47. *The five types of fear*

We can categorize all our fears into five major categories:

The first is fear of losing our wealth, our comfort, name and fame, prestige, and other outer world things.

The second is the fear of losing our health and parts of our body through some accident or disease; the fears concerned with our physical health.

The third is the fear of losing our mental health, our mental stability.

The fourth is the fear of losing our loved ones, or their love.

The fifth is the fear of the unknown: fear of God, fear of ghosts and fear of death itself.

Actually, if you deeply analyze our fears, all the five categories of fear are related to the fear of death. They manifest themselves in different ways, that's all.

Live totally

The main reason why people fear death is, they have not lived their lives totally. They are afraid because they feel desperate that they have not lived life enough. They feel this way because throughout their lives they have lived in memories of the past, in the anxieties of the future, for the sake of others, never in the present. Every action of ours has been due to the pull and push of each others' ego, each others' desires, each others' emotions etc.

If you deeply analyze your own life, you will understand what I am trying to say. You start your life where your parents left it. You simply take over the crown of desires, guilt, fear etc. that was passed down for generations, live your life and pass it down to the next generation before leaving. You have never lived totally.

What do I mean by living totally? Try to live with more clarity, that's all. Make the other people see sense in whatever they try to impose upon you. With clarity, you will be able to identify what your own desires are, what others have imposed on you and what desires you have borrowed from others. The first set of desires alone need to be fulfilled without any harm to any person or property. The other two need to be dropped with the help of clarity.

If you live this way, you will no more be fulfilling others' desires and you will be no more living others' lives. You will live your own life, and experience fulfillment, and you will be ready to die when the time comes. You will have no lurking confusion and fear of death. I am not asking you to be selfish. I am only asking you to bring clarity into the whole thing.

A small story:

Once a Zen monk was ordered by the king to be put to death. He was supposed to be killed the next day.

The monk remained calm and silent.

One of his disciples, shocked by the monk's calmness, asked him, 'Do you realize you have only 24 hours to live? Are you not afraid?'

The monk replied calmly, 'I have lived, and therefore I have no fear of dying.'

He means to say, 'I have lived every moment of my life, moment to moment. Every single moment has been so much for me! Why should I be afraid?'

If you look deep inside, you will realize that most of us are not afraid of dying, but we are afraid that we haven't lived our lives enough. We are afraid that we have lived a pseudo life. We feel a deep unexplainable regret about the whole thing. We feel we have not lived as we wanted to live. We don't feel fulfilled – and there starts the fear of death.

Continuously compromising for the sake of others, trying to live out a life that is not natural to us, trying to fit ourselves into a mould that society has prepared for us; all these things lead to a lack of fulfillment. The fear of life is what is reflected in the fear of death.

When you have lived in the deepest possible way, to your full satisfaction, you will not be in fear of death. Live without fear.

Live with the deepest individuality that you can manage. Live to your complete satisfaction and you will lose your fear of death.

If you live totally, without any hangover of any feelings, when you live your emotions with great clarity and totality, you will never fear losing your family and relatives also.

Fear of loss of dear ones

You fear someone's loss only because you feel you have not justified the relationship in some way in your life. You feel you have not been in it in totality, so you are not ready to let go. Physical separation is only one aspect of the fear. The real reason is lack of fulfillment in the relationship.

The word 'justification' comes into relationships because you have always been taught to live for the sake of others, fulfilling their needs and desires. And if you don't do these things, you get into the cycle of guilt and fear. If you just live totally, with deep clarity of the whole play of society, you will never be gripped by such compulsions.

You can live with total fulfillment and still not lose out on any love in relationships. If you live totally, not with a transaction type of relationship but with just pure loving energy towards the other, there will be no room for guilt or fear. Even if the person passes away, you will continue to feel love towards him or her, never fear of any separation.

Most often, relationships suffer because of the lingering fear of losing one another. If you deeply analyze fear in any relationship, you will understand that because our relationships are just transactions of some sort, this fear is prevalent.

Between a husband and wife, there is fear that the other may start looking outside of marriage. Between mother and son, there is fear that the son may start paying more attention to the wife instead of the mother. Between father and son, there is the fear that the father may not pass on the inheritance to his son or the son may not keep up the family prestige.

Like this, in any relationship, there is a core expectation which needs to be satisfied and guarded, and this gives rise to fear. But you can never satisfy any relationship totally. Any one who has tried to please their whole family will only become a dropout!

