attractive

Why do I find attractive people frightening?

Attractive people are frightening for many reasons. First, the more attractive a person is to you, the more there is the possibility of falling into her or his bondage – that is the fear. You will be possessed, you will be reduced to a slave by the charm, the magnetism, the magic.
Attractive people are attracting and yet frightening. They are beautiful; you would like to relate with them, but to relate with them means to loose your freedom. To relate with them means not to be yourself anymore. And because they are attractive, you will not be able to leave them; you will cling. You know your tendency – that the more attractive a person is, the more clinging will arise in you; you will become more and more dependent. That is the fear.
Nobody wants to become dependent. Freedom is the ultimate value. Even love is not higher than freedom. Freedom is the ultimate value; next to it is love. And there is a constant conflict between love and freedom. Love tries to become the ultimate value. It is not. And love tries to destroy freedom; only then can it be the ultimate value. And those who love freedom become afraid of love.
And love means to be attracted to an attractive person. And the more beautiful the person is, the more you feel attracted, the more fear will arise because now you are going into something from where escape will not be easy. You can escape from an ordinary person, a homely person, more easily. And if the person is ugly, you are free; you need not become too dependent.

Mulla Nasruddin married the ugliest woman in the tomwn. Nobody could believe it. People asked him, “Nasruddin, what has happened to you?”
He said, “There is a logic in it. This is the only woman from whom I can escape any time. In fact, it will be difficult not to escape. This is the only woman in the town whom I can trust. Beautiful people are not trustworthy. They can fall in love easily because so many people are attracted to them. I can trust this woman; she will always be sincere toward me. I need not be worried about her; I can go out of town for months; I will not have any fear. My woman will remain mine.”

