According to Osho, fear of hell is a conditioning tool used by priests, binding you through fear and greed to obedience. Hell and heaven aren’t places but psychological states: mind’s incessant thought-traffic is hell; silent, no-mind awareness is heaven. When you fear hell, you live in that mental prison. Practice witnessing meditation to drop identification with thoughts and enter inner peace.
Being scared of hell keeps you stuck in a noisy mind; calmly watch your thoughts and you’ll feel heaven inside right now.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is hell? Is there really such a place?
If you have intelligence, awareness, even in hell you can manage to air-condition it. That's what I am doing. Can't you see the hell all around? But somehow I have got a few people banded together and we are trying to create a small heaven of our own. What to do? People have decided to live in hell, they are not ready to listen, then the only wise choice is: we can create our own heaven. And if we can create our own heaven, that will become an example, a model, that this way also one can live. When people come for the first time to our commune they are surprised. Just the other day a young priest wrote a letter to me, a Catholic priest, who now has become interested in me, and wants to get married, and wants to get rid of the Catholic church. He has written…
Does hell really exist?
Praying to Christ -- and for seven days he had not slept, thinking the whole night, thinking the whole day -- he fell asleep before the statue of Christ and he had a dream. In the dream he saw a train ready to leave for heaven. He jumped in. He said, "This is perfectly right. Why shouldn't I go there and see with my own eyes? If I see Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Tamburlaine, in heaven, then the question is solved. Or if I see Socrates, who did not believe in God but was one of the most virtuous of men, if I see Gautama the Buddha, who did not believe in God but was one of the most godly persons who ever walked on the earth, then the question is solved." He rushed into the train and the train left. He reached heaven. He was a little surprised, puzzled,…
Is there really a hell?
Heaven and hell are only two sides of your mind. The religions that were born outside India have remained with these two ideas, heaven and hell. They could not rise above them. Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- all the three religions born outside India, have no idea of something transcendental. In India we have a third word MOKSHA, NIRVANA. Hell is a wrong psychology, ill, abnormal, neurotic, pathological; heaven is a right psychology, normal, healthy. But there is a beyond where you are no more a mind, when both sides of the mind have been dropped, where you are a no-mind, where you are neither negative nor positive, where you are neither dark nor light, where you are neither this nor that -- where you are just a witness to all, to misery and bliss, to all, just a witness, where you are not identified with either misery OR bliss, where…
Your religion has to be not out of fear, but out of love. Don't be afraid of hell -- there is no hell, there never has been. It is a fiction created by the priests to exploit humanity, and they have exploited humanity for centuries. And there is no heaven either. It is the other side of hell; the other side of the fiction, That is to exploit your greed, Greed and fear are not different phenomena but two sides of the same coin; the fearful person is always greedy, the greedy person is always fearful. In fact they are not two energies at all but two poles of the same energy. Just like negative and positive poles of electricity, inseparably together. There is no heaven either. Yes, there is a certain kind of hell and heaven, but that is psychological, within you.
Why am I so much afraid of hell?
THERE IS NO NEED TO BE AFRAID OF HELL, because there are many hells -- and there is an Indian hell too. And everybody is asked at the gate, "Which hell do you want to choose?" Choose the Indian, and you will be happy ever afterwards. Fellow dies and is met by Saint Peter at the Gate. "Before you can get in you must spend six months in hell. You have a choice: either the regular hell or the Indian hell." "What is the difference?" asked the fellow. "In the regular hell," explained Saint Peter, "they tie you to a stake, pour gasoline over you, strike the match, and you burn for twelve hours and then you rest for twelve hours." "And the Indian hell?" "They tie you to a stake, pour gasoline over you, set you on fire and you burn for twelve hours and then rest for twelve…