Sufism, Vol. 1 Sufis: The People Of The Path Chapter 16: A Lotus on the Lake of Emptiness, Question 2

The second question:

Question 2

WHY DO I FEEL FEAR WHEN SOMEBODY COMES CLOSE TO ME?

Everybody feels fear more or less. That's why people don't allow others to come very close; that's why people avoid love. Sometimes in the very name of love they go on avoiding love. People keep each other at a distance -- they allow the other only so far. Then the fear arises.

What is the fear? The fear is that the other may be able to see your emptiness if he comes too close. It has nothing to do with the other. You have never been able to accept your inner emptiness -- that's the fear. You have made a very, very decorated surface: you have a beautiful face and you have a good smile and you talk well and you are very articulate and you sing well and you have a beautiful body and a beautiful persona.

But those are on the surface. Behind them is simple emptiness. You are afraid that if somebody comes too close he will be able to see beyond the mask, beyond your smile, he will be able to see beyond your words. And that frightens you. And you know that there is nothing else. You are just a surface -- that is the fear -- you don't have any depth.

It is not that you cannot have the depth, you can have it, but you have not taken the first step. The first step is to accept this inner emptiness with joy and to go into it. Don't avoid your inner emptiness. If you avoid your inner emptiness you will avoid people coming closer to you. If you rejoice in your emptiness you will be completely open and you will invite people to come close to you and to have a look into your innermost shrine. Because accepted, the emptiness has a certain quality; rejected, it has a different quality. The difference is in your mind. If you reject it, it looks like death; if you accept it, the same thing becomes the very source of life.

Only through meditation will you be able to allow others to come close to you. Only through meditation, when you have started feeling your inner emptiness as joy, as celebration, as song, when your inner emptiness no longer freaks you out, when your inner emptiness no longer frightens you, when your inner emptiness is a solace, a shelter, a refuge, a rest -- and whenever you are tired you simply drown into your inner emptiness, you disappear there -- when you have started loving your inner emptiness and the joy that arises out of it, thousands of lotuses flower in that emptiness. They float in the lake of emptiness.

But you are so afraid of being empty that you don't look at it. You make every effort to avoid it. You will listen to the radio, you will go to see the movie, you will look at the TV, you will read the newspaper, the detective story -- something -- but you will be continuously avoiding your inner emptiness. When tired you will fall asleep and you will dream, but you never face it, you never hold it close to you, you never hug it. That's the reason.

You ask: 'WHY DO I FEEL FEAR WHEN SOMEBODY COMES CLOSE TO ME? It is a great insight that has happened to you. Everybody feels fear when somebody comes very close to you, but very few people are aware of it.

Closeness is not liked. You allow people closeness only very conditionally -- she is your wife, then you allow her to sleep in your bed, to be with you in the night. But still you keep an invisible wall between you and the wife. The wall is invisible but it is there. If you want to see it, observe it, you will find it -- a very transparent wall, a glass wall, but it is there. You remain private to yourself, your wife remains private to herself. Your privacies never meet. You have your secrets, she has her secrets. You are not really open and available to each other.

Even in love you don't allow the other to really come into you, you don't allow the other to penetrate you. And remember, if you allow the other to penetrate you there is great bliss. When two lovers' bodies penetrate each other there is a physical orgasm, when two minds penetrate each other there is a psychological orgasm, and when two spirits penetrate each other there is a spiritual orgasm.

You may not even have heard about the other two. Even the first is a rarity. Very few people attain to the real physical orgasm, they have forgotten about it. They think that ejaculation is orgasm. So many men believe that they have orgasm and because women don't ejaculate, not at least visibly, eighty per cent of women think that they don't have any orgasm. But ejaculation is not orgasm. It is a very local release, a sexual release -- it is not orgasm. A release is a negative phenomenon -- you simply lose energy -- and orgasm is a totally different thing. It is a dance of energy, not a release. It is an ecstatic state of energy. The energy becomes a flow. And it is all over the body; it is not sexual, it is physical. Each cell and each fibre of your body throbs with new joy. It is rejuvenated. and great peace follows it.

But people don't even know physical orgasm, so what to say about, how to talk about the psychological orgasm? When you allow somebody to come very close to you -- a friend, a beloved, a son, a father, a Master, it does not matter what kind of relationship -- when you allow somebody so close that your minds start overlapping, penetrating, then there is something so beyond the physical orgasm that it is a jump. The physical orgasm was beautiful, but nothing compared to the psychological orgasm. Once you have known the psychological orgasm, physical orgasm by and by loses all attraction. It is a very poor substitute.

But even psychological orgasm is nothing compared to the spiritual orgasm, when two spirits -- by 'spirits' I mean two emptinesses, two zeros -- overlap. Remember, two bodies can only touch; they cannot overlap because they are physical. How can two bodies be in the same space? It is impossible. So at the most you can have a close touch. Two bodies can only touch; even in sexual love two bodies only touch. The penetration is very superficial, it is not more than a touch -- because two physical objects cannot exist in the same place. If I am sitting here in this chair then nobody else can sit in the same place. If a stone is lying in a certain place, you cannot put another thing in the same place. The space is occupied.

