by Osho
Everything has energy:
Fear
anger
jealousy
hate.
You are unaware
of the fact
that all these things
are wasting
your life.
The fear of death
is not the fear of death,
it is a fear of
remaining unfulfilled.
You are going to die, and nothing, nothing at all could you experience through life - no
maturity, no growth, no flowering.
Empty-handed you came,
empty-handed you are going.
This is the fear.
When you are grown up, you can see - you can try to peel the onion layer by layer - how fears have been created in you, how gullible you have been, how people have exploited your innocence. The priest had no knowledge of God, yet he deceived you and pretended that he knows God. He had no idea of heaven and hell, yet he forced you to be afraid of hell, to be ambitious for heaven. He created greed, he created fear. He himself was a victim of other people. Now you can look back: your father was not aware what he was teaching, what he was telling to you….
There are fears, and there is that constant urge to seek and to search. And I hope that the fears will not be the winners, because anybody who lives out of fears, lives not; he is already dead. Fear is part of death, not of life.
Risk, adventure, going into the unknown, is what life means. So try to understand your fears. And remember one thing: don’t support them, they are your enemies. Support the urge that is still alive in you, make it aflame so that it can burn all those fears and you can move into seeking.
Nobody wants to be lonely.
Everybody wants to belong to a crowd - not only one crowd, but many crowds. A person belongs to a religious crowd, a political party, a Rotary Club ... and there are many other small groups to belong to. One wants to be supported twenty-four hours a day because the false, without support, cannot stand. The moment one is alone, one starts feeling a strange craziness.
It is not only your fear, it is everybody’s fear. Because nobody is what he was supposed to be by existence. The society, the culture, the religion, the education have all been conspiring against innocent children. They have all the powers - the child is helpless and dependent. So whatsoever they want to make out of him, they manage to do it. They don’t allow any child to grow to his natural destiny. Their every effort is to make human beings into utilities. Who knows, if a child is left on his own to grow, whether he will be of any use to the vested interests or not? The society is not prepared to take the risk. It grabs the child and starts molding him into something that is needed by the society. In a certain sense, it kills the soul of the child and gives him a false identity, so that he never misses his soul, his being. The false identity is a substitute.
But that substitute is useful only in the same crowd which has given it to you. The moment you are alone, the false starts falling apart and the repressed real starts expressing itself. Hence the fear of being lonely.
You believed yourself to be somebody, and then suddenly in a moment of loneliness you start feeling you are not that. It creates fear: then who are you? It will take some time for the real to express itself. The gap between the two has been called by the mystics
“the dark night of the soul”
A very appropriate expression. You are no more the false, and you are not yet the real. You are in a limbo, you don’t know who you are. Particularly in the West the problem is even more complicated. Because they have not developed any methodology to discover the real as soon as possible, so that the dark night of the soul can be shortened. The West knows nothing as far as meditation is concerned.
And meditation is only a name
for being alone, silent,
waiting for the real to assert itself.
It is not an act,
it is a silent relaxation.
Because whatever you do
will come out of your false personality
Years of a false personality imposed by people who you loved, who you respected... and they were not intentionally doing anything bad to you. Their intentions were good, just their awareness was nil. They were not conscious people - your parents, your teachers, your priests, your politicians - they were not conscious people, they were unconscious. And even a good intention in the hands of an unconscious person turns out to be poisonous. So whenever you are alone, a deep fear - because suddenly the false starts disappearing.
And the real will take a little time. You have lost it years back. You will have to give some consideration to the fact that this gap has to be bridged.
The crowd is an essential for the false self to exist.
The moment it is lonely, you start freaking out. This is where one should understand a little bit of meditation. Don’t be worried, because that which can disappear is worth disappearing. It is meaningless to cling to it - it is not yours, it is not you.
Nobody else can answer your question “Who am I?” You will know it.
All meditative techniques are a help to destroy the false. They don’t give you the real - the real cannot be given. That which can be given cannot be real. The real you have got already; just the false has to be taken away.
Meditation is just a courage
to be silent and alone.
Slowly slowly, you start feeling a
new quality to yourself,
a new aliveness, a new beauty,
a new intelligence
which is not borrowed from anybody,
which is growing within you.
