Question: I feel an element of fear rising in myself when I meditate and reach for light. My ego seems to fear its dissolution.

Sri Chinmoy: Where there is love, real love, there can be no fear. Right now, we don’t have inner light but we have outer light, electrical light. When we have to choose between a room that has light and one that has no light, we will choose the room with light. In this electrically lit room, we try to do everything. Here we are meditating, here we are answering questions and here we are trying to illumine ourselves. Just because we love this electric light, we are doing everything right in front of the light, around the light.

Spiritual light is within us and we can claim it as our very own. Unfortunately, we have been with darkness for a long time and we feel that darkness is our only friend, the only member of our family. No, the true members of our family are Peace, Light and Bliss. If we feel these qualities as our very own, then there can be no fear.

Why should a drop be afraid of the ocean itself? The tiniest drop should know that it has come from the ocean and without the ocean it can have no existence of its own. If the drop is taken out of the ocean and placed on the shore, in a few minutes’ time it will dry up and disappear. Just because it is in the ocean, it still exists. The tiniest drop can claim the infinite ocean as its very own on the strength of its love, on the strength of its oneness.

It is like a child and his parents. As the parents can claim the little child as their very own, the child also has the right to claim the parents as his very own. Now, how can we and why should we be afraid of the one we really love? A child is three years old and his father is very strong, very powerful. Everybody is afraid of the father’s physical strength, but the child goes right in front of the father and plays with him. He knows that his father loves him and that he loves his father. Because of his inner feeling of oneness with his father, the child is not at all afraid of him. So where there is true love there can be no fear.