The personality is that which is given by others to you. Individuality is that which you are born with, which is your self-nature. Nobody can give it to you, and nobody can take it away.

Personality can be given and can be taken away. Hence you become identified with your personality you start becoming afraid of losing it. You have been told that you are this by your parents, teachers, friends neighbors, they all have been molding your personality, giving a shape to it.

And they have made something of which you are not and which you can never be. Hence you are miserable, confined in this personality. This is your imprisonment, but you are also afraid to come out of it, because you don’t know you have anything more than this.

It's almost a situation like this: you think your clothes are you, and then naturally you will be afraid to stand naked. It is not a question only of the fear of dropping the clothes, but the fear that if you drop the clothes there will be nobody, and everybody will see there is emptiness, you are hollow within.

Your clothes go on giving you substance. The personality is afraid, and it's very natural that it should be afraid.

                         Shree Rajneesh