"But when death actually happens there is no fear. Fear is always about something in the future. Fear never exists in the present moment.

"If you are going to the front in a war you will be afraid, you will be very apprehensive. You will tremble, you will not be able to sleep, many nightmares will haunt you. But once you are on the front – ask the soldiers – once you are on the front you forget all about it. Bullets may be passing and you can enjoy your lunch; and bombs may be falling and you can play cards.

"You can ask Gurudayal. He has been in the war, he has been to the front, he has been a soldier; he knows: the fear is about the future. Then the problem is not physical – because the fear exists in your psychology. When the pain is actual, physical, there is no problem about it.

"Reality never comes as a problem; it is only the ideas about reality that create the problem.

"So the first thing to be understood is: if you can dissolve the psychological pain, no problem is left. Then you start living in the moment. 'Psychological' means: of the past, of the future, never of the present. Mind never exists in the present. In the present reality exists, not the mind. Mind exists in the past and the future, and in past and future reality does not exist. In fact, mind and reality never come across each other. They have never seen each other's face. Reality remains unknown to mind, and mind remains unknown to reality.

"There is an old fable

"Darkness approached God and said, 'Enough is enough! Your sun goes on haunting me, chasing me, I can never rest. Wherever I go to rest he is there and I have to run away again. And I have not done any wrong to him. This is unjust. And I have come to you to get justice.'

"It was perfectly right; the complaint was true.

"And God called the sun and asked the sun, 'Why do you go on chasing this poor woman, darkness? What has she done to you?'

"The sun said, 'I don't know her at all."