death includes not only physical death, but the friend who has gone abroad and got out of touch, the sweetheart whom you have offended and who refuses to speak to you anymore; these are also death; then the question is what is one going to do about it? How is one to prevent oneself being overwhelmed by the idea that all life, all physical life, all friendship, all love ends in death? The clue to the problem is to remember that the fear of death is only the lack of confidence in immortality - in the immortality of ourselves, our friendships, our loves. And the obvious remedy for combating the fear of death is to try to believe in immortality; in one's own immortality, not necessarily in this world, but partly in this world, partly in the invisible world all around us which is beyond death (which is after all what the Church teaches); in the immortality of all true friendships; and in the immortality of one's love. After all every lover boasts that his love is stronger than death, which is simply saying the same thing. And one tries to believe in immortality in exactly the same way that one tries to gain confidence in one's profession - by working at it, see Chapter 4. If death is the rule, and immortality mere fantasy and illusion, then everyday experience will not confirm one's tentative beliefs; it will destroy them. But if immortality is confidence, and death is lack of confidence, then there is a fair chance that everyday experience will confirm that one's confidence is well founded.
The difficulty is though that we live in a community where the fear of death is regarded as normal. Not only is there great pressure to think of anyone who does not as abnormal, but also your attempts to collaborate with your fellow man are affected. Suppose for the sake of argument that you are one of the sheep who do not fear death, whereas your fellow man is one of the goats who do. If our conclusion for the individual was correct that fear of death does affect the consciousness, and therefore affects all thought processes - at least in…