How to Overcome Fear?

Acharya Prashant

7 min
1.4k reads
How to Overcome Fear?
Fear is biological. You are not supposed to fight fear because, even to fight it, you would have to enter the domain of the body. Ignore fear and attend to the task that your consciousness is suggesting to you. Let fear be there; you do what you must. You don't need willpower or motivation—rather, you need wisdom to ignore these things. This summary has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation

Acharya Prashant: You see, for example, mentally, you might be afraid that you might lose money or marks. As a student, you are afraid you might lose marks. As a grown-up one, you might think of losing money or, let's say, prestige, prestige in society, and that's what makes you insecure.

Ultimately, that is related to physical survival. Mind you, anything that you are afraid of ultimately boils down to physical insecurity, that's all. We began the discussion by trying to understand that we are two.

Acharya Prashant: One is the?

Questioner: Body.

Acharya Prashant: The other is the?

Questioner: Consciousness.

Acharya Prashant: Fear belongs to the domain of the?

Questioner: Body

Acharya Prashant: Leave it to the domain of the body. Just keep it aside and ignore it. Don't fight it. You are not supposed to fight fear because even to fight fear, you will have to enter the domain of the body. The moment you enter the domain of the body, you become the body.

And the Knowers have told us that 'Aham Dehasmi'(I am the body) is the fundamental problem. I am the body; the moment you say that even in order to fight fear, you have succumbed. Ostensibly, apparently you are fighting fear but for the sake of fighting fear you have entered the domain of the body and in this way you have indirectly been defeated.

So what do you have to do? When fear arises let it be, fear is there, ignore it. What would you rather focus your attention on? Ignore fear and attend to the task that your consciousness is suggesting to you. So fear is there but there is something far bigger and more important than fear. What is that? That is consciousness, and consciousness is telling you what else is more important. You attend to that.

You gave, for example, the thing regarding the animal: the wild beast is coming at you, and you say you will run away.

Not always! Not always. You have a baby sister, like six months, one-year-old, alright, or a niece or a nephew small, and the wild beast is coming. Will you run away? How many of you? How many of you will run away?

You will first protect her. Even if you run away, first, you will pick her up and then run away. Am I right? And if somehow you can not pick up her and run away. You will fight the beast, you'll not run away. So fear will be there obviously but something more important than fear is there. What is that? Call it responsibility, Call it love or call it whatever.

Fear, you have to remember, is biological. Fear, you have to remember, is to the body. Fear is not to you. Fear is a letter addressed to the consciousness. Do you open the other's letters and read them? Do you do that? So, the letter has been delivered. The letter is coming from Mr. Fear and it is addressed to the body. So what do you do with the letter? You keep it aside. Let the body read it; I won't read it. It's not mine.

Let fear be there; you do what you must. Let jealousy be there; you do what you must. Let fatigue and tiredness be there; you do what you must. Let hunger be there; you do what you must. That's what makes you a human being, or will you succumb to hunger and thirst and fear and greed and insecurity? Will you? Do you understand what I am saying?

You don't need willpower and motivation. You need the wisdom to ignore these things, and mind you, all your life, there will be a little bit of these things that will always remain because they are in the DNA. They are there in the evolutionary past.

Jealousy will never— hundred percent—absolutely go away; some jealousy will remain. What do you do with it? What do you do with it? Ignore and do the right thing. Hunger will remain till your last breath. Should hunger prevent you from doing the right thing, or should anger, lust or any other thing prevent you from doing the right thing?

They are there; let them be there and acknowledge. Obviously, I am very angry right now, but I'll still do what is right. I will not allow anger to dominate me. Anger is there; Let it be there. It is to the body. It is not to me, and I am consciousness. Let it be there; fear is there.

What do you think? When I sit in front of you, I don't face any of the bodily impulses? I do; as I sit here, some part of my body might be aching a bit. The glasses here are clouded a bit (pointing out his glasses). I might not be entirely comfortable with the chair. You sit here for two hours, and you start feeling a bit restless. Don't you? Think of the one who's sitting here for two hours and endlessly speaking. Even if I said this, this fell down (the mic fell). You see, strange things happen.

So, all these things are happening here. Should I now allow this to affect my attention? No, This is something physical that just happened. What is it? Something physical, meaning bodily. I can not give it too much importance. I have to continue.

Think of a Marathon runner. What is his body telling him? ‘Stop! Please stop, I am tired.’ Think of a Grand Slam player, in the fifth set, the fifth hour. And the player is Roger Federer— 38, 40, 41 years of age. What is the body saying? Every single joint is complaining and praying, 'Please stop.' What is he saying? 'One more Grand Slam.'

Acharya Prashant: Who is saying 'One more Grand Slam?'

Questioner: Consciousness

Acharya Prashant: Consciousness must rule. The body must listen to the consciousness. The body is there to obey the commands of consciousness. Are you getting it?

Questioner: Yes, thank you.

Acharya Prashant: Who's getting it?

Questioner: Consciousness.

Acharya Prashant: Good.

Questioner: Sir, seeing how you've changed the field multiple times and still found success. How do we know what the right decision is at the given time, given the limited amount of information we have?

Acharya Prashant: You will never know perfectly. You just have to keep moving and always be polite and modest enough to change. When you see that you need to change, you must never be rigid, and you must never commit yourself permanently to anything.

Move endlessly, and keep correcting yourself endlessly. Never get stuck to any one thing because it is impossible as normal mortal human beings limited ones to know what is absolutely perfect for you.

At this stage, at this age, I still do not know what lies in the future and what is perfection. But what I know is that I will be honest enough to duly change, when I realize that something better, something more important, something more deserving, is there to be surrendered to, to be worshipped. I would rather go to that. That's what life is for.

Continuously change, continuously develop, continuously learn, and be better. Learning is the purpose of life, and that learning in the ultimate sense is called liberation.

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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