According to Osho, the impulse to run from love and joy is love’s natural shadow—fear of losing what you can’t control. If you shut the doors, you feel safe but suffocate; if you stay open, love comes and goes like a breeze, returning fresher. Don’t fight fear; grow in maturity through meditation, expand your inner space, and trust existence—then the urge to escape dissolves.
When you feel like running, it’s just fear; keep your heart open, make more inner room with meditation, and love will keep returning.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, if love has so much glory, then why am I afraid to love?
Exactly for that reason—because it has so much glory. And your conditionings keep you from rising to such glory. Love is vast, and your conditioning has made you petty, small, mean. Love is celebration and your conditioning has taught you renunciation. Love is bliss and your conditioning says, “Become indifferent.” Love is nectar—rasa—and your conditioning is anti-rasa. That is why you are afraid. And you are afraid also because on the path of love the ego must be sacrificed. You have to cut off your head and offer it. You have to lose yourself. As a drop falls into the ocean, so must you fall into the ocean of love. Then fear arises: love is so immense, such a great sky! And you have become accustomed to living in a cage. Have you seen? Even if you open the door of a caged bird, it does not fly out. I…
Beloved Osho, cleaning the house, preparing the tea, being in joyful anticipation -- then you are right in front of me, showering your love on us, and from time to time I see myself closing the doors and the windows as fast as possible and escaping from the back door. Beloved Osho, this old fear of receiving love and staying open, this old voice saying, "this is too much for me" seems so ridiculous and out-of-date. How to drop them?
Rather than being worried about love, you should be more concerned about expanding your consciousness... a few more acres are needed. And whenever you feel it is too much, always remember, you need more space. Love is never too much, it is always that the space is too small. Your insistence should be on the space, because that is in your hands, to make it bigger or not. Love is not in your hands. Love is something that comes from beyond. But you can make a bigger space to allow that love. Drop this idea, "This is too much." Love is never too much. Secondly, you are thinking about love intellectually. That's why you say it seems so ridiculous and out-of-date. If you look through intellect the fear appears to be ridiculous, because love is not going to harm you, why are you afraid? But love is going to destroy…
What is love? Why am I so afraid of love? Why does love feel like an unbearable pain?
Meditate on these lines of Raymond John Born. What is required of us in our time is that we go down into uncertainty, where what is new is as old as every morning, and what is well-known is not known as well. That we go down into the most human where living men have vanished and the music of their meaning has been trapped and sealed. What is asked of us in our time is that we break open our blocked caves and find each other. Nothing less will heal the anguished spirit, nor release the heart to act in love. You ask, "WHAT IS LOVE?" It is the deep urge to be one with the whole, the deep urge to dissolve I and thou into one unity. Love is that because we are separated from our own source, out of that separation the desire arises to fall back into…
Beloved Osho,
I FEEL I WANT TO BE CLOSE TO YOU, BUT AT THE SAME TIME I WANT TO RUN AS FAR AWAY FROM YOU AS I CAN. I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS FEAR, SINCE I AM NOT AWARE OF A FEELING LIKE THIS ABOUT ANYONE ELSE. It is natural, it is not something exceptional. Whenever you have a feeling to be closer to a man like me the fear will come, because to be close to me means to be dead, to be close to me means losing yourself. It is the same fear that grips a river when it comes to the ocean -- the banks will be lost, the river will be lost -- and every river tries to go back. But there is no way. If you feel a deep urge to come closer to me there is no way now to escape. You may try but you will…
Osho, I want to go very, very far away from you. It feels that if I stay close, you will erase me.
People are afraid of love, have always been afraid. That is why the earth has become loveless. That is why master and disciple have been lost; only the names remain, only the words remain. In place of masters there are teachers; in place of disciples there are students. Between student and teacher there is no dying, no love—it is a matter of transaction. The student buys something from the teacher, gives something in return—the matter is finished. There is no exchange of life-breath. O heart, do not revive the tale of worn-out love; do not entangle the people of the gathering in this thorn-thicket. People have begun to fear. They think love is a thorn, a thicket in which, if you get caught, you won’t be able to free yourself. People walk around it. Ordinary love entangles so much—what then to say of extraordinary love! When the thought arises in…