One of the functions of thought is to be occupied all the time with something. Most of us want to have our minds continually occupied so that we are prevented from seeing ourselves as we actually are. We are afraid to be empty. We are afraid to look at our fears.

In obedience there is always fear, and fear darkens the mind.

Fools live in fear, a wise man lives in strength.

When we hide from the world in this way, we feel secure. We may think we have quieted our fear, but we are actually making ourselves numb with fear. We surround ourselves with our own familiar thoughts, so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us.

What a joy to remember that she is our Mother! Since she loves us and knows our weakness, what have we to fear?

You are the witness of the three bodies: the gross, the subtle, and the causal, and of the three times: past, present and future, and also this void. In the story of the tenth man, when each of them counted and thought they were only nine, each one forgetting to count himself, there is a stage when they think one is missing and do not know who it is; and that corresponds to the void. We are so accustomed to the notion that all that we see around us is permanent and that we are this body, that when all this ceases to exist we imagine and fear that we also have ceased to exist.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.

Analyze yourself. All emotions are reflected in the body and mind. Envy and fear cause the face to pale, love makes it glow.

Do what you fear and your fear will die.

The fear is simply because you are not living with life, you are living in your mind.

Love is a light that never dwelleth in a heart possessed by fear.

Fear is bound to disappear when you realize that failure is not something shameful, damaging, destructive, or painful, but something natural.

What men fear is not that death is annihilation but that it is not.

Wicked men obey out of fear, good men, out of love.

The wise man neither rejects life nor fears death... just as he does not necessarily choose the largest amount of food, but, rather, the pleasantest food, so he prefers not the longest time, but the most pleasant.

Men, believing in myths, will always fear something terrible, everlasting punishment as certain or probable . . . Men base all these fears not on mature opinions, but on irrational fancies, that they are more disturbed by fear of the unknown than by facing facts. Peace of mind lies in being delivered from all these fears.

Ultimately, there is no such thing as "my consciousness," but just the one consciousness and to sense your connectedness with the one (I can sense that continuously, which is why I can say that I know this for sure) to sense that connectedness with the one consciousness that pervades the universe, which in some traditions is called God, to sense that frees you of fear, from anxiety, and takes you to a very deep place of peace, but also of heightened aliveness.

Until we can look at fear and accept it as the shadow of personal existence, as persons we are bound to be afraid.

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear.

The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

Never have fear! Even if you have fallen, it does not matter. The guru preceptor is the rescuer of the downtrodden.

Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever.