Question: Can one overcome one's fears through meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: Meditation is the only way to overcome fear. There is no other way. No matter how many injections we take from the doctors, our fear will not leave us. Why does meditation help us to overcome our fear? In meditation we identify ourselves with the Vast, with the Absolute. When we are afraid of someone or something, we are afraid because we do not feel that particular person or thing is a part of us. But when we have established conscious oneness with the Absolute, with the infinite Vast, then everything included there is part of us. And how can we be afraid of ourselves?

The very purpose of meditation is to unite, expand, enlighten and immortalise our consciousness. When we meditate, we enter into our own Divinity. When we talk to our friends or move around, we are not consciously aware of our Divinity. But when we are meditating, we are consciously trying to be aware of our inmost Divinity. Divinity is not afraid of humanity. Far from it, because Divinity has infinite Power. Humanity, in comparison with Divinity, has no power. When we have free access to Divinity, when our entire existence, inner and outer, is surcharged with Divinity's boundless and infinite Power, how can we be afraid of humanity? It is impossible!

Through meditation, outer fear and inner fear are bound to leave us. Inner fear is infinitely more difficult to cast aside. But with the help of meditation our inner fear has to leave. Now you are afraid of fear. You have become a victim to fear because you do not know how to expand your consciousness. That is why at every moment you are at the mercy of fear. But when you take refuge in Divinity, with the help of meditation, then fear has to leave you, for fear feels that it is knocking at the wrong door. Now you are helpless, but fear will be helpless the moment it sees that through meditation you are in touch with something powerful, most powerful.

Now, if we want to conquer fear in the vital, then we should concentrate on our own inner being. But this is difficult for beginners. So I tell them that if they want to conquer fear in the vital, they should try to expand the real vital in themselves. We have two types of vital. One vital is aggressive and the other vital is dynamic. We use the aggressive vital, with its fighting quality, daily. But the dynamic vital wants to create something sooner than at once in a divine way, in an illumined way. So if we can concentrate or focus our attention on that vital, the dynamic vital, then we will expand our consciousness there. Then there can be no fear in the vital.

If we want to conquer fear in the unaspiring heart, we have to take help directly from the soul. How many of us have seen the soul or felt it? When you meditate here, directly on the heart centre, you have to know if you are really and truly meditating on the heart centre proper. Then, try to feel at every moment, or, let us say, every time you breathe in, that you are digging inside. This is not violent digging. No! It is only a divinely intensified feeling that you have inside your heart that you are going deep, deep, deep within. Each time you breathe in, feel that you are going deeper within. And then, a few days or a few months later, you are bound to feel a tingle; you will hear a very tiny sound. When you hear the sound, try to see if the sound is caused by something or not. Normally when we hear a sound, it is because two hands are clapped together or two objects are struck together. But this sound in the soul is not the result of anything. It is spontaneous. So, when you feel that sound inside, like a celestial gong, then you are bound to conquer fear in your aspiring heart.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Meditation: man's choice and God's Voice, part 1, Agni Press, 1974
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