The feeling of separation from others is most acute where there is great and unrelieved craving. In hate and anger also the other person is, so to speak, thrown out of one’s own being and regarded not only as a foreigner but as definitely hostile to the thriving of the ego. Fear also is a subtle form of affirming separateness and exists where the consciousness of duality is unabated.

Fear acts as a thick curtain between “I” and “you” and it not only nourishes deep distrust of the other, but inevitably brings about a shrinking and withdrawal of consciousness so as to exclude the being of another from the context of one’s own life.

Therefore, not only other souls but God should be loved and not feared. To fear God or His manifestations is to strengthen duality; to love them is to weaken it.