Abhayam means we are always afraid. We are always agitated, anxiety, because I am thinking, "I am this body." But if you are completely realized that you are not this body, you are something else, spirit soul, then I am immediately free from anxieties. That is called abhayam—no more fear, no more anxiety. Because everyone is ultimately afraid of being killed. But if he understands fully that he is not this body, then killed or not killed, he is not any attached to this body. Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura says, therefore, deha smṛti nāhi jār, saṁsāra bandhan kaha tār: "If one becomes free from the bodily concept of life, then where is material miseries?" Material miseries does not affect him. He know that . . . just like I am putting on this shirt. If it is torn, so am I affected? I am not affected. I am within this shirt. Similarly, if I am fully convinced that I am not this body, then if there is some injury or some disease or some mishap in the body, I am not concerned because I know that I am not this body. That is self-realization.
The demands of the body: eating, sleeping, sex life and defense—this is the demands of the body. But if I am situated in self-realization, then these demands will not bother me. There are many persons who are not agitated by hunger, who are not agitated not having opportunity of sleeping. They don't sleep. Nidrāhāra-vihārakādi-vijitau. About the Gosvāmīs it is said that these things, material demands of the body—sleeping, eating, sex and defense . . . They are the demands of the body. But how they became gosvāmī or svāmī?