Osho – Shiva says: THE GURU IS THE WAY. Do not be a way unto yourself or you will spoil everything. First of all, it is a difficult task to find a living person because to surrender to a living person is difficult; the ego gets hurt! So people take greater interest in the scriptures; scriptures don’t hurt the ego so much. You can throw them in the dustbin or keep them in a place of worship – scriptures won’t object. You cannot do that to a living guru. Your ego will have to bow down to him.

You also bow down to the scriptures, but you are still your own master. At any time you can discard them; they can do nothing against your will. To bow at the feet of a living person is a crushing blow to the ego. That is why people first seek in books. Then, when they are tired, they look for a master; but by then the books have so much corrupted them by words they cannot recognize the master when he comes.

When you finally approach the master you bring your bookish knowledge of master and try to judge him accordingly. No book can tell you what a master should be like. A book can talk about a guru. If there is a book about Kabir it will tell you all about how Kabir used to be, but Kabir is not going to be born again. Those are Kabir’s characteristics, but not those of a master. If you are a follower of Kabir and totally filled with him, and thus seek the same qualities in another person before accepting him as a master, you will never find a master for yourself. Kabir cannot be born again.

The Digambara Jainas do not accept a master unless he is totally naked. It was Mahavira’s pleasure to take off his clothes; I do not enjoy doing that. If the seeker is looking for a Mahavir, Mahavir no longer exists. It s an irony of fate that during Mahavira’s lifetime it could be this very same nakedness that prevented people from accepting him, perhaps because nakedness was not mentioned as a necessary quality in the books that were circulating at that time. None of the Tirthankaras before Mahavir had renounced clothing, so the Jainas themselves were not prepared to accept him, because nakedness seemed uncivilized to them. They rejected Mahavir, for nowhere in the scriptures is there any mention of naked gurus. Then Mahavir died and scriptures were created around him and the present day Jain carrying Mahavira’s burden. As a result, when Parshwanath appears wearing clothes he cannot be accepted as guru – he is not naked!

Remember, whatever particular scripture that you read tells you about a particular master. He cannot come again. A master is incomparable, unique! Thus if your eyes are filled with scriptures you will never be able to recognize a living master. The scriptures tell about those who have been and who will never be again. Those who believed in Mahavir will never accept Buddha. At best they may consider him a great soul, a Mahatma, but not Bhagwan.

There is a man I know, a Jain. He has written a book. He is really a good man, but that does not give him understanding. Bad people are generally foolish, but so are good people; foolishness is so deep rooted that the goodness makes no difference. He is a good man and he respects all religions equally. The book he wrote is called BHAGWAN MAHAVIR AND MAHATMA BUDDHA – GOD MAHAVIR AND GREAT SOUL BUDDHA. My friend is a writer. He is known to the people in Poona; in fact it was he who brought me to Poona for the first time. He is an old devotee of Gandhiji, from whom he acquired this felling that all human beings are one. So he wrote this book – but his Jain mind persisted. I was staying with him at the time. I asked him, ”Why did you differentiate between Mahavir and Buddha, calling one ’Bhagwan’ and the other only ’Mahatma’?”

He replied ”You see, Mahavir is in fact Bhagwan, but we can accept Buddha at most as a Mahatma, not as God, because God does not wear cloth. He is naked.”

So this is the difficulty! It is not that only Jainas have this difficulty. everyone has it. This is why a Jain cannot accept Ram as God, because Sita stands by his side. A Jain cannot understand a woman present with God. When he has renounced everything how can a woman be there? So a priceless jewel like Sita is lost to the Jainas. They cannot grasp her significance. And Krishna? They put him down in hell, for he has not one but sixteen thousand women around him. No one is more eligible for hell than Krishna. Since the Jainas are traders and merchants by caste, they are afraid of starting any row with the Hindus. Perhaps this is the reason why they have advocated nonviolence.

It is always a coward who advocates non-violence. Violence requires some guts, so cowards believe in not killing and not being killed As a principle it’s fine: Do not kill others-Live and let live! But it implies that they want to survive and they don’t care about the others at all so they use the idea of non-violence; there is no other meaning behind it. After having thrown Krishna into hell, they were afraid of the anger of the Hindus, so out of fear they have played another trick: They declared that Krishna will be a Tirthankara in the coming age. He does not fit anywhere in their doctrine however, if they have to live among the Hindus, they have to accept him. They compromised – just like any business man will calculating mind! Now the Hindus won’t be angry it’s fine. And their own concept remains intact. They have avoided the conflict.

If you seek the master through scriptures, you will never find him, for by the time the scripture is compiled the person around whom it is written has already gone. And each master is in a class of his own kind. He is different and unique. You can’t find another like him. You can’t find Mahavir again, nor Buddha or Krishna. But in all your seeking you simply look for these very people and you wander around and around. When they were alive you were looking for someone else – again, someone who had long since gone. You go on missing every time.

If you want to find a master put all scriptures aside. Try to come close to someone. If you want to find a master, bathe yourself in his presence. Don’t take your concepts along and don’t try to judge him by your measurement. Let your heart beat with his heartbeats; don’t allow the intellect to interfere. If you allow the mind to interfere the hearts will not meet, and you will not be able to recognize the master.

The master is recognized through the heart and not through the head. Whenever you set the intellect aside and see with the heart something happens immediately. If it is possible for you to connect with this master, it will happen immediately, without a moment’s delay. You will find yourself melting into him and him melting into you. From that day onwards you are an integral part of him. From that day onwards you become his shadow; you can flow him The master can be sought with the heart, and without the master there is no way.

Source – Osho Book “The Great Path”

(Meditation is as easy as pie, as Osho tells a new sannyasin, who has been riding a unicycle around the ashram.)

Osho – It is slipping out of your mind like a snake slips out of its old skin. It is not a science, it is an art or, to be even more precise, it is just a knack. It is easy to teach science, very easy, because it consists of something observable; it relates to the objective world. The student can see what is happening with his own eyes. He can see water evaporating at one hundred degrees. There is not much of a trouble in teaching science; just a very average intelligence is needed.

To teach art is a little more difficult because tremendous intelligence is needed. If a person wants to be a painter he will have to learn two things, not one. In science he has to learn only one thing: he has to become informed. If he wants to be a painter he has to learn the technique of painting and the art of painting — which are two totally different things. For a technician painting is only a question of arranging colours in a certain pattern, with a certain geometry, certain proportions; it is almost science. But then it cannot be a great piece of art. It may be perfect technically, but something will be missing in it. It will not be original, it will be a repeat, because for originality not only technique is needed, for originality immense intelligence is needed.