It has roots in your existence.
And if you are not a coward,
it will come to fruition,
to flowering.
All your fears are by-products of identification.
You love a woman and with the love, in the same parcel comes fear: she may leave you - she has already left somebody and come with you. There is a precedent; perhaps she will do the same to you. There is fear, you feel knots in the stomach. You are too much attached. You cannot get a simple fact:
You have come alone in the world; you have been here yesterday also, without this woman, perfectly well, without any knots in the stomach. And tomorrow if this woman goes... what is the need of the knots? You know how to be without her, and you will be able to be without her.
The fear that things may change tomorrow... Somebody may die, you may go bankrupt, your job may be taken away. There are a thousand and one things which may change. You are burdened with fears and fears, and none of them are valid - because yesterday also you were full of all these fears, unnecessarily. Things may have changed, but you are still alive. And man has an immense capacity to adjust himself in any situation.
Fear is like darkness.
What can you do about darkness directly? You cannot drop it, you cannot throw it out, you cannot bring it in. There is no way to relate with darkness without bringing light in. The way to darkness goes via light. If you want darkness, put the light off; if you don’t want darkness, put the light on. But you will have to do something with light, not with darkness at all.
All men are afraid of women,
and all women are afraid of men - because all people are afraid of love. The fear is of love. Hence man is afraid of woman because she is the object of love, and women are afraid of men because they are the object of their love.
We are afraid of love because Love is a small death. Love requires that we should surrender, and we don’t want to surrender at all. We would like the other to surrender, we would like the other to be a slave. But the same is the desire from the other side: man wants the woman to be a slave; and of course the woman also wants the same, the same desire is there. Their methods of enslaving each other may be different, but the desire is the same.
All fears can be reduced to one fear:
the fear of death, the fear that, “One day I may have to disappear, one day I may
have to die. I am, and the day is coming when I will not be” - that frightens, that is the fear.To avoid that fear we start moving in such a way so that we can live as long as possible. And we try to secure our lives - we start compromising, we start becoming more and more secure, safe, because of the fear. We become paralyzed, because the more secure you are, the more safe you are, the less alive you will be.
So because of the fear of death we strive for security, for a bank balance, for insurance, for marriage, for a settled life, for a home; we become part of a country, we join a political party, we join a religious church - we become Hindus, Christians, Mohammedans. These are all ways to find security. These are all ways to find some place to belong to - a country, a church.
Because of this fear politicians and priests go on exploiting you. If you are not in any fear, no politician, no priest can exploit you. It is only out of fear that he can exploit because he can provide - at least he can promise - that this will make you secure: “This will be your security. I can guarantee.” The goods may never be delivered - that’s another thing - but the promise.... And the promise keeps people exploited, oppressed. The promise keeps people in bondage.
Fear is made of ignorance of one’s own self.
There is only one fear;
it manifests in many ways,
a thousand and one
can be the manifestations,
but basically fear is one,
and that is that
“Deep inside, I may not be.”
And in a way it is true
that you are not.
Courage means going into the unknown
in spite of all the fears.
Courage does not mean fearlessness. Fearlessness happens if you go on being courageous and more courageous. That is the ultimate experience of courage - fearlessness; that is the fragrance when the courage has become absolute. But in the beginning there is not much difference between the coward and the courageous person. The only difference is, the coward listens to his fears and follows them, and the courageous person puts them aside and goes ahead. The courageous person goes into the unknown in spite of all the fears. He knows the fears, the fears are there.
You have exaggerated your fears.
Just look at them, and just by your looking at them they will start becoming smaller.
You have never looked at them.
You have been escaping from them. You have been creating protections against them, rather than looking directly into the eyes of your fear.
There is nothing to fear at all; all that is needed is a little more awareness. So whatever your fear is, catch hold of it, look at it minutely, the way a scientist looks at a thing. And you will be surprised, it starts melting like an ice flake. By the time you have looked into its totality, it is gone. And when freedom is there without any fear, it brings such benediction that there are no words to express it.
Fear accepted becomes freedom.
Fear denied, rejected, condemned, becomes guilt. If you accept fear as part of the situation.... It is part of the situation. Man is a part, a very small, tiny part, and the whole is vast. Man is a drop, a very small drop, and the whole is the whole ocean. A trembling arises: “I may be lost in the whole; my identity may be lost.”
