Fear is considered by the mystics to come from the action of the earth element, and its effect is to make the body stiff at the moment when a person is afraid. According to metaphysics fear is caused by the lack of light. Therefore the more light there is in the heart the more fearless the heart becomes.

There is a Sura of the Qur'an which supports this, where it is said, "There is no fear in the master-mind."

Fear arises from the strangeness of an object or from ignorance on the part of the person who fears.

There is a verse of a Marathi poet, who says that, "It is the self that creates for itself the object of fear -- one's fear comes from oneself."

Every attitude towards life has a re-echo, and the attitude is formed by expectation. When one expects one's fellow-man to love one, his fellow-man does love him, and when one expects harm from another, then harm comes. When a person is afraid of a dog, he gives the dog a tendency to bite him. This can be noticed so plainly in the lower creation, that every animal is afraid for another animal, and the expectation of harm makes it fear more than does the idea of the hugeness of the form or the bodily strength of another animal.

Many things in life can be brought about, not only by wanting them and thinking of them, but by fearing them, both objects and conditions.

To clear one's mind of fear is like bringing light into a dark room, and as light is needed to illuminate a dark room so the light of the soul is necessary to clear away the thought of fear.

Man is more impressionable than any other living being, owing to the fineness and sensitiveness of his nature, but at the same time man alone is capable of rising above all fear, for in him there is a torch that can show him a way through the darkness.

Man fears all that is hurtful and harmful in any form, and more than all, man fears what he calls death. As in the case of every object and condition that arouses fear, the fear is caused by ignorance, so even the fear of death is caused by ignorance.

Man is afraid if he is in the water, where even so helpless a creature as a fish feels safe. It is not only the fact that man is incapable of remaining in the water that makes him afraid, but the water is a strange world to him; he does not know what is in it. Many have died in the water of fright of the water before having actually sunk.

This life of names and forms is therefore called by the mystics Maya, an illusion, which is apt to be made into that which one would like to make it. When one fears, this world frightens one, but when one clears one's heart of all fear, the whole world of illusion turns into one single vision of the sublime immanence of God.