Several years ago there was a world-wide pandemic that affected many tens of millions of people, which was called the covid-19 pandemic. It provided us a clear opportunity to see the impact of fear on the reactions of people. Panic ensued. Stores closed, public access was shut down in many places, people tried to avoid the pandemic by staying at home and minimizing their interaction with other people, keeping their distance, using face masks, protective gear such as plastic shields and using a lot of hand sanitizer products. Individuals who became ill were quarantined and even those hospitalized or dying from the pandemic were prevented from interacting with family and friends.
We saw a similar, but less complete response to the HIV epidemic which appeared to impact a much smaller number of people and be confined more to specific demographics. Anyone who had HIV was basically ostracised by others due to fear.
The bubonic plague in Europe in the Middle Ages had an extraordinary amount of fear attached to it, with towns walled off and closed down, trade halted in many places, and people trying to escape the plague infestations by going out to other non-infected areas.
Albert Camus in his book The Plague and Daniel Defoe in his book A Journal of the Plague Year, provided outstanding insights to the events and psychological forces at work, including the influence of societal fear on the reactions of people. The extreme fear weakened the vital sheath of most individuals who thus were more subject to succumbing to the pandemic, and opened up a pathway for the vibrations that brought on the changes to the body that accompanied the illness, to actually enter and carry out their task of infection. The fear and the suggestions that accompanied it pre-disposed the body to respond to those vibrations, thus making the illness more virulent and effective in its penetration through the protective sheath of the vital envelope.
Sri Aurobindo notes: “They [the subtle forces of illness] first weaken or break through the nervous envelope, the aura. If that is strong and whole, a thousand million germs will not be able to do anything to you. The envelope pierced, they attack the subconscient mind in the body, sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper — prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves say that in influenza or cholera in the Far East 90 p.c. [i.e. percent] get ill through fear. Nothing to take away the resistance like fear. But still the subconscient is the main thing.”
“If the contrary Force is strong in the body one can move in the midst of plague and cholera and never get contaminated.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch. 3 Hidden Forces Around, pg. 74
Sri Aurobindo Studies 