How to Be Fearless?

When one percent of your life, let us say, is conducted consciously and ninety-nine percent accidentally, you must be ---- scared of life. How else to live? So what are you fearful about? Something that will happen or you think will happen, isn't it? If you do not know anything about this, then you are an accidental being. You being fearful is good, otherwise you may cause enormous harm to yourself. Questioner 1 – Namaskaram Sadhguru. Many people say that thoughts create karma and sometimes our biggest fears keep on recurring in our minds on a daily basis. So how do we stop that flow of thoughts and how do we stop those fears from materializing and also how to cut down on unwanted karma? Sadhguru – See, this whole karma business has been very misunderstood and been projected as a fatalistic process. Karma means this, karma means action. Literally translates as action. As you sit here, there is physical activity going on, there is mental activity going on, there is emotional activity going on, there is energy activity going on. These four dimensions of karma are happening within you every moment of your life. Both in wakefulness and in sleep, it's happening. Now if I ask you a question, since today morning, since you woke up to this moment, how much of these four dimensions of karma are you conducting consciously? How much do you think? Percentage. Well, below one percent, believe me. It's way below one percent. When one percent of your life, let us say, is conducted consciously and ninety-nine percent accidentally, you must be ---- scared of life. How else to live, hmm? If you are driving a car and ninety-nine percent it is accidental, the way you are driving, will you be scared or not? So fear is a consequence of your inability to manage the nature of your intellect. See, your life's experience is happening this way. These are three dimensions. There is something called as memory, which feeds you all the time. Memory is not just what you remember. You don't remember ten generations ago how your great-great-grandmother looked, do you? You don't, but her nose is sitting on your face. Yes or no? You have genetic memory, you have evolutionary memory, you have karmic memory, articulate and inarticulate levels of memory. This entire thing is memory, head to toe. Every cell in the body is memory, isn't it? We can take one cell and create the whole of you and that's how your parents also did. Just one cell and see, you become like this. So there is enormous amount of memory in this. This memory rules certain things. But there is a present experience. Memory is of the past, but the present is of experience, your ability to experience. If you want to experience anything, you must be conscious, you must be aware, only then you can experience. The future is an imagination. So memory, experience and imagination, it is between these three dimensions in which you exist. Memory you cannot change because it's already there. Present you don't have to change because that is also here right now. It's only the imagination which you can change. So what are you fearful about? Something that will happen or you think will happen, isn't it? Fear is always about something which does not exist right now. It's always about what will happen. So you are suffering that which does not exist. If you're suffering that which does not exist, there are psychiatric terms for that. Hello? Your only comfort is everybody is in the same state. That's how it is in asylum usually. Everybody is in the same condition. But right now people are in this condition. What happened ten years ago, they can still suffer. What may happen day after tomorrow, they already suffer. They're suffering things which does not exist. Simply because in your education system, you are studying about everything except how to manage this. If you do not know how to manage this, it doesn't matter how much nonsensical information you have gathered, it'll be not of much use to your life. You must know how to keep this, how to conduct this body, how to conduct this mind, how to conduct this emotional structure and the energy structure. If you do not know anything about this, then you are an accidental being. You being fearful is good, otherwise you may cause enormous harm to yourself.