Question – Beloved Osho, What is Sannyas?

Osho – Moses, sannyas is a crazy way of living life. The ordinary way is very sane, mathematical, calculated, cautious. The way of sannyas is non-calculative, beyond mathematics, beyond cunningness, cleverness. It is not cautious at all; it is knowingly moving into danger.

Friedrich Nietzsche says, “Live dangerously.” He had it written on his table in golden letters: “Live dangerously” — but he never lived dangerously! In fact, a person who is not living dangerously needs to be reminded of the fact again and again every day. On his table, when he comes to work — “Live dangerously.” If you are living it, there is no need to be reminded.

Friedrich Nietzsche lived in a very cowardly way. He had great ideas — just as all philosophers have — but they were mere ideas. The life and the ideas of philosophers are polar opposites: they say one thing; they do exactly the opposite. There is no rhythm in their being; they are going in all directions simultaneously.

But those two words, “Live dangerously,” are significant. Sannyas is a way to live your life in total danger. What do I mean when I say sannyas is living dangerously? It means living moment to moment without any past. The past makes your life convenient, comfortable, because the past is known; you are familiar with it, you are very efficient with it. But life is never past, it is always present. The past is that which is no more, and life is that which is. Life is always now, here, and all your knowledge comes from the past. Trying to live the present through the past is the way of the coward; it is the calculated way. People call it sanity, but it is very superficial and never adequate. There is no rapport with the present.

That’s why millions of people are so utterly fed up with life. Life is such a gift, and people are fed up with it. It is very strange and amazing. Why should people be so fed up with life? The reason is not life itself; the reason is they are carrying the mountainous load of the past: all their experiences, knowledge, information — what others have told them. They have accumulated great junk and they are carrying that junk. And the load is so heavy, and their eyes are covered with so much dust, that they cannot see the beauty of the present. And whatsoever they do see is something other than the reality.

The rural preacher ended his long, dull sermon by requesting the board of deacons to remain for a few minutes after the service. In the group which stayed on was a stranger.
“Pardon me, sir,” said the minister politely, “but I asked that only the board remain.”
“That’s why I stayed on,” retorted the man. “I was never more bored in my life!”

Your religions are boring you, your philosophies are boring you, your scriptures are boring you. Thousands of years of the past are the cause of your boredom. You cannot dance — you are chained to the past, you are imprisoned in the past. Sannyas means escaping from that prison. The prison may be of Hinduism or Mohammedanism or Christianity or Judaism or Jainism — it does not matter what the name of the prison is. On the earth there are three hundred religions; that means three hundred kinds of religious prisons. And there are thousands of ideologies; they are also prisons within prisons. And there are sects and subsects…. You must have seen Chinese boxes — boxes within boxes within boxes. You open one box, then another; you open that and then another; you go on opening and you always find a smaller box within. Each prison has more prisons inside it. Ultimately you are left only in a dark cell.

Sannyas is rebellion against all slavery; it is living life in absolute freedom. To live life in absolute freedom, without traditions, without conventions, without religions, without philosophies, without ideologies — political, social, and others — to live unburdened is sannyas. But it will look crazy to the whole world. Freedom looks crazy because everybody is living an imprisoned life. To prisoners, the person who escapes from the prison looks crazy, because for them prison is comfortable, convenient, secure, safe.

A Hungarian secret police colonel was inspecting a strip of the border.
“Too many people have been slipping across at this point,” he informed the guards. “I have been ordered to test your security precautions.”
After deploying the guards at strategic points, the colonel began creeping on all fours toward the barbed wire.
“Can you see me now?” he called out. When they cried back “Yes,” he started again. On the third attempt he slipped under the fence.
“Can you see me now?” he called back.
“No, Comrade Colonel,” was the answer.
“Then you will never see me again!” the officer shouted as he hastened on his way to freedom.

Sannyas is an escape from the prison — Catholic or communist, it does not matter; it is an escape into the open. To live moment to moment is a crazy way, a poetic way, the way of the lover. People are living lives of prose — clear-cut but mundane, superficial. Anything which is very clear-cut is bound to be superficial. Life is mystery, and the only way to commune with it is through poetry, not prose.