Physical objects occupy space, so two physical objects can only touch -- that is the misery of love. If you know only physical love you will always be miserable because you will only be touching, and the deep desire is to become one. And two physical objects cannot become one. It is not possible.

A better communion happens with two psyches. They can come closet. But even then two thoughts cannot occupy the same space because thoughts are subtle things. They can touch far better, they can get intertwined far better than two things... things are very solid, thoughts are very liquid. When two lovers' bodies meet it is like two stones coming together; when two psyches meet, it is like water and oil coming together. Yes, it is a better meeting but still there is a subtle division.

Two thoughts cannot occupy the same space. When you are thinking one thought you cannot think another thought at the same time -- the first thought will have to go, only then will you be able to pay attention to another thought. Only one thought can be in your mind at one time and in one space. So even friendship, psychological friendship, misses something, lacks something. It is better than the first but nothing compared with the third.

Spiritual penetration is the only possibility of really being one with someone -- because spirit means emptiness. Two emptinesses can be together. And why two? ALL the emptiness of the world can be together in one space. They can occupy the same space simultaneously, at the same time, there is no problem -- because they are neither concrete like objects nor liquid like water, thoughts. They are simply empty of themselves. You can bring as many emptinesses together as possible.

That's what happens around a Master. When a Buddha exists in the world, thousands of people will become disciples. And sometimes disciples become worried.

Just today there is a question from Nirgun: NOW THAT PEOPLE ARE COMING FROM FARAWAY PLACES AND THE ASHRAM IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE CROWDED, HOW WILL YOU BE ABLE TO GIVE YOUR LOVE TO YOUR DISCIPLES? THERE ARE SO MANY.

The question seems relevant, it seems relevant from the physical point of view -- but not from the spiritual point of view. I am not giving my love to anybody, I am simply love . If I am giving, then it must be a kind of thing, a quantity. Then certainly I can give only to so many and others will not be able to get it.

It is not a quantity, it is simply a quality. It is not confined, it is not defined. It does not occupy any space. I am just emptiness. So whether one disciple is here or one million disciples are here it will not make any difference. The difference it makes will depend on the disciple: if he is not ready to dissolve with my emptiness then he will miss.

When you start feeling your emptiness -- joyously, remember -- then you will be able to allow people to come close to you. Not only will you be able to allow them, you will be always welcoming, inviting -- because whenever somebody can come into you, the only way is if he allows you to come into him. There is no other way. If you want to come into me, the only way is to allow me to come into you. There is no other way.

Sometimes it happens.... Once a young man was with me for two years. He was deeply in love with a woman. They used to live together. Their parents were against it, that's why they had taken shelter with me. I gave them a meditation, a simple meditation to do. The meditation was just to sit every day at least two times, morning, evening, at a fixed time, regularly, and look into each other's eyes and feel that they are going into each other.

After the six-month experiment one day they went crazy. It happened. After six months of regular experimentation twice a day it happened that the man went into the woman spiritually and the woman went into the man spiritually. And then they became very much afraid -- now what would happen? The man started feeling like a woman and the woman started feeling like a man. Their whole personalities changed. Even their voices, the way they used to walk, suddenly changed. The man started walking like a woman and the woman started walking like a man. The woman's voice became coarse, harsh, and the man's voice became very, very feminine.

Naturally, they became very much afraid and I had to give them an antidote technique to come back to themselves. For three days they had to be confined in a room, they couldn't go outside. And they had to look into each other's eyes continuously so that they could come back home. After three days it happened -- but those three days were crazy days. They could not understand what had happened. They became so disoriented.

They missed a great blessing. And they became so afraid of me that, when after three days they came back home to their own selves, they simply escaped without informing me. I have not seen them since then.

Yes, it is a crazy phenomenon to feel that you have become the other, that you are no longer the same person, that you are being possessed by the other, that your soul has left your body and somebody else's soul has entered. You can imagine. But they could not accept it, that's why it became bizarre. It they had accepted It they would have learned the way to come back. Then they would have slowly, slowly learned the way to go into each other each day and come back. By and by the passage would have become very, very smooth and they would have known the knack of it. And I was giving them a great experiment that would have made the ultimate in orgasm possible for them, the spiritual orgasm. But they missed.

That goes on happening around here every day. Whenever something starts happening you become afraid, you start escaping. Remember it. When something is very frightening remember that this is the time not to go anywhere, this is the time to be here. When something frightening is happening, then something is happening. The moment is very pregnant and you have to be here and you have to go into it.

This is a good insight -- that you ask: WHY DO I FEEL FEAR WHEN SOMEBODY COMES CLOSE TO ME? You are becoming a little bit aware of your emptiness. Now let this awareness increase; let this awareness become a great experience. Go into this emptiness and soon you will be surprised that this emptiness is what meditation is, this emptiness is what I call divinity, God. And then you will become a temple -- open to every stranger who wants to come in.

Sufism

VOL. 1, SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH

Chapter-16

A Lotus on the Lake of Emptiness