Understand: Fear is always imprisoning, while love is always liberating. But unless society instills fear into you, you will not listen to it and so it instills fear in you through all possible means – through insecurity, rules, regulations, worship etc.

Fear is what takes the form of jealousy also in relationships. Fear is the basis for most of our actions and emotions. Jealousy, anger, greed – all these emotions are rooted in fear. But we are not aware of this. We don't know that fear is the causative factor for all these. That is the problem. That is why we continue to be in the dark as far as our behavioural patterns are concerned. That is why relationships turn out to be difficult.

Understand that fear and love can never co-exist. If there is pure love in a relationship, there can never be fear. If there is fear, there can never be pure love. There is some vested interest in the relationship. There is some purpose, some objective, some expectation of security or greed or returns in the relationship. That is why fear sets in.

We look for security in every relationship. We need some security to settle down comfortably. This is actually a kind of imprisonment that we enjoy. People talk of freedom, but I tell you, they are so afraid of it! They like only imprisonment. In the comfortable cushioning effect of imprisonment, they think they are free.

A small story:

A small girl asked her father one day, 'Dad, what is the meaning of the word guaranteed?'

The father replied, 'It means that something is made well and it will last for a long time.'

That night before going to sleep, the girl called out, 'Good night guaranteed father!'

All of us look for security continuously in our lives. But we say that we are looking for freedom. If we are really looking for freedom, why are we looking for security? Why fear? As long as you have fear in you, you will look for security. Until then, you can only delude yourself by saying that you want freedom.

A master is one who will throw you upon the utter insecurity of life. He is the only one who gives you complete freedom. That is why with him, you feel insecure, you feel afraid. Freedom creates fear.

You will never feel utterly insecure in your other relationships because there is always some push and pull of greed, fear and anger that keeps you well-settled in the familiar patterns of relationships. But with a master, you are totally free. So you become afraid.

A small story:

A man was in prison for 20 years.

On the day of his release, he appeared very worried and tense.

His friend in the prison asked him, 'What has happened to you? Why are you so worried?'

The man replied, 'I am afraid. What will I do when I go out?'

The prison has created such a solid pattern of security for the man that he does not know what he will do when he goes outside! This is the danger of getting caught in patterns and security.

A master will never offer you the security you are looking for. He will never offer you the patterns you are looking for. When you don't get the security you are looking for, you will grow with deep centering within yourself. You will grow fearlessly because you know there is nothing to lose. And when you know there is nothing to lose, you have no fear.

To show you that there is nothing to lose, the master throws you upon utter insecurity. Out of his deep compassion for you, out of deep concern for your growth, he doesn't offer you security. When you don't find the mundane security, you will find God!

All your fears are because you don't clearly know that there is nothing to lose. Just one encounter with near death can show you that there is nothing to lose and that all your fears are baseless. The master simply makes you understand this in his own way.

So don't try to escape from the master. Understand that he is here only to show you what you actually are. Your inherent nature is fearlessness. Over years, you have been instilled with fear. The master tries to break the layers of conditioning that you have taken upon yourself. If you just allow him to work upon you, with trust and love, you will see yourself transform in front of your own eyes.

Let me tell you a small story about a Swami with whom I was acquainted:

This Swami used to have a number of clocks in his room, and each of the clocks would show a different time! I asked him about it one day.

He replied, 'Time is not my master. I am the master! Whatever time I want it to be, I simply choose the time from that particular clock.'

This Swami had already predicted that he would be leaving his body on a particular day and time.

On the night before his death, the Swami asked all his disciples to gather around him and sing hymns.

One of the singers was somewhat arrogant about his musical abilities. He never sang on this occasion.

As was the custom, the Swami wrote something on a piece of paper and passed it on to him.

The disciple was flattered, thinking that it was a request for a particular song.

But when he opened the note, he saw that the Swami had written, 'Please don't sing after my death!'

Even on his deathbed he was in a humorous mood!

Later that night, he instructed his disciples to take good care of the orphans who lived in the ashram. He said, 'Especially tomorrow, you will all be busy with preparations for my cremation. Don't forget to arrange for food for those children!'

Till the last minute, his concern was for the people he was leaving behind.

The next morning, exactly at the time he had mentioned, he joined his hands in a namaskar to all and his hands dropped, simply like a drama.

What a beautiful, calm and courageous way to face death! That is the way we should all go to death and that is the way we should look upon death even when our own family and relatives pass away. When you understand this, your whole idea of fear will slowly dissolve, because as I said, the underlying basis of fear is death itself.