<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If you were in a perfectly harmonious environment where everything was full of a total and perfect goodwill, then evidently you could lay the blame only on yourself. But the difficulties that are within are also without. You can, to a certain extent, establish an inner equilibrium, but you live in surroundings full of imbalance. Unless you shut yourself up in an ivory tower (which is not only difficult but not always recommendable), you are obliged to receive what comes from outside. You give, you receive; you give, you receive. It is a perpetual play. Even granting that there is no bad will, there is necessarily contagion. And as I was saying just now, all is contagious, everything. You are looking at the effect of an accident: you absorb a certain vibration. And if you are over-sensitive and, over and above that, you have fear or disgust (which is the same thing, disgust is only a moral expression of a physical fear), the accident can be translated physically in your body. Naturally you will be told that those who have such reactions are in a state of nervous imbalance. It is not quite true. They are persons with an ultra-suprasensitive vital, that is all. And it is not always a proof of inferiority, on the contrary! For as you progress spiritually, a certain hypersensitivity of the nerves occurs and if your self-control does not increase along with your sensibility, all kinds of untoward things may happen to you. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/22-july-1953#p45</ref></u></span>
= Physical Fear=
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Physically, well... When you do not any longer have the other two fears[mental and vital fears], you can become aware of the physical fear. Generally, the other two are much more conscious. They hide the physical fear from you. But when you have no longer any mental or vital fear, then you become aware of it. It is a curious little vibration that gets into your cells and they begin shivering that way. But the cells are not like a heart beating very fast. It is in the very cells: they tremble with just a slight quivering. And it is very difficult to control this. Yet it can be controlled. </span><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/22-july-1953#p17</ref></u>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Some people are especially afraid of fire, some especially fear water, others have a special fear of one animal or another. It comes from a disharmony between the vital vibrations. And then it is translated in this body-unconsciousness by fear. The body is a terribly unconscious thing. How one has to work to give it just a very little consciousness! It lives automatically, by habit. It is terribly unconscious. </span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/10-march-1954#p24</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Many people say, "Oh, yes, here I am not afraid." They don't have any fear in the mind, their mind is not afraid, it is strong, it is not afraid; but the body trembles, and one doesn't know it, because it is in the cells of the body that the trembling goes on. </span><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/11-may-1955#p14</ref></u>
<div style="color: #000000;">Some people are spontaneously free from fear even in their body; they have a sufficient vital equilibrium in them not to be afraid, not to fear, and a natural harmony in the rhythm of their physical life which enables them to reduce the illness spontaneously to a minimum. There are others, on the other hand, with whom the thing always becomes as bad as it can be, sometimes to the point of catastrophe. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/19-june-1957#p7</ref></div>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">...fear is more even of a nervous sensation than an emotion. </span><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-instruments-of-the-spirit#p8</ref></u>
== Reason for Physical Fear ==
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Because in the large majority of men, the body receives its inspirations from the subconscient, it is under the influence of the subconscient. All the fears driven out from the active consciousness go and take refuge there and then, naturally, they have to be chased out from the subconscient and uprooted from there. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/14-march-1951#p27</ref></u></span>
And even if by discipline and effort you have liberated your mind and your vital of apprehension and fear, it is '''more difficult to convince the body.''' But that too must be done. Once you enter the path of Yoga you must get rid of all fears—the fears of your mind, the fears of your vital, the fears of your body which are lodged in its very cells. One of the uses of the blows and knocks you receive on the path of Yoga is to rid you of all fear. The causes of your fears leap on you again and again, until you can stand before them free and indifferent, untouched and pure. One has a fear of the sea, another fear of fire. The latter will find, it may be, that he has to face conflagration after conflagration till he is so trained that not a cell of his body quivers. That of which you have horror comes repeatedly till the horror is gone. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/19-may-1929#p19</ref>
<div style="color: #000000;">''What is the ground of the repulsion that one instinctively feels towards certain animals, such as snakes and scorpions?''</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">The repulsion you speak of comes from fear; if there were no fear, it would not exist. This fear is not based on reason, it is instinctive; it is not individual, but racial; it is a general suggestion and belongs to the consciousness of humanity as a whole. When one takes up the human body, one accepts along with it a mass of these general suggestions, race ideas, race feelings of mankind, associations, attractions, repulsions, fears.</span> <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p3</ref>
== How to deal with Physical Fear ==
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If it is a vital fear, you must reason with yourself and go about it all the same. But if it is a physical instinct (that is possible, it happens very often that there is a kind of physical instinct), in that case you must listen to it, for the instinct of the body is a very sure thing, if it is not disturbed by thought or vital will. The body left to itself knows very well what it can and what it cannot do. And not only that but even a thing that one can do and does usually, if one day you feel a sort of repulsion, as if you were shrinking back, you must definitely not do it; it is an indication that for some reason or other—a purely material reason of a disorder in the functioning of the body—you are not fit to do the thing at that time. Then you must not do it. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/24-june-1953#p19</ref></u></span>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">A strict discipline is needed to cure the body of fear. The cells themselves tremble. It is only by discipline, by yoga that one can overcome this fear. But it is a fact that one can catch anything through fear, even invite an accident. And, you see, from a certain point of view everything is contagious. </span><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/22-july-1953#p12</ref></u>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">You have no idea of the almost magical effect of staring fearlessly into the eyes of a vital being. Even on earth, if you deal in this way with all those incarnations of the vital powers which we ordinarily call animals, you are assured of easy mastery. A physical tiger will also flee from you, if without the least tremor you look him straight in the eyes. A snake will never be able to bite you if you manage to rivet its gaze to yours without feeling the slightest dread. Merely staring at it with shaking knees will not help. There must be no disturbance in you: you must be calm and collected when you catch its gaze as it keeps swaying its head in order to fascinate you into abject fear. Animals are aware of a light in the human eyes which they are unable to bear if it is properly directed towards them. Man's look carries a power which nullifies them, provided it is steady and unafraid. </span><u><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/different-kinds-of-space-and-time-fearlessness-on-the-vital-plane#p4</ref></u>
== Fear and Illness ==