of that kind.

March 28
Fear is non-acceptance of what is

Fear finds various escapes. The common variety is identification, is it not?—identification with country, with society, with an idea. Haven’t you noticed how you respond when you see a procession, a military procession or a religious procession, or when the country is in danger of being invaded? You then identify yourself with the country, with a being, with an ideology. There are other times when you identify yourself with your child, with your wife, with a particular form of action, or inaction. Identification is a process of self-forgetfulness. So long as I am conscious of the “me” I know there is pain, there is struggle, there is constant fear. But if I can identify myself with something greater, with something worthwhile, with beauty, with life, with truth, with belief, with knowledge, at least temporarily, there is an escape from the “me,” is there not? If I talk about “my country” I forget myself temporarily, do I not? If I can say something about God, I forget myself. If I can identify myself with my family, with a group, with a particular party, with a certain ideology, then there is a temporary escape.

Do we now know what fear is? Is it not the non-acceptance of what is? We must understand the word acceptance. I am not using that word as meaning the effort made to accept. There is no question of accepting when I perceive what is. When I do not see clearly what is, then I bring in the process of acceptance. Therefore fear is the non-acceptance of what is.

March 29
The disorder that time creates

Time means moving from what is to “what should be.” I am afraid, but one day I shall be free of fear; therefore, time is necessary to be free of fear—at least, that is what we think. To change from what is to “what should be” involves time. Now, time implies effort in that interval between what is and “what should be.” I don’t like fear, and I am going to make an effort to understand, to analyze, to dissect it, or I am going to discover the cause of it, or I am going to escape totally from it. All this implies effort—and effort is what we are used to. We are always in conflict between what is and “what should be.” The “what I should be” is an idea, and the idea is fictitious, it is not “what I am,” which is the fact; and the “what I am” can be changed only when I understand the disorder that time creates.

...So, is it possible for me to be rid of fear totally, completely, on the instant? If I allow fear to continue, I will create disorder all the time; therefore, one sees that time is an element of disorder, not a means to be ultimately free of fear. So there is no gradual process of getting rid of fear, just as there is no gradual process of getting rid of the poison of nationalism. If you have nationalism and you say that eventually there will be the brotherhood of man, in the interval there are wars, there are hatreds, there is misery, there is all this appalling division between man and man; therefore, time is creating disorder.

March 30
How do I look at anger?

Obviously, I look at it as an observer being angry. I say, “I am angry.” At the moment of anger there is no “I”; the “I” comes in immediately afterwards—which means time. Can I look at the fact without the factor of time, which is the thought, which is the word? This happens when there is the looking without the observer. See where it has led me. I now begin to perceive a way of looking—perceiving without the opinion, the conclusion, without condemning, judging. Therefore I perceive that there can be “seeing” without thought, which is the word. So the mind is beyond the clutches of ideas, of the conflict of duality and all the rest of it. So, can I look at fear not as an isolated fact?

If you isolate a fact that has not opened the door to the whole universe of the mind, then let us go back to the fact and begin again by taking another fact so that you yourself will begin to see the extraordinary thing of the mind, so that you have the key, you can open the door, you can burst into that...

...By considering one fear—the fear of death, the fear of the neighbor, the fear of your spouse dominating over you, you know the whole business of domination—will that open the door? That is all that matters—not how to be free of it—because the moment you open the door, fear is completely wiped away. The mind is the result of time, and time is the word—how extraordinary to think of it! Time is thought; it is thought that breeds fear, it is thought that breeds the fear of death; and it is time which is thought, that has in its hand the whole intricacies and the subtleties of fear.

March 31
The root of all fear

The craving to become causes fears; to be, to achieve, and so to depend engenders fear. The state of the non-fear is not negation, it is not the opposite of fear nor is it courage. In understanding the cause of fear, there is its cessation, not the becoming courageous, for in all becoming there is the seed of fear. Dependence on things, on people, or on ideas breeds fear; dependence arises from ignorance, from the lack of self-knowledge, from inward poverty; fear causes uncertainty of mind-heart, preventing communication and understanding. Through self-awareness we begin to discover and so comprehend the cause of fear, not only the superficial but the deep casual and accumulative fears. Fear is both inborn and acquired; it is related to the past, and to free thought-feeling from it, the past must be comprehended through the present. The past is ever wanting to give birth to the present which becomes the identifying memory of the “me” and the “mine,” the “I.” The self is the root of all fear.