The prose style of life is the ordinary lifestyle. The poetic style of life is sannyas. It is bound to be a little bit crazy — all poets are crazy, all painters are crazy, all dancers are crazy, all musicians are crazy. All that is great on this earth has something of madness in it. Zorba the Greek says to his boss, “Boss, everything is right in you, only one thing is missing — a little bit of madness!”

And I agree with Zorba. Sannyas gives you a little bit of madness, but that little bit of madness brings rainbows to your life. Multidimensional is that little bit of madness. It opens many doors which have remained closed for thousands of years. It allows the sun and the rain and the wind to come in. It gives you a chance to whisper with the clouds and the stars. It is a way of falling in love with existence. To live without falling in love with this tremendously beautiful existence is very stupid, ridiculous. That is missing the whole opportunity of being, of being alive, of being intensely alive, passionately alive.

Sannyas is a risk! The people who cannot take any risk cannot be sannyasins. Hence the people who are Hindu sannyasins are not real sannyasins; they are still clinging to the safety of the Hindu tradition. The VEDAS and the BHAGAVADGITA and the RAMAYANA — the whole past gives them the feeling that they are on the right track: “How can so many people be wrong?” They are following like sheep — a large crowd of sheep, ancient, very ancient, prehistoric! The more ancient a tradition is, the safer it looks.

The person who cannot risk, deals with life in a businesslike way — tries to cheat life, exploit life. He tries to give less and get more, because that is the way of profit. The sannyasin does not care at all about getting anything back from life; he simply gives in sheer trust, and he receives a millionfold. But that’s another matter; that is not his consideration at all. The man who is trying to exploit life will not get much out of it, and whatsoever he does get will remain inessential. He will remain a beggar and he will die a beggar. He will never know what it means to be an emperor.

The sannyasin knows what it means to be an emperor, because he simply gives; he enjoys giving, he loves sharing. And the miracle of life is: the more you give the more you have. When you give totally, the whole sky descends on you, the whole beyond becomes your within. Sannyas is hope — hope against all hope. People have lost all hope; they are living hopelessly. They are living simply because they are cowards and cannot commit suicide.

The existentialist philosophers are right when they say that the most important philosophical problem is suicide: to live or not to live, to be or not to be. If this is life that ordinary people are living, then it does not seem to be worth living at all. What is the point of getting up every morning and going through the same empty gestures you have gone through thousands of times? The same breakfast, the same nagging wife, the same ugly husband; the same suspicions, the same possessiveness, the same jealousy, the same anger, the same ambition; rushing to the office, the same boss — everything is the same, a constant repetition.

And again coming back home and sitting in front of that idiot box called the television, and looking at the same story, the same triangles — two women and one man or two men and one woman — the same story, the same triangle! And you already know the conclusion; in fact, you can write the whole story yourself. But what else to do? Playing cards, listening to the radio, reading the newspaper — it is almost the same. And then to bed again, and the same nightmares…. Nothing seems to be of any significance, and you have done it all, and many times.
The existentialists are raising a significant question: Why go on living? The only reason seems to be that people are afraid of dying, they are cowardly. They are living hopelessly because at least they have not chosen to live. Death has to be chosen, and they cannot take any decision on their own.

Sannyas is choosing your life and also choosing your death. Sannyas means becoming decisive, conscious, deliberate.

No matter how bad the news might be, there was one man who had a stock comment: “Ah well, it might have been worse.”
One day a friend said to him, “I have had an experience to which you can’t apply your favorite cliche. I dreamed the other night that I died, went to hell, and was doomed to everlasting torment.”
“Ah well, it might have been worse,” said the optimist.
“How in hell could it have been worse?” cried the other.
The optimist replied, “It might have been true!”

The way of sannyas is the way of tremendous hope, trust. Life is basically good, beautiful, divine, so if we are missing then something is wrong with us, not with life itself. Life is so beautiful that it makes even death beautiful.

Sannyas, Moses, is not a way of doing anything, it is a way of being. It changes your inner world and, of course, your outer world changes with it, but that is secondary. It changes your center, it changes your awareness, and then your behavior, your actions. Whatsoever you do has a new quality to it, a grace that descends from the beyond — a song said or unsaid, sung or unsung, but it is there within your heart, a dance, the quality of dance to your feet….

