It’s not the actual violence that scares us. It is the uncertainty and possibility for disaster that emotionally drives us absolutely bonkers.
The need for a stable and predictable environment is a core human need. What frightens us or gives us anxiety is not when bad things happen - it’s when we’re not sure whether a bad thing will happen or not. When something goes wrong, at least we have the power to fix it. We’re still in control. But when life becomes unpredictable - when the house is dark and there’s a mysterious sound upstairs - we feel as though we’ve lost control.
If you want your wife to be alive, then there is risk. An alive woman is a dangerous woman; she may fall in love again, who knows? An alive person is an alive person; love an happen again! If you are alive you can fall in love with other women. Life knows no law, no moralities.
Only death can be controlled - so the more dead you are, the more easily you can be controlled. Then you remain a husband or a wife and this and that, and things at least look secure. A middle-class home, a bank balance, a car in the garage, a woman, a man, children, a good job, and one feels that one is secure. But is this security? Security is not possible; only comforts are possible. These are comforts, not security - and they can taken back, they can be taken away.
The only security possible is to start enjoying insecurity. That looks paradoxical, but all that is true in life is paradoxical. Truth is a paradox. Love insecurity and it disappears. Not that you become secure, but when you start loving and enjoying insecurity, who bothers? There is no worry, no anxiety about it. One is really thrilled. One is thrilled; one wonders what tomorrow is going to bring. And one remains open.
Be so soft, be tender, be delicate, but never be hindered by it and don’t repress it. Accept the limitations, the human limitations, but still go on working beyond them. That’s how one grows.
You will escape from people if you are carrying something false in you. You will not allow anybody to be friendly, to be intimate with you, because in intimacy the danger is that the other may be able to see something which strangers cannot see. You will keep people at a distance; you will run and rush away from people. You will have only formal relationships, but you will not really relate, because to really relate means to expose yourself.
Hence your so-called saints escaped into the monasteries. It was out of fear. If they were in the marketplace they would be caught; it would be discovered that they are cheating, thay they are deceiving, that they are hypocrites. In the monasteries they can maintain their hypocrisy and nobody will ever be able to detect it. And moreover, there are other hypocrites there; they can all maintain their conspiracy together more easily than each single hypocrite can maintain his alone.
Monasteries came into existence for escapists. But you can live even in the world in a monastic way, keeping people always at a distance, never allowing anybody access to your inner being, never opening up, never allowing anybody to have a peek into you to see who you are, never looking into people’s eyes, avoiding people’s eyes, looking sideways. And always in a hurry, so that everybody knows you are so occupied, you don’t have any time to say hello, to hold somebody’s hand, to sit with somebody informally. You are so busy, you are always on the go.
If there is fear and you start doing something about it, then a new fear has entered: Fear of the fear; it has become more complex. So if fear is there, accept it. Don’t do anything about it because “doing” will not help. Anything that you do out of fear will create more fear; anything that you do out of confusion will create more confusion. Don’t do anything! If fear is there, not that fear is there and accept it. What can you do? Nothing can be done.
“Fear is there.” See? If you can just note down the fact that fear is there, where is the fear? You have accepted it; it has dissolved. Acceptance dissolves it - only acceptance, nothing else. If you fight with it you create another disturbance, and this can go on ad infinitum; then there is no end to it.
If you have one problem, don’t create another. Remain with the first one, don’t fight with it and create another. It is easier to solve the first problem than to solve a second, and the first is nearer to the source. The second will be removed from the source, and the further removed the more impossible it becomes to solve it.
Suffering is there - it is a part of life and part of growth, nothing is bad in it. Suffering become evil only when it is simply destructive and not creative at all; suffering becomes bad only when you suffer and nothing is gained from it. But I am telling you that insight can be gained through suffering and then it becomes creative.
