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 be a failure; others have tried, others will go on trying. If you have a deep urge to come closer to me, you will have to come. You can only delay it; by escaping, struggling, you can delay it. You can postpone it, that's all, because the deep urge is coming from your very being. Fear is only in the mind. The urge is coming from the deepest core of your being, to be closer. But fear comes in the mind because the closeness means death.
To be close to a master is death, your ego will have to go. The ego thinks, starts thinking, "I must escape before something happens; before I am lost, I must escape." The ego will continuously tell you to escape. The ego will find rationalizations; it will find faults in me just to help you escape; it will convince you in every way that this is the wrong man. Love is deathlike, and no love is as deathlike as loving a master.
If you love a woman, you can dominate her. That's why lovers go on playing politics with each other, dominating, possessing; the fear is there that if you don't dominate you will be lost and the other will dominate, so they continuously fight. Husbands and wives, lovers, go on fighting; the fight is for existence, to survive. The fear is there, "I may be lost in the other."
But when you come to a master you cannot dominate him, you cannot fight with him. So fear is deeper because of that, because you cannot create any politics. Either you have to escape or merge, no other alternative is there. If you escape, from your very deep source of being you hear you are doing wrong; if you escape you will have to come back. If you come closer, the mind says: Where are you going?
If you go closer still you may be burned. And it is right, the ego is right: The flame is there and if you come closer you will be burned. Conflict will be created; inner tension, anguish will be created. You can delay, that's all, sooner or later you will have to merge; no river can escape the ocean. Once you have come closer you have come, and there is no way to go back. No way exists for going back.
You are here. You have traveled long; not only in physical space but also in the inner space you have traveled long. Many, many lives you have been traveling towards this point; you have desired it and now when the point has come nearer you become afraid. The fear is natural. Understand it, don't let it overpower you. Take a jump, and that jump will not only be a death it will be a rebirth. But you cannot know that. Only death, you see only death; the beyond that is hidden behind the death you cannot see. I can see it; I know you will be reborn.
But nobody can be reborn unless he dies; so death is not the goal and death is not the end, it is just a beginning. When you are ready to die you are ready to be reborn; the old will disappear and the absolutely new will come in its place. That new is struggling from the very core of your being; the old is struggling from the mind because the mind has memory — the old, the past. The past and future are struggling within you. That is the problem.
Now it depends on you. If you are being overpowered by the past then you will delay, postpone, and you can delay it for many lives.
This is not the first time you have delayed; many times you have missed before. Many times you have come across a Buddha, a Mahavira, a Jesus and you escaped. You tried to avoid, you closed your eyes. Again and again you have been playing that game. But the game is natural to you I say, because you can see only death.
The river can only see that she will dissolve, she cannot see that she will become the ocean. How can she see? That oceanic existence will be only when the river is no more, so the river cannot see. When your ego is no more, only then will you know who you are.
Don't allow the fear to overpower you, allow love to overpower you. Love comes from the center, fear always comes from the periphery; don't allow this periphery to be dominant. And what have you got to lose? Even if there is no rebirth — there is rebirth — but I say even if there is no rebirth and you simply die, what have you got to lose? What will be lost? What has the river got that is worth preserving? The life through the hills has been just a struggle; the life through the plains has been just a dirty passage. What has the river got to lose in the ocean? Nothing.
So think about it. What have you got to lose if you come closer? – your suffering? your madness? What have you got to lose? There is nothing to lose, but we never look within to see that we have got nothing to lose because that too gives fear. You like to think that you have got much to lose, that a treasure is there, and you will never look. There is no treasure, the house is empty; there has never been anything. But you are so afraid, you never look, because you know that there is nothing. Even a beggar dreams that he is an emperor; in dreams he becomes an emperor, enjoys. And then he is afraid: What if the kingdom is lost? But there has never been any kingdom.
You have come to me because there has never been any kingdom. You have nothing to lose, and now you become afraid. Look at the tricks of the mind, the deceptions of the mind; look into them.
A man entered a pet shop. He looked around, and he asked the shopkeeper, "How much will that big dog cost?" It was a very ferocious looking Alsatian.
The man said, "Five hundred rupees."
That was too much for him, so logically he said, "And how much will this small fellow cost?", – it was another dog of a smaller size.
