THIS TECHNIQUE TALK ABOUT LOVE AND HOW GOOD IT IS TO MEDITATE UPON IT, BUT FEAR IS MUCH CLOSER TO OUR REALITY. WOULD YOU TALK TO US ABOUT FEAR AND WHAT ATTITUDE SHOULD WE HAVE TOWARDS IT?
The first thing: fear is the other side of love. If you are in love, fear disappears. If you are not in love, fear arises, tremendous fear. Only lovers are fearless. Only in a deep moment of love there is no fear. In a deep moment of love, existence becomes a home – you are not a stranger, you are not an outsider, you are accepted. Even by a single human being you are accepted, something in the depth opens – a flower-like phenomenon in the innermost being. You are accepted by someone, you are valued; you are not futile. You have a significance, a meaning. If in your life there is no love, then you will become afraid. Then there will be fear everywhere because everywhere there are enemies, no friends, and the whole existence seems to be alien; you seem to be accidental, not rooted, not at home. Even a single human being can give you such deep at-homeness in love, what to think about when a person achieves; to prayer?
Prayer is the highest love; love with the total, with the whole. And those who have not loved cannot attain prayer. Love is the first step and prayer is the last. Prayer means you love the whole and the whole loves you. When even by a single individual such deep flowering can happen within you, what to think about when the whole is felt as loving you? Prayer is you love God and God loves you. And if love and prayer are not in your life, then only fear…
So fear in fact is the absence of love. And if fear is a problem for you, that shows to me that you are looking at the wrong side. Love should be the problem, not fear. If fear is the problem, that means you should seek love. If fear is the problem, the problem in fact is you should be more loving so somebody can be more loving to you. You should be more open towards love.
But this is the trouble: when you are in fear you are closed. You start feeling so fearful that you stop moving towards a human being. You would like to be alone. Whenever there is somebody you feel nervous, because the other looks like an enemy. And if you are so much, fear-obsessed, it is a vicious circle. Absence of love creates fear in you, and now, because of fear, you become closed. You become like a closed cell with no windows, because afraid anybody can come through the windows, and there are all over enemies… afraid to open the door, because when you open the door anything is possible. So even when love knocks at your door, you don’t trust.
A man or a woman who is so deep-rooted in fear is always afraid to fall in love, because then the doors will be open of the heart and the other will enter you, and the other is the enemy. Says Sartre, “The other is hell.”
Lovers have known another reality: the other is heaven, the very paradise. Sartre must be living in a deep-rooted fear, anguish, anxiety. And Sartre has become very, very influential in the West. In fact, he should be avoided like a disease, a dangerous disease. But he appeals because whatsoever he is saying, many people feel the same in their own life. That is his appeal. Depression, sadness, anguish, fear: these are the themes of Sartre, the themes of the whole movement of existentialism. And people feel that these are their problems. And when I talk about love, of course you feel that it is not your problem; fear is your problem. But I would like to tell you love is your problem, not fear.
It is just like this: the house is dark and I talk about light, and you say, “You go on talking about light. Better it will be if you talk about darkness, because darkness is our problem. The house is filled with darkness. Light is not our problem.” But do you understand what you are saying? If darkness is your problem, talking about darkness won’t help. If darkness is your problem, nothing can be done about darkness directly. You cannot throw it out, you cannot push it out, you cannot put it off. Darkness is an absence. Nothing can be done about it directly. If you have to do anything, you have to do something with the light, not with darkness.
Pay more attention to light-how to find light, how to create light, how to rekindle a candle in the house. And then suddenly there is no darkness.
Remember: love is the problem, never fear. You are looking at the wrong side. And you can look at the wrong side for many lives and you will not be able to solve it. Always remember absence should not be made a problem, because nothing can be done about it. Only presence should be made a problem, because then something can be done and it can be solved.
If fear is felt, then love is the problem. Become more loving. Take a few steps towards the other. Because everybody is in fear, not only you. You wait for somebody, should come to you and love you.
You can wait forever because the other is also afraid. And people who are afraid they become afraid of one thing absolutely, and that is the fear of being rejected.
If I go and knock at your door, the possibility is you may reject. That rejection will become a wound, so it is better not to go. It is better to remain alone. It is better to move on your own, not to get involved with the other because the other can reject. The moment you approach and take initiative towards love, the first fear comes whether the other will accept you or reject. The possibility is there he may reject, or she may reject.
That’s why women never take a step; they are more fearful. They always wait for the man – he should come. They always keep the possibility of rejecting or accepting with themselves. They never give the possibility to the other because they are more afraid than men. Then many women simply wait for their whole life. Nobody comes to knock at their door, because a person who is afraid becomes, in a certain way, so closed that he puts off people. Just reaching nearer, and the afraid person throws such vibrations all around that anybody who is coming closer is put off. The fearful person starts moving; even in the movements…
You talk to a woman – if you are in a certain way feeling love and affection for her, you would like to be closer and closer. You would like to stand closer and talk. But see the body, because the body has its own language: the woman will be leaning backwards, not knowingly, or she may simply back. You are closing, you are coming closer and she is backing. Or if there is no possibility, there is a wall, she will lean against the wall. Not leaning forward, she is showing, “Go away.” She is saying, “Don’t come near me.”