Darkness is beautiful if the dawn is coming out of it soon; darkness is dangerous if it is endless, leads to no dawn, simply continues and continues and you go on moving in a rut, in a vicious circle. This can happen if you are not alert - just to escape from one suffering you can create another; then to to escape from another, yet another. And this goes on an on, and all those sufferings that you have not lived are still waiting for you. You have escaped, but you simply escaped from one suffering to another - because the same mind that was creating a suffering will create another. You can escape from this suffering to that, but suffering will still be there because your mind is the creative force.
Everyone is a coward. People you call brave are just pretending. Deep down they are as cowardly as anyone else; in fact more cowardly because just to hide that cowardliness they have created a brave face and are trying to act in such a way that everyone thinks they are not cowards.
My own observation is that near the age of five a child becomes identified with this programmed mind. And it is only up to that time that the child is alive because he is not yet programmed. After that he becomes just a mechanism. Around the age of five all real learning stops. One goes on repeating the program in better and better ways, more skillful, more efficient, but it is basically the same program till death… unless by chance you come across a situation, and energy field, where you can be made aware - almost forced against yourself to become aware of this whole nonsense that your mind is doing to you.
When fear arises, it is simply indicate that something is going against the program that you have been carrying up to now. You have come into a situation where you will have to start learning again. That means you will have to drop your neurosis. That means whatsoever you have done from your childhood up to now, from the age of five up to now, has to be slowly erased and dropped… so that you become a child again and you start from where the learning process stopped.
Don’t pay much attention to fear, because that is dangerous. If you pay much attention to fear you are feeding it, and it will grow. Turn your back to the fear and move toward love.
Remember. Love is the problem, never fear. You are looking at the wrong side. And you can look at the wrong side for many lives and you will not be able to solve anything. Always remember, absence should not be made a problem - because nothing can be done about it. Only presence should be made a problem, because then something can be done and it can be solved.
If fear is felt, then love is the problem. Become more loving. Take few steps toward the other… because everybody is in fear, not only you. You wait for somebody to come to you and love you - you can wait forever because the other is also afraid. And people who are afraid become afraid of one thing absolutely, and that is being rejected.
That’s why women never take a step; they are more fearful. They always wait for the man - he should come to them. They always keep the possibility of rejection or acceptance with themselves, they never give the possibility to the other because they are more afraid than men are. So many women simply wait for their whole life! Nobody comes to knock at their door, because a person who is afraid becomes, in a certain way, so closed that she puts people off. Just reaching near, and the afraid person throws such vibrations all around that anybody who is coming closer is put off. Even in their movements you can sense the fear.
Fear is the other side of love. If you are in love, fear disappears. If you are not in love, fear arises - tremendous fear. Only lovers are fearless; only in a deep moment of love is there no fear. In a deep moment of love, existence becomes a home - you are not a stranger, you are not an outsider, you are accepted. Even by a single human being you are accepted, something in the depth opens - a flowerlike phenomenon in the innermost being. You are accepted by someone, you are valued; you are not futile. You have a significance, a meaning.
If in your life there is no love, then you will become afraid. Then there will be fear everywhere because everywhere there are enemies, no friends, and the whole existence seems to be alien; you seem to be accidental, not rooted, not at home. Even a single human being can give you such deep at-homeness in love, what to say about being in love with the total, with the whole?
So fear, in fact, is the absence of love. And if fear is a problem for you, that shows that you are looking at the wrong side. Love should be the problem, not fear. If fear is the problem, that means you should seek love. If fear is the problem, the problem is in fact is that you should be more loving so somebody can be more loving to you. You should be more open to love.
But this is the trouble: When you are in fear, you are closed. You start feeling so fearful that you stop moving toward another human being. You would like to be alone. Whenever there is somebody you feel nervous, because the other looks like an enemy. And if you are so fear-obsessed, it is a vicious circle. The absence of love creates fear in you, and now, because of fear you become closed. You become like a closed cell with no windows, because you are afraid anybody can come through the windows, and there are enemies all over. You are afraid to open the door, because when you open the door anything is possible. So even when love knocks at your door, you don’t trust.