Zen monks have been painting for thousands of years and they say that to learn real painting one has to learn the technique for twelve years and then for twelve years one has to stop painting completely and forget all about it. And then after those twenty-four years one has to start painting again, so the technique is forgotten, so the technique does not come in between you and the painting. Now you can start painting as if you don’t know painting, you don’t know the technique of painting, so you can be original.

The second stage of twelve years is far more important than the first. The technique has to be learned, certainly — without knowing about colours and canvases you cannot paint — but that is only a preliminary process. Then you have to forget all about it so you don’t become addicted to the technique. The technique goes deep into your blood and bones, but you are not at all self-conscious about it. It functions, but you are now free from technique; it does not hinder you.

Art — music, poetry, painting — is far more difficult to teach, a longer process. And a knack is the most difficult thing to teach because it needs three things; it needs a certain technique, it needs tremendous intelligence and also it needs some intuitiveness. Intuitiveness is the highest peak of intelligence. The very word ‘intuition’ is significant. Education is tuition — somebody teaches you. Intuition is something that happens to you; it cannot be brought in from the outside.

The master can create a certain atmosphere, a certain energy field; it is a very indirect process. It is just as a gardener prepares the ground and then sows the seed and then waits; there is nothing else he can do about it. Now everything depends on the seeds. They will find their way in their own time. It will be something like intuition. You cannot persuade the seeds to grow faster, you cannot tell them “This is the time — go ahead.” You cannot order them; you have simply to wait. Prepare the ground, remove all the barriers, rocks, weeds, etcetera, give them a beautiful bed, watering, sun, and then wait, then wait for their own intuition to unfold. You cannot do more than that.

That’s the function of the master; to create a certain energy field in which your intuition one day suddenly becomes aflame. It cannot be caused, it cannot be forced. It can only be helped, and that too in a very soft way. That’s the whole purpose of sannyas: to create an energy field, to create a communion of people, to create a loving, invisible force, a have of love, so that the wave can take you, can possess you.

Meditation is only a method: it helps to remove the barriers. It is spade-work. Weeds are removed, thoughts are removed, mind is removed. It is just a removing — it is a negative process: rejecting, rejecting everything that is inside so one day there is nothing to reject. All that can be thrown out has been thrown out and you have a pure space, just space. And that space is the right preparation. In that space your intuition, the seed of intuition which you have been carrying all along, suddenly bursts forth unpredictably. One cannot say when it will happen, but one thing is certain — it does happen. That much can be said; the time cannot be predicted, but it happens. If the space is ready it happens sooner or later — and it is always sooner rather than later.

And your name Jack is very beautiful; it means god’s gracious gift. The gift is already with you, but you have not opened the treasure, the doors of the treasure. The parcel has remained with you unopened, and it has remained for so long with you unopened that you may have completely forgotten about it.

My work is to help you to find where you have put it and to find how to open it. And then life becomes a splendour, a grandeur of inconceivable dimensions. Then for the first time you know what depth means, what height means; then you are no more flat. Ordinarily people are just flat: they don’t have any depth, they don’t have any height — just flat ground. They don’t know the depths of the Pacific, they don’t know the heights of the Himalayas. They are missing something.

The real adventure begins only when you start moving deeper into your being and also higher into your consciousness, and the processes are two sides of the same coin. If you go deeper you go higher, if you go higher you go deeper. It is one dimension, the vertical dimension. People who are living a flat life are living horizontally, and of course, their life is just like a flat tyre, utterly punctured! And you must know about tyres — you are a unicyclist!

Become something vertical. Sannyas is a change from being horizontal to vertical. And then life is really bliss, a gift of god. One cannot repay god, there is no way. One can only be thankful, tremendously thankful. That’s what prayer is, that’s what religion is: a deep gratitude to existence for what it has done for us.

Source – Osho Book “Just the Tip of the Iceberg”

Question – We, in our unawareness and egoistic state, are not always in touch with the master. but is the master always in touch with us?

Osho – Yes, because a Master is in touch with all the four layers of you. Your conscious layer is only one of the four layers. But that is possible only when you have surrendered and accepted him as your Master — not before that. If you are just a student, learning, then when you are in touch, the Master is in touch; when you are not in touch, he is also not in touch.

Has to be understood, this phenomenon… You have four minds: the supermind which is the possibility of the future, of which only seeds you carry — nothing has sprouted — only seeds, just the potentiality. Then the conscious mind — a very small fragment with which you reason, think, decide, argue, doubt, believe — this conscious mind is in touch with a Master to whom you have not surrendered. So whenever this is in touch, the Master is in touch. If this is not in touch, then the Master is not in touch. You are a student, and you have not taken the Master as a Master. You still think about him as a teacher.

Teacher and student exist in the conscious mind. Nothing can be done because you are not open; your all three doors are closed. Superconscious is just a seed; you cannot open its doors. Subconscious is just below the conscious. That is possible if you love. If you are here with me only because of your reasoning, your conscious door is open. Whenever you open it, I am there. If you don’t open it, I am outside; I cannot enter. Just below the conscious is the subconscious. If you are in love with me — not just a teacher and a student relationship but more intimate, a love-like phenomenon — then the subconscious door is open. Many times the conscious door will be closed by you. You will argue against me; you will be sometimes negative; sometimes you will be against me. But that doesn’t matter. The unconscious door of love is open and I can always remain in touch with you.

But that too is not a perfect door because sometimes you can hate me. If you hate me, you have closed that door also. Love is there, but the opposite, hate, is also there — it is always with love. The second door will be more open than the first — because the first changes its moods as fast that you don’t know… Any moment it goes on changing. Just one moment it was here, the next moment it is not there; it is a momentary phenomenon.

Love is a little longer. It also changes its moods, but its moods have longer periods. Sometimes you will hate me. In thirty days almost there will be eight days — one week and four days, you will hate me. But three weeks it is open. With the reason, a week is too long; it is an eternity. With the reason, one moment here, another moment against: for, against, it goes on. If the second door is open and you are in love with me, even if the door with reason is closed, I can remain in contact.

The third door is below subconscious: that is the unconscious. Reason opens the first door — if you feel convinced with me. Love opens the second door which is bigger than the first — if you are in love with me: not convinced, but in love — feeling an affinity, a harmony, an affection.

The third door opens by surrender, if you are initiated by me, if you have taken the jump into sannyas, if you have taken a jump and said to me, “Now — now you be my mind. Now you take the reins of me. Now you guide me and I will follow.” Not that you will always be able to do it, but just the very gesture that you surrendered opens the third door.

