The Right Fear
Questioner: Acharya ji, Rumi says, "We have been busy accumulating solace. Make us afraid of how we were." What does he mean by making us afraid of how we were?
Acharya Prashant: From Rumi to Kabir to the Upanishads, The importance of fear has been highlighted by the movers.
We can do strange things to our fear. I have seen a young boy who used to be terribly afraid of ghosts in the dark. And in the nights when he would be returning to his house — which was a little bit at an isolated place, he would need to pass a deserted stretch. It used to be a trial, a nightmare daily for him.
So, somebody gave him a solution. The solution was: close your eyes, keep walking, and start singing a song, and start thinking of all the beautiful things that you know of. It worked for him.
Now I ask you, was he able to get rid of his fear?
You are saying no. But if you ask that boy, he would say that he does not experience fear anymore. He was happy. His daily trauma had been taken care of. All he had to do now while passing through that barren stretch was to start humming a nice song, start thinking of pleasant things. And to enable this bravery, he would even close his eyes. The experiment was successful for him. He would say, "I'm not afraid anymore."
Where has fear gone?
Fear has an important characteristic — it is experiencer dependent. It is dependent on the sensitivity of the experiencer. If you can dull yourself down, if you can turn yourself insensitive, then you will not be experiencing fear. An experience requires the experiencer to be at the same level of subtlety as the experience is.
Now, if the experience makes the experiencer feel bitter, then the experiencer can play a simple trick. The trick is to drop subtlety, to turn gross, turn numb. Now you won't know. It's almost like being on anesthesia. The stimulus is there, the condition is there, but the experiencer has been numbed down. So, experience does not seem to happen at all.
All experience is experiencer dependent. If you can play a trick with the experiencer, then the experience will appear to have been modified or gone.
Now you must understand why all the saints and Upanishads have talked about the importance of fear. Fear is present in our body, mind, our very system. We are fear-driven people. It is just that some seem to be fearless — some seem to be experiencing no fear. And the others? They appear to be trembling.
Those who appear to be trembling take the ones who appear to be fearless as role models. They say, "Wow, these people are so confident. They probably have hit upon something we have no idea of. They probably know something we are ignorant of." The fact is usually otherwise. The ones who appear fearless are not only afraid but actually foolish and insensitive as well.
Afraid everyone is. Some have a little sensitivity, so they experience their fear. The others have turned themselves gross. The others have raised a huge lie within themselves, and that lie gives them an impression of at least a temporary freedom from fear.
So Kabir Sahab has to say — Nirbhay hoye na koye. Bhay paras hai jeev ko, nirbhay hoye na koye. He has to say: Fear will transform you.
He says it is not right that you claim fearlessness. It is not as if he's praying that human beings should forever remain in the throes of fear. He's not a fear worshiper. He's just saying that fear is the fact of your life, and you would do yourselves no good by negating a fact.
Fear is there. You better acknowledge that it is there. By closing your eyes towards fear, by suppressing fear, or by dumbing yourselves down, you are doing yourselves no good.
So the difference between one man and the other is not that one is afraid and the other is not — afraid everyone is. One man is yet not cunning enough to hide his fear. The other one has played a trick on himself. The other one has fooled his own mind, and he believes that he has no fear.
Redemption is possible for the one who is very afraid, who is shivering. No redemption is possible for the one who has grown confident, who appears fearless. In fact, one mark of the stupid man is that he will be very confident.
In general, if you see a person walking around with bloated confidence, with an eye that says, "I know." You would find that in his eyes, the eyes would be saying,
"I know, I understand, ask me, rest assured." This confidence, this swagger, is a telltale sign of insensitivity and idiocy. You need no further proof. This is the biggest proof.
So, Rumi has to say, “Make us afraid, take away all our solas, take away all our alibis, take away all our clever tricks, take away everything that we have used to veil fear. Tear away all the veils. Prove that all our excuses are rubbish. Make us tremble.”
Tremble is such a telling word. You know what tremors are — when you shake. God is tremendous. He makes you shake, he makes you tremble. There are tremors. When the truth is there, everything shakes in the presence of truth because the truth is the only one that has a right to be. All else is proven false in the presence of truth.
The very knocking of the truth is doing this to your hut . What if the truth enters? Now either protect your little hut or remain fond of the truth. You can choose.
We have been busy accumulating. One is busy doing nothing else. Look at the entire history of mankind — what has man been busy doing? We are busy collecting methods of self-protection. That is what we call progress.
We say, let there be security, and the more security there is, the more you take it as an indicator of development. The more developed a place will be, the more security it would be offering — financial security, psychological. There would be huge armies to defend the borders. There would be social security schemes to protect you against illness, unemployment. There would be a robust law and order structure to take care of your worries. You call that as development.
Man has been busy developing. Man has been busy, as Rumi says, accumulating solaces. But a few, just a few, a handful, have bucked the trend. They would say, "I don't want to gather protection. I, first of all, want to see — who is this one who needs so much protection? And if he's so weak, is he worth protecting?"
He needs protection from morning to evening, from head to toe — is he worth protecting? He goes to the market, he needs protection. His thoughts are hurt, he needs protection. He faces illness, he needs protection. At every step in life, minute by minute, all he needs is protection. He's so liable to be hurt, must he be protected?
What are we protecting?
We are protecting the festering wound. A wound has to be treated, not protected. If you touch or press a wound, it hurts. So, you can find a solution by saying, "I will not touch the wound. Now, is that really a solution? You can say, "I'll bandage the wound really thick so that nothing can touch the wound." Is that a solution?
You need to open the bandage. You need to look at the wound. The wound requires treatment and healing, not obfuscation.
Hiding is not the same as healing. In the name of progress, in the name of growth, man has been hiding. And that which he's trying to hide can be hidden only in one condition, only by one method — man has to keep growing dumber and dumber.
You have pain, you take one painkiller pill. It works for a while. The pain is growing — you have to take another pill. And you keep popping pills. Every pill that you are taking to hide your pain is numbing you down. It's an assault upon your nervous system.
The more man is growing, the more man is defending himself. The more one must be compelled to ask, against whom? The more a man is hiding, the more one must be compelled to ask, what? What is it that you are hiding? Let that be exposed. Let all your fears come to surface.
Of course, when they first come to surface, it would be a very poignant scene. There would be just pity and pathos. You would feel as if the teachers, the wise men, have all ruined you with their advice. The diseases that were lying in the basement, buried deep down, will all come to the surface. There would be so many skeletons flowing down the stream. Much ugliness would be exposed.
And you will say, "What’s the use? Weren’t we better off before? Why has so much stink been generated? Why has so much filth been revealed?" But bear all that.
A surgeon’s table is never a beautiful sight to look at. Poets will find nothing there. There are scissors and instruments, and iron and blood and flesh cut apart. There is no happiness there. There is nothing pleasant there. Seekers of pleasantness will be disappointed looking at a surgeon’s table. But that table saves lives.
