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Question: Beloved Osho,I
feel i want to be close to you, but at the same time I
want to run as far away from you as i can. I don't
understand this fear, since I am not aware of a feeling
like this about anyone else. Osho: It is natural, it is not something exceptional. Whenever you have a feeling to be closer to a man like me the fear will come, because to be close to me means to be dead, to be close to me means losing yourself. It is the same fear that grips a river when it comes to the ocean -- the banks will be lost, the river will be lost -- and every river tries to go back. But there is no way. If you feel a deep urge to come closer to me there is no way now to escape. You may try but you will be a failure; others have tried, others will go on trying. If you have a deep urge to come closer to me, you will have to come. You can only delay it; by escaping, struggling, you can delay it. You can postpone it, that's all, because the deep urge is coming from your very being. Fear is only in the mind. The urge is coming from the deepest core of your being, to be closer. But fear comes in the mind because the closeness means death. To be close to a master is death, your ego will have to go. The ego thinks, starts thinking, "I must escape before something happens; before I am lost, I must escape." The ego will continuously tell you to escape. The ego will find rationalizations; it will find faults in me just to help you escape; it will convince you in every way that this is the wrong man. Love is deathlike, and no love is as deathlike as loving a master. If you love a woman, you can dominate her. That's why lovers go on playing politics with each other, dominating, possessing; the fear is there that if you don't dominate you will be lost and the other will dominate, so they continuously fight. Husbands and wives, lovers, go on fighting; the fight is for existence, to survive. The fear is there, "I may be lost in the other." But when you come to
a master you cannot dominate him, you cannot fight with
him. So fear is deeper because of that, because you
cannot create any politics. Either you have to escape or
merge, no other alternative is there. If you escape,
from your very deep source of being you hear you are
doing wrong; if you escape you will have to come back.
If you come closer, the mind says: Where are you
going? If you go closer still you may be burned. And it
is right, the ego is right: The flame is there and if
you come closer you will be burned. Don't allow the fear to overpower you, allow love to overpower you. Love comes from the center, fear always comes from the periphery; don't allow this periphery to be dominant. And what have you got to lose? Even if there is no rebirth -- there is rebirth -- but I say even if there is no rebirth and you simply die, what have you got to lose? What will be lost? What has the river got that is worth preserving? The life through the hills has been just a struggle; the life through the plains has been just a dirty passage. What has the river got to lose in the ocean? Nothing. So think about it.
What have you got to lose if you come closer? - your
suffering? your madness? What have you got to lose?
There is nothing to lose, but we never look within to
see that we have got nothing to lose because that too
gives fear. You like to think that you have got much to
lose, that a treasure is there, and you will never look.
There is no treasure, the house is empty; there has
never been anything. But you are so afraid, you never
look, because you know that there is nothing. A man entered a pet
shop. He looked around, and he asked the shopkeeper,
"How much will that big dog cost?" It was a very
ferocious looking Alsatian. That was too much
for him, so logically he said, "And how much will this
small fellow cost?", - it was another dog of a smaller
size. The man tried still.further. He said, "How much is this tiny one?" It was a very small dog. The man said, "Two thousand rupees."The man became very puzzled and disturbed and then he asked, "How much will it cost if I don't purchase anything?" The rates are going higher and the dog is disappearing! If I don't purchase anything, how much will it cost? - that is your fear. What will happen if you come closer to me? Nothing will happen because you have nothing to lose. And everything will happen, because once this nothing is lost everything becomes possible. Once this shelter which has become a bondage to you is lost the sky opens infinitely; once these banks which have been a prison to you are lost you become boundless, you become infinite. Let the river move, unafraid, into the unknown, the uncharted. Death will be there, but death is always followed by rebirth. Die and be reborn, lose yourself and find. Fear comes from the mind, love comes from your heart; listen to the heart. It happened once in
a great palace of a king that there was a musical organ.
He loved it very much but something had gone wrong, and
the organ was so unique that nobody knew how to fix it.
Nobody had ever seen one like it. This king had heard
the organ when he was a very small child, when his
father was alive, and since then something had gone
wrong. But he loved the organ so much that he used to
keep it in his room. It was beautiful; even from the
outside it was beautiful. Many experts were called in
vain. The beggar said, " Nothing more, no more harm can be done. The organ is already out of order, absolutely. I cannot harm it any more so what is the harm if you give me a chance?" The king thought, "He is right, because nothing more harmful can be done." So he said, "Okay, you try." For many days the beggar disappeared behind the organ. He was working and working and working, and suddenly, one midnight, he started playing on the organ. The whole palace was filled with an unknown melody, something so divine that everybody ran to see. The king came out of his bedroom and said, "You have done it! It must have been very difficult. It was almost impossible. You have done a miracle!" The man said, " No, it was not difficult because in the first place I made it. In your father's time I made this organ, so it was not difficult." If you are ready, for one thing, no more harm can be done to you; you are already harmed. I cannot harm you any more than you have been harmed - this much is certain. Look at my eyes and feel my voice; give me a chance. It is not difficult, I say to you. Once one is dissolved into the infinite, he is at the source of the thing from where he has come. I am not there. If I were there, if the ego were there, then it would be difficult. There is no expert in me; the expert died long ago. The ego is the expert; I don't know anything.I am not there, I have disappeared; the ocean exists, God exists, not I. In the first place,
you are close to that thing from which you have come,
and for God, nothing is impossible. In the first place,
he created you. And I am not there, because otherwise it
would be a very difficult thing. If I am there I will
harm you; the ego can only harm. Experts can only
destroy- they cannot fix you. You have been with many
experts and they have done every type of thing that was
possible, now you are beyond repair. But the river can
fall in the ocean, and suddenly the melody arises; a
music will come out of you, a music that you have not
heard. How do you help your
family at home?" But then the teacher saw that one small boy, Johnny, had not answered. So he asked, " Johnny, what do you do?"Johnny hesitated a moment and then he said, " Mostly, I keep out of the way." You just keep yourself out of the way that's all! Don't come in between me and you, just keep out of the way. Even if you keep out of the way for a single moment the thing can happen: the old can die, the new can be born. Source: from book "A
Bird on the wing" by Osho |