Professional Documents
Culture Documents
www.osho.com/trademarks.
www.stmartins.com
The material in this book are questions and Osho’s responses selected from various talks by
Osho given to a live audience. All of Osho’s talks have been published in full as books,
and are also available as original audio recordings. Audio recordings and the complete text
archive can be found via the online OSHO Library at www.osho.com.
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1
UNDERSTANDING
%
FEAR ITSELF
breathing has changed, you are perspiring, your body is still trem-
bling, 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 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. Godliness is, you are not. The host is not, the guest is. And
because you are suspicious—and your suspicion is valid—you don’t
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 dis-
ease, 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.
This is the situation with the ego too. You don’t 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 think-
ing: 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. People’s love affairs are
just hit-and-run affairs. They don’t go deep into each other’s be-
ing because going deep into each other’s being, the fear is there—
the other’s pool of being will reflect you. In that pool, in that
mirror of the other’s being, if you are not found, if the mirror
remains empty, if it reflects nothing, then what?
6 • FEAR
for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. Each death is your death.
Even when a dry leaf falls from the tree, it is your death. Hence we
go on protecting ourselves.
Somebody is dying and we talk about the immortality of the
soul, and the leaf is falling from the tree and we say, “Nothing to
be worried about. Soon the spring will come and the tree will
again have foliage. This is only a change, only the garments are
being changed.”
People believe in the immortality of the soul not because they
know but because they are afraid. The more cowardly a person is
the more is the possibility that he will believe in the immortality of
the soul—not that he is religious, he is simply cowardly. The belief
in the immortality of the soul has nothing to do with religion. The
religious person knows that “I am not,” and then whatever is left is
immortal—but it has nothing to do with “me.” This “me” is not
immortal, this “I” is not immortal. This “I” is just temporary; it is
manufactured by us.
Fear is the shadow of “I.” And because the “I” is always alert
somewhere deep down it will have to disappear in death. . . . The
basic fear is of death; all other fears only reflect the basic one. And
the beauty is that death is as nonex istential as ego. So between
these two nonex istentials, the ego and death, the bridge is fear.
Fear itself is impotent, it has no power. It is just that you want to
believe in it—that’s its only power. You are not ready to take a
plunge into your inner depth and to face your inner emptiness—
that is its power. Otherwise it is impotent, utterly impotent. Noth-
ing is ever born out of fear. Love gives birth, love is creative; fear is
impotent. It has never created anything. It cannot create anything
because it has no substance. But it can destroy your whole life, it
8 • FEAR
can surround you like a dark cloud, it can exploit all your energies.
It will not allow you to move into any deep experience of beauty,
poetry, love, joy, celebration, meditation. No, it will keep you just
on the surface because it can exist only on the surface. It is a ripple
on the surface.
Go in, look in . . . and if it is empty, so what? Then that’s our
nature, then that’s what we are. Why should one be worried about
emptiness? Emptiness is as beautiful as the sky. Your inner being is
nothing but the inner sky. The sky is empty, but it is the empty sky
that holds all, the whole existence, the sun, the moon, the stars, the
earth, the planets. It is the empty sky that gives space to all that is.
It is the empty sky that is the background of all that exists. Things
come and go and the sky remains the same.
In exactly the same way, you have an inner sky; it is also empty.
Clouds come and go, planets are born and disappear, stars arise and
die, and the inner sky remains the same, untouched, untarnished,
unscarred. We call that inner sky the witness, the watcher—and
that is the whole goal of meditation.
Go in, enjoy the inner sky. Remember, whatsoever you can
see, you are not it. You can see thoughts, then you are not thoughts;
you can see your feelings, then you are not your feelings; you can
see your dreams, desires, memories, imaginations, projections,
then you are not those things. Go on eliminating all that you can
see. Then one day the tremendous moment arrives, the most sig-
nificant moment of one’s life, when there is nothing left to be re-
jected. All the seen has disappeared and only the seer is there. That
seer is the empty sky.
To know it is to be fearless, and to know it is to be full of love.
To know it is to be god, is to be immortal.
U N D E R S TA N D I N G F E A R I T S E L F • 9
had brought cockroaches with them, and those roaches were per-
fectly healthy and living and reproducing.
If you just look around the earth you can see—man lives in
thousands of different climates, geograph ical situations, political
situations, sociolog ical situations, religious situations, but he man-
ages to live. And he has lived for centuries . . . things go on chang-
ing, he goes on adjusting himself.
There is nothing to fear. Even if the world ends, so what? You
will be ending with it! Do you think you will be standing on an
island and the whole world will end, leaving you alone? Don’t be
worried. At least you will have a few cockroaches with you!
What is the problem if the world ends? I have been asked about
it many times, but what is the problem? If it ends, it ends. It does
not create any problem because we will not be here; we will be
ending with it, and there will be no one to worry about. It will
be really the ultimate freedom from fear. The world ending means
every problem ending, every disturbance ending, every knot in
your stomach ending. I don’t see the problem.
But I know that everybody is full of fear. Everybody has a
kind of armor, and there are reasons for it. First, the child is born
so utterly helpless, into a world he knows nothing of. Naturally
he is afraid of the unknown that faces him. He has not yet forgot-
ten those nine months of absolute security, safety, when there was
no problem, no responsibility, no worry for tomorrow.
To us, those are nine months, but to the child it is eternity. He
knows nothing of the calendar, he knows nothing of minutes,
hours, days, months. He has lived an eternity in absolute safety
and security, without any responsibility, and then suddenly he is
thrown into a world unknown, where he is dependent for every-
U N D E R S TA N D I N G F E A R I T S E L F • 11
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