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ANDREW

Krishnamurti talks with children about fear and death and
time;

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Krishnamurti: You cannot have an innocent fresh young mind
if you are ridden with fear, if from childhood until you
die, you are trained in fear. That is why a good education,
a true education eliminates fear.

Student: How can one be completely free from fear?

Krishnamurti: First of all, you must know what fear is. To
know about something completely makes the mind free from
fear. How will you find out about fear? Are you afraid of
public opinion, public opinion being what your friends think
of you?

Most of us, especially while we are young, want to look
alike, dress alike, talk alike. We do not want to be even
slightly different, because to be different implies not to
conform, not to accept the pattern. When you begin to
question the pattern there is fear.

Now examine that fear, go into it. Do not say,"I am
afraid", and run away from it. Look at it, face it and find
out why you are afraid. Suppose I am afraid of my neighbour,
my wife, my god, my country--now what is that fear? Is it
actual or is it merely in thought, in time?

I will take a simpler example. We are all going to die some
time or other. Death is inevitable for all of us and
thinking about death creates fear, thinking about something
which I do not know creates fear. But if it were actual, if
death were there immediately and I were going to die now,
there is no fear. You understand?

Thought in time creates fear. But if something has to be
done immediately there is no fear, because thinking is not
possible. If I am going to die the next instant, then I
face it, but give me an hour, and I begin to say,"My
property, my children, my country, I have not finished my
book." I get nervous, frightened. So fear is always in time,
because time is thought.

To eliminate fear you have to consider thought as time and
then enquire into this whole process of thinking. It is a
little bit difficult. I am afraid of my parents, my society,
of what they will say tomorrow or ten days later. My
thinking about what might happen projects fear. So can I
say,"I am going to look at that fear now, not ten days
later"? Can I invite what they will say into the present and
look at it and if they happen to be right, can I accept it?
Why should I be frightened? And if they are wrong, I also
accept that. Why should they not be wrong? Why should I be
frightened? So, when I face fear it goes away. But to face
fear I have to enquire, which is quite a complex process
because it involves the problem of time.

You know, there are two kinds of time; time by the watch,
the next minute, tonight, the day after tomorrow; and there
is another kind of time which is created by the psyche
inside one, by thought--"I shall be a great man","I shall
have a job","I shall go to Europe"--that is the
psychological future, in time and space. Now to understand
chronological time by the watch and to understand time as
thought and to go beyond both, is really to be free of fear.

Student: You said if you know something, you stop feeling
afraid of it.
But how do you know what death is?

Krishnamurti: That is a good question. You are asking,"How
do you know what death is and how can you cease to be
frightened of it?" I am going to show you. You know, there
are two kinds of death--bodily death and death of thought.
The body is going to die eventually--like a pencil writing,
it eventually wears out. Doctors may invent new kinds of
medicine; you may last 120 years instead of 80 years. But
still there will be death. The physical organism come to an
end. We are not afraid of that. What we are afraid of is
the coming to an end of thought, of the "me" that has lived
so many years, the "me" that has acquired so much money,
that has a family, children, that wants to become important,
that wants to have more property, money. That "me" dying is
what we are afraid of. Do you see the difference between
the two? The physical dying and the "me" dying?

The "me" dying is psychologically much more important than
the body's dying and that is what we are frightened of. Now
take one pleasure, and die to it. I will explain this to
you. You see I do not want to go into the whole problem; I
am merely indicating something. You see the "me" is the
collection of many pleasures and many pains. Can that "me"
die to one thing? Then it will know what death means. That
is, can I die to a wish? Can I say "I do not want that
wish, I do not want that pleasure"? Can I end it, die to it?

Krishnamurti: Do you know anything about meditation?

Student: No, Sir.

Krishnamurti: But the older people do not know either. They
sit in a corner, close their eyes and concentrate, like
school children trying to concentrate on a book. That is
not meditation. Meditation is something extraordinary, if
you know how to do it. I am going to talk a little about
it.

