Acharya Mahapragya Blog
(This is a translated part of Acharya Mahapragya’s book kaise soche)
A mind infested with fear always creates negative thoughts. Fear constricts the mind. Thus, a fearful person can never think right. The first condition for healthy, life-supporting thoughts is to become fearless.
But, what makes a person fearful? The answer is quite surprising. A person reels in fear because of his own notions. Personality develops on the basis of one’s thoughts and beliefs. And people develop such beliefs that as soon as a certain situation crops up in their life, they become fearful.
The first outcome of a person’s encounter with spirituality is fearlessness. The one who is not fearless is not spiritual. And he is neither disease-free. The root cause of diseases is fear. So is the root cause of strife and non-spirituality. Unless fear doesn’t leave the mind, how can a person experience their inner selves?
People talk about the soul and the supreme soul. Discussion about these subtle elements is useless if you have fears: fear of disease, old-age, death, losing your dear objects, losing your beloved. You are paralyzing your consciousness with so many fears and then you want to talk about God.
We all know Lord Mahaveer emphasized on non-violence. However, there is something which many of us not know: he gave the same weight on fearlessness as he gave onto non-violence. Unless the feeling of fearlessness doesn’t strengthen, non-violence cannot exist. A fearful person cannot be non-violent.
People have fear of dying. If you die, the world will not become empty. Even the kith and kin who would cry on your death are not many. For a few days, they’ll remember you and then move on with life. But, we are still attached to our life. Unless the attachment to life and death doesn’t slip away, constructive, positive thoughts do not make a firm position in our consciousness.