The Immeasurable
Share
07/12/2026
One observes the storms and crises that are multiplying in the world, the economic catastrophes, and so on. We go through these incidents and experiences almost unthinkingly. What is our life, as it is lived daily, all about? Where is it we are going? It is important to understand the question of what is living - the days we spend in constant strife, the battle, one against the other, the everlasting struggle, accumulating, losing, frightened, pursuing pleasure and stimulation, the physical and psychological pain, the utter empty loneliness of one’s life, the escapes that thought has invented as religion and politics. Behind all this, there is fear and great anxiety, untold misery. This is what we call living, with occasional flashes of joy which is uninvited, a feeling of happiness that soon fades into pleasure. This life, we know pretty well. Outwardly there are increasing storms coming, and each one is concerned with one’s own life. We don’t think beyond our particular agony, frustration, misery and confusion, but all this is the lot of most people. We don’t seem to be able to change ourselves or outward circumstances. It is difficult to change the economic and political structure, but perhaps we could, if we apply our minds, our thought, our energy, bring about a change in ourselves, a change which is so immensely necessary. Unless one transforms oneself completely, we are going to have a dreadful time ahead of us. This is not a prophecy; this is what one observes actually going on, with things getting worse: overpopulation, lack of food, and the devastation when there is no rain. Poorer countries are going to peacefully or violently demand that the rich should give and not hold everything to themselves.
J. Krishnamurti
Public Talk 3 in New York, 27 April 1974
*continue reading in the first comment
The Root of Fear. | J. Krishnamurti
So we are enquiring what is the root of fear, not a particular fear but the root of all fear. The root of fear is time: what I will be, what I have been, what I might not be. Time is the past, the present, and the future. The past modifying itself in the present and continuing in the future. Fear of something that has happened psychologically, or physically, last week, or last year, and hoping that it will not continue in the future. So time is a factor of fear. The poor man, fear of not being able to find the next meal. You don’t know all that. The fear of having no home, no shelter, no food. And the effect of fear, both on the physical organism, and on the psychological, on the psyche, and the very psyche may be made up of fear. Please understand that.
The psyche, what you are, maybe the result of fear. And probably is. So it is important to understand the depth and the meaning of fear. And that is time and thought. Time as the future, I might die, I might lose, I might be nobody, I am somebody now - which I doubt - but I want to be somebody in the future, the next day, and so on. So time and thought are the root of fear. And therefore one must ask a much more serious question: whether time and thought has a stop.
J. Krishnamurti
Talk 2, New York, 1983
Click here to claim your Sponsored Listing.
Category
Website
Address
Ojai, CA
