Recorded at the Vedanta Society of Western Washington on July 29, 2012.
In this talk, Swami Bhaskarananda presents Advaita—the teaching of nonduality—as a practical foundation for fearlessness. He explains that human beings naturally seek unity behind the diversity of experience, and that the sages of the Upanishads identified this underlying oneness as Brahman, the single reality appearing as the many. Using simple analogies, he illustrates how forms and names create the appearance of difference, while the underlying essence remains one. He notes that Swami Vivekananda summarized the Upanishadic message as a call to fearlessness, rooted in the direct understanding that there is no second reality apart from Brahman.
Swami Bhaskarananda then connects fear to the sense of separateness produced by identification with the body and mind. Fear, he suggests, arises from the apprehension of losing what we cling to—life, health, security, possessions—and persists so long as we take ourselves to be limited beings. Drawing on Vedantic reasoning and examples from spiritual tradition, he argues that when one knows one’s true identity as the eternal Spirit, fear loses its basis. He emphasizes that this conviction is cultivated through spiritual discipline, especially the path of knowledge, in which one repeatedly discriminates between what one truly is and what one merely possesses. As the mind becomes purified and refined, it can glimpse what is beyond time and change, and the recognition of oneness brings a deep, stable freedom from fear.