Hence, Moses, I say it is a crazy way of living, but that’s the only way to live life rightly. A poetic way, the way of the lover — but only love knows. Logic is blind, love has eyes. Only love can see the ultimate truth that surrounds you within and without.

Source – Osho Book “Come, Come, Yet Again Come”

Question – Beloved Osho, I am seventy-five years old. I want to become a Sannyasin, but I don’t know why i am hesitating.

Osho – Prakash Chandra Sethia, I think you should wait a little more! Let death come first, then I can initiate you into sannyas…because when death has already happened, there will be no hesitation: you will not be there at all.

Seventy-five years old and still hesitating? One leg is already in the grave! Ninety-nine percent is almost dead. Only one percent can become a sannyasin now, and even then you are hesitating. It almost always happens with old people. The people who followed Jesus were all young, almost all of them his own age. The people who followed Buddha were his age or nearabout. The same was true with Mahavira.

The older a person becomes, the more cautious he becomes, and one can understand why. He has lived in the world with so many deceptive people all around. He has been deceived again and again, he has been cheated, so he becomes very cautious, hesitant. He clings to the familiar and becomes afraid of the unknown.

But sometimes it happens that your very cautiousness can be the most destructive thing in your life, because to be very cautious means to die before your death. It is a well-known psychological fact that people die nearabout thirty years of age. Of course, they live on afterwards, and they actually die nearabout seventy or eighty. So what are these fifty years? It is a kind of posthumous existence.

The gay couple were strolling down a Paris street. One kept saying to the other, “Watch out, dearie, don’t step in the doggie-doo! Watch out dearie, don’t step in the doggie-doo. Oh shit! I just stepped in the doggie-doo!”

Making the other cautious, he has forgotten completely about himself! You are becoming too wary, too cautious, and soon you will fall in the doggie-doo! And then it will be too late — it is already late. It is evening time, the sun is setting. Don’t waste time.

An old man of ninety-seven and his wife of ninety-two were appearing before the judge because they wanted a divorce.
The judge was very surprised. “You’re so old,” he said. “Why do you want to separate now, after all these years of being together?”

The old man did not answer. But after some minutes his wife said very shyly, “Your honor, we wanted to wait till all our children died.”

Now, Prakash Chandra Sethia, what are you waiting for — all the children to die first? Now, what is the point of waiting? You have waited enough! And remember, death will not ask you, it will not even inform you, it will not even knock on your doors. It simply comes, and before you have recognized it you are finished.

Before death happens, let sannyas happen, because sannyas in fact has two functions. For you now it can fulfill only one function. It has two functions: the first is the art of life and the second is the art of dying. The first you have missed — next time you are around don’t miss it! But the second is still possible; you can learn the art of dying. You can die peacefully, silently, blissfully, surrendered to God. And in fact, the second part is far more important than the first part, because the first ultimately leads to the second. The art of life is only a preparation for the art of death.

If one can dance, sing and celebrate one’s own death, if one can die in deep consciousness, with no complaint, with no grudge, but in immense gratitude towards God, one has fulfilled one’s mission in life.

Source – Osho Book “Come, Come Yet again Come”

Question -Beloved Master, A few people are feeling not to wear their Malas or Red clothes, But they consider themselves Rajneeshees and want to live here. How does this fit your vision?

Osho - There are no Rajneeshees, and there is no Rajneeshism. That was also part of this fascist regime. You cannot be Rajneeshees because there exists nothing like that. Even I am not a Rajneeshee, so how can you be? So, first thing, forget that you are a Rajneeshee.

Second thing, the mala and red clothes are symbolic of the commune. If you don’t want to wear the mala and red clothes, then pack your luggage and get lost. This is not your place, and we don’t want you to be here. This only shows how the mind moves to extremes. Either you will be a slave or you will be licentious, but you cannot be a free individual.

Your red clothes are your identification that you have dropped all old conditionings, that you are the sunrise of the new man and of the new humanity.

The mala has one hundred and eight beads. It represents the one hundred and eight methods of meditation. Any method will do. It is just to remind you continuously that one hundred and eight doors are open to bring you into light, and you are unnecessarily groping in darkness. Choose any method. I have spoken extensively on all the methods of meditation.

