Acharya Mahaprajna
Deccan Herald
Thinking born of fear is ever negative and destructive. A fearful man is incapable of right thinking; fear dulls his mind and heart; his thinking becomes blunted.
It would be idle to expect a fear-ridden brain to function normally. Such a brain cannot think constructively. The first condition for sane thinkings is total freedom from fear. The mind must be absolutely fearless, and the brain, and indeed the whole environment, must be free from fear. Only in the right atmosphere will sane thinking become possible. A man oppressed by fear connot think straight.
A man's individuality is determined by his thought. He has accepted certain ideas and beliefs and the whole environment is itiated by fear.
A man who has understood even a little bit of spirituality, whose dry and anguished existence has been even slightly touched by the grace of religion, cannot but be fearless. He who is not fearless cannot be spiritual or religious; he cannot be sane. Fear is the root of all disease, of all conflict and of unspirituality.
Lord Mahavir pronounced a subtle truth. He never said that non-violence alone constituted religion, despite the common belief. On the basis of my own understanding I can say that Lord Mahavir emphasized much more the importance of fearlessness than of non-violence.
The spirit of non-violence is implicit in fearlessness; without fearlessness this spirit cannot manifest itself in life. A coward can never be truly non-violent. The man who is too much attached to life, who is afraid of dying, cannot be non-violent.
Nothing is impossible where there is no fear of death; for all incompetence owes its existence to this fear. One is greatly attached to life and is, therefore, afraid to die. But is one's removal from the scene, of much moment? Will one's death unpeople the world? Who cares! Of course, when a man is alive, his friends and relatives pretend to love him forever.
But who remembers him after death? For a few days, there is a formal exhibition of grief; then all is forgoteen. Once a year, on the occasion of the death anniversary, people do perfunctorily pay a tribute to the memory of the dead, "He was a good man", they say, "May his soul rest in peace!" That is all. As long as a man is infatuated with life, he cannot think straight. The first condition of constructive thinking is complete freedom from the fear of death.