CHAPTER XVI.

FEARLESSNESS
Fearlessness is something more than courage. A man whom we call cour- ageous may be very far from fearless. A recruit going onto the battle-field for the first time, white-faced but deter- mined, is called a man of courage. Wellington is said to have remarked as a young soldier passed him to the front, pale, trembling but resolute: "There goes a brave man; he realizes the danger, but unhesitatingly faces it." A man may have the courage to move toward a known danger, even to risk his life where there is a strong proba- bility of losing it, and yet be by no means fearless. Perfect freedom from fear marks a high state of develop- ment and indicates great knowledge;
152 Hints to Students of Occultism
for, as a matter of fact, fear arises from ignorance.
Chiefly because ignorance is the parent of fear, a man who is coura- geous in one thing is sometimes an ab- ject coward in another. He may face death a hundred times and come to be quite unconcerned about bullets and shells, and yet he could not be induced to spend a night alone in a graveyard. A French king who died upon the scaf- fold with such calm courage and dig- nity as to arouse general admiration had been so lacking in a different kind of firmness as to hasten his own down- fall. On the other hand, a notorious outlaw of the early California days who was celebrated for his daring, who had killed many people in the various raids and robberies of his band, and who seemed to risk his life as reck- lessly as though he were a total strang- er to fear, nevertheless died in abject terror when he was finally caught and
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hanged by the vigilantes. Some men, courageous in other matters, are filled with fear by the sight of a harmless snake. Others would on no account be present at a materializing seance, while it would be extremely difficult to induce many ordinarily courageous per- sons to visit alone at night an unoccu- pied house which was alleged to be "haunted." But all these fears would vanish with a little more knowledge. The graveyard can have no terror for the man who knows that the dead physical body is as much a separate thing from the dead man who once lived in it as his clothing is and that a cemetery is as harmless as a ward- robe. The outlaw about to be deprived of the physical life he had forfeited to the outraged public would not have suddenly turned coward had he not been ignorant of the fact that there is really no death and that while he was losing his physical body he had a better
154 Hints to Students of Occultism
one left. The life ahead of him in the astral world would certainly be an undesirable one; but what probably filled him with fear was the possibility of extinction. The man who is afraid of a materialization, or a ghost, would quickly regain his courage if he un- derstood a little more about the facts and laws of the invisible world. He would not run from a wraith if he knew it was but a temporary aggrega- tion of matter as harmless as a puff of smoke. We are mightily amused at a huge elephant going into a paroxysm of terror at sight of a mouse; but it is no more remarkable than the many baseless fears of human beings that arise from various kinds of ignorance. The action of fear upon the physical body is interesting and instructive and even a superficial examination of it shows that it is extremely detrimental in its effects, while courage is of in- calculable value to a person. Sudden
Fearlessness 155
fear contracts the heart, impedes the circulation of the blood and leaves the face blanched and ashen. We are not surprised when the clairvoyant tells us that the color in which this emotion ex- presses itself is gray. It is quite in keeping with what we know of its physical effects. The emotion of fear appears to be synonymous with con- traction. It is a lessening of life, and therefore of vitality — a tendency to- ward separation from the source of life. Fear is the ally of disease and death. It is destructive, disintegrating. Every physician knows this from ex- perience and always does his best to keep fear from the mind of his patient. He knows that if he can kindle hope and revive courage the battle is more than half won.