The third door remains open. You may be against me rationally. It doesn’t matter: I am in touch. You may hate me. It doesn’t matter: I am in touch — because the third door always remains open. You have surrendered. And it is very difficult to close the third door — very, very difficult It is difficult to open, it is difficult to close. It is difficult to open, but not as difficult as to close it. But that too can be closed because you have opened it. That too can be closed You can decide some day to take your surrender back. Or, you can go and surrender yourself to somebody else. But that never — almost never — happens, because with these three doors the Master is working to open the fourth door.

So there is very… almost impossible possibility that you will take your surrender back. Before you have taken it, he must have opened the fourth door which is beyond you. You cannot open it, you cannot close it. The door that you open, you remain the master to close it also. But the fourth has nothing to do with you. That is the superconscious. All these three doors are needed to open so the Master can forge a key for the fourth door, because you don’t have the key, otherwise you yourself can open it. The Master has to forge; it is a forgery because the owner himself doesn’t have the key.

The whole effort of a Master is to have enough time from these three doors to enter to the fourth and forge a key and open it. Once it is opened, you are no more. You cannot do anything now. You may close all the three doors — he has the key for the fourth and he is always in contact. Then even if you die, it doesn’t matter. You go to the very end of the earth, you go the moon, does not make any difference; he has the key for the fourth. And, in fact, a real Master never keeps the key. He simply opens the fourth and throws the key in the ocean. So there is no possibility to steal it or do anything. Nothing can be done!.

I have forged a fourth-door key with many of you and have thrown it, so don’t unnecessarily trouble yourself; it is futile, now nothing can be done. Once the fourth is opened, then there is no problem. All the problems exist before it, because at the very last moment the Master was getting ready the key because the key is difficult…

For millions of lives the door has remained closed; it has gathered all sorts of rust. It looks like a wall, not like a door. It is difficult to find where the lock is — and everybody has a separate lock, so there is no master key. One key won’t help because everybody is as individual as your thumbprint. Nobody has that print anywhere — not in the past, never in the future. Your thumbprint will be simply yours, a single phenomenon. It never is repeated.

Your inner lock is also like your thumbprint — absolutely individual: no master key can help. That’s why a Master is needed, because a master key cannot be purchased. Otherwise, once a key is made, everybody’s door can be opened. No, everybody has a separate type of door, a separate type of lock — his own locking system — and you have to watch and find and forge a key, a special key for it.

Once your fourth door is open, then the Master is in constant touch with you. You may forget him completely: it makes no difference. You may not remember him: it makes no difference. The Master leaves the body: it makes no difference. Wherever he is, wherever you are, the door is open. And this door exists beyond time and Space. That’s why it is the supermind: it is superconscious.

WE IN OUR UNAWARENESS AND OUR EGOISTIC STATE ARE NOT ALWAYS IN TOUCH WITH THE MASTER, BUT IS THE MASTER ALWAYS IN TOUCH WITH US?

Yes, but only when the fourth door is opened. Otherwise, with the third door, he is more or less in contact. With the second door, half the time almost in contact. With the first door, only momentarily in contact. So allow me to open your fourth door — and the fourth door is opened in a certain moment. That moment is when all your three doors are open. Even if a single door is closed, the fourth cannot be opened. It is a mathematical puzzle. And this condition is needed: your first, conscious door is open; your second door is open — your subconscious, your love — you have surrendered, you have taken a step into initiation, your third, unconscious door is open.

When all the three doors are open, when in a certain moment all the three doors are open, the fourth can be opened. So it happens that while you are awake, the fourth is difficult to open. While you are asleep, only then. So my real work is not in the day. It is in the night when you are fast asleep snoring, because then you don’t create any trouble. You are so fast asleep, you don’t reason against. You have forgotten about reasoning.

In deep sleep, your heart functions well. You are more loving than when you are awake, because when you are awake many fears surround you. And because of fear love is not possible. When you are fast asleep, fears disappear, love flowers. Love is a nightflower. You must have watched night queen — the flower that flowers in the night. Love is a night queen. It flowers in the night — because of you; there is no other reason. It can flower in the day, but then you have to change yourself. Tremendous change is needed before the love can flower in the day.

That’s why you see that when people are intoxicated they are more loving. Go into any tavern where people have drunk too much: they are almost always loving. See two drunkards moving on the street hanging on each other’s shoulder: so loving — as if one! They are asleep.

When you are not afraid, love flowers. Fear is the poison. And when deep down in sleep, you are already surrendered because sleep is a surrender. And if you have surrendered to a Master, he can enter into your sleep. You will not be even able to hear his footsteps. He can enter silently and work. It is a forgery, just like thieves enter in the night when you are asleep. A Master is a thief. When you are fast asleep and you don’t know what is happening, he enters in you and opens the fourth.

Once the fourth is opened, then there is no problem. Every effort and every trouble that you can create, you can create only before the fourth is open. The fourth is a point of no return. Once the fourth is open, the Master can twenty-four hours be with you — there is no problem.

Source – Osho Book “Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2″

Osho – Kabir says: The only thing worth doing is to wake up my mind. The God, the REAL guru, is inside.

The word ‘guru’ is untranslatable. Neither does the word ‘teacher’ nor the word ‘Master’ have that beauty. In fact, the phenomenon of the guru is so deeply Indian that no other language of any country is capable of translating it. It is something intrinsically Eastern.

The word ‘guru’ is made of two words, ‘gu’ and ‘ru’. ‘Gu’ means darkness, ‘ru’ means one who dispels it. Guru literally means ‘the light’. And you have the light within you, yes! If you come across a Buddha or a Jesus or a Krishna or a Mahavir, it will be of tremendous help to you in finding your inner guru, because seeing Buddha, suddenly a great enthusiasm and hope will arise in you: “If it can happen to Buddha” — who is just like you, the same body, the same blood, bone, marrow — “if it can happen to this man, why not to me?” The hope is the beginning. Meeting with the Master on the outside is the beginning of a great hope, a great aspiration.

And this can happen only if you meet a living Master. It cannot happen just by reading about Buddha, because who knows whether this man was really historical or not? And the way the story is being; told is such that nobody can believe that he was historical.

The followers always go on creating more and more unnecessary stories about their Masters. Maybe they do it with good intentions, but even good intentions coming out of unconscious people are of no use; they are harmful. Maybe they want to impress people so people can become more attracted, but what really happens is just the opposite.

Now the Buddhist story is that when Buddha was born, the mother was standing, was walking in a garden. Buddha was born while the mother was walking. And not only that, the first thing that he did was that he himself walked seven steps. The first thing the child did — he walked seven steps! Not only that, the second thing that he did after the seventh step was that he declared, looking at the sky, “I am the awakened one, I am the great Buddha! Nobody has ever been like me and nobody will ever be like me.”

