Walk Without Feet 04

The first question:
Osho,
Listening to you in the discourse, it is the pauses, the gaps, between two sentences, two words, that roll in my ears like thunder, tearing me open and tearing me apart.
I am being taken to a space beyond tears or laughter by your silence. What is happening to me?
I am happening to you. Allow it. Sometimes it will be frightening, scary, because you will be going into spaces you are not acquainted with.
You will be moving beyond yourself. You will be entering the unknown. And the unknown is always frightening. The new always creates great fear. With the old, one feels perfectly comfortable. The old always feels cozy, snug. With the new, you have to learn again. With the new you have to become a child again. The new happens only to those who are ready to become children again and again and again – because the old knowledge, the old experience, the old life, will have no meaning in the new. It will be irrelevant. You will suddenly feel ignorant facing the unknown; hence the fear, hence the clinging to the past.
Remember: the journey to truth is a journey from the old to the new, from the known to the unknown, from the closed to the open. And I can happen to you only in the pauses.
Words are used to create the pauses – not vice versa. I am saying things and talking to you just to give you an experience of silence. Those pauses are the most significant thing that is being delivered to you, being transferred to you. Be available in those pauses.
They will tear you apart. They will destroy you. That’s why I say I have come to destroy, not to fulfill. But remember: the only way to fulfillment is through destruction. If you are destroyed utterly, only then will you be utterly new. Through crucifixion is resurrection.
Let me first become your crucifixion. Let me first become your cross. And then the second thing follows naturally: nothing has to be done about it. To die is to be reborn.
Die in those pauses, in those silences, in those gaps. In those gaps, my meditativeness is flowing toward you – receive it. Receive it with great joy. Receive it as you would receive a guest, a cherished guest. Open the doors of your heart.
And, yes, there will be great chaos with it – I will bring chaos in you – but that is the only way stars are born: out of chaos. I will bring great upheavals in your being, I will uproot you from where you are because that is the only way to transform, to transplant you onto higher plenitudes. And there are higher and higher plenitudes, there is no end to it. This is an eternal pilgrimage.
I know fear is natural, but don’t get caught by it. Leave it aside. Move in spite of it.
Always remember: the difference between a courageous man and a coward is not that the courageous man has no fear and the coward has fear. No, that is not the difference. Both have fear – in the same proportion. Then where is the difference? The difference is that the courageous man goes in spite of the fear, and the coward stops because of the fear. Both have fear.
If you can find a courageous man who has no fear, then how will you call him courageous? He will be a machine, not a man. Only machines don’t have fear. But you don’t call machines courageous. How can you call a machine courageous? Courage simply means that something is happening in spite of the fear. The fear is there, the trembling is there, but it is not stopping you, you are not being blocked by it. You use it as a stepping-stone. Shaking, trembling, still you go into the unknown.
To be a sannyasin is to choose courage. Both possibilities exist in every human being: fear and courage. All will depend on which you choose between the two. Never choose fear. It cripples. It paralyzes. It destroys you without giving you a chance of resurrection. Courage will also destroy you, but that destruction is very creative – it will give you rebirth.
Fear and courage both destroy – but fear simply destroys. The seed simply rots. When you sow the seed of courage in the soil, then too it dies – but it doesn’t rot. It dies – it dies into a new phenomenon. A sprout comes up.
Courage will kill you as much as fear, but fear will simply kill you without giving you a new life. Courage will give you a new life. Choose courage – always choose courage.
It is arduous, but it is adventurous too. It is difficult, it is uncomfortable, inconvenient, but it brings great ecstasies too. One has to pay the price for those ecstasies.

The second question:
Osho,
If my mind still controls and blocks my feelings, how do I discover what is the next appropriate step for me to take?
Listen to this question again, very carefully: “If…” It is not a true question; it starts with “If.” It is as if you are asking a hypothetical thing. You are supposing a question.
Never ask such questions. At least be honest about your questions. If they are there, then ask. And I know the question is there, but you don’t even want to take the responsibility for it. The question is valid – but you start with “If”? Can’t you say “This is my problem”? You want it to appear theoretical? You want it to appear impersonal? Then you will miss the answer – because I don’t give answers to theoretical questions.