Dropping the mala simply means forgetting the symbolic meaning of the mala. Dropping the mala means that you don’t want to meditate. If you don’t want to meditate, then what the hell are you doing here? It is a meditation commune. And why were you not walking around without the mala and without red clothes before? Cowards!

When everything was being done against humanity and against you and against the law, that was the time to revolt. That time you were just docile. And now, because nobody is forcing you, you are walking around without the mala and without red clothes. You can walk, but that means walk out. And we don’t want anything to do with such people, because these are the people who will again force the same structure.

My picture, and the locket in the mala, is simply symbolic. It is not something sacred. It is symbolic of your freedom from all religions the way I am free! It is symbolic that you are my fellow travelers. It is symbolic of your love.

It is difficult, of course, for me to hang around my neck one million lockets to show my love. It is easier for you. On the one hand you address me, “Beloved Master” — and you cannot have the mala and the locket. I know the reason. In the outside world, everywhere you will go you will be condemned, you will not be accepted. You will be misfits. And I want you to face the world, rather than get lost into the crowd. My picture is enough. You will not be accepted anywhere. So you can decide.

If you don’t have the courage to be rejected everywhere — in your family, in your friends, in your society — you are free. Nobody has told you to become sannyasins. You have become sannyasins on your own accord. Naturally, if you don’t want to remain sannyasins, you are perfectly welcome. But not on the streets of Rajneeshpuram.

Source – Osho Book “From Bondage to Freedom”

Question – Beloved Osho, In place of the ten commandments, with which i was brought up, i have given myself a new set of rules — be alert, be patient, be spontaneous, accept myself.

Osho – All questions are mind questions — no question comes out of no-mind — and all answers are no-mind answers. So questions and answers never meet. You ask a question and I give you an answer. They never meet, they cannot meet, because your question runs on the track of the mind and my answer runs on the track of no-mind. They may run parallel but they never meet. Either I should drop my no-mind — then there can be a meeting — or you should drop the mind. Then there can be a meeting.

And remember, I am not going to drop my no-mind. It cannot be dropped, because how can you drop a no-thing? You can drop a thing, but you cannot drop a no-thing. So you have to drop the mind. Then the answer will be heard, understood. Then it will penetrate you. And the mind is a deeper source of new questions, new puzzles, new riddles, so you can change the ten commandments — you can create another ten. That will not do, because if they are created by the mind nothing changes.

Now the ten commandments have become very old, out of date. They speak in a language of the past. At that time that language was relevant, but now they don’t look relevant. You can change, you can make new commandments, but those new commandments, if they are put together by the mind, will not be of any use. Your mind can think and put them together and they may look beautiful, but they will be false. You can make let-go a commandment, total acceptance a commandment, but if they are put by the mind they are meaningless. Why? It is because the mind cannot allow itself to be a total let-go. It can pretend, but it cannot really allow itself to let go. And the mind cannot accept because the mind exists through rejection; that is why the mind always likes to say no rather than yes.

Whenever you say no you feel the ego; whenever you say yes you don’t feel the ego. That’s why people go on saying no more than yes. They say yes only when it becomes absolutely necessary; otherwise they say no. Whenever something is asked the first thing that arises in your mind is no — because when you reject, you are, and when you accept, you are not there. Yes-saying will create a no-mind. So a theist is a yes-sayer, and an atheist is a no-sayer — he says no — and when you say there is no God, then you feel a tremendous energy in the ego. Then you are.

Nietzsche has said, “If God is then I won’t want to be, and if I am, then I won’t allow God to be, because both cannot exist.” And he is right. How can both exist, you and God together? If you are there, then you are the God. God cannot exist. If he exists, then how can you exist? The ultimate no comes to the mind — no God.

The mind rejects, cannot accept. So you can change, you can think about it, you can change the old ten commandments and create a new ten, but if they come out of the mind they are useless. And if they do not come out of the mind, what is the need? If the no-mind has happened and you feel it, what is the need of commandments? Commandments are for the mind. They are from the mind and for the mind. Rules exist for the mind, because the mind cannot exist without rules. This is one of the most basic things. Rules exist for the false, not for the real. The real can exist without rules, but the false cannot exist; it has to be propped, helped, supported by the rules. You play a game, you play cards — can you play cards without rules? There can be no possibility. If you say, “I will follow my rules and you follow your rules and we play the game,” there will be no game. We have to follow the rules — and we both know that rules are just rules, nothing real in them. We have agreed on the rules, that’s why they exist.

