Osho - Fear: understanding and accepting the insecurities of life

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Contents

Go into your fear.

Silently enter into it, so you can find its depth.

And sometimes it happens that it is not very deep.

A ZEN STORY IS:

A man walking in the night slipped and fell from a rocky path. Afraid he would fall down thousands of feet, because he knew that just at the edge of the path was a very deep valley, he grabbed hold of a branch that was overhanging the edge. In the darkness of night all he could see below him was a bottomless abyss. He shouted and his own shout was reflected backthere was nobody to hear him.

You can imagine that man, and his whole night of torture. Every moment there was death below, his hands were becoming cold, he was losing his grip but he managed to hold on, and as the sun came out he looked down and he laughed! There was no abyss. Just six inches below his feet there was a rock ledge. He could have rested the whole night, slept wellthe ledge was big enoughbut instead, the whole night was a nightmare.

From my own experience I can say to you:

The fear is not more than six inches deep. Now it is up to you whether you want to go on clinging to the branch and turn your life into a nightmare, or whether you would love to leave the branch and stand on your feet.

There is nothing to fear.

OSHO

UNDERSTANDING FEAR ITSELF

Fear is as nonsubstantial as your shadow, but it is. The shadow also existsnonsubstantial, negative, but not nonexistentialand sometimes the shadow can have a great impact on you. In a jungle when the night is approaching you can be frightened of your own shadow. In a lonely place, on a lonely path, you can start running because of your own shadow. Your running will be real, your escaping will be real, but the cause will be nonsubstantial.

You can run away from a rope thinking that it is a snake; if you come back and you look closely and you observe, you will laugh at the whole stupidity of it. But people are afraid to come to places where fear exists. People are more afraid of fear than of anything else, because the very existence of fear shakes your foundations.

The shaking of the foundations is very real, remember. The fear is like a dream, a nightmare, but after a nightmare when you are awake the aftereffects still persist, the hangover persists. Your breathing has changed, you are perspiring, your body is still trembling, you are hot. Now you know that it was just a nightmare, a dream, nonsubstantial, but even this knowing will take time to penetrate to the very core of your being. Meanwhile the effect of the nonsubstantial dream will continue. Fear is a nightmare.

What is fear made of? Fear is made of ignorance of ones 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. Godliness is, you are not. The host is not, the guest is. And because you are suspiciousand your suspicion is validyou dont look in. You go on pretending that you are; you know that if you look in, you are not! This is a deep, tacit understanding. It is not intellectual, it is existential; it is in your very guts, the feeling that I may not be. It is better not to look in. Go on looking out. At least it keeps you fooled, it keeps the illusion intact that I am. But because this feeling of I amness is false, it creates fear. You know that anything can destroy it, any deep encounter can shatter it. It can be shattered by love, it can be shattered by a serious disease, it can be shattered by seeing someone die. It can be shattered in many ways, it is very fragile. You are managing it somehow by not looking in.

Mulla Nasruddin was traveling on a train. The ticket collector came; he asked for the ticket. He looked in all his pockets, in all his suitcases, and the ticket was not found. He was perspiring, and he was becoming more and more frightened. And then the ticket collector said, Sir, but you have not looked in one of your pockets. Why dont you look in it?

Mulla Nasruddin said, Please dont talk about that pocket. I am not going to look in it. That is my only hope! If I look in that pocket and it is not found, then it is lost, then it is absolutely not anywhere to be found. I cannot look in that pocket. Mind you, I will look everywhere else; that pocket is my safety, I can still hope that it may be in that pocket. I have left it deliberately and I am not going to touch it. Whether I find the ticket or not, I am not going to look in that particular pocket.

This is the situation with the ego too. You dont look in, that is your only hope: Who knows? Maybe it is there. But if you look, your intuitive feeling says it is not there.

This false ego, which you have created by not looking in, by continuously looking out, is the root cause of fear. You will be afraid of all those spaces in which you have to look. You will be afraid of beauty because beauty simply throws you within. A beautiful sunset, and all those luminous colors in the clouds, and you will be afraid to look at it because such great beauty is bound to throw you inside yourself. Such great beauty stops your thinking: For a moment the mind is in such awe, it forgets how to think, how to go on spinning and weaving. The inner talk comes to a stop, a halt, and you are suddenly in.

People are afraid of great music, people are afraid of great poetry, people are afraid of deep intimacy. Peoples love affairs are just hit-and-run affairs. They dont go deep into each others being because going deep into each others being, the fear is therethe others pool of being will reflect you. In that pool, in that mirror of the others being, if you are not found, if the mirror remains empty, if it reflects nothing, then what?

People are afraid of love. They only pretend, they only go on playing games in the name of love. They are afraid of meditation; even in the name of meditation at the most they go on practicing new ways of thinking. Thats what Maharishi Mahesh Yogis Transcendental Meditation isit is neither meditation nor transcendental, it is simply chanting a mantra. And chanting a mantra is nothing but a process of thought, concentrated thought. It is again a new device, a device not to meditate. People are repeating Christian prayers, Mohammedan prayers, Hindu prayersall ways to avoid meditation. These are not meditations, remember. Mind is so cunning that in the name of meditation it has created many false phenomena.

Meditation is when you are not doing anything at all, when the mind is not functioning at all. That nonfunctioning of the mind is meditationno chanting, no mantra, no image, no concentration. One just simply is. In that isness, the ego disappears, and with the ego the shadow of the ego disappears.

That shadow is fear.

Fear is one of the most important problems. Each human being has to go through it and has to come to a certain understanding about it. The ego gives you the fear that one day you may have to die. You go on deceiving yourself that death happens only to others, and in a way you are right: Some neighbor dies, some acquaintance dies, some friend dies, your wife dies, your mother diesit always happens to somebody else, never to you. You can hide behind this fact. Maybe you are an exception, you are not going to die. The ego is trying to protect you.