Because fear means a restriction of the life- forces, a process of life con- traction instead of expansion, it is in- imical to soul growth. Only in the
156 Hints to Students of Occultism
atmosphere of serene fearlessness can the inherent divinity come to perfect expression. Any kind or degree of fear is an enemy of growth and prog- ress; and the kinds and degrees are many. People fear poverty, fear disease, fear old age, fear accident, fear possible helplessness, fear loss of posi- tion, of power, of social standing, — fear even the opinions of others about them. With many people one or an- other, or several, of these things gives rise to a mental condition of perpetual unrest. Ignorance, once more, is the cause of all such fear. The difficulty is in the failure to understand facts — - to see things in their correct relation- ship to each other and thus to realize the harmlessness of things which, seen out of their true relationship, are fear inspiring. A man is afraid of a harm- less wraith because he erroneously at- taches to it a power it does not possess. Just so are all the rest of his fears
Fearlessness 157
groundless, and the objects of them equally powerless to injure him, except through the fear he permits them to inspire in him. To all things over which he worries a man attaches a wholly imaginary power to do him in- jury and in order to acquire fearless- ness he must try to understand nature's methods of evolution and to compre- hend why certain unpleasant experi- ences, such as the unexpected loss of property, accidents on sea or land, friendlessness in old age, etc, come to people. He must come into an under- standing of three things: First, that no such experiences can come to any hu- man being unless that person has him- self generated the causes that will bring them; second, that when a thing is in- evitable it is much less disastrous if calmly faced than if met with paralyz- ing fear that renders one helpless ; and third, that ill-fortune has a lesson to teach that is of more real value to a
158 Hints to Students of Occultism
man than good fortune could possibly have been in its stead — not that painful things in general are better than pleas- ant ones, but that they are absolutely necessary to those to whom they come ; and were it otherwise they would not, and could not, come to them. A pain in a boy's stomach is not better than the condition of perfect health, but un- til he learns better than to eat green apples that pain is giving him a lesson that is necessary for his future health and safety. If a thing is inevitable nothing can be gained by frantically trying to escape it; and if it has a les- son to teach that will enable us to avoid greater suffering later on, it is obviously foolish to lament it.
A wise man once said that there are two classes of things about which he refused to worry. One was the things he could not help and the other the things he could. It is quite useless to worry about the one and unnecessary
Fearlessness 159
to \vorry about the other ; and so a little common sense puts the demon of worry entirely out of court.
But there is something more to be said about fear than that it arises from ignorance, for its root is in an igno- rance that is closely associated with selfishness. "Perfect love casteth out fear" ; and there can be perfect love only where there is absolute unselfish- ness. The man who reaches a knowl- edge of the actual unity of all life has no fear. Fear and hatred perish to- gether. A man does not fear himself. When he knows that he is one with all that lives he can have neither hatred nor fear of anything nor can anything have fear of him. The devotee of the orient prays that he may become one who is afraid of nothing and of whom nothing is afraid.
The "perfect love that casteth out fear" also casts out selfishness. A man is no longer thinking about himself but
160 Hints to Students of Occultism
about others. Instead of worrying for fear he will be friendless and helpless in old age he is thinking altogether about how he can help those who are now poor and friendless; and in that very forgetfuJness of himself he is creating the conditions that will make his own old age rich with loyal friend- ships. On the other hand a man who is trying to accumulate money "to pro- vide for old age" may permit his anxi- ety to secure plenty of it to lead him into the very things that will make a friendless old age certain.
The thoughtful student of cause and effect, as they operate in human evolu- tion, will not be misled by the foolish idea that by increasing his material possessions he can protect himself against any fate he has earned ; nor will he waste time worrying about blunders that he may have made in the past and the resulting unpleasantness that may still be ahead, but will meet the inevi-
Fearlessness 161
table serenely, pondering its lessons when it comes, getting from its severity a Spartan strength and courage and rejoicing that the account now balanced is done with forever. To live in fear of what may be ahead of us as the life- plan unfolds is only to increase what- ever misfortune may come and to weaken our powers of resistance at the moment when they are most needed.
To the disciple who has entered fully into the spiritual life nothing matters. He has reached a clear understanding of the fact that a superior intelligence is superintending his evolution and that all the events of this life and his future lives will be adjusted with more care- ful planning for his welfare than that of a tutor for his pupil or a father for his son; that no useless lesson will be given him, that no unneeded experience can befall him, and that while he may not understand all the events in a pro- gram so far-reaching that it includes
162 Hints to Students of Occultism
his evolution on planes of the universe of which he is wholly ignorant in his waking consciousness, he has no more to fear from it than an infant has in the arms of its loving mother. When this view of evolution is fully compre- hended one reaches a mental condition that is higher than courage, — the con- dition that can properly be called fear- lessness. It is not the state in which the will is called upon to enable one to resolutely face danger or death. It is rather the state of consciousness that, realizing there is neither danger ncr death and that all things are well with the soul, looks fearless and unafraid upon any change that can come.
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Most readers pass over even the obvious occultism in the Shakespeare plays with but little thought on the subject and lightly dismiss the matter with the belief that the great dramatist was giving rather free rein to his imagination. The fact is that in these plays we are given a truthful arid accurate picture of the invisible world, and a most realistic description of the fact that human passions and emotions survive the .death of the physical body and continue to play a part in the visible world.
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