What of Tomorrow? The Problem of Fear
By H.K. Challoner.
178 Pages | Published in 1976 | Softcover | The Theosophical House, London | ISBN: 0722950462.
‘. . . What else is Wisdom? What of man’s endeavour
Or God’s high grace so lovely and so great?
To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait;
To hold a hand uplifted over Hate:
And shall not loveliness be loved for ever’.
What of tomorrow? This is the question, which haunts millions today. Tomorrow holds such immeasurable threats to everything dear to man. Its dark face is always looking over our shoulders. In our small, personal concerns as in wider spheres, local and international, a sense of menace, uncertainty and above all insecurity casts its shadows over our future so that fear has become inseparable from almost every aspect of modern life. It is the chief enemy to peace of mind, happiness and even health.
From Chapter VIII (p. 146):
” All that was harsh or sweet
To me was brought
By some affinity of Soul or sense or thought;
I complain not, nor wonder.
Just was my lot.
We – the real Self – cannot be injured in the long run by personal failures, by accident, certainly not by death, which for it does not exist. And if at the very moment of physical panic and physical death, be it slow or violent, we can hold to this conviction it will make all the difference to the state, in which we shall enter the next phase of existence. Hence the true purpose of the performance of the Last Rites of the church. We are not our bodies; so, however much the body panics or shrinks from experience (which it is its nature to do), to the extent to which this belief in the ultimate purpose of good has become the very ground of our thinking, we shall remain in every circumstance more inwardly controlled, confident and calm. “