First of all, sit very quietly; do not force yourself to sit
quietly, but sit or lie down quietly without force of any
kind. Do you understand? Then watch your thinking. Watch
what you are thinking about.

You find out you are thinking about your shoes, your saris,
what you are going to say, the bird outside to which you
listen: follow such thoughts and enquire why each thought
arises. Do not try to change your thinking.

See why certain thoughts arise in your mind so that you
begin to understand the meaning of every thought and every
feeling without any enforcement. And when a thought arises,
do not condemn it, do not say it is right, it is wrong, it
is good, it is bad. Just watch it, so that you begin to
have a perception, a consciousness which is active in seeing
every kind of thought, every kind of feeling. You will know
every hidden secret thought, every hidden motive, every
feeling, without distortion, without saying it is right,
wrong, good or bad. When you look, when you go into thought
very very deeply, your mind becomes extraordinarily subtle,
alive. No part of the mind is asleep. The mind is
completely awake.

That is merely the foundation. Then your mind is very
quiet. Your whole being becomes very still. Then go into
that stillness, deeper, further--that whole process is
meditation. Meditation is not to sit in a corner repeating
a lot of words; or to think of a picture and go into some
wild ecstatic imaginings.

To understand the whole process of your thinking and feeling
is to be free from all thought, to be free from all feeling
so that your mind, your whole being becomes very quiet. And
that is also part of life and with that quietness, you can
look at the tree, you can look at people, you can look at
the sky and stars. That is the beauty of life.


LYNNE

This (Krishnamurti) series is helping me tremendously. I
guess that means my mind is "as a child's"? :)

Friendship (to me) means allowing people who care about you
to challenge you to grow, and comfort you when you need it.

FRIENDSHIP

I will value the comfort of friendship and hold a true
friend dear. Soul is expressed through human relationship;
care of relationships is care of the soul. Relationships
are what trigger my anxieties.
Intimacy acts like a black light under which my emotional
cracks show up.

In a close friendship I have an opportunity to see and feel
those cracks, to allow them to be looked at so that I can
work with them and heal. A friend is someone with whom I
can explore my limits and become more me.

I value friendship in my life.

"Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of
feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts
nor measure words, but pouring all right out just as they
are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful,
friendly hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth
keeping and with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away."
- George Eliot
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ELAINE

...when I judge how I am to use "time," I think I need
time. When I just live in the moment to moment without
judgment in how I am to be, I have no use for time.
Therefore time is not part of my being and is not a reality
for me in that moment.

At this time (pun intended) I fluctuate because sometimes I
still mistakenly think there is a choice to be made. When I
reach the point where I know always, that there is no choice
to be made (not just intellectually but experientially) then
time will no longer exist for me. I will no longer have a
use or need for it. This is how everything that I believed
so strongly in has dropped away for me. Im not there yet,
but they are all disappearing one at a time with no feelings
of lack or sacrifice.
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BOB BAYS

I am prompted by recent posts by Elaine and Kristi to submit
the following from A Course in Miracles, as edited by
Frances Vaughan and Roger Walsh for their book Accept This
Gift:

A NEW BEGINNING

There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you
will see you know not what you are.
It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns,
unhindered and unbound.
Where concepts of the Self have been laid by is truth
revealed exactly as it is.

Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever
learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that
we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is.
Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for.
We do not know.
Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds
and swept away.
Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or
of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone.
Now do you know him not.
But you are free to learn of him, and learn of him anew.

Only be quiet.
You wll need no rule but this, to let your practicing today
lift you above he thinking of the world, and free your
vision from the body's eyes.
Only be still and listen.

Simply do this:
Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and
what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world;
all images you hold about yourself.
Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or
false, or good or bad, of every thught it judges worthy, and
all the ideas of which it is ashamed.
Hold onto nothing.
Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor
one belief you ever learned before from anything.
Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly
empty hands unto your God.

(T 613; T 602; WB 221; WB 350)

OM shantih, Bob B, ..............................
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/4216/humnat.html
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LARRY

Glimpse

The inner voice speaks for no one.
There is simply no one there.
Fancy cloths without an emperor.
Now what?

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