Osho Speaks On Fear
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I came across Ram Gopal Verma’s latest blog post, where he speaks about getting scared by his own creations. Isn’t fearfulness man’s own creation anyway?
“It was 3’O’clock in the night. I just returned from a late night shoot of “Bhoot” to my apartment on the 8th floor. As I got into the bed and was trying to sleep I suddenly had a feeling that Manjeet the ghost in “Bhoot” was behind the cupboard near the wall. I felt my hair rise and I almost immediately laughed out loud at my own imagination. Manjeet’s laugh came out from behind the wall mixed with my own laughter. Startled, I looked at the wall. There was complete silence. I reminded myself that Manjeet was created from my own imagination and now my own imagination is trying to play tricks and scare the hell out of me with my own creation. I smiled to myself at the ridiculousness of it. My mind said that I go and check behind the cupboard and my sensibility said ‘No’. After a severe conflict between the two, I completely resisted the temptation to go and check. However after staring at the cupboard for a while in a low voice I called out Manjeet’s name. In reply there was a dead silence from behind the cupboard.”
Reproducing the comment I wrote in response to RGV’s rants.
“A few experiences to share in this regard. Firstly, I don’t get scared looking at my own room walls and the furniture set around, unless and until precisely choosing to do so. Often questioning why don’t I get scared of the swinging windows in air and the dry leaves making strange sounds all over my terrace – which otherwise should make for a serene night – can sometimes do the trick for me. No doubt, getting back to the senses and gloating over the effort, is the next obvious course. However, there have been a couple of more incidents that I should be mentioning here.
The slaying of a common friend and his servant’s in 2004 was one such incident. I learned of their gruesome end and the bizarre mystery surrounding the whole affair through the media and other friends. How the phone calls and people visiting them would go unresponded the whole day until finally the police barged in to find them brutality done with during that night. The ‘Desi’ method used by their paid killers, but their love for the ‘Videsi Tharra’ (wine) that they had sipped the previous night on the terrace, while awaiting for a SUV to take them away at dawn….all established through the forensics, and listened by me at length through common mouths. The case was to go unresolved later, but had me unsettled for a week or so on a personal level.
I could not walk around in my own house in the dark for an entire week, always seeking to keep one or the other corner of my house lit. Always living under the anxiety of the unknown and getting edgy at the slightest of movements and sounds from behind the objects, and that too for no obvious personal reasons. I’m basically a mediator who knows how to get rid of their undue mental burdens when it starts getting the better of them, but all in vain for that one tortuous week.
The other incident is somewhat funny in nature. I once lay on my bed thinking of the methods to scare the others of my own silly existence (or the lack of it), and began assuming to be dead while the rest others had no clue of my demise. That, those outside my room and in the neighborhood would come to know of my ghostly departure only after the next morning, and I would have started rotting and leaving a trail of bad odor and fear by that time. That, my room would be seen with suspicion and will have a ghostly shadow woven around it for a very long period. Obviously, my room grew remarkably darker and mysterious by the moment and made my own body so much unbearable, that I decide never ever to revisit this fantasy again.”
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Image courtesy of Osho International Foundation. New York. USA
And then I decided to check out Osho’s discourses on fear and compiled the following list of quotes and links with respect to that.
Fear And The Four Stages Of Love
“Fear is a negativity, an absence. This has to be understood very, very deeply. If you miss there you will never be able to understand the nature of fear. It is like darkness. Darkness does not exist, it only appears to be. In fact it is just an absence of light. Light exists; remove the light – there is darkness.
Darkness does not exist, you cannot remove darkness. Do whatsoever you want to do, you cannot remove darkness. You cannot bring it, you cannot throw it. If you have to do something with darkness, you will have to do something with light, because only something which has an existence can be related to. Put the light off, darkness is there; put the light on, darkness is not there – but you do something with LIGHT. You cannot do anything with darkness.
Fear is darkness. It is absence of love. You cannot do anything about it, and the more you do, the more you will become fearful because then the more you will find it impossible.
The problem will become more and more complicated. If you fight with darkness you will be defeated. You can bring a sword and try to kill the darkness: you will only be exhausted. And, finally, the mind will think: Darkness is so powerful, that’s why I am defeated.