Just see the point: If the person is ugly, you can possess the person. The ugly person will depend on you. If the person is beautiful, the beautiful person will possess you. Beauty is power, it is tremendous power.
The ugly person will become a slave, a servant. The ugly person will in every way substitute for the beauty that is missing in him or her. The ugly woman will be a better wife than a beautiful woman – she will have to be. She will take more care of you, she will be a better nurse – because she knows that beauty is missing and something has to be provided instead. She will be very good to you; she will never nag you, she will never fight with you, she will not be in a constant quarrel with you – she cannot afford it.
Beautiful persons are dangerous. They can afford to fight. So these are the reasons.
You ask me, “Why do i find attractive people frightening?”
They are. Unless you understand and become aware, this fear remains. Attraction/fear are two aspects of the same phenomenon. You area always attracted to the same person with whom you feel a great fear. Fear means you will be secondary.
In fact, people want the impossible. A woman wants a man, the most beautiful, the most powerful man in the world – but also wants him to remain interested only in her. Now, this is an impossible demand. The most beautiful and the most powerful person is bound to be interested in many more people. And many more people will be interested in him. The man would like to have the most beautiful woman in the world, but also would like her to remain very faithful to him, devoted to him. That will be difficult; that is asking the impossible.
And remember: If some woman looks very beautiful to you, that simply shows you are not very beautiful. And you are afraid also – if the woman looks so beautiful to you, what is happening from the other side? You will not be looking so beautiful to her. There is fear – she may leave you. All these problems are there. But these problems arise only because your love is not really love but a game. If it is really love, then it never thinks of the future. Then there is no problem of the future. Tomorrow does not exist for real love; time does not exist for real love.
If you love a person, you love a person. What will happen tomorrow – who cares? Today is so much, this moment is an eternity. What will happen tomorrow, we will see... when tomorrow comes. And tomorrow never comes. Real love is of the present.
Always remember: Anything real has to be part of awareness, has to be part of the present, has to be part of meditation. Then there is no problem! And there is no question of attraction, and there is no question of fear.
Real love shares; it is not to exploit to the other, it is not to possess the other. When you want to possess the other, then the problem arises: The other may possess you. And if the other is more powerful, more magnetic, naturally you will be a slave. If you want to become the master of the other, then the fear arises that “I may be reduced to a slave.” If you don't want to possess the other, then the fear never arises that the other may possess you. Love never possess.
Love never possess and love can never be possessed. True love leads you into freedom. Freedom is the highest peak, the ultimate value. And love is closest to freedom; the next step after love is freedom. Love is not against freedom; love is a stepping-stone toward freedom. That's what awareness will make clear to you: that love has to be used as a stepping-stone for freedom. If you love, you make the other free. And when you make the other free, you are made free by the other.
Love is a sharing, not an exploitation. And in fact love never thinks in terms of ugliness and beauty, either. You will be surprised: Love never thinks in terms of ugliness and beauty. Love only acts, reflects, meditates – it never thinks at all. Yes, sometimes it happens that you fit with somebody – suddenly, everything falls in harmony. It is not a question of beauty or ugliness. It is a question of harmony, a rhythm.
Somebody has asked a question about what George Gurdjieff used to say, that for every man there is a corresponding woman somewhere on the earth, and for every woman there is a corresponding man somewhere on the earth. Each one is born with the polar opposite. If you can fins the other, everything will fall in harmony immediately. All their centers function harmoniously – that is love. It is a very rare phenomenon. It is very rare to find a couple who really fit together. Our society exists with such taboos, such inhibitions, that it is almost impossible to find the real mate, the real friend.
In Eastern mythology we have a story, a beautiful myth, that in the beginning when the world was created, each child was born not alone but as a couple: one boy, one girl, together, from the same mother. Twins, fitting with each other totally – that was the couple. They were in tune in every way with each other. Then the man fell from grace – just like the idea of the original sin – and as a punishment couples were no longer born from the same mother. Still, they are born! Gurdjieff is right – that's my own observation, too. Each person has a divine mate somewhere. But to find them is very difficult because you may be white and your opposite polarity may be black; you may be a Hindu and your opposite polarity may be a Mohammedan; you may be a Chinese and the opposite polarity may be a German.
In a better world, people will search and seek – and unless you can find the real person who can fit with you, you will remain in a kind of tension, anguish. If you are alone you are in anguish; if you meet the other person, you are in anguish if the other person does not fit with you or only fits so far. Now, through scientific investigation this has also been found: that there are people who fit, and there are people who don't fit. Scientific arrangements can made now; each person can declare his centers, his birth chart, his rhythm. Now there is every possibility to find the other person who fits exactly. The world has become very small, and once you have found the other person... it is not a question of beauty and ugliness at all.
In fact, there is nobody who ugly and nobody who is beautiful. The ugly person may fit with somebody – then the ugly person is beautiful for that person. Beauty is a shadow of harmony. It is not that you fall in love with a beautiful person; the process is just the opposite. When you fall in love with some person, the person looks beautiful. It is love that brings the idea of beauty in, not vice versa.
But it is rare to find a person who totally fits with you. Whenever somebody is fortunate enough, life is lived with a melody; then there are two bodies and one one soul. That is the real couple. And whenever you can find that kind of couple, there will be great grace and great music around them, a great aura, beautiful light, a silence. And love then naturally leads into meditation.
People should be allowed to meet and mix to find each other. People should not be in a hurry to get married. The hurry is dangerous; it only brings divorces, or it brings a life of long, long misery. Children should be allowed to meet with each other, and we should drop all pretechnological taboos, inhibitions; they are no longer relevant.
We are living in a post-technological age; man has become mature, and he has to change many things because many things are wrong. They were developed in the old days; it was a necessity then – it is no longer a necessity. For example, now people can live together, men and women, there is no need to be in a hurry to get married. And if you have known many men and many women, only then will you know who fits with you and who does not fit. It is not a question of a long nose or a beautiful face; somebody may have a beautiful face and you feel attracted, and may have beautiful eyes and big eyes and you feel attracted, and the color of the hair... but these things don't matter! When you live together, after two days you will not note the color of the hair, and after three days you will note the length of the nose; and after three weeks you will have completely forgotten about the physiology of the other. Now the reality impinges upon you. Now the real thing will be spiritual harmony.
Marriage up to now has been a very ugly affair. And priests were happy to allow it – not only happy to allow it, they were the ones who invented it. And there was some reason why priests all over the world have been in favor of this ugly marriage that has been on the earth for five thousand years. The reason was that if people are miserable, only then do they go to the churches, to the temples; if people are miserable, only then they ready to renounce life. If people are miserable, only then are they in the hands of the priests! A happy humanity will have nothing to do with the priests. Obviously. If you are healthy, you have nothing to do with the doctor. If you are psychologically whole, you have nothing to do with psychoanalyst. If you are spiritually whole, you will have nothing to do with the priest.
And the greatest spiritual disharmony is created by marriage. Priests have created hell on the earth. That is their trade secret – then people are bound to come to ask them what to do. Life is so miserable! And then they can tell them how to go get free of life. Then they can give you rituals for how never to be born again, how to get out of the wheel of birth and death. They have made life such a hell, and then they teach you how to get rid of it.
My effort is just the opposite: I want to create heaven here now so that there is no need to get rid of anything. There is no need to think of getting rid of birth and death, and there is no need for the old so-called religions. More music is needed, more poetry is needed, more art is needed. Certainly more mysticism is needed. More science is needed. And then there will be a totally different kind of religion born, a new religion. A religion that will not teach you antilife ideologies but help you to live your life in more harmony, more artistically, more sensitively, more centered, rooted in the earth. A religion that will teach you the art of life, the philosophy of life, and will teach you how to be more festive.
You ask, “Why do I find attractive people frightening?”
Because deep down in you there is a search, as there is in everybody, for the other pole, and you don't want to get involved with somebody who may not be the other pole. But there is no other way to find the other pole except by getting involved in many, many friendships, in many, many love affairs. If you really want to find your beloved, you will have to go through many love affairs. That is the only way to learn. Drop your fear...
And if you start associating with ugly people out of your fear of beautiful people, that is not going to be satisfying to you.