It is just like this: The house is dark and I talk about light, and you say, “You go on talking about light. It will be better if you talk about darkness, because darkness is our problem. The house is filled with darkness. Light is not our problem.” But do you understand what you are saying? If darkness is your problem, talking about darkness won’t help. If darkness is your problem, nothing can be done about darkness directly. You cannot throw it out, you cannot push it out, you cannot switch it off. Darkness is an absence. Nothing can be done about it directly. If you have to do anything, you have to do something with the light, not with darkness.
Pay more attention to light - how to find light, how to create light, how to enkindle a candle in the house. And then suddenly there is no darkness.
By and by, you become afraid because you are suppressing yourself. If you relate with somebody, the suppression may break and everything may bubble up to the surface. Then what? So you are afraid, afraid to come in contact with anything and you remain hidden within yourself. Nobody knows how ugly you are, nobody knows how angry you are. Nobody knows how full of hatred you are, nobody knows your jealousy, possessiveness, envy. Nobody knows. You create armor around yourself and you live within that armor. So that you can manage your image, you never make any contact. If you come into contact with another person deeply, the image is bound to break. The reality, the real encounter will shatter it - that is the fear.
You ask, “Why am I afraid of other people?” You are afraid because you are afraid of yourself.
Drop that fear. Drop the guilt that has been created in you. Your politicians, priests, parents, all are guilt-creators because that is the only way that you can be controlled and manipulated. It is a very simple but very cunning trick to manipulate you. They have condemned you because if you are accepted, not condemned - if you are loved, appreciated, and if it is relayed to you from every where that you are okay - then it will be difficult to control you.
Whenever you love a person that person’s godliness comes to the top. It happens - because when somebody loves you, how can you show your ugliness? Simply, your beautiful face comes up. By and by, the ugly face disappears. Love is alchemical. If you love yourself, the ugly part of you disappears, is absorbed, is transformed. The energy is released from that form.
Love yourself. That should be the foundational commandment. Love yourself. All else will follow, but this is the foundation.
When something is very frightening remember that this is the time not to go anywhere, this is the time to be here. When something frightening is happening, then something is happening. The moment is very pregnant and you have to be here, and you have to go into it.
That is a good insight - that you ask why you feel fear whenever somebody comes close. You are becoming a bit aware of your emptiness. Now let this awareness increases; let this awareness become a great experience. Go into this emptiness and soon you will be surprised that this emptiness is what meditation is, this emptiness is what I call divinity, godliness. And then you will become a temple - open to every stranger who wants to come in.
If you are afraid of yourself, only then are you afraid of other people. If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others. In relationship with others, it is only you - mirrored. The other is nothing but a mirror. So whatsoever happens in a relationship, always know that it must have happened before, within you - because the relationship can only magnify what is already within you. It cannot create; it can only show and manifest what is already there.
If you love yourself, you love others. If you are afraid of yourself, you are afraid of others. In coming in contact with others, you will start manifesting your being.
If you don’t love yourself, and you are nearest to you, how can you love anybody else? Nobody loves himself yet he is trying to love others. Then your love is nothing but hatred masked, hidden.
I tell you to love yourself first, because if love happens within you, only then can it spread to others.
Love yourself, and then suddenly you will find yourself reflected everywhere.
You are a human being and all other human beings are just like you. Just forms differ, names differ, but the reality is the same. Go on moving, farther and farther; then animals are also like you - the form differs a little more. But the being? Then the trees are also like you. Go farther and farther, the ripples spread; then even rocks, because they exist like you. Existence is the same, similar.
