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HOW MAY MAN MASTER FEAR?
HOW MAY MAN MASTER FEAR ?*
In the Religion founded by MEN who attained to Godhood and became Omniscient, namely, in Jainism, two remedies are provided to overcome fear. These are Knowledge and LOVE, rather Universal Love.
It will be seen that fear is either due to our ignorance of the true state of affairs or to a lack of love on our part. Sometimes we fear needlessly; and in such a case knowledge of the true facts will at once dispel it. Knowledge will also remove such unwholesome feelings as the fear of calamity and death.
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The soul-true knowledge will surely reveal the existence of the soul-is immortal; it is really not subject to birth and death; but owing to the association with the body of flesh, death and disease and ill-luck are thrust upon it, and it has no alternative or choice, except through knowledge and faith. When right knowledge of the soul-nature is acquired the fear of death becomes a laughable impossibility with the true believer. Many souls have already attained to Immortality, and are now enjoying it. They are deathless, sorrowless, painless at the same time as they enjoy Eternal Life, Eternal Youth and perfect Happiness. THEY are all-knowing and all-perceiving. He who knows himself to be like Them can surely have no occasion to fear death, or any other form of calamity. He works in the certitude that all the above-mentioned attributes are his already, and he has merely to put off the body of flesh which is the real enemy. We fear calamity and death on account of the love of the body; hence what room can be left for fear when the ideal is to become separated from the body itself?
Jain Education International
*Delivered at 8 a.m. on the 13th September, 1933, at Morrison Hotel, Chicago, under the World Fellowship of Faiths.
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