The Will-To-Good Group

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Special Topics

On Fear

"Every human being knows fear and the range of the fear vibrations extends from the instinctual fears of the savage man based on his ignorance of the laws and forces of nature, and on his terror of the dark and the unknown, to the fears so prevalent today of loss of friends and loved ones, of health, of money, of popularity and on to the final fears of the aspirant—the fear of failure, the fear which has its roots in doubt, the fear of ultimate negation or of annihilation, the fear of death (which he shares equally with all humanity) the fear of the great illusion of the astral plane, of the phantasmagoria of life itself, and also fear of loneliness on the Path, even to the very fear of Fear itself. This list could be largely extended but suffices to indicate the prevalence of fears of all kinds. They dominate most situations and darken many happy moments. They reduce man to a timid and frightened atom of sentient life, standing afraid before the stupendousness of the problems of existence, aware of his insufficiency as a man to cope with all situations and unable to leave his fears and questionings behind and step into his heritage of freedom and of life. Often he is so ridden by fear that he becomes afraid of his very reason. The picture cannot be too blackly coloured, for fear is the dominant astral energy at this time and sensitive humanity succumbs all too easily to it.

1. The Fear of Death is based upon:
    a. A terror of the final rending processes in the act of death itself.
    b. Horror of the unknown and the indefinable.
    c. Doubt as to final immortality.
    d. Unhappiness at leaving loved ones behind or of being left behind.
    e. Ancient reactions to past violent deaths, lying deep in the sub consciousness.
    f. Clinging to form life, because primarily identified with it in consciousness.
    g. Old erroneous teaching as to Heaven and Hell, both equally unpleasant in
          prospect to certain types.

There is no death. There is, as you know, entrance into fuller life. There is freedom from the handicaps of the fleshly vehicle. The rending process so such dreaded does not exist, except in the cases of violent and of sudden death and then the only true disagreeables are an instant and overwhelming sense of imminent peril and destruction, and something closely approaching an electric shock. No more. For the unevolved, death is literally a sleep and a forgetting, for the mind is not sufficiently awakened to react, and the storehouse of memory is as yet practically empty. For the average good citizen, death is a continuance of the living process in his consciousness and a carrying forward of the interests and tendencies of the life. His consciousness and his sense of awareness are the same and unaltered. He does not sense much difference, is well taken care of, and oft is unaware that he has passed through the episode of death. For the wicked and cruelly selfish, for the criminal and for those few who live for the material side only, there eventuates that condition which we call 'earth-bound'. The links they have forged with earth and the earthward bias of all their desires force them to remain close to the earth and their last setting in the earth environment. They seek desperately and by every possible means to re-contact it and to re-enter. In a few cases, great personal love for those left behind or the non-fulfillment of a recognised and urgent duty holds the good and beautiful in a somewhat similar condition. For the aspirant, death is an immediate entrance into a sphere of service and of expression to which he is well accustomed and which he at once recognises as not new. In his sleeping hours he has developed a field of active service and of learning. He now simply functions in it for the entire twenty-four hours (talking in terms of physical plane time) instead of for his usual few hours of earthly sleep.

2. Fear of the Future. This is a fear that will as yet show a growing tendency to develop and will cause much distress in the world before it is obliterated. It grows out of three human capacities:

    a. Instinctive psychological thought habits, which have their roots deep in the
        animal nature and hark back to the primal instinct of self-preservation.

    b. The flashes of prevision emanating from the soul who is dwelling in the
        consciousness of the Eternal Now. When contact with the soul is firmly
        established and the consciousness of the Knower is stabilised in the brain then
        prevision will carry with it no terror. The picture will then be seen as a whole,
        and not as a passing and fragmentary glimpse as is now the case.

    c. A mass of individual distress and fear can be taken on by an individual and yet
        have nothing to do with him whatsoever. It is quite possible for a man to tune in
        on the fears of other people whilst he himself has literally nothing to fear of
        any kind. He can so identify himself with their forebodings of future disaster
        that he interprets them in terms of his own coming experience.

3. Fear of Physical Pain. Some people have this fear as the underlying cause of all their anxieties, little though they may recognise it. It is really a result of the other three classes of fears...

4. Fear of Failure. This affects many people along many lines. The fear that one may fail to make good, the fear that we may not gain the love and admiration of those we love, the fear that others despise us or look down upon us, the fear that one may fail to see and grasp opportunity, these are all aspects of the fear complex which colours the lives of so many worthy people."

- A Treatise on White Magic, p 297-298,  by Alice A. Bailey

"But if true impersonality is cultivated, if the power to stand steady is developed, if every situation is handled in a spirit of love and if there is a refusal to take hasty action and to permit separation to creep in, then there will be the growth of a group of true servers, and the gathering out of those who can materialise the plan and bring to birth the new age and its attendant wonders.

To do this, there must be courage of the rarest kind. Fear holds the world in thrall, and no one is exempt from its influence. For the aspirant and for the disciple are two kinds of fear which require to be especially considered. The fears that we dealt with in the earlier part of the treatise, and the fears that are inherent, as you know, in existence itself are familiar to all of us. They have their root in the instinctual nature (economic fears, fears arising out of the sex life, physical fear and terror, fear of the unknown, with that dominating fear of death which colours so many lives) and have been the subject of much psychological investigation. With them I do not seek to deal. They are to be overcome by the life of the soul as it permeates and transforms the daily life, and by the refusal of the aspirant to accord them any recognition. The first method builds towards future strength of character, and prevents the coming in of any new fears. They cannot exist when the soul is consciously controlling life and its situations. The second negatives the old thought forms and brings about eventually their destruction through lack of nourishment. A dual process is therefore carried forward, producing a genuine manifestation of the qualities of the spiritual man and a growing freedom from the thralldom of age-old fear concepts."

- A Treatise on White Magic, p 625-626,  by Alice A. Bailey

"Fear holds the world in thrall, and no one is exempt from its influence."

- A Treatise on White Magic p 625, by Alice A. Bailey

___________

"Overcome fear, my brother; kill out suspicion and those vile children of fear—nervousness, foreboding, worry and that instant jumping to conclusions which are dire and full of disaster. Achieve that inner poise which faces all that comes in the light of the Eternal."

- Discipleship In the New Age p 505, by Alice A. Bailey

___________

"Be of good courage, my brother, and fear not. Fear itself creates a glamour and the glamour hides the light. Love freely those you love."

- Discipleship In the New Age p 515, by Alice A. Bailey