The basic fear is of death

1. Fear is made of ignorance of one’s own self. There is only one fear; it manifests in many ways, a thousand and one can be the manifestations, but basically fear is one, and that is that “Deep inside, I may not be.” And in a way it is true that you are not.
2. Fear is the shadow of ‘I’, and because the ‘I’ is always alert somewhere deep down that “I will have to disappear in death”…. The basic fear is of death; all other fears only reflect the basic one. And the beauty is that death is as nonexistential as ego, and between these two non-existentials — the ego and death — the bridge is fear.
3. Nothing is ever born out of fear. Love gives birth, love is creative; fear is impotent.
4. Fear is utterly impotent. It has never created anything. It cannot create; it is not. But it can destroy your whole life, it can surround you like a dark, dark cloud, it can exploit all your energies. It will not allow you to move into any deep experience of beauty, poetry, love, joy, celebration, meditation. No, it will keep you just on the surface because it can exist only on the surface. It is a ripple on the surface.
5. Certainly, if you are not aware of who you are, you cannot be love. You will be fear. Fear is just the opposite of love. Remember, hate is not the opposite of love, as people think; hate is love standing upside down, it is not the opposite of love. The real opposite of love is fear. In love one expands, in fear one shrinks. In fear one becomes closed, in love one opens. In fear one doubts, in love one trusts. In fear one is left lonely, in love one disappears.
6. Society reduces small children to slaves; and one can be reduced to a slave only if great fear is created.
7. The young child is free of fear; children are born without any fear. If the society can help and support them to remain without fear, can help them to climb the trees and the mountains, and swim the oceans and the rivers, if the society can help them in every possible way to become adventurers, adventurers of the unknown, and if the society can create a great enquiry instead of giving them dead beliefs, then the children will turn into great lovers, lovers of life — and that is true religion. There is no higher religion than love.
8. To expose oneself creates great fear. It is natural, because to expose oneself means to expose all the rubbish that you carry in your mind, the garbage which has been piling up for centuries, for many, many lives. To expose oneself means to expose all one’s weaknesses, limitations, faults. To expose oneself ultimately means to expose one’s vulnerability. Death…. To expose oneself means to expose one’s emptiness.
9. Out of fear is the pretension, out of fear arises all pseudoness. One needs to be fearless to be authentic.
10. Fear is natural. Don’t condemn it, and don’t feel that it is something wrong. It is just part of this whole social upbringing. We have to accept it and go beyond it; without condemning it we have to go beyond it.
11. You cannot conquer fear. Fear has to be understood. The moment you start thinking of conquering it, you have already accepted its existence, its power over you. And fear is just like a shadow: you can fight with it, but you cannot win. On the path one has to be very aware whether one is fighting with something that does not exist but is only his own projection; otherwise the journey goes on becoming longer and longer.
12. Fear is a by-product of your unconsciousness, so the only way to get rid of it, to know its bogus reality, is to become conscious. It is not a question of conquering; fear has nothing to do with it. Once you know what death is, fear disappears.
13. Man is living in fear. He is doing everything out of fear. If he does not do it he will lose respectability; if he does not do it according to the idea of others, he will not be thought to be somebody special. It is all fear, and out of fear nothing great ever comes. Anything great is born only out of love, meditation, silence, understanding. If you create out of fear it is not creation. Your fear will be there, just like a shadow, destroying the beauty of your creation.
14. In this nothingness, in this emptiness, in this selflessness, in this shunyata, there is complete security and stability. You will be surprised to know about this — complete security and stability when you are not. All fears disappear… because what is the basic fear? The basic fear is the fear of death. All other fears are just reflections of the basic fear. All other fears can be reduced to one fear: the fear of death, the fear that, “One day I may have to disappear, one day I may have to die. I am, and the day is coming when I will not be” — that frightens, that is the fear.
15. To avoid that fear we start moving in such a way so that we can live as long as possible. And we try to secure our lives — we start compromising, we start becoming more and more secure, safe, because of the fear. We become paralyzed, because the more secure you are, the more safe you are, the less alive you will be.
16. Once you have known this inner emptiness then there is no fear, because death has already happened. In that emptiness it has happened. In that emptiness you have disappeared. How can you be afraid anymore? About what? About whom? And who can be afraid? In this emptiness all fear disappears because death has already happened. Now there is no longer any death possible. You feel a kind of deathlessness, timelessness. Eternity has arrived. Now you don’t look for security; there is no need.
17. If you start living in the moment, fear disappears. Fear comes through desire. So basically, desire creates fear. Look into it. Whenever there is fear, see from where it is coming — what desire is creating it — and then see the futility of it.
18. When you are nothing, fear disappears, and when fear disappears you function intelligently. If fear is there you cannot function intelligently. Fear cripples you, paralyzes you.
19. Fear is poison to intelligence. How can you be intelligent if there is fear? The fear will go on pulling you in different ways. It will not allow you to be courageous, it will not allow you to step into the unknown, it will not allow you to become an adventurer, it will not allow you to leave the fold, the crowd. It will not allow you to become independent, free; it will keep you a slave. And we are slaves in so many ways. Our slavery is multidimensional: politically, spiritually, religiously, in every way we are slaves, and the fear is the root cause of it.