This is not a philosophy class – I am not teaching you philosophy – I am teaching you life; not a philosophy of life, but life itself.
Remember: when you ask a question, let it be true. Don’t camouflage it, don’t cover it. Don’t try to be clever with me, otherwise you will be at a loss.
It may have happened unconsciously; I am not saying that you have put that “If” consciously. You are not that conscious, I know. It must have happened mechanically. You may have learned the trick of how to ask questions and remain aloof, and detached, and out of them.
This is not the way to write or ask a question with me at least. You have to be in your question. I am going to be in my answer, and if you are not in your question, where and how shall we meet? If I am in my answer, I am absolutely there.
You have to be in your question – only then is the meeting possible. And the meeting is the solution – not the answer, not the question: the meeting. The point where my consciousness touches your consciousness. But if you are not in your question and I answer it, how am I going to touch your consciousness? You will be absent. I will be knocking on a door where you are not.
Don’t be so afraid of the answer. Be authentic. Be existential. Let the question have the flavor of your being. Let the question have life – it should have a heart which beats, it should breathe. Only then is there a possibility…
You kill the question from the very beginning: “If?” “If my mind still controls…” as if it is not controlling and you are asking for others’ sake.
“If my mind still controls…” and just watch how many times in such a small sentence “I,” “my,” “mine,” have come. “If my mind still controls and blocks my feelings, how do I discover what is the next appropriate step for me to take?”
With so much “I,” whatever step you take will be wrong. With so much “I,” a right step cannot be taken at all. The “I” is the poison. It will destroy whatever you do.
With so much “I,” if you love, your love will turn into hatred. With so much “I,” if you meditate, your meditation will be nothing but madness inside. With so much “I,” if you look at the flowers, you will not see the beauty. The “I” is ugly, and it creates ugliness all around it.
In fact, the very question: “…what is the next appropriate step?” is because of the “I.” The “I” wants to control not only this step but the next too. It has been controlling all your past steps, it is controlling your present step, it wants to control the next step too. What do you mean by “appropriate”? That which fits with your ideas of right, true; that which fits with your idea of religion, spirituality. And what do you know of religion and spirituality? What do you know of truth? How can your next step be adequate, appropriate?
Any step that is in accordance with the truth, any step that has the quality of suchness in it, is appropriate. But what do you know about suchness? You have lived in the mind – with the “I,” “me,” “mine.” All that you know is just rubbish. And out of that rubbish, you want to take an appropriate step? Remember: out of the mind there is no appropriate step; out of the mind all steps are inappropriate. Why? What do I mean when I say that? Let us move slowly into this phenomenon.
Life brings a situation. Those situations are always new. Life is immensely creative; it never repeats. Even if you feel it is a repetition, it is not. There are vital differences, subtle differences…may not be available to you on the surface, but have you seen two mornings exactly the same? Have you ever come across two roseflowers exactly the same? Have you come across two human beings exactly the same? What to say about human beings? You cannot find two pebbles exactly the same. You can search the whole earth…
Life is always fresh. That is the meaning of being alive – life is always moving into new spaces. And your mind is always old; it knows nothing of the new. It knows only of the past. It knows only that which has happened. It accumulates experiences. Experience means it has happened. And remember: life is never going to repeat the same situation in which that experience happened. And you act out of the mind, hence there is always a gap between you and life – and nothing is appropriate. How can it be appropriate?
You act out of past experiences and life is always creating new spaces. You never meet with life, you never merge with life. You are always inappropriate. Your answers don’t fit the questions that life raises. Your responses are not responses but reactions.
To be appropriate means to me to be spontaneous. Not to act out of the mind is to be appropriate: to act in this moment, to act utterly in this moment, to see the situation and to act, respond to the situation.
Don’t search in your memory for what is appropriate, because the memory will supply you with answers which are not appropriate and cannot be appropriate. The memory is always irrelevant. You have to put the memory aside. You have to be in a kind of absolute exposure to the reality, to the situation that is.
