“When you come close to a real Master, he gives you the taste of fearlessness.”
In the name of religion people have been exploited down the ages; and these have been the trade secrets: create fear and create greed – these are the two trade secrets. If somebody is trying to create fear in you or is trying to create greed in you, escape from that place. That place has nothing to do with religion, because real religion has to free you from all greed and all fear. These are the symptoms of a pathological situation. The man who is creating fear or greed – which are two aspects of the same coin – will make you afraid of hell, hell fire, and he will make you greedy for heaven. […]
Remember, let me repeat it again, a real Master never makes you afraid; in fact, he makes you fearless. He says there is no hell, he says there is no heaven; these are all psychological states. Hell is nothing but a projection of inner agony, and heaven, also, a projection of inner ecstasy. The states are inner. And you can be free only when you are free of both.
It happened…
A mystic woman, Rabiya, was seen in Baghdad one day. People used to think she was mad. She was a real Master: real Masters have always been thought to be mad, because they speak a language that people don’t understand. They speak the language of fearlessness, freedom, truth. They don’t talk about fear and greed, and what is understood in the market-place. People saw Rabiya running, and they asked Where are you going?’ And she was almost creating a scene.
A crowd gathered, because in one hand she had a burning torch and in the other hand she was carrying an earthen pot full of water. And she was running so fast that people thought that there must be some emergency. And they asked ‘Where are you going, Rabiya? What has happened?’
And she said ‘Unless I drown hell with my water and burn heaven with my fire this world is going to remain irreligious.’
When you come close to a real Master, he gives you the taste of fearlessness. There is no way of falling back; no-body has ever fallen back, nobody can fall back.
Osho, The Sun Rises in the Evening – Talks on Zen, Ch 4, Q 4
Biographical note: Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya, or simply Rābiʿah al-Baṣrī, was a female Muslim saint, born in Basra, 714 or 717/718 – 801
Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales
Featured image: The Garden of Earthly Delights, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, Credit to Museo del Prado, Madrid – wikimedia.org
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