A game cannot continue if rules are not followed, but life will continue without rules. What rules are these trees following? What rules does the sun follow? What rules does the sky follow? The human mind is such that it thinks they are also following rules, moving according to rules. The sun moves, it follows a rule, so there is a ruler — the God who controls everything. He is like a great super-manager. He goes spying on everybody — who is following, who is not following. This is a mind creation.
Life exists without rules; games cannot exist without rules. So real religion is always without rules; only false religion has rules, because false religion is a game.

I have heard that one young woman came to a barber’s shop with her young boy. The boy was dressed like a soldier, looked very dangerous, and he had a toy six-shooter. Immediately he jumped on the chair and said, “Bang! Bang!” He just made noise.
And the lady said to the barber, “I am going to leave my son here for half an hour, I have some shopping to do.”

The barber became uneasy and he said, “If this young man becomes too restless, what am I supposed to do?” — and that young boy was standing with his six-shooter on the chair looking very dangerous, soldierlike.

The young lady said, “If he gets too restless, you will simply have to drop dead a few times, that’s all. If he says, ‘Bang!’ — you drop dead. Follow the rule — that’s the rule — then he will not be restless. So you have to drop dead a few times, and then he will be happy and there will be no trouble.”

All the commandments are, “Bang! Drop dead!” For real life there is no commandment. You flow in it without any rules. You simply be. Why follow rules? Out of your being, everything will happen. These things you say will happen if you are simply there without any rules. Then acceptance will come, let-go will come; then the mind will drop. So these rules cannot be made rules. They are consequences of being spontaneous and total.

If somebody follows them, and he has made a commandment that he has to accept everything, and then accepts, it is false, because in accepting he has already rejected. And if you have to accept something because of the commandment, you have already rejected. Your mind says: Accept! Why accept? Before it has said: Reject. Then rejection has come before the acceptance. But if there is no rejection, how will you be aware of acceptance? You will simply accept and flow.

Become riverlike. Become a white cloud floating in the sky, and let the winds take you wheresoever they take. Don’t, don’t follow any rules. This is what I mean when I say: Be a sannyasin. Just be. Your ochre robes, your mala — these are rules. This is a game. This is not what I mean by real sannyas. But you are so accustomed to games that before I lead you to a ruleless life, in the transitory period you will need rules. Moving from this world of rules, of games, to that world without rules and games, a bridge has to be passed. Your orange clothes, your mala, are just for that transitory period. You cannot drop rules immediately, so I give you new rules.

But be fully alert that your robes are not your sannyas, your mala is not your sannyas, your new name is not your sannyas. Sannyas will be there when there is no name, when you become nameless. Then there will be no rules. Then you will be so ordinary, you will not be recognized. Only then….

But don’t think that now it is okay, so no need to take sannyas and no need to take an orange robe. That is again a trick. You have to pass through this, you have to go through this. You cannot bypass it — and if you try to bypass you will never reach to the other shore.

Rules of the world, then rules of sannyas, and then comes a no-rule state; no, commandments are needed. Don’t change the old commandments — they are okay as they are. You be, simply be, and follow and flow into the being.

Source – Osho Book “A Bird on The Wing”

Question – What do you, you foresee as the future of your Sannyas Movement? Do you see it as prospering, even when you’re not here?

Osho – Sannyas movement is not mine. It is not yours. It was here when I was not here. It will be here when I will not be here. Sannyas movement simply means the movement of the seekers of truth. They have always been here.
Of course, they have been always tortured by the ignorant masses: killed, murdered, crucified, or worshipped.

Remember: it is the same whether you crucify or you worship. Both are the ways how to get rid of those people. One is crucifixion, another is worship. Worship is more cultured. We say you are an incarnation of God, we will worship you. But we will not do what you say. How can we do?