The Cohens were renting a furnished apartment. Mr. Cohen had found the place, which met with all his requirements, but Mrs. Cohen demurred: “I don't like this flat.”
“What's the matter, Rachel? Ain't it a fine flat? Why, it has all the latest improvements: washstands, decent lights, good plumbing, and hot and cold water. Why not?”
“I know all what you say, but there are no curtains in the bathroom. Every time I take a bath, the neighbors can see me.”
“That's all right, Rachel. If the neighbors see you, they will buy the curtains.”

Ugliness can have its uses, but it will not give you contentment. And if you are afraid of beautiful people, then remember that you are really afraid of getting involved in a deep, intimate relationship – that you want to keep a distance, that you want to keep a distance so you can escape any time if the need arises. But this is not the way to go into it; this is not the way to know the secrets of love. One has to go in absolute vulnerability. One has to drop all armor and defense.
If it is frightening, let it be frightening, but go into it. The fear will disappear. The only way to drop any fear is to go into the very thing of which you are afraid. If somebody comes to me and says, “I am afraid of darkness,” then I always suggest to them, “The only way is to go into the dark night, sit somewhere alone outside the town under a tree. Tremble! Perspire, be nervous, but sit there! How long can you tremble? Slowly, slowly things will settle. The heart will start beating normally... and suddenly you will see that darkness is not that frightening, either. And slowly, slowly you will become aware of the beauties of darkness, which only darkness can have – the depth, the silence, the velvety touch of it, the stillness, the music of the dark night, the insects, the harmony. And slowly, as the fear disappears, you will be surprised that darkness is not that dark, it has its own luminosity. You will be able to start seeing something – vague, not clear. But clarity gives shallowness to things; vagueness gives depth and mystery. Light can never be so mysterious as darkness. Light is prose; darkness is poetry. Light is naked; hence, how long can you remain interested in it? But darkness is veiled; it provokes great interest, great curiosity, to unveil it.
If you are afraid of darkness, go into darkness. If you are afraid of love, go into love. If you are afraid of being alone, then go into the Himalaya and be alone. That is the only way to drop it. And sometimes if you can deliberately do something, it brings great awareness.

(Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other, Osho, St.Martin's Griffin, New York, 2001)