Guilt and Fear

 

 

Question :

Osho,

Can you say some thing about Guilt and Fear?

 

 

Latifa, fear is natural, guilt is a creation of the priests. Guilt is man-made. Fear is in-built, and it is very essential. Without fear you will not be able to survive at all. Fear is normal. It is because of fear that you will not put your hand in the fire. It is because of fear that you will walk to the right or to the left, whatsoever is the law of the country. It is because of fear that you will avoid poison. It is because of fear that when the truck driver sounds his horn, you run out of the way.

 

If the child has no fear there is no possibility that he will ever survive. His fear is a life-protective measure. But because of this natural tendency to protect oneself...and nothing is wrong in it -- you have the right to protect yourself. You have such a precious life to protect, and fear simply helps you. Fear is intelligence. Only idiots don't have fear, imbeciles don't have fear; hence you have to protect the idiots, otherwise they will burn themselves or they will jump out of a building, or they will go into the sea without knowing how to swim or they can eat a snake...or anything they can do!

 

Fear is intelligence -- so when you see a snake crossing the path, you jump out of the way. It is not cowardly, it is simply intelligent. But there are two possibilities.... Fear can become abnormal, it can become pathological. Then you are afraid of things of which there is no need to be afraid -- although you can find arguments even for your abnormal fear.

 

For example, somebody is afraid of going inside a house. Logically you cannot prove that he is wrong. He says, "What is the guarantee that the house will not fall?" Now, houses are known to fall so this house can also fall. People have been crushed by houses falling. Nobody can give an absolute guarantee that this house is not going to fall -- an earthquake can happen...anything is possible! Another man is afraid -- he cannot travel because there are train accidents. Somebody else is afraid -- he cannot go into a car, there are car accidents. And somebody else is afraid of an airplane....

 

If you become afraid in this way, this is not intelligent. Then you should be afraid of your bed too, because almost ninety-seven percent of people die in their beds -- so that is the MOST dangerous place to be in. Logically you should remain as far away from the bed as possible, never go close to it. But then you will make your life impossible.

 

Fear can become abnormal, then it is pathology. And because of this possibility, priests have used it, politicians have used it. All kinds of oppressors have used it. They make it pathological, and then it becomes very simple to exploit you. The priest makes you afraid of hell. Just look in the scriptures -- with what joy they depict all the tortures, with really great relish. Scriptures describe in detail, in great detail, each and every torture.

 

Adolf Hitler must have been reading these scriptures; he must have found great ideas from these scriptures describing hell. He himself was not such a creative genius as to invent the concentration camps and all kinds of tortures. He must have found them in religious scriptures -- they are already there, priests have already done the work. He only practiced what priests have been preaching. He was really a religious man!

 

Priests have only been talking about a hell that is waiting for you after death. He said, "Why wait so long? I will create a hell here and now. You can have a taste of it."

 

I have heard that once a man died, reached hell, knocked on the door. The Devil looked at him -- he looked German -- he asked him, "From where are you coming?"

 

The man said, "From Germany."

 

He said, "Then there is no need to come here -- you have already lived it! Now you can go to heaven. And you will find our place very boring because you had a far more improved edition of hell. We are still living in the bullock-cart age -- old tortures. You know far more sophisticated instruments, ways, means."

 

Gas chambers are still not known in hell. In a single gas chamber, ten thousand people, within seconds, can become smoke. And you will be surprised to know that although we are living in the twentieth century, man is still an animal. Thousands of people used to go to see. Glass was fitted, fixed in, one-way. You could see what was happening inside, but the insiders could not see who was looking in from the outside.

 

Thousands of people would stand outside watching through the glass: people disappearing in smoke -- simply disappearing in smoke -- thousands of people dying within seconds. And the people who were enjoying outside, can you call them human beings? But remember, it has nothing to do with Germany, this is so all over the world. Man is exactly the same everywhere.

 

The priests became aware very early that the fear instinct in man can be exploited. He can be made so much afraid that he will fall at the feet of the priests and will tell them, "Save us! Only you can save us." And the priest will concede to save them if they follow the priest; if they follow the rituals prescribed by the priest, the priest will save them. And out of fear people have been following the priests, and all kinds of stupidities, superstitions.

 

The politician also became aware soon that people can be made very much afraid. And if you make them afraid, you can dominate them. It is out of fear that nations exist. The fear of America keeps Russians slaves to the communists, and the fear of Russia keeps Americans slaves to the government. Fear of each other...the Indians are afraid of the Pakistanis, and the Pakistanis are afraid of the Indians. It is such a stupid world! We are afraid of each other, and because of our fear the politician becomes important. He says, "We will save you here, in this world," and the priest says, "We will save you in the other world." And they conspire together.

 

It is fear that creates guilt -- but not fear itself. Fear creates guilt via the priests and politicians. The priests and the politicians create in you a pathology, a trembling. And, naturally, man is so delicate and so fragile, he becomes afraid. And then you can tell him to do anything and he will do it -- knowing perfectly well that it is stupid, knowing perfectly well deep down that it is all nonsense, but who knows...? Out of fear, man can be forced to do anything.

