Why does fear exist?

BENGALURU: Did you have you fears? Have you any kind of fear, physical or psychological? So if one has psychological fears - how do you deal with them? I am afraid - suppose - I am afraid that I shall lose my position, my prestige, I depend on the audience, on you, to bolster me up. I depend on you to give me vitality by talking. And I am afraid if I grow older, become senile, gaga, I will be faced with nothing and I am afraid.

Right? You are following this? Are you? So I am afraid. What is this fear? Or I am afraid that I depend on you, man, woman, and that dependency makes me attached to you, and I am afraid to lose you. You are following all this? I am afraid I have done something in the past, of which I regret or I am ashamed of, and I don't want you to know, so I am afraid of that, of your knowing it. You are following all this? Or I may feel terribly anxious: anxiety about death, living, what people say, what people don't say, how they look at me, the deep sense of foreboding, anxiety, a sense of inferiority.

And this anxiety, death, living a life that has no meaning, or out of my anxiety I seek some assurance from somebody in human relationship, or I seek a sense of security out of my anxiety in a certain belief, ideology, in god and so on. And also I am afraid that I shan't be able to do everything I want to do in this life. I haven't the capacity, or the intelligence but I am tremendously ambitious to achieve something. And so I am frightened of that too. You are following all this? And of course I am afraid of death, and I am afraid of being lonely, not being loved and so I want to establish a relationship with another in which this fear doesn't exist, this anxiety, this sense of loneliness, this separation. And also I am afraid of the dark, the lift, and the innumerable neurotic fears that one has. Right?

Now, what is this fear? Why is this fear there? Is it based on not being hurt, you know, not to be hurt? Or is it that one wants complete security and not being able to find it, physically, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, not being able to find this sense of complete safety, security, protection, one becomes terribly anxious about living, life, this sense of uncertainty. Right? Now why is there fear?

Please, this is a dialogue, I am not making a speech, please. This is a dialogue, talking over together our problems. One of our major problems is fear, whether we are aware of it or not, whether we run away from it, or try to overcome it, try to withstand it, develop courage and all the rest of it, there is still fear. I am asking myself, I am asking you whether the mind is so delicate - you understand? So sensitive that it doesn't want to be hurt, from childhood on up, and so not wanting to be hurt one builds a wall, one is very shy, or aggressive.

Before you attack I am ready to attack you, verbally, with thought, because I am so sensitive, I have been hurt so much in my life, in my childhood, everybody hurts me, in the office - you follow? In the factory, the foreman, the boss, everybody treads on each other's toes, and I don't want to be hurt. Is that one of the reasons why fear exists?

You have been hurt, haven't you? And out of that hurt we do all kinds of things, we resist a great deal, we don't want to be disturbed. Out of that feeling of hurt we cling to something which we hope will protect us, and therefore anything that attacks that which I am holding on to as protection, towards that I become aggressive.