You have removed past and future. What is left? If there is still the sense of panic, it must be related to the past by the very fact one has applied this label to it.
What is left is me.
Are you going to say that the āmeā canāt now exist, alone from past and future because I/me is always a construct of time and bound to those temporal constraints?
Is it possible that āIā exceed all constraints? Or is that a fervent āno.ā
It is possible that I want to. Thatās why I use time. But what happens when there is no movement away from what you are calling panic?
What should I call it? I conform to convention in the use of the word āfearā as defined in the dictionary. You call the future fear. This is unconventional and intelligible only to Krishnamurti readers.
We call it fear because it is the convention; it has been handed down to us, passed from one generation to the next. Also, we call it fear in order to bring it under the control of thought. So it passes from sensation into thought. But because thought has already formed a strong image of fear - the same image that has been handed down from our forefathers - the only way thought can deal with it is to then create further images. After all, this is the primary function of thought: to form images linked to objects and events; to store those images in memory; and to retrieve them when necessary. The image of the snake and its dangers is an intelligent use of thought. But why have we formed images of sensations and feelings?
Ours is an imagined reality constructed by consciousness. Researchers believe that conscious experience is a symbolically reflected experience, that through the use of language in speech our consciously experienced world (our ālived realityā) is created.
Why? Forming images of sensations is also āthe primary function of thoughtā as you put it. This is how we communicate with each other about what we are sensing and how we feel.
Right. The problem is not fear, but our resistance to that which is the opposite of what-should-be. Fear is intense, and the more we feel it, the less we like it until we fear Fear itself: a self-perpetuating extreme sensation loop. One propels the other.
The irony is that desire is the same feeling as fear - but on the giving end, not the taking. By this I mean, when I experience desire Iām acting as if I deserve special treatment, and when I experience fear, Iām beating myself up for being an extremist.
I donāt think youāre quite following. Iāll try an analogy. A particle which formally obeyed the laws of Newtonian physics, now placed within a particle accelerator begins to disobey those laws and yet it remains a particle. Similarly, fear may likewise be governed by a temporal order, but then accelerated and brought to its apex, that order no longer holds and yet it remains fear. That is, when fear increases and reaches a summit, it is felt as panic. But then panic no longer obeys the same temporal laws that governed fear. They breakdown.
For example, you may have read that 3 days ago, one of the engines on a Boeing 777 non-stop flight from Denver to Honolulu exploded shortly after take-off (thankfully they were able to return to the airport and no one was injured or killed). Now certainly prior to boarding and take-off, a little anticipatory anxiety is very common. One might have subtle unconscious projections and imagine a possible malfunction and crashing into the sea somewhere over the pacific. That seems to be a rather conventional and familiar fear. But then a malfunction did happen. And it happened not in the abstract future, but in actuality; as in right now, we are going down. The passengers reported that it was not unlike the sensation of being on one of those amusement park rides that raises you to some height and then drops you straight down. My question: at that moment, fear has been actualized. Its not a projection of past into future, but fear has become very real and present. Now, at that moment, when fear is no longer avoidable does a sense of calm and serenity now pervade the cabin? Or is it that, at that moment, it is revealed in startling clarity that my relationship to myself is unimportant, but rather what is of supreme importance is the unselfish (selfless) care and love I have for those in my life and thus, the passengers held hands, and rushed for their phones in order to tell relatives that they loved them.
I can remember some many years ago, almost getting into what could have been a bad traffic accident and my first thoughts being of my own expiration and then afterwards of my family. Now, that Iām older and a father, I had a similar experience but the order of concern was completely reversed. My instant feeling was not of my own self preservation, (I/me must continue) but was of my then 3 year old daughter, not having a father. Only later did I worry about myself as separate and to tell you the truth, it didnāt matter that much at all to me anymore.
Is it possible that self-concern exists only by virtue of the love another has for us and we have for them? In other words, is āIā an expression of the love from the you?
Is it possible that āIā arrives to us, paradoxically, as a gift from you and you only? Or have I gone much too far?
