Freedom from Fear
Self-knowledge removes all fear.
Fear arises from duality - seeing something 'other' that might threaten. When all is seen as the Self, there is nothing other to fear. Liberation is fearlessness.
When one sees no other, hears no other, knows no other - that is the Infinite. There is no fear.
Fearlessness is a sign of true realization.
Chandogya Upanishad
Written about in
- What the Upanishads say about the purpose of life
Fear needs a second thing to be afraid of. Where nothing is other, the Chandogya says, there is no fear. It is the nearest these texts come to describing how freedom feels.
- What the Upanishads say about loneliness
Chandogya locates fear precisely: it arises from a second, from something other that could threaten. That diagnosis is uncomfortable, because it says loneliness is not the absence of others but the persistence of otherness — and the cure it names is not company.