Now these stupid stories naturally make intelligent people suspicious. And one thing is absolutely certain: that Buddha is not like us, so maybe, perhaps, he became enlightened, but he gives no hope to us. Jesus is born of a virgin mother — nonsense, patent nonsense! But how can you become enlightened? You are not born of a virgin mother. Krishna is born as God, he is an incarnation of God; YOU are not an incarnation of God.

Rather than these stories creating a hope in you, they create a kind of hopelessness. You need living Masters who have not yet become myths. You need living Masters who are just like you and yet different, just like you but with something plus, something mysterious surrounding them in every other way the same as you, but only in one respect different: they have a certain understanding which is missing in you, they have a certain luminosity which is missing in you, they have a certain grace, a certain climate which is missing with you. But in every other way they are exactly like you: they fall ill, they need food, they become thirsty, they are tired, they have to go to sleep; they are just exactly like you in every possible way. Then great hope arises: maybe the ‘one plus’ thing that has happened to them is also latent in you and can become manifest.

The outer Master is simply a mirror so that you can see your face, so that you can see that you also have-the same face, the same possibility, the same potential. And once this has settled in your heart, that “I have also the same potential, the same seed”, a great journey has started. You will never be the same again. Looking into the eyes of a living Master, something synchronizes in you, something is triggered in your being, a process has already started.

Source – Osho Book “The Guest”

Question – Is it possible to deceive a master?

Osho- YES, IF THE MASTER WILLS SO. Sometimes the Master wants to be deceived. If it is for your growth, he is ready to do anything – even to be deceived. If that is the only way to help your cheating characteristic to surface, he will allow himself to be deceived by you. Otherwise not. How can you deceive a Master? He knows you – as you your-self don’t know yourself. He knows the secret most desire of your heart. It may not be conscious even to you. He knows the subtle ways of your ego. And you CANNOT deceive. You can try, but from one point or another, from one side or another, they will be revealed. You will say one thing from your mouth: your eyes will say something else.

And the Master is not very much concerned with what you say – he tries to read you through subtle manifestations. He looks in your eyes, he looks at the way you walk, he looks at the way you sit… from the superficial to the deepest. He is not very much concerned about what you say. Your saying is almost meaningless; it is babbling. You don’t exactly know what you are saying. And even if you know, you don’t mean it. And even if you mean it, the next moment you will change it. It is not worth paying attention to.

That’s why psychoanalysis has to go into your dreams. Rather than watching your day it watches your night. Why? Because in the day you are cunning, deceptive. You live through a masquerade, a camouflage. You have many masks. And it is not that you are deceiving others: you are deceived yourself by your masks. You. believe in your masks. You think these are your faces. You have completely forgotten your original face. Psychoanalysis looks into your dreams, because in your dreams your constant pretending relaxes. You come in your true colors.

The Master goes even deeper than psychoanalysis, because there are people who can deceive even in dreams. One can train oneself to dream certain dreams. And now, after one hundred years of psychoanalysis, this fact has become very very apparent. Patients start dreaming according to the expectation of the analyst. If a patient goes to a Freudian, he dreams one kind of dream. If he goes to the Jungian, he starts dreaming another kind of dream. Now this is an accepted fact. How does it happen? Even un-consciously he is trying to be clever, cunning.

When you go to a Freudian, he is waiting for some sexual dream. Even if you don’t dream it, he will impose an interpretation of sexuality on your dream. Your innocent dreams will be painted in such a way that they will look utterly sexual. For example, if you are flying in your dream, the Freudian will say, ”This is nothing but sexuality – flying is a phallic symbol. You want to go high and high and high; you want to reach a climax of sex. It is pictorial. You want to reach to a peak. It simply represents a peak. ’

It may be so, it may not be so, but the analyst has imposed a certain pattern on your dream. Now, slowly slowly, you will start dreaming according to him, because every human being has a deep need to be approved. And when you really dream a Freudian dream, the analyst is so happy that the patient also feels happy that he is doing something really great. Because of this, by and by he will dream more and more sexual dreams, remember more and more sexual dreams. May start editing dreams – and VERY unconsciously. May drop a few things, may add a few things. Will give it a color – a Freudian color. After six months of psychoanalysis with a Freudian, ALL your dreams will be just sexuality and nothing else.

Go to a Jungian and things start changing. Now, flying is no more a sexual symbol – it is occult. It is the desire of the human soul to reach to the ultimate. It is esoteric. Another interpretation is enforced, and soon you will have visions of Masters talking to you, pure voices descending upon you, great light, kundalini, lotuses opening within you… and things will start happening. And within six months you will be a perfect Jungian dreamer.

Go to the Adlerian, and the same dream, that you are flying, and the interpretation is different. The Adlerian says, ”Flying high is nothing but an effort to become superior – man suffers from inferiority complexes. To be low is inferior; to fly high, above everybody else, is to be superior.” Another interpretation is enforced on you.

People start dreaming the way they are expected to dream. So even dreaming is not so innocent as you think. The Master cannot depend on your dreaming either. He simply goes beyond ALL your layers; he looks through all the layers. He looks through all the chaos that you are. You are not in order, you are not a discipline. There are a thousand and one contradictions in you, so no one particular idea can be imposed on you.

The Master’s work is not to impose any particular interpretation on you – he has none. He simply tries to see the whole chaos that you are, the whole contradiction that you are, the crowd, the mob, that you are, the so many small selves in you without any real center, the civil war that goes on within you. He goes on seeing it.

And if he feels that it will be helpful for you, then he can be deceived by you – but that is willed by him. You cannot deceive him on your own. There is no way. He has eyes! He is no more blind. He looks through and through. And, in fact, to deceive a Master is impossible, but even to deceive a man who has a little observation is difficult. If you just start a little observation, it will be impossible for anybody to deceive you. Just a LITTLE observation!

For example, a woman says to you, ”I love you.” Watch her eyes – if she really loves you, you will see her eyes changing, her eyes expanding, the black dot in the eye becoming bigger – immediately! if she really loves you. She is opening up. And this is not DONE by her: she is opening up in the eyes because she wants to drink more of you.

Just as eyes change: when you go into the sun the eyes become smaller, because too much sun is not needed to go in. When you come back to the home in the darkness, the pupils dilate, they become bigger; more light is needed to come in. When a woman says to a man, ”I love you,” if she is falsifying, if she is just trying to deceive the man, maybe is interested in his money or in something else, her eyes will not cooperate with her statement. And there is no way to will the cooperation of the eyes. Spon-taneously, if she loves you, pupils dilate, become bigger. She opens up. She wants you to be in.

