Why am I afraid of God if God is love?

Beloved master, I know that god is love, but then why am I so afraid of him?

People become conditioned to seeing certain things. When there is a certain conditioning, you look at things through that conditioning and it appears like that. Two men were sitting under a tree; one was a Hindu, another was a Mohammedan. Birds were singing, it was a beautiful spring morning. They both listened for a time, then the Hindu said, "Can you hear? All the birds are resounding the sound aum. I can hear it. I have been practicing aum for thirty years, and now I have become capable of deciphering it very easily. All the birds are resounding with the same sound: the soundless sound, the ancient sound of the Hindus, OMKAR." The Mohammedan laughed and he said, "Nonsense! I have also been practicing my prayers. The birds are not saying aum, they are saying AMIN." Mohammedan prayers, Christian prayers, end with amin; Christians call it AMEN, Mohammedans call it…

Mahatma Gandhi said: “I fear no one—except God.” I say to you: fear everyone else if you must, but do not fear God. If you fear God, there will never be any relationship. Will you fear God—and then connect? Does a relationship grow out of fear? Fear poisons. Not fear, but a wave of love is needed between you and God. Lovers are eager to drown in one another. A bhakta is not born out of fear. And if fear births it, know it is not bhakti. It is only fearfulness. Because of this fearfulness religion is little visible in the world; for centuries man was frightened. The accumulated result was that a thinker like Friedrich Nietzsche could declare: “God is dead.” And not only that—he added, “And understand clearly how he died: we killed him. We murdered him. We had to.

I am a god-fearing man, but you say that all fear has to be dropped. Has the fear of god also to be dropped?

Patanjali says: God is only an excuse to pray. It is like a peg on the wall to hang your coat on. If the peg is not there you can hang your coat somewhere else. You can hang it on the door, on the window, anywhere. Patanjali has great insight when he says that God is just a peg: God has been invented because otherwise it will be difficult for you to pray. Ordinarily you think prayer is a means to reach God; Patanjali says God is only a means so that you can pray. But it is only for the beginners -- to help them. It is just like when a small child goes to school to learn the alphabet we give him a few helpful clues. We say, "D is for donkey." Now, D has nothing to do with donkey in particular; donkey is not the owner of…

Osho, there is a saying, “If you believe, it is a god; otherwise, it’s a stone.” Is it all just a matter of believing?

I tell you: do not believe in God. There is no need to believe. If you believe in God, then what will you know? To believe in God means you have declared defeat in knowing—you are tired, you have thrown down your arms. You have said, “The search is over; there is nothing to know, so let us believe.” You don’t believe in the sun or the moon; you know them. You don’t believe in this world; you know it. And you believe in God? If your believed God is repeatedly defeated before your known world, it is no surprise. God should also be known. The day God is known, this world becomes insipid—maya, a dream. Experience is wealth; empty beliefs are not. So I make a small change in the saying: “Know, and it is God; otherwise, it’s a stone.” But to know, a great journey is required. To…

Beloved Osho, I love you, and I have been in love before and been hurt. I am afraid. Will you help me?

There are a few sannyasins who think that they are dependent on me. And how do I know they think that? I have come to know from their questions and their letters. They write angry letters to me, angry questions to me. Then I know that in some way they must be feeling dependent on me -- this is their revenge. Otherwise there is no need to be angry with me. I do not possess you -- you can leave at any moment. Not even for a single moment will you be prevented from leaving. It is absolutely up to you to be here or not to be here, to be a sannyasin or not to be a sannyasin. I am not obliging you to be a sannyasin, I am not obliging you by initiating you into sannyas. It is my joy. Remember, it is my joy to share my…