Hi Philip,
On a rafting trip, our boat struck a rock and almost capsized, I was thrown into the water into what is called a ākeeper holeā. I was on my back under the water looking up through it to the sky, unable to move. I felt a great sadness, there was no panic, it was very quietā¦only sadnessā¦ that I was going to leave my two very young children and wife.
Someone who had not been thrown from the boat above was able to reach down and grab my hand and pull me up out of the ākeeperā.
I think thatās correct. I authorize myself to take responsibility for myself, whether that means avoiding people or choosing a leader. Either way, Iām no authorityā¦Iām just making my own decisions for a change.
Snatched from the reaper.
Panic is choiceless because no one chooses to abandon hope and security. It just happens, and lasts until the mind can recover its consoling content.
Yes. Fascinating. It will not allow me to just simply respond āyes.ā Instead it requires me to enter at least 20 characters. lol.
Hi Philip.
Had you ever questioned that āwhy humans fear of physical death?ā - āwhy we are attached to this body?ā
We have āresponsibilityā- but there is āfearā of āwhat happens if the āwhat should beā doesnāt happen?ā
We āloveā our wife/parents/child right? - and why couldnāt we show the same āloveā to all the human/living beings?
Allow me to rephrase and restate. I only have a sense of myself by virtue of my encounter with you. In fact, the first sense that I have of me is also the first sense of i have of you. You precede I. You are what starts, for the first time, the psychological clock of I. So this sense that we all have of a pre-possessed Self is only granted to us by you. You are my thou. And as such you are what calls me to attend to the greater depths myself and thus I appear before you now as I. I have no power to refuse, but only to decline belatedly.
Does that make any sense?
Does it matter how we feel? We seem to have made our feelings the central part of our human existence and communication. But what is a feeling?
But the crisis has brought about this reaction. Until then, the passengers were wrapped up in themselves; and now they are reaching out. But it is too late. Even if the plane lands safely, it is still too late.
This Panic is not there all the time. So there is something which brings the panic in action. So I suggest to āobserveā,
- which event makes this panic appear? i.e. why panic appears all of a sudden?
and share those observation - so we shall discuss about that.
Attachment naturally embodies everything from my senses, my intellect, my imagination, through to my notion of myself as separate.
Do I see the very root of myself in its entirety, not simply as a thought or as an intellectualisation, but actually? I would have to say that is lost from sight at the point self-preservation is reached, which on the face of it constitutes a block. The self-preservation that psyche constitutes is the same inhibition the animal is when standing at the cliff edge. I have said previously that things are hidden, but it is more that I hide from things in myself, and my intellect is my chief means of accomplishing this. However this inner core is impervious to mere intellectualisations about dying to or ending things.
When I mentioned self-aggrandisement before I was pointing at the general dynamic here of defensive egos exhorting others to end a thing now, as a being a misunderstanding, and false consciousness. This is the mind manoeuvring to keep itself safe using its intellect to avoid an encounter with something that is not under its command and control the same way its thinking is. Seeing a thing like fear has nothing to do with ending it, or reaching a state in which I am without.
This approach to things which is repeated over and over again here is not different to fear, but is fear. When I am hiding from things in myself, I will not see when another is in fact doing similar because I do not wish to see what is involved, and so have need of the same evasive manoeuvres. I will miss the subtlety of it all because I am unable to look at it without bringing effort to bear. Striving or stretching to reach an end of fear is the same as avoidance and evasion however plausible my ego makes it sound.
Hi Dominic,
While we walking in the street, if we see an open drainage canal, what will we do? - We are āawareā that if we continue walking the same way we will fell into it and so we stop walking that way.
Itās like āThe House is on fireā.
If we āseeā this fear is the root of our attachments - which brings sufferings - we are āawareā of it - and it stops continuing. But are we seeing that serious?. Practically why we are not that serious is, we think itās tough to āsee/awareā of these and these somehow keeps us in control by providing pleasure.
And about āself-aggrandisementā - yes it happens, one tries to control other with intellect. But even if one shares āobservationsā and ask other to ālistenā - It should not be an order - but can be a suggestion.
So, I ultimately suggest that - if we āseeā this fear of nothingness and attachments to something/someone - is the cause/root of all sufferings - then in this very seeing - there is choice-less awareness. This is the radical change which is not in time.