Are the feelings experienced during separation related to the fear of death?

Beloved Osho, are the feelings that we have when we are separated from you related to the fear of death?

Amrito, they are. Being with me, you have tasted something of life. Being with me, you have felt the poetry, the dance, the music of existence. Alone, you are still not able to keep the same state of mind -- you fall back to your old chattering mind. You forget the peace, the beauty, the dance, the song. Separated from me, you certainly feel a kind of death. If to be with me you feel a kind of life -- a life that you would like to live for twenty-four hours a day -- then naturally when you are separated you are afraid. It is a feeling of death on the one hand; on the other hand, you are also afraid of your own death -- because you have seen with me that life can become an experience of the eternal. I have given you the name Amrito: it means…

Beloved Osho, when I come to your darshan, I feel a fear, as if of death. But with your presence, fear disappears and I feel life. Osho, what is happening?

The ancient seers have a very strange statement. I have asked shankaracharyas -- because they are technically the representatives of those ancient seers -- but none of them has been able to explain even a simple statement. The statement is that "The master is nothing but death." But it is only a half statement; the remaining half is that the master is a resurrection too. Coming to me, you feel the fear of death. That is absolutely as it should be. I am going to be a death to you. My whole function is to kill you because whatever you are is not your reality. It has to be destroyed, dismantled, burned. So just like a phoenix bird -- out of the tire which is burning your old personality, a new being is born. Hence, the master is also life. That's why when you are here you feel life. And…

Osho, when you speak of your death I begin to tremble. Master, we cannot bear to hear it. We cannot live without you. Even the thought makes the heart shudder.

We had a friend—Ramlal Rana. In the machinery of his head, who knows what went wrong. He began to take himself to be a grain of wheat! Wherever he saw a rooster—he would be afraid: “This one will eat me”— and die a thousand deaths while still alive. Wherever he saw a sack, he grew nervous, skittish: “Someone will stuff me into it, tie it shut.” And if a flour mill came into view, Brother Rana would run for his life: “Here I’ll be ground to powder!” Well, some well-wishers, to set his brain right, filled out a form and had him admitted to the asylum. The doctor explained, “Dear Rana! You have two ears, two eyes, two legs, two hands, you walk, you speak— how can you be a grain of wheat?” But Rana wouldn’t agree— simply wouldn’t agree. He went on believing himself a grain of wheat. A…

Kill out all sense of separateness.

If you are afraid of death you will be afraid of meditation also. But if you love meditation, you will not be afraid of death. If you enter meditation unafraid, fearless, you will become deathless, because there will be no death for you. You are already dead, so how can you die again? One who has entered meditation is already dead. Now you cannot die again, now death cannot destroy you. You have already surrendered; you are no more. Death will enter an empty house. You will not be found there. Only the ego dies, not you. Your life is eternal, but the ego is transitory. The ego is just a created, composed phenomenon. You have created it. It is needed, it has some utility. In society, you need an ego; but in life, in existence, that same ego becomes a barrier. Sannyas means going beyond society, because it means…

Osho, ever since I took initiation from you, I have also begun to feel afraid of you. Earlier this fear was not in me, though I have been afraid all my life. I also know that the love and freedom I have found in your presence I never found even around my parents. And if, even in the shade of a master as utterly love-filled as you, I do not become free of fear, then where else will I? How is this freedom from fear possible?

Take this as a touchstone: if the reason for which you went to the master is the very reason he accepts and works upon, he too is standing in darkness. You have come to me because of fear—I know. But it is not my task to lessen your fear; it is to awaken abhaya. You did not come for abhaya. You came for nirbhayata, a little courage to fight—you would be satisfied with that. You are easily satisfied; your discontent is not very deep. A drowning man is content with a straw. You are looking for a straw; I know that no one is saved by a straw. Perhaps because of the straw you will drown—whoever takes a straw for a boat stops looking for a real boat. Whoever mistakes a false shore will find the true shore very far. Whatever reason you have come with is not my concern.…