This is where logic goes wrong. It is absolutely logical that if you have been struggling with darkness and you could not defeat it, could not destroy it; it is absolutely logical to come then to the conclusion that darkness is very, very powerful. I am impotent before it. But the reality is just the opposite. You are not impotent, darkness is impotent. In fact darkness is not there – that’s why you could not defeat it. How can you defeat something which is not?
Don’t fight with the fear otherwise you will become more and more afraid: and a new fear will enter into your being, that is: fear of fear, which is very dangerous. In the first place fear is absence and in the second place the fear of fear is the fear of the absence of absence. Then you go into a madness. You have taken a wrong step.
Fear is nothing but absence of love. Do something with love, forget about fear. If you love well, fear disappears. If you love deeply, fear is not found. Whenever you have been in love with someone, ever for a single moment, was there any fear? It has never been found in any relationship – if even for a single moment two persons are in deep love and a meeting happens, they are tuned to each other, in that moment fear has never been found. Just as if the light is on and darkness has not been found There is the secret key: Love more. If you feel there is fear in your being – love more. Be courageous in love, take courage. Be adventurous in love, love more, and love unconditionally, because the more you love the less will be the fear. And when I say love I mean all the four layers of love: from sex to samadhi.
Love deeply.”
“So whenever fear comes to you, don’t suppress it, don’t repress it, don’t avoid it, don’t get occupied in something so that you can forget about it.
No! When fear comes, watch it.
Be face to face with it.
Encounter it.
Look deep into it.
Gaze into the valley of fear.
Of course you will perspire, and you will tremble, and it will be like a death, and you will have to live it many times. But by and by, the more your eyes become clear, the more your awareness becomes alert, the more your focus is there on the fear, the fear will disappear Like a mist. And once fear disappears, sometimes, even for only a moment, suddenly you are deathless.
There is no death.
Death is the greatest illusion there is, the greatest myth — a lie.
For even a single moment, if you can see that you are deathless.
Then no meditation is needed.
Then live that experience, then act out of that experience, and the doors of eternal life are open for you.
Much is being missed because of fear.
We are too attached to the body and we go on creating more and more fear because of that attachment.
The body is going to die, the body is part of death, the body is death — but you are beyond the body.
You are not the body; you are the bodiless.
Remember it.
Realize it.
Awaken yourself to this truth — that you are beyond the body. You are the witness, the seer.
Then death disappears and fear disappears, and there arises the tremendously glorious life — what Jesus calls ‘life abundant,’ or ‘the kingdom of God.’
The kingdom of God is within you.”
Accept fear
“If you have fear, you have fear- why make a problem out of it? You know that you have fear, just as you have two hands. Fear is there: accept it, note it. What will happen? Suddenly you will feel it has disappeared. And this is the inner alchemy — a problem disappears if you accept it, and a problem grows more and more complex if you create any conflict with it. It is there and nothing can be done about it. And when I say nothing can be done about it, don’t think that I am talking about pessimism to you, in fact I am giving you the key to solve it.”
It is good to tremble in darkness
“If a child is afraid in the dark, we say, “Don’t be afraid, be brave.” Why? The child is innocent- naturally he feels fear in the dark. You force him: “Be brave.” So he also forces, then he becomes tense. Then he endures the darkness but now tense; now, his whole being is ready to tremble and he suppresses it. This suppressed trembling will follow him his whole life. It was good to tremble in the darkness, nothing was wrong. It was good to cry and run, nothing was wrong. The child would have come out of darkness more experienced, more knowing. And he would have realized, if he passed through darkness trembling and crying and weeping, that there was nothing to fear. Suppressed, you never experience the thing in its totality, you never gain anything out of it. Wisdom comes through suffering and wisdom comes through acceptance. Whatsoever the case, be at ease with it.”
dear sir,
iam osho fan i ask one question i will see any person iam feel that time fear please give instruction sir now dates fear is increasing sir. iwant live faer sir plz tell me instruction sir i am waiting for ur result sir
Never been so clear about fear !
Thank you