Just watch people: they say one thing, and their face says another thing. They may be saying one thing with their mouth, and another thing with their hand gesture. Just a little observation and nobody can deceive you.

A Broadway agent returned home and found one of his biggest clients in the arms of his wife. ”Stop sounding like a TV melodrama, Harry,” the client told him, cutting short a tirade of denunciations.
”Let’s treat this situation like adults. We both love your wife. All right, then, let’s play one game of gin rummy – and the winner gets her.”
The agent thought for a moment, then said, ”Okay, but just to make it interesting, let’s play for a dime a point on the side.”

How long can you deceive? How can you deceive?

Danny was an inveterate bargain hunter. He hadn’t a penny to his name, but whenever he saw a bargain he couldn’t resist it. One day a friend of his came to see him. Jim said, ”Danny, I’ve got a terrific bargain for you. A boat-load has arrived for the Barnum and Bailey Circus and they have an overstock. They’ve got an elephant on board, a baby elephant, that’s worth at least 2, 000, and Ican land it for you for only 300.”

Danny looked at Jim as if he were half crazy. ”What! An elephant! An elephant in my one-room apartment? You must be out of your mind! In the first place, there’s no room for it. And in the second place, how could I feed it? In the third place, what could I do with it? Don’t be nuts!”

”But,” persisted Jim, ”I’m telling you this elephant is worth two thousand bucks and I can get it for you for a mere three hundred, maybe even two hundred and fifty.”

Danny was adamant. ”Get the hell out of here, will you? You’re off your rocker. I don’t need an elephant. I don’t want an elephant. Leave me alone with elephants.”

But Jim knew his friend and he continued hammering away. ”Listen, Danny,” he said, ”the fact is they have an overstock. You know, I think if I put it to them I could get you two elephants for the same two hundred bucks.”
”Now you’re talk in’,” said Danny.

Your reality, your mind, is always there below your skin. It is just skin-deep – scratch it a little and the truth comes out. You cannot deceive even a man who knows a little observation – how can you deceive a Master? But if the Master feels it is good for you, it may be helpful for your growth, it may bring something up, it may take you through a breakthrough, then the Master is ready to do anything. Yes, he is ready even to be deceived by you.

Source – Osho Book “The Perfect Master, Vol 2″

Question – You have been explaining many meditation methods to us. However, Isn’t it true that no method can be all that powerful unless one is initiated into it?

Osho – A method becomes qualitatively different when you are initiated into it. I am talking about the methods – you can use them. Once you know the scientific background and the way, the knowhow, you can use it, but initiation makes it qualitatively different. If I initiate you into a particular method it will be a different thing, because many things are implied in initiation.

When I talk about a method and I explain it to you, you can use it on your own. The method is explained to you, but whether it will suit you or not, how it will work upon you, what type of person you are, is not discussed. It is not possible. In initiation, you are more important than the technique. When the master initiates you, he observes you. He finds out what is your type, he finds out how much you have worked through in your past lives, where you are right at this moment, at what center you are functioning right now, and then he decides about the method; he chooses the method. It is an individual approach. The method is not important, you are important, you are being studied and observed and analyzed.

Your past lives, your consciousness, your mind, your body, they are dissected. You are felt deeply in terms of where you are, because the journey begins from that point – the point where you are just now. Just any method will not do. Then the master chooses a particular method for you, and if he feels that this particular method has to be changed for you, that minute alterations or some additions are needed, he adds, he deletes, he makes the method fit for you. And then he gives the initiation; then he gives the method to you. That is why it is insisted that whenever you are initiated in a method, you are not to talk about it. It has to be secret because it is individual. If you tell it to someone else it may not be helpful, or it may even be harmful.

It has to be kept secret. Unless you achieve and your master says that now you can initiate others, it should not be talked about at all – not uttered, not even to your husband or your wife or your friend. No, it is absolutely secret because it is dangerous, it is very powerful. It has been chosen and made for you. It will work for you, but it is not for any other individual in the world. Really, each individual is so unique that he needs a different method, and with a slight difference a method can become suitable for him.

What I am talking about – these one hundred and twelve methods – they are generalized methods. They are one hundred and twelve generalized methods, all the methods which have been used. This is a general form so that you become acquainted. You can try – if something suits you, you can go on. But this is not initiation into a method. Initiation is a personal, individual affair between the master and the disciple. It is a secret transmission. And many other things are implied in initiation. Then the master chooses a right moment when he will give the method to you, so that it goes deep
into the unconscious.

While I am talking, your conscious mind is listening. You will forget. When I have talked about one hundred and twelve methods, you will not even be able to rename them again – the one hundred and twelve. You will forget many completely. You will be able to remember a few, and then you will be mixed up and confused. You will not know what is what.

The master has to choose a right moment when your unconscious is open, and then he gives you the method. Then it goes deep down into the unconscious. So many times initiation is given in sleep, not when you are conscious. Many times initiation is given to you in a deep hypnotic trance, when your conscious mind is completely asleep and your unconscious mind is open.

That is why surrender is so much needed in initiation. Unless you surrender initiation cannot be given, because unless you surrender your conscious mind is always alert and on guard. When you surrender, your conscious mind can then be relieved of its duty and your unconscious mind can come directly in contact with the master.

A right moment has to be chosen, and then you have to be prepared for initiation. It may take months to prepare you. There has to be the right food, the right sleep, and everything has to come to a tranquil point; only then can you be initiated, so initiation is a long process, an individual process. Unless someone is ready to surrender totally, initiation is not possible.

So I am not initiating you into these methods, I am just making you acquainted with these methods. If someone feels that some method suits him deeply and he feels that he should be initiated into that method, I can initiate him into that method. But then it is going to be a long process. Then your individuality has to be completely known. You have to become totally naked so that nothing remains hidden. And then things become very easy – because when a right method is given to a right person at a right moment, it works immediately.

Sometimes it happens that while initiating the disciple, the disciple becomes enlightened, just the initiation becomes the enlightenment. Then the method becomes alive – when it is given by a master privately, individually. Whatsoever I am doing now is not initiating, remember this. This is a scientific approach just to revive the one hundred and twelve methods, to make them known.

If someone is interested, he can be initiated. And when you are really interested you will seek initiation, because working alone on the method is a very long affair. It may take years, it may take lives, and you may not be able to sustain it for so long a period. Through initiation it becomes very easy, and then the method becomes a transmission. Then through the method the master starts working in you. Initiation is a living relationship with the master, and a long relationship, of course, goes deep. It changes you and transforms you.

Source – Osho Book “Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1″

Question – How do i find my way?

