Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Fear

• What is fear? Fear can exist only in relation to something, not in isolation. How can I be afraid of death, how can I be afraid of something I do not know? I can be afraid only of what I know. When I say I am afraid of death, am I really afraid of the unknown, which is death, or am I afraid of losing what I have known? My fear is not of death but of losing my association with things belonging to me. My fear is always in relation to the known, not to the unknown.
   
• You know what fear is? Each one has his own particular form of fear - not one, but multiple fears. A mind that has any form of fear cannot obviously have the quality of love, sympathy, tenderness. 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?
   
• What is the root of fear? Go on sirs! Can you look at your fear - please look at it now - invite it - naturally you are not afraid now, sitting here, but you know what your fears are: loneliness, not being loved, not being beautiful, frightened of losing your position, your job, your this, or that, ten different things.Now by looking at one fear, at your particular fear, you can then see the root of that fear, not only the root of that fear but the root of all fear. You understand? Through one fear, by observing it, by observing it in the sense the observer is the observed, then you will see for yourself that through one fear you discover the very root of all fear.
   
• Fear must exist as long as there is an urge to be or to become, which is the pursuit of success, with all its frustrations and tortuous contradictions. You can teach concentration, but attention cannot be taught, just as you cannot possibly teach freedom from fear, and in understanding these causes there is the elimination of fear.
   
• I am afraid of anyone who disturbs them. Thus my fear is of the known, I am afraid of the accumulations, physical or psychological, that I have gathered as a means of warding off pain or preventing sorrow. Knowledge also helps to prevent pain. As medical knowledge helps to prevent physical pain, so beliefs help to prevent psychological pain, and that is why I am afraid of losing my beliefs, though I have no perfect knowledge or concrete proof of the reality of such beliefs.
   
• How do these psychological fears arise? What is their origin? That is the issue. There is the fear of something that happened yesterday; the fear of something that might happen later on today or tomorrow. There is the fear of what we have known, and there is the fear of the unknown, which is tomorrow. One can see for oneself very clearly that fear arises through the structure of thought—through thinking about that which happened yesterday of which one is afraid, or through thinking about the future. Right? Thought breeds fear, doesn’t it?
   
• The speaker is saying that fear can be totally ended. Don’t say, “It is for the illumined one” and all that nonsense. You can end it if you put your brain, your heart into it—completely, not partially. And then you will see for yourself what immense beauty there is in it; a sense of utter freedom—not freedom of a country or of some government, but the sense of the enormity of freedom, the greatness of freedom. Will you do it—today, now? From today, seeing the cause of fear, end it. As long as there is fear—biologically, physically, psychologically—it destroys us. So, if one may ask, after listening to this fact, not theory, what are you going to do? Time is the factor of fear and thought; so if you don’t change now, you won’t ever change. It is constant postponement.
   
• If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.
   
• Freedom of mind comes into being when there is no fear, when the mind has no desire to show off and is not intriguing for position or prestige. Then it has no sense of imitation. And it is important to have such a mind - a mind really free of tradition, which is the habit-forming mechanism of the mind.