BENGALURU : So, can the mind actually ever be free of fear? That seems to me to be one of the most primary, essential, questions which must be asked and which must be resolved, for any person who is at all serious. There are physical fears and psychological fears. The physical fears of pain, having had pain and the repetition of that pain in the future; the fears of old age, death, the fears of physical insecurity, the fears of uncertainties of tomorrow, the fears of not being able to be a great success, achieve and so on, not being somebody in this rather ugly world; the fears of destruction, the fears of loneliness, not being able to love or be loved, and so on; the conscious fears as well as the unconscious fears.
Can the mind be free, totally, of all this? And if it cannot, then such a mind is incapable, because it is distorted, it is incapable of perception, of understanding, of having a mind that is completely silent, quiet; it is like a blind man seeking light and never finding light, and therefore inventing a ‘light’ of words, concepts, theories.
So how is a mind which is so heavily burdened with fear, and with all its conditioning, ever to be free of it? Or must we accept it as an inevitable thing of life? - and most of us do accept it, put up with it.
So, now what shall we do? How shall I, as a human being, and you as a human being, be rid of this fear, the total fear, not a particular fear, but the whole nature and structure of fear?
What is fear? Don’t accept, if I may suggest, what the speaker is saying; the speaker has no authority whatsoever, he is not a teacher, he is not a guru; because if he is a teacher then you are the follower and if you are the follower you destroy yourself as well as the teacher. What we are trying to do is to find out what is truth. We are trying to go into this question of fear so completely that your mind is never afraid, therefore you are free of all dependence on another, inwardly, psychologically.
So we are taking a journey together, not being led, someone ahead of you and you following in his footsteps. The beauty of freedom is that you don’t leave a mark. The eagle in its flight does not leave a mark, only the scientist does. And in enquiring into this question of freedom there must be not only the scientific observation, but also the flight of the eagle that doesn’t leave a mark at all; both are required; which is, both the verbal explanation and the non-verbal perception, bearing in mind that the description is never the described, the explanation is never that thing which is explained, that is, the word is never the thing.
So if all this is very clear then we can proceed to find out for ourselves - not through the speaker, not through his words, not through his ideas or thoughts - to find out for ourselves whether the mind can be completely free from fear.