What is the fear? The fear is that the other may be able to see your emptiness if they come too close. It has nothing todo with the other - you have never been able to accept your inner emptiness, that’s the fear. You have created a very, very decorated surface. You have a beautiful face and you have a good smile and you talk well and you are very articulate and you sing well and you have a beautiful body and a beautiful persona. But those are on the surface. Behind them is simple emptiness. You are afraid that if somebody comes too close they will be able to see past the mask, past your smile, they will be able to see beneath your words. That frightens you. You know that there is nothing else, you are just a surface - that is the fear - you don’t have any depth.
It is not that you cannot have the depth - you can have it, but you have not taken the first step. The first step is to accept this inner emptiness with joy, and to go into it. Don’t avoid your inner emptiness. If you avoid your inner emptiness you will avoid people coming closer to you. If you rejoice your emptiness you will be completely open and you will invite people to come close to you and to have a look into your innermost shrine. Because when it is accepted, the emptiness has a certain quality, but when it is rejected, it has a different quality.
The difference is in your mind. If you reject it, it looks like death; if you accept it, the same thing becomes the very source of life.
This is not a way to live life, this is a way to commit suicide. This is real suicide. This is already entering into your grave, because this type of closed existence will not be able to know anything of truth, of beauty, of love, of bliss, of godliness. If nothing is allowed in, how can you know what surrounds you? And if you don’t know what surrounds you, you will never be able to know yourself. One can know oneself only in reference to others. First you have to know the “thou,” then you can know “I.”
Only in deep love does one become aware of one’s soul, because in deep love one becomes aware of the other’s soul, and the other’s soul creates a response in you, creates a resonance in you. Suddenly you are aware of a new dimension, of something that is beyond time and space. The “thou” becomes the mirror to know one’s own face. Love is the best mirror to show you who you are.
The closed person never knows who he is, he cannot know. And all that he knows about himself is false; he lives with a false identity. He thinks he is his name and his money and his power and his prestige, and that is all nonsense - he is none of those things. He is something divine, something that exists before birth and that will exist after death… but he will not be aware of it.
One has to become soft, vulnerable, open. One has to become almost like a sponge, so that the sun and the rain and the wind are all allowed, invited, accepted, welcomed, so that existence can penetrate you. And one has to allow existence to reach to one’s deepest core, because that is the only way - if existence goes deep into your being - that you will become aware of your depths. If it penetrates to the very core, you will become aware of your center. And that’s what is mean by self-knowledge.
But one has to learn how to be soft, how to drop all armor, how to open the doors and windows, how not to cling anymore to fear - how to be in love with the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the people… because love is the key that unlocks your doors. You open to somebody only when you are in love, because then you are no longer afraid. You can allow the other to reach you, you can trust. You know the other will not hurt you.
The day one trusts the whole of existence, the day one knows, “It is not going to hurt me because I am part of it - how can the whole hurt the part? Because my pain will be its pain, my misery is going to be its misery…” When you are miserable, a part of existence is miserable. When you are crying, existence is crying because your tears are the tears of the whole. All eyes are the eyes of the whole, and all hands are the hands of existence. The whole, the divine, has no other eyes and no other hands. So when your eyes are full of tears and your heart full of pain, existence is full of pain and full of tears. How can the whole hurt or wound the part? It is impossible! It is an unnecessary fear.
The only thing that I teach is drop fear. It is absolutely unnecessary, and it is crippling you, paralyzing you. It is a slow kind of poison that kills people, destroying people. They live and yet the live not, they only die. They die over a long period of time, seventy years, eighty years, slowly, part by part. They don’t commit suicide in a single moment, hence it is not known as suicide - but it is really suicide.
It is a very rare person who lives, who really lives. That person has to be courageous enough to open to all kinds of experiences, to be open unconditionally.
There is only one thing in life that conquers death and that is love. All fear is concerned with death - and only love can conquer death.
So one thing I would like to say to you is, don’t pay too much attention to fear because it becomes an autohypnosis. If you go on repeating that you live in fear, that your life is governed by fear, you are dominated by fear, then you are helping it.
