According to Osho, fear dissolves when you stop chasing happiness and fleeing suffering and instead become a silent witness to both. Happiness and misery are excitations; they shake you only when you identify with them. Awareness of this very condition is the beginning. Root yourself in meditative watchfulness, neither hoping nor resisting, and a calm center appears. From that centeredness, anxieties untangle and fear loses its grip.
Just watch your feelings without running toward pleasure or away from pain, and fear will fade.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete 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…
Osho, I can bear neither sorrow nor joy. I am frightened of everything. I am afraid of death, of course, but I am also afraid of life. What is the path for me?
You will be surprised. You say, “We want to live happiness with our whole heart, but it is rare; and who would want to live sorrow wholeheartedly! Why would one? And it is plentiful.” Try living sorrow wholeheartedly too. What do I mean? Suppose you have a headache. The usual concern is: how to get rid of it? If it doesn’t go, at least forget it. Take an Aspro or an Anacin. If it won’t go, may I at least not feel it. Try an experiment: Sit quietly; accept that there is a headache today. Acknowledge it. Drop the tension. Drop the ill will toward the headache. Drop the notion that it should go. It is—accept it. Relax and observe the headache peacefully. You will be amazed: as acceptance deepens, the pain diminishes. Try it; it’s experimental. These are the ordinary processes of yoga—this is real yoga. Physical calisthenics and…
Osho, yesterday you told the story of Saint Peter and the three women. Please tell us what happened after that?
Saint Maharaj! Do use a little of your own intelligence. No story is ever told in full, because some trust must also be placed in your imagination—that you, too, can think a bit. You could have figured out for yourself what would happen next. The matter was so clear. My friend, what else could happen! What had to happen is exactly what happened. Saint Peter had barely dealt with those three women when three goddesses arrived. One had a white mouth-cloth tied over her face—she was a Jain nun. The second was a beautiful French model, and the third a Rajneesh sannyasin. Saint Peter first pointed toward the part below the French girl’s waist and asked, “What did you use this for?” Preening, the beauty replied, “I used it to revel with my eight wedded husbands and about a hundred and fifty lovers. I also used it to earn money…
Osho, I am not so afraid of death, but I am very afraid of suffering. What is the path for me?
Into this body this poor soul came, taking it for a flute, thinking it would find melody here— but where is melody found? Who has found it here? Here, all tunes are false. Here, all tunes are momentary. Here, tunes arise now and in a moment break. Every tune becomes insipid. Even the sweet soon turns bitter. And even the nectar here does not remain nectar for long; on the surface it is nectar—inside, it is poison. Today or tomorrow this body will have to be left. You must seek elsewhere. But if you have not sought rightly in this body, there is great danger that you will again take some other body to be a flute and enter it—just as you have done many times. If you do not understand this body rightly, do not recognize its sufferings rightly, do not know its futility, do not imprint its insubstantiality…
This is certain: if, in that moment, you hold steady and do not lose courage, you will soon go beyond fear and become fearless forever. Then no fear of the world will ever catch you. He who goes beyond the fear of spirituality—no fear in the world can catch him. He whom even this moment cannot shake, cannot frighten—no power can frighten him. Not even death can ruffle a single hair—for this danger is greater than death. In death the body only perishes; in this moment it seems my very life-breath is breaking. I am nowhere now. I will become pure nothingness. As if one has fallen into an endless abyss whose bottom is never found. And there is no way to climb upward. And one falls, and falls—and no bottom appears—just such is the feeling.