The Dynamics of Fear
(Extracts form OSHO)
With malice towards one & all
The Creation of Guilt

You have to look into your frightened heart. Why are you so much afraid? Who has done this poisoning to you? The schools, priests, church, and the politicians have frightened you. They live on your fear. They have exploited you because they have been able to frighten you.
The first basic thing to make a man afraid is to tell him what is wrong and never to do wrong; and make what is wrong something which is so natural that he will be tempted to do it. Now he is caught. Tell him that some natural thing, is a sin, and if he commits it he will be thrown in hell. Out of the fear of hell, he will start denying something natural in himself. In that very denial, hell is created: he becomes frightened. He is afraid of himself, he cannot trust himself. He knows that if he simply relaxes even for one day, he is going to commit the same thing that he has been told not to do.
If he does it he feels guilty; again he is in a trap. If he does not do it he feels miserable, because he is denying something natural which was a need for his well-being. Religious dogmas handed down to us by our parents, priests’ nuns’ gurus and politicians, who have been dominating humanity, have been in a deep conspiracy: make man afraid. Tell him that something in his nature is wrong, evil. Once you divide a person you can rule him. Divide and rule: that has been the secret up to now. Man is divided: man is split.


The Strategy of Reward and Punishment

You have been told that so many things are wrong in you that you feel condemned, and still those things cannot be dropped, just by thinking that they are wrong. At the most you can repress them – but in repressing them you become more and more guilty. You come to a state of self – condemnation; you start thinking that you are the worst sinner in the world. You have been told so many times that you will suffer in hell, and this thought has been impregnated, in your very roots from childhood. On the other hand, you have been told, that you will be rewarded in heaven, if you follow the dogmas, which are more than 2000 years old, by the church, priests, and to a certain extent the politicians.
This is the basic way animals are trained, if you want somebody’s behavior to be modified or changed, whatsoever you want him to do, reward him; and whenever he does not do it, punish him. That’s how dogs, elephants and other animals are trained in the circus – and that’s what they have been doing with man. They have made a mockery of humanity, and still we go on tolerating them. This has been the practice for thousands of years, before the psychologist appeared on the scene. Man’s psychology, has always been dominated by a kind of strategy, do this and you will go to heaven, and if you don’t, you will go to hell. These thought have been embedded into our subconscious mind at a very young age, by parents, priests, nuns, school, etc. and if necessary, by the use of physical punishment. You have been brought up in such a stupid way, called religious education that you will always live in an inner conflict. This inner conflict creates fear and greed in you, and then your fear and greed has to find some outlet. If you stop one outlet it will come from another outlet. Rather than stopping outlets, please understand the root cause of it.
Some religions say drinking alcohol is a sin, but in paradise or heaven rivers of alcohol will flow. Here, to look or be attracted to a beautiful woman is a sin, but instead heaven will provide you woman far more beautiful, with golden bodies, that do not perspire and eternally young and the absence of old woman. Your heaven and hells are just the imagination of repressed people.


No More Divisions

If you remain divided in yourself, if you remain split, if you can’t accept yourself as you are, if you remain dominated by others, you will remain afraid, and trembling. They want you to remain in trembling, because only a person who is in deep trembling can be dominated, can be possessed, and can be reduced to a thing, to a commodity.
The person who is in fear is ready to become a slave to anybody. The moment you drop all your fear and they can be dropped, because they have been artificially created. Fear is always there behind the corner: but when we turn to face it, it is only a shadow. It is non – substantial, and has been only imposed upon you; and is not part of your nature, and can be easily shaken off. The moment you shake off all your fears, for the first time you will start existing as a single unit and an individual without any fear, and in tune with totality.
Fear is just a shadow. Shadow of what? The personality, the mask that we wear all the time. Fear is definitely useful as a natural instinct to defend yourself against any physical attack. But this instinct is exploited by religion and society to dominate the multitude. As a result, fear grows out of proportion and overpowers you like a monster. The best medicine for fear is: encounter it. Look it in the eye and you will find that it was only a fog. It dissolves as consciousness dawns on the horizon. The rule of the game is: Do the things you fear.