That is the fear of death. All fear is the fear of death. And the fear of death is the fear of annihilation.
A man living out of fear is always trembling inside. He is continuously on the point of going insane, because life is big, and if you are continuously in fear... And there is every kind of fear. You can make a big list, and you will be surprised how many fears are there - and still you are alive! There are infections all around, diseases, dangers, kidnapping, terrorists... and such a small life. And finally there is death, which you cannot avoid.
Your whole life will become dark. Drop the fear! The fear was taken up by you in your childhood unconsciously; now consciously drop it and be mature. And then life can be a light which goes on deepening as you go on growing.
Understanding is the Secret of Transformation
Just be a little more understanding
of all your sentiments, emotions.
They all have a certain place
in the total harmony of your being.
But we have been kept almost blind
to our own potentialities, dimensions.
Be a little more alert about everything,
and remember that the natural
is the superior, and the unnatural
is phony and American.
From the very beginning one should remember that we are in search of a place, a space, where nothing arises - no dust, no smoke; where everything is pure and clean, utterly empty, just spaciousness. One should be clear from the very beginning what we are looking for.
Awareness is needed, not condemnation.
Through awareness transformation happens spontaneously. If you become aware of your anger, understanding penetrates. Just watching, with no judgment, not saying good, not saying bad, just watching in your inner sky.
There is lightning, anger, you feel hot, the whole nervous system shaking and quaking, and you feel a tremor all over the body - a beautiful moment, because when energy functions you can watch it easily; when it is not functioning you cannot watch.
Close your eyes and meditate on it. Don’t fight, just look at what is happening - the whole sky filled with electricity, so much lightning, so much beauty - just lie down on the ground and look at the sky and watch.
Then do the same inside. Clouds are there, because without clouds there can be no lightning. Dark clouds are there, thoughts. Somebody has insulted you, somebody has laughed at you, somebody has said this or that... many clouds, dark clouds in the inner sky and much lightning.
Watch! It is a beautiful scene - terrible also, because you don’t understand. It is mysterious, and if mystery is not understood it becomes terrible, you are afraid of it. And whenever a mystery is understood, it becomes a grace, a gift, because now you have the keys - and with keys you are the master.
You don’t control it, you simply become a master when you are aware. And the more you become aware, the more inwards you penetrate, because awareness is a going-inwards, it always goes inwards: more aware, more in; totally aware, perfectly in; less aware, more out; unconscious - you are completely out, out of your house wandering around.
The Empty Heart
People have always thought that “mind” means word, speech, thoughts - but that is not true. They are very close, concurrent, so close that you can get the conception that they are one. But when you get deeper into meditation and leave the world of words and speech, you suddenly find there is an empty mind beyond them which is your real mind. To distinguish it, we call it the empty heart.
Either to call it no-mind, real-mind, empty heart... they are all synonymous. But ordinarily, you are so close to thinking, emotions, words, that you cannot conceive there is a sky beyond the clouds, that there is a full moon beyond the clouds. You will have to go beyond the clouds to see the moon.
The empty heart is a door to eternity.
It is a connection between you
and existence.
It is not something physical
or material.
It is not something mental
or psychological.
It is something beyond both,
transcending both.
It is your spirituality.
Remember, the empty heart
makes you a buddha.
Understanding is the secret of transformation.
If you can understand anger, immediately you will be showered with compassion. If you can understand sex, immediately you will attain to superconsciousness. Understanding is the most important word to remember.
You feel anger, you feel jealousy, you feel hatred, you feel lust. Is there any technique that can help you to get rid of anger? of jealousy? of hatred? of sexual lust? And if these things continue to remain, your lifestyle is going to
remain the same as before.
There is only one way - there has never been a second. There is one and only one way to understand that to be angry is to be stupid: watch anger in all its phases, be alert to it so it does not catch you unawares; remain watchful, seeing every step of the anger. And you will be surprised: that as awareness about the ways of anger grows, the anger starts evaporating. And when the anger disappears, then there is a peace. Peace is not a positive achievement. When the hatred disappears, there is love.
