Through fear of punishment concentration is achieved. Will you ask anybody how to concentrate if someone is holding a knife against your chest? Your concentration will be total, you will forget everything else. The tune you were humming will disappear, the train of thought you were following will come to a halt.
All your attention will be concentrated on this sharp point. Out of fear comes concentration. This is why students in schools, colleges and universities are made to live in fear. Very subtle ways of fear are used. If you fail in the examinations you will lose face, people will laugh at you. But this is not all, there is fear about the world too. If you go on failing like this, where do you stand in the world? How will you earn your living? Where will you find a home? You will be a nobody!
This fear has first to be deeply instilled. As the fear crystallizes, you begin to concentrate. This is why a student's concentration deepens as the exams approach; his fear has crystallized more, and his frightened mind deepens its concentration.
The opposite side of fear is reward. There is not much difference between punishment and reward. Reward is inverted fear. Attain the first place in exams and you will win a gold medal, your name will be publicized, honors will be showered on you, and all sorts of opportunities for high professional status and good jobs will come your way. To fulfil your ambitions will become easy. The ego will be further refined, and it will enjoy its prestige. Then comes the fear of not achieving the gold medal, and also the greed to achieve it.
All education is based either on greed or on fear. If you want to teach, you must frighten.
Hence all these so-called gurus who want to teach you will first have to scare you. Hell was created for this purpose, and heaven too. There is neither heaven nor hell; they are nowhere to be found, except inside you. Geographical exploration is pointless: dig as deep into the earth as you like, you will not find hell; nor will the rocket aimed toward the stars ever reach heaven. Outside yourself they are nowhere to be found. Heaven and hell are within you, they are extensions of greed and fear. The greed is for heaven, and the fear is of hell.
Religions understood that if you want to teach people, you have to frighten them or create greed in them. It is a strange contradiction that religions continuously exhort you to be free of fear and greed, and yet go on preaching of heaven and hell.
OSHO