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Jiddhu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)

Feel the state of death

We are afraid to die. To end the fear of death, we must come into contact with death, not with the image, which thought has created about death, but we must actually feel the state. Otherwise there is no end to fear, because the word death creates fear, and we don't even want to talk about it.

Being healthy, normal, with the capacity to reason clearly, to think objectively, to observe, is it possible for us to come into contact with the fact, totally? The organism, through usage, through disease, will eventually die. If we are healthy, we want to find out what death means. It's not a morbid desire, because perhaps by dying we shall understand living. Living, as it is now, is torture, endless turmoil, a contradiction, and therefore there is conflict, misery and confusion. The everyday going to the office, the repetition of pleasure with its pains, the anxiety, the groping, the uncertainty - that's what we call living. We have become accustomed to that kind of living. We accept it; we grow old with it and die. To find out what living is, as well as to find out what dying is, one must come into contact with death, that is, one must end every day everything one has known. One must end the image that one has built up about oneself, about one's family, about one's relationship, the image that one has built through pleasure, through one's relationship to society, everything. That is what is going to take place when death occurs.