Is reluctance to meditate due to a refusal to encounter the reality of death?

Question: Maneesha's question ... OUR BELOVED MASTER, IS IT BECAUSE OF A REFUSAL TO ENCOUNTER THE REALITY OF DEATH THAT THERE IS A RELUCTANCE TO MEDITATE? Maneesha, yes, because meditation and death are very similar. In death you enter reluctantly, unwillingly. That's why you fall unconscious, in a coma. In meditation you are going with full consciousness, with great totality of being, on your own accord. It is the same point that you will pass in death also, but if you have moved to the center before death, then death is no more a fear. You know it. You have died many times whenever you touched your center, and you have gone again into a resurrection. Every meditation is a death and a resurrection. You go to the point where death takes people unconsciously. You go consciously, that is the only difference. The point is the same.

Beloved Osho, could you say something to me about fear? What is fear? Will meditation help me overcome my fear of death? Why am I afraid to let go into something more powerful than me?

Your form is changing every moment. And death is nothing but a change, a vital change, a little bigger change, a quicker change. From childhood to youth... you don't recognize when childhood left you and you became young. From youth to old age... things go so gradually that you never recognize at what date, on what day, in what year, youth left you. The change is very gradual and slow. Death is a quantum jump from one body, from one form into another form. But it is not an end to you. You were never born and you never die. You are always here. Forms come and go and the river of life continues. Unless you experience this, the fear of death will not leave you. You are asking, "Will meditation help me overcome my fear of death?" There is no other way. Only meditation... and only meditation can help.…

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…

Beloved Osho, I feel a strong connection between death and meditation, a fascination and a fear. When I sit with you, it is somehow safe to close my eyes and meditate; when I am alone, it is frightening. Please comment.

So meditate while you are sitting with me, and meditate in your aloneness. Meditation is the only thing with an absolute guarantee that nothing goes wrong with it. It only reveals your existence to yourself -- how can anything go wrong? And you are not doing anything; you are really stopping doing everything. You are stopping thinking, feeling, doing -- a full stop to all your actions. Only consciousness remains, because that is not your action, it is you. Once you have tasted your being, all fear disappears, and life becomes a totally new dimension -- no longer mundane, no longer ordinary. For the first time you see the sacredness and the divineness not only of yourself, but of all that exists. Everything becomes mysterious, and to live in this mystery is the only way to live blissfully; to live in this mystery is to live under blessings showering on…

Socrates was given the poison. His friends began to mourn; they were not in their right senses. And what was Socrates doing? He was telling them, "The poison has reached up to my knees. Up to the knees my legs are totally dead -- I will not even know if you cut them off. But my friends, let me tell you, even though my legs are dead, I am still alive. This means one thing is certain -- I was not my legs. I am still here, I am totally here. Nothing within me has faded yet." Socrates continued, "Now both my legs are gone; up to my thighs everything is finished. I wouldn't feel anything if you cut me right up to the thighs. But I am still here! And here are my friends who go on crying!" Socrates is saying, "Don't cry. Watch!