People sitting, people walking – you watch. There are people who simply put off anybody; anybody who comes closer, they become afraid. And fear is energy just like love, a negative energy. A man who is feeling love bubbles up with a positive energy. When you come closer, as if a magnet is attracting you, you would like to be with this person.
If fear is your problem, then think about your personality, watch it. You must have closed your doors for love, that’s all. Open those doors. Of course there is the possibility of being rejected. But why be afraid? The other can only say no. Fifty percent possibility of no is there, but just because of fifty percent possibility of no, you choose a hundred percent life of no love.
The possibility is there, but why worry? There are so many people. If one says no, don’t take it as a hurt, don’t take it as a wound. Simply take it – it didn’t happen. Simply take it – the other person didn’t feel like moving with you. You didn’t suit; to each other. You are different types. He has or she has not said no to you really; it is not personal. You didn’t fit, move ahead. And it is good because the person has said no, because if you don’t fit with a person and the person says yes, then you will be in real trouble. You don’t know – the other has saved you a whole life of trouble! Thank him or her and move ahead, because all cannot suit; to all.
Every individual is so unique that in fact it is so difficult to find the right person to fit with you. In a better world, sometime in the future, people will have more mobility, so people can go and find the right woman and the right man for themselves. Don’t be afraid of making errors, because if you are afraid of making errors you will not move at all, and you will miss your whole life. It is better to err than not to do. It is better to be rejected than simply remaining with yourself, afraid and not taking any initiative – because rejection brings the possibility of acceptance; it is the other side of acceptance.
If somebody rejects, somebody will accept. One has to go on moving and finding the right person. When the right person meets, something clicks. They are made for each other. They fit together. Not that there will not be conflicts, not that there will not be moments of anger and fight, no. If love is alive, there will be conflict also. Sometimes there will be moments of anger also. That simply shows that love is an alive phenomenon. Sometimes sadness… because wherever happiness exists, sadness is bound to be there.
Only in a marriage there is no sadness, because there is no happiness. One simply tolerates – it is an arrangement, it is a managed phenomenon. When you really move into life, then anger is also there. But when you love a person you accept the anger. When you love a person you accept his or her sadness also. Sometimes you go away just to come closer again. In fact, there is a deep mechanism: lovers fight to fall in love again and again, so they can have small honeymoons again and again and again.
Don’t be afraid of love. There is only one thing one should be afraid of, and that is fear. Be afraid of fear and never be afraid of anything else, because fear cripples. It is poisonous, it is suicidal. Move! Jump out of it! Do whatsoever you would like, but don’t get settled with the fear because that is a negative situation. And if you miss love…
To me, love is not a great problem because I look farther ahead than you. If you miss love you will miss prayer, and that is the real problem for me. To you it may not be yet a problem, because if fear is the problem, then to you even love is not yet a problem, how can you think about prayer? But I see the whole sequence of life, how it moves. If love is missed you can never pray, because prayer is cosmic love. You cannot bypass love, and reach to prayer. Many people have tried, they are dead in the monasteries. All over the world many people have tried. Because of the fear, they have tried to avoid love completely, and they have been trying to find a short-cut direct from their fear to prayer.
That is what the monks have been doing all over the centuries. Christian and Hindu and Buddhist – all monks have been doing that. They have been trying to bypass love completely. Their prayer will be false. Their prayer will have no life. Their prayer will not be heard anywhere, and the cosmos is not going to answer their prayer. They are trying to deceive the whole cosmos.
No, one has to pass through love. From fear, move into love. From love, you will move into prayer, and from prayer arises fearlessness. Without love fear; with love fearlessness, and the final fearlessness is in prayer because then even death is not a fear at all, because then there is no death. You are so deeply in tune with existence – how can fear exist?
So please don’t get obsessed with fear. Just jump out of it and take a move towards love. And don’t wait because nobody is interested in you; if you are waiting you can go on waiting. This is my observation: you cannot bypass love, otherwise, you will be committing suicide. But love can bypass you if you are simply waiting. Move! Love should be a passion. It should be passionate, alive, and vital. Only then you attract somebody to fall towards you. Dead, who bothers; with you? Dead, people would like to get rid of you. Dead, you become a boring phenomenon, a boredom. All around you, you carry such dirt of boredom, that anybody who comes across you will feel that it is a misfortune.
Be loving, vital, unafraid – and move. Life has much to give to you if you are unafraid. And love has to give you more than life can give, because love is the very center of this life, and from that very center you can pass to the other shore.
These three steps: life, love and light. Life is already there. Love you have to attain. You can miss it because it is not given; one has to create. Life is a given phenomenon; you are already alive. There stops natural evolution. Love you have to find. Of course there are dangers, hazards, but they all make it beautiful.
You have to find love. And when you find love, only then you can find light. Then the prayer arises. In fact, deeply in love, the persons, the lovers, by and by start moving unconsciously towards prayer. Because the highest moments of love are the lowest moments of prayer. Just near the boundary is prayer.
It has happened to many lovers. But lovers are very rare that while they are deep in love, suddenly they have started praying. Just sitting by each other’s side in silence, holding each other’s hand, or lying together on a beach, suddenly they have felt an urge, an urge to move beyond.
So don’t pay much attention to fear, because that is dangerous. If you pay much attention to fear you are feeding it, and it will grow. Turn your back to the fear and move towards love.
Tags: Lovers Are Fearless Patanjali