We are ordinary human beings. You were extraordinary — either you were a prophet sent by God, or a messenger, or the only begotten son of God, or you were a reincarnation of God — you could do miracles. We have created all kinds of miracles, only for one reason. To create a distance between us and the people who have been seeking the truth and the people who have ultimately found the truth. We were not ready to go with them. There were only two ways: either to kill them, destroy them, so we can forget them and forgive them.

They were a disturbing element, a nuisance. We were asleep and having such beautiful dreams and a Gautam Buddha comes and starts shaking you and tells, “Wake up!” Naturally you get angry. There have always been a line of seekers of truth… I call it sannyas. It is eternal. It is sanatan. It has nothing to do with me.

Millions of people have contributed to it. I have also contributed my own share. It will go on becoming more and more richer. When I am gone there will be more and more people coming and making it richer. The old sannyas was serious. I have contributed to it a sense of humor. The old sannyas was sad. I have contributed to it singing, dancing, laughing… I have made it more human.

The old sannyas was somehow life-negative. I have made it life- affirmative. But it is the same sannyas. It is the same search. I have made it more rich. I have made it more grounded in the world because my whole teaching is `be in the world, but don’t be of the world.’

There is no need to renounce the world. Only cowards renounce it. Live in the world, experience it. It is a school. You cannot grow in the Himalayas. You can only grow in the world. Each step is an examination. Each step you are passing through a test. Life is an opportunity.

I will be gone. That does not mean that the sannyas movement will be gone. It does not belong to anybody. Just as science does not belong to Albert Einstein. Why the search for truth should belong to somebody? To Gautam Buddha? To J Krishnamurti? Or to me? Or to you?

Just as science goes on growing and every scientific genius goes on contributing to it and the Ganges goes on becoming bigger and wider — oceanic; in the same way the inner world needs a science. The objective world has a science. The inner world needs a science and I call sannyas the science of the inner world. It has been growing but because it goes against humanities attachments, ignorance, superstitions, so-called religions, churches, priests, popes, shankaracharyas… these are the enemies of the inner search because the inner search needs no organization.

Sannyas movement is not an organization: that is why I call it `movement’. It is individual. People join. I had started alone and then people started coming and joining me and slowly, slowly the caravan became bigger and bigger. But it is not an organization. I am nobody’s leader. Nobody has to follow me. I am grateful that you have allowed me to share my bliss, my love, my ecstasy. I am grateful to you. Nobody is my follower, nobody is lower. There is no hierarchy. It is not a religion. It is pure religiousness. The very essence. Not a flower, but only a fragrance. You cannot catch hold of it.

You can have the experience of it, you can be surrounded by the perfume, but you cannot catch hold of it. Religions are like dead flowers you can find in Bibles, in Gitas… When they were put in the Bible they were living, they were fragrant, but now it is only a corpse. All holy books are corpses, dead flowers and nothing else.

Truth, the living truth, has to be discovered by each individual by himself. Nobody can give it to you. Yes, somebody who has achieved it can transpire a thirst in you, a tremendous desire for it. I cannot give you the truth, but I can give you the desire for it.

I cannot give you the truth, but I can show you the moon… please don’t get attached to my finger which is indicating the moon. This finger will disappear. The moon will remain and the search will continue. As long as there is a single human being on the earth the flowers of sannyas will go on blossoming.

Source – Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol6″

Osho – That is why I can initiate anyone into sannyas. To me, initiation itself is a play. And I will not ask for any qualifications — whether you are qualified or not — because qualifications are asked when something serious is done. Just by existing everyone is qualified enough to play, and even if he is unqualified to be a sannyasin it makes no difference, because the whole thing is just a play.

So I will not ask for any qualifications. And my sannyas does not involve any obligation either. The moment you are a sannyasin, or a sannyasini, you are totally at freedom. It means that you have taken a decision, and this is the last decision: to live in indecision, to live in freedom.

The moment you are initiated into sannyas, you are initiated into an uncharted, unplanned future. Now you are not tethered by the past; you are free to live. So a sannyasin, to me, is a person who decides to live to the utmost, to the optimum, to the maximum. Moment to moment you live; moment to moment you act. Each moment is complete in itself. You do not decide how to act; the moment comes to you, and you act. There is no predetermination; there is no preplan.