Fear is just a symptom, it is not a disease. There is no cure for it; there is no need. So it is just a symptom, and it is very useful because it shows you that you should not waste your life any longer. It simply says to you to love more.
So I will not talk about fear. I will help you to love more - and fear disappears as a consequence. If you start working directly on fear you strengthen it, because your whole attention will be focused on it. It is as if somebody is trying to destroy darkness, and become focused, obsessed, with how to destroy darkness. You cannot destroy darkness because it is not there in the first place. Note the fact that darkness is there - and then start working on how to bring in light.
The same energy that you are using to fight fear can be used to love. Pay more attention to love. If you touch, touch as lovingly as possible; as if your hand becomes your whole being and you are flowing through your hand. You will feel energy passing through it, a certain warmth, a glow. If you make love, go wild and forget all civilization. Forget all that has been taught about love; just be wild and love like animals.
Once you realize that the presence of love becomes the absence of fear, you have got the point and there is no problem.
Buddha said, “You have not understood me. You are still trying to realize yourself. You are even ready to drop the ego, but the desire deep down is to find a truer ego, a more eternal ego; that’s what you are calling the self. Forget about the self. There is nothing to be achieved! You have simply to drop your ego and wait.”
Life is beautiful because it is insecure. Life is beautiful because there is death. Life is beautiful because it can be missed. If you cannot miss it, everything is forced upon you, then even life becomes an imprisonment. You will not able to enjoy it. Even if you are ordered to be blissful, commanded to be free, then bliss and freedom both are gone.
When you start anything new, you have to learn the taste. And of course the taste of pain is bitter, but once you have learned it, it gives such sharpness and brilliance to you. It shakes all dust, all stupor and sleepiness from you. It makes you fully mindful in a way that nothing else can. In pain you can be more meditative than in pleasure. Pleasure is more distracting. Pleasure engulfs you; in pleasure you abandon consciousness. Pleasure is a sort of oblivion, a forgetfulness. Pain is a remembrance; you cannot forget pain. Pain can become a very creative energy; it can become meditation, it can become awareness.
When pain is there, use it as awareness, as meditation, as a sharpening of the soul. And when pleasure is there, then use it as a drowning, as a forgetfulness.
Explanations are simple. It is very simple - pain is there because pleasure is there. Pleasure cannot exist without pain. If you want a life that is absolutely painless, then you will have to live a life that is pleasureless; they come together in one package. They are not two things really; they are one thing - not different, not separate, and cannot be separated.
Death is impotent if you are ready to live it, death is very powerful if you are afraid. Unlived life gives power to death. A totally lived life takes all power from death.
Time is a problem because you have not been living rightly - it is symbolic, it is symptomatic. If you live rightly the problem of time disappears, the fear of time disappears.
So, what to do? Each moment, whatever you are doing, do it totally. Simple things - taking a bath; take it totally, forget the world; sitting, sit; walking, walk, above all don’t wobble; sit under the shower and the the whole existence fall on you. Be merged with those beautiful drops of water falling on you. Small things: cleaning the house, preparing food, washing clothes, going for a morning walk - do them totally, then there is no need for any meditation.
Meditation is nothing but a way to learn how to do a thing totally - once you have learned, make your whole life a meditation; forget all about meditations, let the life be the only law, let the life be the only meditation. And then time disappears.
The fear is not of death, the fear is of time, and if you look deeply into it then you find that the fear is of unlived life - you have not been able to live life. If you live, then there is no fear. If life comes to a fulfillment, there is no fear. If you have enjoyed, attained to the peaks that life can give, if your life has been an orgasmic experience, a deep poetry vibrating within you, a song, a festival, a ceremony, and you lived each moment of it to its totality; then there is no fear of time, then the fear disappears.
Problems were there in life also - I solved them, so if I am there and there are problems I will solve them - and it is always a joy to solve a problem, it gives a challenge. You take the challenge and you move into it, and when you solve it a great release of happiness happens.