Don’t fight fear—notice it kindly, understand what it’s tied to, and it will loosen and change.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, what to do with fear? I am feeling very tired being led around by it. Can it be mastered or killed? How?
What is fear? First: fear is always around some desire. You want to become a famous man, the most famous man in the world -- then there is fear. What if you cannot make it? -- fear comes. Now fear comes as a by-product of desire: you want to become the richest man in the world. What if you don't succeed? You start trembling; fear comes. You possess a woman: you are afraid that tomorrow you may not be able to possess, she may go to somebody else. She is still alive, she can go. Only dead women won't go; she is still alive. You can possess only a corpse -- then there is no fear, the corpse will be there. You can possess furniture, then there is no fear. But when you try to possess a human being fear comes. Who knows, yesterday she was not yours, today she…Read the full discourse →
You have said that one who is in fear cannot love, nor can he reach godhood. But how is one to get rid of his fear according to tantra?
Then you are not afraid of fear. It is there, a part of you; nothing can be done about it. You have accepted it. Now you don't pretend, now you don't deceive anyone, nor yourself. The truth is there, and you are not afraid of it. The fear starts disappearing, because a person who is not afraid to accept his fear has become fearless -- that is the deepest fearlessness that is possible. He has not created the opposite, so there is no duality in him. He has accepted the fact. He has become humble before it. He doesn't know what to do -- no one knows -- and nothing can be done, but he has stopped pretending; he has stopped using masks, faces. He has become authentic in his fear. This authenticity, and this fearlessness to accept the truth, changes you. And when you don't pretend, don't create a…Read the full discourse →
Beloved Osho, recently I heard you say that we have to fight our fears. I don't believe you. For years I tried to fight my fears and they became bigger and stronger. Now, if fear comes up, I go into it totally defenseless, stay with it and go through with it without doing anything -- not even judging the situation. I've realized that fear is a tremendous energy, and sometimes I even enjoy this energy -- like diving from the three-meter board into krishnamurti lake. Can you speak about fighting fear and facing fear?
It is good that you don't believe in me. I am relieved, because if you believe in me, sooner or later you will take revenge. But if the thing had stopped there -- that you don't believe in me -- everything would have been perfectly good. You say, I have said fight fear. I cannot conceive myself saying that, ever. Fight is not my teaching. You must have heard something which has not been said. In fact, what you are doing is what I have been teaching: face fear, encounter it, be a witness to it. That's the only way to overcome, and not only to overcome but to release all the energy that is hidden in fear, for better purposes, for more creative things. Everything has energy: fear, anger, jealousy, hate. You are unaware of the fact that all these things are wasting your life. Your energy is leaking…Read the full discourse →
Can cowardice and hypocrisy also be beautiful? Can I accept even my cowardice, my hypocrisy, my miserliness and a tendency towards privacy that you yourself have called "idiocy"? And if I accept such tendencies, all of which tend to bottle me up, how will I get free?
See the beauty of fear, see the alchemical work of fear. It is simply trying to prepare you for the situation so that you can accept the challenge. But rather than accepting the challenge, rather than understanding fear, you start rejecting it. You say, "Ashoka, you are such a great man, a great sannyasin, and you are trembling? Remember what Osho used to say, that there is no death, that the soul is immortal. An immortal soul, and trembling? Remember what Krishna said: 'Death cannot destroy you, fire cannot burn you, weapons cannot penetrate you.' Remember! And don't tremble: hold yourself in control!" Now you are creating a contradiction. Your natural process is that of fear, and you are bringing in an unnatural process to contradict fear. You are bringing ideals to interfere in the natural process. There will be pain, because there will be conflict. Don't bother whether the…Read the full discourse →
Beloved Osho, since you initiated me into sannyas, I have begun to fear you a little. Before that this fear was not there, although I have been frightened throughout my entire life. I know too that the freedom and love I have found in being close to you were not available to me even around my parents. If in the shadow of your overflowing love I am not going to find freedom from fear, then where else? How is this freedom from fear possible?
No, I am not talking of that love. I am talking of a love which is not related to anybody in any way, which is unassociated. This does not mean that you will run away from your wife, or keep the children at a distance, if this love is born in you. If this love is born in you, just your ideas of the wife as wife will dissolve; the very idea that your son belongs to you will dissolve. The ideas will be replaced by an understanding that everyone belongs to the universe, that you are just instrumental; and your love will go on showering, day in, day out. Questions about who is worthy of your love and who is unworthy will all wither away. You will flow like a river, and whoever is thirsty will be able to fill his cup and take it away with him. Your…Read the full discourse →