Sannyas means living moment to moment, with no commitments to the past. If I give you a mala and if I give you new clothes, this is only for your remembrance: to remind you that now you do not have to make any decisions, now you are no longer the old. When this awareness becomes so deep that you do not need to remember it, then throw the robe, then throw the mala. But not until the awareness becomes so deep that now, even in sleep, you know that you are a sannyasin. So a new name, a new robe, a mala — these are just devices to help you; to help you toward freedom, to help you toward total being, to help you toward total action.

Sannyas means that you have come to realize that you are a seed, a potentiality. Now you have taken the decision to grow; and this is the last decision. To decide to grow is a great renunciation — renunciation of the security of the seed, renunciation of the “wholeness” of the seed. But this security is at a very great cost. The seed is dead; it is only potentially living. Unless it becomes a tree, unless it grows, it is dead — only potentially living. And as far as I know, human beings, unless they decide to grow, unless they take a jump into the unknown, are like seeds: dead, closed.

To be a sannyasin is to take a decision to grow, to take a decision to move into the unknown, to take a decision to live in indecision. It is a jump into the unknown. It is not a religion and it is not bound to any religion; it is religiousness itself.

Source – from Osho Book “Meditation the art of Ecstasy”

Osho – Challenge brings integrity; otherwise a person remains hollow, empty. If all facilities are provided for you and there is no danger in your life, you will remain hollow and empty. God gives life with all its dangers.

My sannyas is to accept this challenge. To live dangerously is what my sannyas is all about. The more dangerously you live, the more risks you take, the more you grow, the more you become integrated, crystallized, the more your soul becomes a clear-cut, well-defined phenomenon. Otherwise it remains vague, cloudy, doubtful.

I am all for life. If you ask me, God and his creation are not two separate things. The creator has become his own creation. The creation and the creator are one. I am in immense love with life. And this is my message to you: Love life totally! Get involved with life!

Don’t hold back, because whatsoever you hold back will remain empty. Become committed to life: a multidimensional commitment is needed. Scientists say that even the greatest human beings use only fifteen percent of their potential — even the greatest! What about normal people? They use only five to seven percent of their potential. Just think: if every person was using one hundred percent of his potential, if each person was a torch burning from both ends together, with intensity, with passion, with love, then life would be a sheer celebration. And you would see so many christs and so many buddhas walking on the earth! But because of this old idea of renunciation we have missed much.

I want to bring a totally new concept of sannyas to the world: a sannyas that loves, a sannyas that knows how to become committed, a sannyas that goes to the deepest core of life.

But nobody else can decide it for you. Not even I can decide for you. I can only make things clear to you. I can give you the map, but you have to go, you have to journey, you have to move. And remember one thing: my map will really be MY map and it can’t be exactly your map. It may give you a few hints, a few indications, but it can’t exactly be your map because you are a totally different person. You are so unique that nobody else’s map can be your map. Yes, by understanding my map you will become aware of many things about yourself, but you are not to follow it blindly; otherwise you will become a pseudo human being.

Listen to me, to my words, to my silence, to my being. Try to understand what is happening here, what is transpiring here, and then decide on your own. Don’t throw the responsibility on anybody else’s shoulders. This is the way to grow. This is the way to arrive.

Osho – Remember that sannyas is a new birth, the beginning of something mysterious in life, something that is very elusive. There is no way to argue it, to prove it, but it is. And unless it starts having its impact on you, your life goes on missing the meaning. Once the unknown has penetrated you, life has meaning, and only then. Meaning simply means the penetration of the unknown into the known.

All is not known, and it is good; all can never be known, and it is good. Something is basically unknowable. To be initiated into sannyas is to be initiated into the unknowable. It is a love relationship – love with the whole, love with existence as such. And out of love everything grows: prayer, worship, celebration. Love is the source of all.

Remember it and from this moment be in search of the mysterious that is already around you, within you, without you… but of which we have become oblivious. Because it is so much there, we don’t pay any attention to it. Attention is paid only when something new happens – and god is so ancient.

If something new happens, immediately your mind becomes attracted. If nothing new happens, then the mind goes to sleep. And god is the most ancient – he has been your companion forever and forever; hence we have forgotten him. Now he has to be remembered.