The shopkeeper said, " One thousand rupees."
The man tried still.further. He said, "How much is this tiny one?" It was a very small dog. The man said, "Two thousand rupees."
The man became very puzzled and disturbed and then he asked, "How much will it cost if I don't purchase anything?" The rates are going higher and the dog is disappearing!
If I don't purchase anything, how much will it cost? – that is your fear. What will happen if you come closer to me? Nothing will happen because you have nothing to lose. And everything will happen, because once this nothing is lost everything becomes possible. Once this shelter which has become a bondage to you is lost the sky opens infinitely; once these banks which have been a prison to you are lost you become boundless, you become infinite.
Let the river move, unafraid, into the unknown, the uncharted. Death will be there, but death is always followed by rebirth. Die and be reborn, lose yourself and find. Fear comes from the mind, love comes from your heart; listen to the heart.
It happened once in a great palace of a king that there was a musical organ. He loved it very much but something had gone wrong, and the organ was so unique that nobody knew how to fix it. Nobody had ever seen one like it. This king had heard the organ when he was a very small child, when his father was alive, and since then something had gone wrong. But he loved the organ so much that he used to keep it in his room. It was beautiful; even from the outside it was beautiful. Many experts were called in vain. They made many efforts and things went from bad to worse; The organ was more and more destroyed. the king lost hope: the organ could not be fixed.
Then suddenly one day a beggar appeared. To the doorkeeper he said, "I have heard that something has gone wrong with the organ. I can fix it."The doorkeeper had the urge to laugh, because great experts from many capitals of the world had come, great musicians; they couldn't find what was wrong. They couldn't even recognize what type of organ this was and what type of music was created by it, it was so complex. He had the urge to laugh, but he looked at the beggar, and the voice, the beggar's eyes, seemed to be authentic; he was absolutely confident. He was a beggar but his face looked majestic. The doorkeeper's mind was saying, "It will be a wastage again," but his heart said," This man seems so confident, what is wrong if he tries?" So he took him to the king.
Looking at the beggar the king laughed, and he said, " Are you mad? Every type of expert has tried and failed. You must be mad. You think you can fix it?"
The beggar said, " Nothing more, no more harm can be done. The organ is already out of order, absolutely. I cannot harm it any more so what is the harm if you give me a chance?"
The king thought, "He is right, because nothing more harmful can be done." So he said, "Okay, you try." For many days the beggar disappeared behind the organ. He was working and working and working, and suddenly, one midnight, he started playing on the organ. The whole palace was filled with an unknown melody, something so divine that everybody ran to see. The king came out of his bedroom and said, "You have done it! It must have been very difficult. It was almost impossible. You have done a miracle!"
The man said, " No, it was not difficult because in the first place I made it. In your father's time I made this organ, so it was not difficult."
If you are ready, for one thing, no more harm can be done to you;
you are already harmed. I cannot harm you any more than you have been harmed – this much is certain. Look at my eyes and feel my voice; give me a chance. It is not difficult, I say to you. Once one is dissolved into the infinite, he is at the source of the thing from where he has come.
I am not there.
If I were there, if the ego were there, then it would be difficult. There is no expert in me; the expert died long ago. The ego is the expert; I don't know anything.
I am not there, I have disappeared; the ocean exists, God exists, not I.
In the first place, you are close to that thing from which you have come, and for God, nothing is impossible. In the first place, he created you. And I am not there, because otherwise it would be a very difficult thing. If I am there I will harm you; the ego can only harm. Experts can only destroy- they cannot fix you. You have been with many experts and they have done every type of thing that was possible, now you are beyond repair. But the river can fall in the ocean, and suddenly the melody arises; a music will come out of you, a music that you have not heard. It is just hidden in you — the ego just has to be put out of the way.
I have heard: one school teacher was asking his first-graders, "
How do you help your family at home?"
One small boy said, "I fix my bed myself."Another said, "I clean dishes." – and so on and so forth.
But then the teacher saw that one small boy, Johnny, had not answered. So he asked, " Johnny, what do you do?"
Johnny hesitated a moment and then he said, " Mostly, I keep out of the way."
You just keep yourself out of the way that's all! Don't come in between me and you, just keep out of the way. Even if you keep out of the way for a single moment the thing can happen: the old can die, the new can be born.
OSHO