 

A young woman who can't prevent herself from coughing and sneezing at the theater asks a doctor for a remedy before going to a first night. "Here, drink this," he says, offering her a glass. She drinks it, mouth awry, and asks what it was, imagining some type of bad-tasting cough medicine.

 

"That's a double dose of Pluto water," he answers. "Now you won't dare sneeze or cough."

 

...You don't get it. You have never tasted Pluto water -- try, and neither you will dare to sneeze or cough. Do an experiment: you can ask Ajit Saraswati for Pluto water, only then will you understand the joke. It is very existential. Because you didn't get it I will have to tell another:

 

One morning, a big she-bear raided Joe's cabin, scattered everything, ate everything, tore up everything, and ambled away. Joe trailed her, shot her, and then noticing how much she resembled a woman, he satisfied his passion with her carcass. Just then he noticed another hunter cowering in the branches of a nearby tree. Realizing his deed had been observed, Joe pointed his gun at the man, made him climb down and said, "Have you ever made love to a bear?"

 

And the hunter said, "No, but I am getting ready to try."

 

Man can be forced to do anything -- just to save himself. And because the pathology that the priests have created in you is unnatural, your nature rebels against it, and once in a while you do something which goes against it -- you do something natural -- then guilt arises.

 

Latifa, guilt means you have an unnatural idea in your mind about how life should be, what should be done, and then one day you find yourself following nature and you do the natural thing. You go against the ideology. Because you go against the ideology, guilt arises, you are ashamed. You feel yourself very inferior, unworthy.

 

But by giving people unnatural ideas you cannot transform them. Hence, priests have been able to exploit people, but they have not been able to transform them. They are not interested in transforming you either; their whole idea is to keep you always enslaved. They create a conscience in you. Your conscience is not really YOUR conscience -- it is created by the priests. They say, "This is wrong." You may know from the deepest core of your being that there seems to be nothing wrong in it, but they say it is wrong. And they go on hypnotizing you from your very childhood. The hypnosis goes deep, seeps deep in you, sinks deep in you, becomes almost part of your being. It holds you back.

 

They have told you sex is wrong -- but sex is such a natural phenomenon that you are attracted towards it. And nothing is wrong in being attracted towards a woman or a man. It is just part of nature. But your conscience says, "This is wrong." So you hold yourself back. Half of you goes towards the woman, half of you is pulling you back. You can't make any decision; you are always divided, split. If you decide to go with the woman, your conscience will torture you: "You have committed a sin." If you don't go with the woman, your nature will torture you: "You are starving me."

 

Now you are in a double bind. Whatsoever you do you will suffer. And that's what the priest has always wanted -- for you to suffer, because the more you suffer, the more you go to him for his advice. The more you suffer, the more you seek salvation.

 

Bertrand Russell is absolutely right that if a man is given total, natural freedom -- freedom from this so-called conscience and morality -- and if man is helped to become an integrated, natural being -- intelligent, understanding, living his life according to his own light, not according to somebody else's advice -- the so-called religions will disappear from the world.

 

I perfectly agree with him. The so-called religions will certainly disappear from the world if people are not in suffering; they won't seek salvation. But Bertrand Russell goes on and he says religion itself will disappear from the earth. There I don't agree with him. The so-called religions WILL disappear, and because the so-called religions will disappear there will be, for the first time in the world, an opportunity for religion to exist. Christians will not be there, Hindus will not be there, Mohammedans will not be there -- only then will a new kind of religiousness spread over the earth. People will be living according to their own consciousness. There will be no guilt, no repentance, because these things never change people. People remain the same; they just go on changing their outer garb, their form. Substantially, nothing changes through guilt, through fear, through heaven, through hell. All these ideas have utterly failed.

 

Now it is time to recognize that all the old religions have failed. Yes, they have created a few beautiful people -- a Buddha here and a Jesus there -- but out of millions and millions of human beings, once in a while somebody has bloomed. It is an exception, it cannot be counted. It should not be taken into account. Buddhas can be counted on the fingers. If a gardener plants ten thousand trees and only one tree blooms in the spring, will you call him a gardener? What about the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine trees? If this tree has bloomed, it must have bloomed in spite of the gardener. The credit cannot go to him -- he must have somehow missed it.

 

We have lived in a very wrong kind of world; we have created a wrong kind of situation. People only go on changing superficially -- the Hindu becomes a Christian, the Christian becomes a Hindu, and nothing ever changes. All remains the same.

 

The reformed prostitute is giving testimony with the Salvation Army on a street-corner on a Saturday night, punctuating her discourse by beating on a big brass drum.

 

"I used to be a sinner!" she shouts (boom!) "Used to be a bad woman (boom!) I used to drink! (boom!) Gamble! (boom!) Whore! (boom! boom!) Used to go out Saturday nights and raise hell! (boom! boom! boom!) Now what do I do Saturday nights? I stand on this street corner, beating on this mother-fucking drum!"

 

-Osho, "Dhammapda Vol 2, #2, Q4"