Osho – Rashid, There is no way to be found, and there is no one to find it – and there is no need either. The very idea of the way misleads, misguides. The way is possible only if God is far away; if there is a distance between you and the truth, then the way is needed to connect, to bridge.

But God is not distant, truth is not ’there’. God is not even near, God is in you, God is you. God is nearness, intimacy. That is the meaning when Jesus says God is love – by love he means nearness, intimacy. God is already there in the innermost core of your being. The moment you start thinking of the way, you have started thinking of time, effort, will, struggle, seeking, searching, desiring, dreaming. You have created the whole world and the misery that automatically follows it. The very idea of truth being distant is false, utterly false. You have never left home. See it! Seeing it, the whole search disappears.

This is the Zen approach, hence Zen is a pathless path, a gateless gate, an effortless effort. These are immensely significant words: pathless path, gateless gate, effortless effort. All that is meant is that you are not to go anywhere. Relax. Rest into your being. Rather than thinking of going, think of coming. You have already dreamt enough, you have left your home in a dream. Now, don’t prolong this dream. Asking for a way you are trying to convert your worldly dream into an other-worldly dream, that’s all. The materialist is trying to become a spiritualist, but the greed continues.

Remember one thing as a criterion: anything which creates future is bound to be against reality, because reality is always present – always and always, and for ever. Reality knows no future, the mind creates the future, and creates it very cunningly, very cleverly.

Now, this is a very clever question: HOW DO I FIND MY WAY? And you may not be aware what you are getting into. You are getting into a dream, and now you will be exploited because now you will find people who will supply the way. Wherever there is a demand, somebody is bound to supply. That is an economic law: the law of demand and supply. You make a demand for the way, and immediately thousands of gurus are born – you have given birth to them – and they are ready to supply you all that you need. That’s how the spiritual supermarket exists: you create it by your demand. You create the false, the pseudo prophets, because when you ask for the way, the real Master cannot give it to you because he is not your enemy, he is not there to exploit you. The real Master’s work is to take all the ways from you, all the methods. His whole work consists of destroying your future. Once the future is destroyed, you will find yourself here, now – and now is the only real time.

God exists in real time, and you exist in an unreal time, hence you never meet. It is like a person who has fallen asleep and is dreaming: fallen asleep in Poona and dreaming of Philadelphia. And you are sitting by the side of the man who has fallen asleep; he cannot see you, he cannot be aware of you, he cannot see the room, he cannot hear the birds singing outside, he cannot feel the wetness in the air. He is in Philadelphia, he is in an unreal time, in an unreal space. Because he is in an unreal time and unreal space – of his own creation and imagination and fantasy – he is missing the real; he is missing this room, this place, he is missing you who are there, alive, loving, but unavailable. So close and yet so far away you are – because the man is in Philadelphia.

What is needed? Does he need a way? Has he to go to some airline and book to come back? Has he to travel back? Is there any need for a Way? No, all that he needs is an awakening, a shock so he can be awakened, a shaking-up. You shake him up, he will open his eyes, and suddenly Philadelphia has disappeared. Exactly like that it happens. In the close proximity of a Master you are given constant shocks and shakings. He does not supply you with paths, ways, methods, he simply shocks you – he goes like a shiver in your spine.

And the sleep is no ordinary sleep, it is metaphysical sleep. You have slept for lives together. You have slept the whole past, and you have dreamed so much and you have invested in the dream so much that it looks almost impossible to wake up – too risky, too costly, such a gamble. You can do it only if you fall in love with a Master. If you fall in love with a Master risk is possible, because people risk only when they are in love.

Sannyas is a love affair. When you are in love you are mad. And only the mad man can come back; the clever and the cunning and the calculating will think so many things against coming back. In Philadelphia he has made a beautiful house, in Philadelphia he has found a woman, in Philadelphia he has children, in Philadelphia he has a good business, in Philadelphia he has become respected – he has become the mayor; all his life consists of Philadelphia. And suddenly you wake him up, and you destroy all. And the woman that he used to love and was so beautiful is no more, and the children… all disappeared, and the mayorhood and the business and the bank balance… all is gone. He will be angry at you.

Unless you are in love with a Master, you will not allow him to wake you up. Unless the love is so great that you can risk all… Once you are awake you will thank him, but before you are awake you will be angry many times. It is happening every day here. I go on shaking you, shocking you, I say so many things. The purpose is basically to shock you, the purpose is somehow to make it impossible for you to go on sleeping, to go on dreaming. All the methods that we use here are not methods to attain to truth – no, not at all, there is no method to attain to truth – all those methods are nothing but efforts to wake you up, to bring you back home, WHERE YOU REALLY ARE. They are only to destroy your dream.

Sannyas is renouncing your dreams, renouncing your sleep. But this is possible only if you love the man, if you love the Master, so much that you say ’Okay, if he is going to hell, we are going with him. Hell will be heaven with him. Without him we are not going to heaven.’ Only then can you be awakened.

Don’t ask for any way, Rashid. That’s why Jesus makes a very strange statement: ’I am the way.’ And Christians have missed the point; they have interpreted it in such a way that the whole thing has gone wrong. When Jesus says ’I am the way’ he is simply saying ’Meet a Master and fall in love. Follow a Master.’ He is not saying anything about Jesus, he is simply saying to his disciples ’I am the way. Fall in love with me so that I can awaken you, because you will be able to bear awareness only if you are in tremendous love; otherwise, you will not be able to forgive the man, and you will want to fall asleep again and you will want to start dreaming again.’ When Jesus says ’I am the way’ his ’I’ contains all the Masters of the world – past, present, future. That ’I’ has nothing to do with Jesus as such, that ’I’ is the ’I’ of all the Masters.

Exactly that is what Krishna said to Arjuna, his disciple, ’Leave all aside. Come to my feet – surrender to me.’ That’s all. One starts thinking ’How can it be so easy?’ It is easy because you have never left the place, it is easy because you are already there. The Master is not giving anything, he is simply taking away that which you don’t have and he is
giving you that which you already have. The work of the Master is almost like magic, that’s why in the old days the Master was thought to be a magician. He takes away things which you don’t have and he gives you things which you already have – this is magic.

Don’t ask for a way. I am the way. Look into my eyes. Get into this enchanted space that I am. Yes, it is an enchanted space. Martin Heidegger calls it ’enchanted regioning’, not just region but regioning, because region makes it look static and it is dynamic. That’s why he does not call it space, because space seems static. And it is not a noun, it is a verb – a living verb.

A Master is a dynamo. A Master is a flow, an overflow, a river. Get into it. And you need not even swim, the river is already moving. You can just relax with the river, and one day you will find that you have arrived. And that day can be this moment – it all depends on your courage, on the intensity of your love.

