What happens when I confront the fear of being nobody?

Question: BELOVED OSHO, I AM AFRAID OF BEING NOBODY. WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMEND? Shunyam Anukant, everybody is afraid of being nobody. Only very rare and extraordinary people are not afraid of being nobody. A Gautam Buddha is needed to be a nobody. A Nobody is not an ordinary phenomenon; it is one of the greatest experiences in life -- that you are and still you are not, that you are just pure existence with no name, with no address, with no boundaries... neither a sinner nor a saint, neither inferior nor superior, just a silence. People are afraid because their whole personality will be gone; their name, their fame, their respectability, all will be gone; hence, the fear. But death is going to take them away from you anyway. Those who are wise allow these things to drop by themselves. Then nothing is left for death to take away.

Beloved Osho, lately I find that I am desperately trying to find or do or learn something in order to give myself an identity, knowing perfectly well that this is a trap of the mind. Why is it so painful and shocking to not have any identity, to be nobody?

The psychology of the crowd is the problem. Your whole upbringing teaches you to be identified as a certain personality. Nobody is worried about who you are; everybody is putting different labels on you. And that is a very easy job, because the search for your own self can be done only by you; nobody else can do it on your behalf. The child comes into the world utterly innocent, a blank sheet of paper. He does not know even his own signature. We have to teach him his name, which is a fiction; and with this fiction every individual starts as a novel. One fiction leads to another. The whole life becomes fictitious, and we have to cling to it because that's all we have got. Otherwise, there is utter emptiness, nothingness, abysmal. We will be lost. A story will help you.... A man had lost his way in…

Osho, in this vast existence I am a nothing; accepting this unpleasant fact fills me with great fear. How can I rise above this fear?

If you call it “unpleasant,” then from the very start the interpretation has gone wrong—then fear will take hold. Calling it “unpleasant” is itself the mistake. Think again: what is unpleasant in being a nothing? In truth, the unpleasantness lies in being something. Because all the sorrows of life arise from your being “something.” Ego is like a wound. And when you carry a wound within—and there is no greater wound than ego; it is a festering sore—then everything hurts. The slightest touch hurts; even a gust of wind hurts; your own hand brushing against it hurts. Ego means: I am something. If you make a list of all the pains of life, you will find they all arise from the ego. But you have never looked at it closely. You think others inflict pain on you. Someone abuses you, and you think, “This man, by abusing me, is hurting…

Do you know who I am?

Emptiness has the nature of bliss, has the nature of existence, has the nature of consciousness. Not that consciousness fills it: it is not like a lamp burning in a room so the light is filling the room. You can put the lamp off and the light goes; you cannot put off consciousness. It is the very nature of that inner emptiness -- it is not that it is filling it. You cannot destroy it. How can you destroy emptiness? You can destroy everything in the world; you cannot destroy emptiness. That's why you cannot be murdered, you cannot be killed. There is no possibility, because you are not. The sword can kill the wheel, but the hub? -- the hub will remain intact. It cannot be destroyed; it was not there in the first place. Is-ness is the nature of the inner emptiness; consciousness is the nature of the…

Beloved Osho, I have hoped to become more sure of myself, stronger and more relaxed through meditation. On the contrary, although I am less anxious, I feel more and more empty, uncertain and vulnerable. Why does this happen?

Every desire leads not to the goal it has promised you; it leads to just the opposite of it. You want to be special? you have already accepted your ordinariness. One who is special does not want to be special; he's not even aware that he is special. Whatever you want, one thing is certain: you are not that. And from where are these desires and wants coming? -- imitation. All around, you see people: somebody is so rich, somebody is so intellectual, somebody is a wrestler, somebody is a boxer. And you are nothing -- it hurts. It hurts because of your wrong conceptions about life. So you have to note down a few things in your being: one, you cannot be anybody other than who you are. If you try to be somebody other than who you are, you will never be somebody else, but you will miss…