40. Fear of the Other is Fear of Yourself🔗

The second energy center is the Being center or swadishthana chakra. If your imagination is added to it, it results is a distortion of your fears about life.

Listen: when imagination is added to your greed, it becomes fantasy. When imagination is added to your fear, it becomes phobia. When your swadishthana chakra is corrupted by your imagination, you start constantly feeling frightened for no reason. If your imagination takes the form of fear, you will be living in fear of others - and sometimes, even yourself. If you have fear about others, at least you will be free whenever the other person is not there. You will not have that fear. If you start creating fear about yourself, you can never escape from that. You can never relax.

When imagination is added to your greed, you start having too much of expectation from the other person. You see him as something much beyond what he really is. When imagination is added to your fear, you start living in fear of the other person. But the other person is the same! The other person is same here also, but you see him as something much worse than what he really is! When imagination is added to your greed, everything looks sweet. Everything looks fantastic. You feel the other person is an angel. But when a shift happens in the energy center, when the same imagination rises two inches above to the swadhishtana chakra, the same person suddenly starts looking like a devil! Listen: whether we see the other person as an angel or devil, we are suffering with vikalpa, imagination. The reality of the other person is neither angel nor devil; he's a man, she's a woman, that's all! If you are seeing anything other than reality, you are suffering with vikalpa.

A beautiful story: An enlightened master and his young disciple were walking near a small stream which was flowing fast. They saw a young girl standing near the stream and looking at the water anxiously. When they came near, the girl asked the master, 'Can you please help me cross this stream? It is not very deep, but I am afraid of the current.' The master said, 'No problem.' He just carried the girl and waded through the water, left her on the other bank and came back. His young disciple could not tolerate this! How could the master, being a monk, touch a young woman? How could he lift her and carry her across the river so casually? He was not able to tolerate this, but somehow he kept quiet out of respect for the master. When they reached the monastery, he finally could not hold it any longer. He asked the master, 'Master, being a monk, how can you touch that young woman and carry her across the river? Is it not wrong?' The master was surprised. He smiled at the disciple and said, 'I left her on the opposite bank long ago. Are you still carrying her?'

Please understand, the disciple has deep fears about himself. That is why he cannot tolerate the outer reality; he is so afraid of the outer reality. He can't relate with the other person. In the same way, the enlightened master Sri Ramakrishna lived with his wife Sarada Devi until the end. They lived such a wonderful life. The relationship between them was indescribable; a real yogi relationship. Sri Ramakrishna was criticized by many people for living with Sarada Devi in the temple. He always used to respond to them that they are afraid of themselves, and that is why they are afraid of the person outside. Sometimes these so-called yogis criticize me, 'What is this Swamiji? Being a sannyasi, you are sitting on such a big throne and so many disciples are serving you.' I tell them, 'I don't have the fear that I will get attached to these things. You have that fear - that is why you are afraid to have them in your life!' When you are not afraid of renouncing, you will not be afraid of having.

If you are afraid of the other, at least when the other person is not there, you will not have the fear. If you are afraid of yourself, of your own patterns and emotions, it is like the fear of a ghost, it will continue to haunt you, shake you, frighten you. This is what Patanjali calls vastu shunya – the imagination for which there is no corresponding object in reality.

> When imagination is added > to your greed, it becomes fantasy. > When imagination is added > to your fear, it becomes phobia.

Recall an incident where you projected your magnified fear on someone else, seeing them as much worse than they really are. Complete with that incidents and move beyond the fear.