Love Dissolves Fear and Sorrow
Where divine love takes root, Narada teaches, the great afflictions of fear, grief, and delusion can no longer hold the heart.
The one established in supreme love crosses beyond fear, grief, and delusion, for these arise from the sense of separateness that love dissolves (echoing Narada Bhakti Sutra 5 and the wider tradition). Fear is rooted in the perception of an other that can harm; when the heart is filled with the beloved who is everywhere, the ground of fear vanishes. Sorrow arises from loss; the lover who has found the imperishable beloved has nothing left to lose. The Bhagavad Gita's promise that the devotee 'comes to Me and is not lost' (9.31) underlies this assurance. The glory of devotion is its power to heal the deepest wounds of the human condition not by argument but by the warmth of love.
Where there is love, there is no fear; perfect love casts out all dread.
The teaching that love dissolves fear finds a striking echo in the First Letter of John, 'perfect love casts out fear.'
Narada Bhakti Sutras
Written about in
- What the Narada Bhakti Sutras say about loneliness
The tradition's closing claim is that love dissolves fear and grief because both rest on the sense of separateness. Read plainly, that describes the finished state; it is not a technique for the middle of it.