Therapist say that the Three most common Fears are:
1) Going Crazy 2) Sexual Desires 3) The Fear of Dying

1) Going Crazy: The fear of going crazy is in everyone, for the simple reason: because their intelligence has not been allowed to develop. Intelligence is dangerous to the vested interest. So for thousands of years they have been cutting the very roots of intelligence. Man lives almost uprooted. He has to be made uprooted so that he can become dependant on society, religion, country, parents, on everybody. He himself has no roots. The moment he feels that he has no roots, he feels that he is going crazy, and insane. His whole personality is borrowed from some outer source – the university, the church, the state. He himself has nothing of his own.
Parents say if you do not follow us, if you disobey, you will be condemned. The Jewish god says in the Talmud, “I am a very jealous god, a very angry god. Remember that I am not nice, I am not your uncle.” And all religions have been doing it.
If you go off the way, which is followed by the mob, they will declare you crazy and some might even say that you are possessed by the devil. Everybody goes on clinging to the crowd, remaining part of a religion, a church, a party, a nation, a race. Man is afraid to be alone, and if he goes astray, all his friends, and those closely connected to him disappear. He’s is left alone and there is no body else on whom he can depend on. Unless he starts growing his own intelligence, training, and disciplining himself of being alone, and in tune with the universe, by meditation and self-realization, by realizing his own nature and living in peace within himself, can give him back his lost roots, his strength of being an individual. Every child is born fearless. He can play with dogs with no fear. He has no idea of fear or death or anything. Only meditation and self-realization, brings the person back to his childhood. He is reborn.

2) Sexual desires: All religions exist because they have turned man against his own energies. Sex is man’s whole energy, his life energy, but all religious teachings make man an enemy of himself.

The basic strategy is – because sex is the most powerful energy in you – sex should be condemned, guilt should be created, and this constant guilt, makes him insane, because his nature is sensuous, sexual, and his mind is full of garbage against it. He is helpless and split, because dropping fear means dropping the society, the religion, the profits, Jesus Christ and gods. The only way to get out of this rut is to become an individual – able to be alone without any fear and be able to decide what is right and wrong, and not let your conscience play havoc on your mind.
Man’s biology and mind, function in two separate ways; his biology will draw him towards sex and his mind will be standing there continuously condemning him. So he makes love, but in a hurry and never bothers about the woman’s feelings. His love is always entangled with fear and guilt and his love ends with frustration, anger, because he is not able to use his energy freely, in a totally relaxed way and become one with existence. Sex is a god given gift, for man and woman to relax every fiber of his mind, heart and body. It is also said that people who have a fulfilling sex life, live longer than others.
Woman are also the greatest losers, her body reacts to sex in a different way, she needs time to warm up, to give her the throbbing joy of a fulfilled sex experience. That’s why they have become so bitchy, continuously nagging and always ready to fight. There is no possibility of having a conversation with a woman. You are living with a woman for years, but there is not one single conversation, that you can recall when you both were sitting together talking about the great things of life. No. All that you will remember will be fighting, throwing things, being nasty, but the woman is not responsible for it. She’s being deprived of her whole possibility of blissfulness. Then she becomes negative.
This has given the priests their chance. All the churches and temples are filled up with woman, because they are the losers, more than man. In life there is no hope, because they are suffering, they want some consolation; they want some hope at least after death. The old priests are disappearing, losing their grip over people, and now the new generation of priests study psychology in their theological colleges. What has psychoanalyses got to do with Jesus Christ?

3) The Fear of Dying It looks like the biggest fear of man. It is not true. You don’t know death; how can you be afraid of it? If you do not live life totally, without fear, and a sensuous sex life, you are bound to have a miserable death, because of an unlived life. But for those who have lived a joyous and fulfilled life, the moment of death is of tremendous joy, which radiating from every pore of his being, makes death more glorious than even life has been. Do not be afraid of death otherwise it will haunt you every day of your life. Treat it as a reality which has to happen some day. If you have lived your life, death becomes the peak of it all. Death is the climax of life, the pinnacle, the crescendo. You have to live that too in its totality, and then one is ready to die. That very readiness is the death of death itself. Fear can only exist with something which is known. Who knows? – Death may be better than life, with new opportunities and new mysteries. Much of the fear of death can be destroyed, by the experience of being alone and having no fear.

Fear & Disease
How is it that, this fictitious phenomenon of fear appears in the body and the mind and influences them to the extent of creating a real disease? According to medical professionals, fear is accompanied by a series of physiological changes produced by the autonomic nervous system and adrenal glands, including increased heart rate, rapid breathing, tenseness or trembling of muscles, increased sweating, and dryness of the mouth.
The long term effects of fear are much worse than the original emotional experience. It can give birth to panic, anxiety, neurosis, phobia, obsession, traumas and a number of other psychological disorders. With good intentions, psychologists try to treat the symptoms with pills, drugs, injections, therapies which are all damaging to the patient. Actually they are treating something that does not exist. They only are nourishing the sickness. This is not the way to eradicate the deep rooted fear in man. What they are doing is pruning the leaves and watering the roots.