There is no need for any way. And if you try to find a way, you will find not one, you will find many, and you will be distracted by all those ways for millions of lives. You try one way then it fails, then you try another way and that fails, and you try another… And they are all bound to fail, they are doomed to fail because you are trying to do something which is absolutely absurd.

It is like searching for the horse on which you are riding. You can rush in all directions – and you can have a very beautiful horse, a very powerful horse, and he can take you to the farthest corners of the earth – but still you will not find the horse because you are already riding on it. Let me awaken you. Allow me to take your dreams away. What more way do you need? I am the way.

Source – Osho Book “The Sun Rises in the Evening”

Osho – surrendering is enough. It is a sudden method, it can work in a moment, it can explode you in a moment. On the surface it looks easy – that one has not to do anything, just to surrender. Then you do not know what surrendering means. It can mean anything. If the Teacher says, ”Jump into the sea!” then there should be no hesitation. Surrendering means, ”Now I am not – now you are. Do whatsoever you like.”

In Egypt there was a mystic, Dhun-Nun. When he was with his Teacher, he came to ask a certain question. The Teacher said, ”Unless I say to you, ’Ask,’ don’t ask, and wait.” For twelve years Dhun-Nun was waiting. He would come daily in the morning – the first man to enter the hut of the Teacher.

He would sit there. Many, many others would come to ask and they would be answered. And the Teacher didn’t say to anyone again, ”Wait!” It was too much. And that man Dhun-Nun was waiting – for twelve years. He was not allowed to ask. So that was the first thing he uttered, ”I want to ask a certain question,” and the Teacher said, ”You wait – unless I tell you to ask, you cannot ask. Wait!”

For twelve years he waited. The Teacher wouldn’t even look at him; the Teacher wouldn’t even give any hint that he was going to let him ask. He completely forgot that Dhun-Nun exists. And Dhun-Nun waited day and night for twelve years. Then one day the Teacher moved to him and said, ”Dhun-Nun – but now you need not ask. You had come to ask a certain question. Now I allow you, but I think now you need not ask.”
Dhun-Nun bowed, touched the Teacher’s feet and said, ”You have given me answer enough.”

What had happened to Dhun-Nun? You cannot wait twelve years unless you have surrendered totally. Then doubts are bound to arise – whether you have become a madman, whether he has forgotten you completely. And to no one else was the Teacher saying ”Wait!” For twelve years, thousands and thousands of people would come and ask and he would answer. And this would go on continuously, day after day, and the man waited. It was a total trust. The Teacher said, ”Now you
need not ask.”

And Dhun-Nun said, ”There is no question left. These twelve years, what a miracle you did with me! You did not even look at me. What a miracle! You did not even give a hint!”

Surrender means total trust. Then you are not needed. If you cannot give total trust, if you cannot surrender, then the only way is the path of will. But don’t be confused. I know so many people going around and around confused. They would like something to happen to them just like what happens on the path of surrender, but they are not ready to surrender. They would like to behave like a man of will and would like something to happen as it happens on the path of surrender.

Source – Osho Book “The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol 1″

Osho – Deva means divine, urdhwa means upward-going – a divine upward-going. Science knows one law, the law of gravitation – that everything falls downwards, that the earth functions like a magnet and pulls things towards itself. Religion knows another kind of law – the law that things can fall upwards too. Religion calls it ”the law of grace.”

There is a Sufi story…. A Sufi mystic who was thought to be mad – as all mystics have always been thought to be – was staying with a friend. The family was a little worried because the man was unpredictable. Not to create any scene in the neighborhood they arranged for his stay in the basement of the house so nobody would know; it was underground. In the night the family was suddenly awakened by great laughter that was coming from the terrace. They rushed out – they suspected the mystic and they were right. He was rolling on the terrace and laughing madly. They asked, ”What happened? Why are you laughing like a madman and why are you rolling about?”

He said, ”Suddenly I started falling upwards! I was in the basement and I started falling upwards – that’s why I am laughing, because this has never happened to me – and suddenly I found myself on the terrace!”

The story is symbolic: one day one finds oneself falling upwards. The ordinary human being lives in the basement; his life is underground, unconscious is his life. He lives in a kind of darkness. But if a few things can be arranged, one starts falling upwards. One day one finds oneself on the terrace of life, under the open sky, full of stars, and the miracle has happened. Then there is no end to the laughter… then life and laughter are synonymous.

How can one stop laughing when one starts feeling that one is falling upwards? It looks so ridiculous, but it has been found to be so again and again, although not many people have learned the secret of it, only some thousands. Down the ages a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu, a Mahavira, and so on, so forth. A few people have found themselves falling upwards.

That dimension is called ”urdhwa.” And I hope one day you will find yourself falling upwards! It is time to get out of the basement. Enough is enough. You have lived long in darkness and unconsciousness. The time has come to come out of the darkness, out of the tunnel. The sun is just on the horizon… it is dawn.

The orange color symbolizes the morning, the sky becoming red, ready, spreading red carpets for the sun. The orange is the color of the morning, the early morning color, symbolic that the night is over, that one need not creep and crawl into a basement, that one can start rising higher, that one can start flying.

Yes, sannyas is the art of flying… the art that stops the process of gravitation and starts the process of grace. All that is needed is a state of let-go. All that is needed is a readiness to be possessed by the upward dimension, a readiness to open to the sky. We are clinging to the earth. The sky is ready to take us, we have the wings – we just need courage. All that we need is to drop the fear of the unknown and the vast and the infinite.

So keep it in your heart that the time is very close by, and prepare for it. The meditations will unburden You and the therapy groups will help you to drop unnecessary luggage, because one who wants to fly can not carry all the nonsense-luggage that one has accumulated down the ages. If one wants to fly one has to be utterly nude, one has to drop all kinds of weights. That’s what I call the state of let-go: one has to be surrendered to God, and then miracles start happening. We are preventing them, we are hindering them, we are our own enemies.

So just don’t stand between yourself and God, that’s all. And the first lesson will be: don’t stand between me and yourself. Let there be a direct contact between me and you. Put your personality aside, don’t let your ego stand in between. This will be the first lesson in let-go. The disciple has to learn the lesson of let-go with the Master and then the same lesson has to be spread over all one’s experiences, all over one’s life. Then it becomes the state of let-go, and when the time is right and the spring has come, God descends.

