The question arose: “Whom should you fear—God, the world, or Self?”
Baba replied:
- Do not fear the world or its people; always do the right thing. Whatever your conscience accepts and tells you to do, whatever your mind and heart feel right,’ do that. In other words, face the opposition of the whole world in doing what is right.
- Do not fear God to the slightest degree. For if you are afraid of Him, how will you be able to engender prem, love for Him? Only love for God enables and entitles you to attain the goal of Truth, which is Realization.
- Do not fear Self! For Self is never independent or apart from you. You yourself are no one other than Parameshwar (or God). What then is the sense of fearing Self, which only makes God aloof and independent of you and separates your “self” from Him?
If you have to fear anything, fear Maya!
Yes, be afraid of Maya, which is personified to you in the form of this world (jag); on Maya this entire material sphere is dependent. Maya means kam, krodh, and lobh—passion, anger, and greed. Fear these—fear passion, anger, and greed—and keep yourselves as far aloof and away from them as possible. Don’t fear anything else.
Speaking then on the subject of fear of God, Shri asked:
Do people actually fear God? Not a bit! They don’t fear God Himself. What they fear is the hell (nark-dozakh) created by Him for punishing sinners; they have fear as to where God will place them if their actions aren’t right. Take this as a simile: do boys fear the teacher—Arjun—or do they fear his cane? The cane, of course!—and not the teacher, who actually plays with the boys sometimes, and they play with him, and willingly too, since there is no cane then.
– “Meher Baba’s Tiffin lectures”, p260
01-October-1926; Meherabad