Source – Osho Book “God’s Got a Thing About you”

Osho – One can be a disciple only if one drops all knowledge. Disciplehood means that you accept the fact that you know nothing. It begins in a state of not-knowing. If you know then you cannot be a disciple. Then your knowledge will be a constant disturbance and whatsoever you know is nothing but rubbish; it is all borrowed — from traditions, from conventions, from the society, from the scriptures — it is all conditioning and a disciple needs as a first step to be totally unconditioned. He has to drop his whole mind, he has to behead himself. Unless that much readiness is there one can only be a student, not a disciple, and that is the difference between these two words. The difference is immense.

A student is only intellectually interested, he wants to know more. The disciple is not intellectually interested, he’s existentially interested; he is not after accumulating more information and knowledge. He wants to be more; not to know more, but to be more.

Knowledge is something of the mind and being is a totally different phenomenon. One can know all the scriptures of the world and yet may remain ignorant — that’s how scholars are: they are just donkeys carrying a big burden of scriptures. That burden has not transformed them, that burden has really hindered, hampered their progress. It is like with rocks hanging around your neck. You are trying to swim: You are creating unnecessary hurdles for yourself.

Socrates is right when he says, ‘I know only one thing, that I know nothing.’ That is the state of a disciple and in that state great things happen: Ego disappears, it can’t exist — How it can exist? There is no claim left. One becomes utterly empty and in that emptiness god comes to you; you become a host, he becomes a guest.

Source – Osho Book “No Man Is an Island”

[A sannyasin says: Sometimes when I see you in lecture I just feel angry against you.]

Osho – These things are natural. If you love me, you will sometimes be angry too. You cannot only love. When I accept your love I am also accepting your anger. You don’t have pure love, so how can you offer it to me? Your love is mixed with all kinds of ugly things. When I initiate you into sannyas, I initiate you with all these possibilities: that you will be angry, that you will hate me, that you will think against me, that you will do this and that – all possibilities.

To accept a disciple is not an easy task, because you are accepting a bundle of so many problems. A disciple is not all sweet. If he was all sweet, why should he be a disciple? He carries many bitternesses in him; he will impose and project those bitternesses on the master. The master will become a screen and you will project all kinds of things on him – good and bad both. Sometimes it will be a great experience and you will move into heights, and sometimes you will be falling into valleys of negativity. But this is natural; nothing to be condemned in it.

That time you went thinking to come back – this time you are going thinking not to come; both are perfect. Neither that remained forever nor is this going to remain forever. All passes. By the time you have reached home, you may start feeling love for me again. And this will happen many times – it is a wheel: many times you will come close and you will go far away, and come close and go far away. Slowly slowly you will see the whole absurdity of your mind; then one day you simply drop the whole mind. But that happens only later on.

When for the first time somebody becomes a sannyasin, he is enchanted he is enchanted by my presence. But he has forgotten his own personality. It is like falling in love with a man or a woman: when you fall in love you don’t think about your faults, your limitations. You simply see the beauty of the woman; you don’t think about yourself. But if you start living with the woman, all your faults and all your limitations and your anger and your hatred and jealousy and possessiveness are going to surface. Then you will be surprised – where has that love disappeared to? Where are those beautiful days of the honeymoon? They are all gone and there is only misery; and you had never thought about it.

When you fall in love with me, you are simply thinking of me; you have not thought about yourself. But sooner or later you will have to think about yourself. If you don’t, I will force you to think about yourself. I will have to throw you back to yourself, and when you see who you are, where you are, all these things are bound to arise and disturb.

But all is good – this too is perfectly good. So what? – this time you are going in a different mood. This time you are moving back in the night, that time you moved in the day. But the day is gone, so the night will go; the day will come again and the night will fall – unless you decide one day to drop all kinds of moods and just be with me without any mood between me and you, neither love nor hate. Then the disciple has really come to the master, when there is neither love nor hate. That is total surrender. Love cannot be total surrender, because love has to imply the hate in itself. It is a double-bind; hate is always intrinsic in it. When one day you come and you surrender all moods… and remember, good moods also have to be surrendered.

What do people go on doing? They go on doing one thing: the positive is good, it is so sweet, so they want to have it, and the negative is bitter and they don’t want to have it. But this is the whole problem of life. It is not only with a master; it is everywhere: you choose only half. Then who is going to have the other half? – and it comes in the same package. It cannot be divided; you have to choose that too. If you choose at all, you have to choose both, otherwise don’t choose. Then they both disappear. Either they are both together or they both disappear, but you cannot divide.

Slowly slowly you will see the point: in the beginning a disciple comes through love and then one day the wheel turns and he hates, he is angry, he protests and he resists. Finally, the awareness happens that you cannot relate through love, otherwise hate is bound to be there. Then the disciple leaves both. Then there is nothing between the disciple and the master – not even love, because even love is a disturbance. The disciple is simply there in the presence, with no expectation, with no desire. It has a great beauty in it.

That day real initiation happens, and after that day there is no change; one has come to the point of no return. That will also come if you can wait, if you can be patient. If you can’t wait, if you can’t be patient, you miss this opportunity. So don’t be worried.

And remember one thing more: never take any decision too early. Wait, just remember that this will pass, this will go away. The problem only arises when people take a decision when they are negative. Then they start thinking ’Leave sannyas, forget all about it.’ If you take a decision when you are negative, then you miss the opportunity, you close the door. Then it will become very very difficult for you to come back. Your ego will feel hurt. Now what to say and how to go back? And it happens every day…. There are a few sannyasins who leave sannyas when they are angry – they will throw the mala into the sea – but then the mood passes and they start repenting. Then it becomes very difficult for them to come because they feel guilty, and even if they come, the guilt lingers on. To ask for sannyas again looks as if you are asking too much; you have misbehaved. And then they have to find explanations.

One sannyasin just wrote a few days before…. He runs a centre and he called all the sannyasins of the area for a meeting. Some sannyasins criticised him very much saying that his way of running the centre was wrong, that through the way he was doing things Osho’s presence was not felt in the centre at all.

He became very angry. He went to the sea, and he heard an inner voice ’Throw the mala into the sea.’ So he threw the mala into the sea. Then he heard another voice ’Now throw yourself!’ That he didn’t do. (laughter) Now he writes to me that he could not do that. But then he should not have done the first either! If you are not courageous enough to follow the inner voice… if it is really the inner voice you should follow it. But to throw the mala is so easy – to throw yourself is risky.

So now he is worried, feeling guilty. Now he wants to come and is afraid that he has done something wrong. Wait. The negative moment comes – wait and watch and it will go. And finally one has to remain available for the ultimate, when both can be dropped. Then you are with me. Then it is no more a relationship and there is no possibility of its breaking because it is no more a relationship. It is communion – it is no more a communication.

Source – Osho Book “The Madman’s Guide to Enlightenment”