And let your total being respond. Don’t decide about it. Don’t rehearse it. Don’t prepare for it. Let it respond! And then it will be appropriate.
When you are not, it will be appropriate. When the mind is not brought in, it will be appropriate. When it is spontaneous, it will be appropriate. Bring a little preparation in it, just a little bit, and you have poisoned it, then it is never appropriate.
Life is not a school examination where you go prepared. That’s why schools are so ugly – they don’t prepare you for life, they destroy all possibilities of life. Schools have to disappear from the world, and the colleges and the universities. They are antilife. They believe in rehearsals. They believe in giving you fixed answers – as if there are fixed challenges! – the basic fallacy.
And a third of life is wasted in the university. By the time you are ready with a PhD, one third of life has gone down the drain. And what are you ready for? You have simply bookish answers crammed into your head; you have become a computer. And now, with all that knowledge, whatever you do will be inappropriate!
A knowledgeable man has never been known to be appropriate – never. He always goes on missing the train; he is always late. He is never to the point – he cannot be. His arrows never reach the target – they cannot, because the target is moving and his ideas of it are fixed.
Education no longer prepares you for life: it prepares you for death. Your universities are cemeteries where the past lives; it goes on killing the present – and the future too. Education, as it is in the world now, is very reactionary. A totally different kind of education is needed – not that which simply goes on helping you to cram answers, but that which helps you to be open, which helps you to function from a state of not knowing.
That’s what meditation is all about: a state of not knowing. Then whatever you do is going to be appropriate because then you are no longer the doer – then existence is the doer. Then life itself is responding.
Just try to observe a few moments when you are spontaneous – they will give you such joy.
For example: somebody is drowning in the river and you stand there and you think about it: “What should I do? What is appropriate?” If you are a Christian missionary, you will think this is a great opportunity to help and serve humanity – this is a way to reach heaven and be special there. And you repeat in your head all the quotes from the Bible, what Jesus has said – that service is the way to God… And then you jump! You are not concerned with this poor human being who is drowning: you are concerned with your ego trip you call spirituality. You want to be virtuous.
This is so ugly. This spirituality, this religiousness, this service, is so ugly. It is not a spontaneous act; it is not out of your heart, it is out of your head.
And if your head has been prepared in a different way, for example, if you had been born into another religion… There exists a religion in India, a sect of Jainas – Terapanth: if you had been born into that sect, then these ideas wouldn’t come to you. A follower of Terapanth will stand there on the bank, he will also think just like you are thinking, but he will think… His scriptures say: “Everybody suffers according to his karmas. Now, this man is drowning, he must have done some bad karmas in the past.” And his scriptures say: “Don’t come in the way of anybody’s karmas.” Now, he is being punished by his own karmas – you need not jump and save him. That will not be a help; you will be hindering, you will be delaying! If you get him out of the river and you save him, one day he will again have to fall into the river and drown. The mathematics of karma: he has to. Maybe he killed his wife in a past life by drowning her in water – now he has to suffer.
Now think. From these two different minds: the Christian thinks this is an opportunity to go to God, and the Jaina thinks this is an opportunity not to get emotional – it is foolish to jump; it is emotional, sentimental. He has to control himself not to jump and not to save this human being because he is suffering his karmas – let him suffer so that he can be finished with it. Next life he will be born in a better life, in a better way.
Now both these people are acting out of their memories. Can’t you see a third possibility: just acting out of the spontaneity of the moment, on the spur of the moment – neither a Hindu, nor a Christian, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Jaina, nor a Buddhist…nobody? Just acting out of the situation itself? Then it is appropriate.
That is my definition of appropriate. Act out of the mind and it is inappropriate; it is not true to the situation. Act without mind and it is appropriate.
Now I will read the question again: “If my mind still controls and blocks my feelings, how do I discover what is the next appropriate step for me to take?” Don’t think of the morrow. Just be in this moment, spontaneous, and out of the spontaneity of this moment the spontaneity of the next will follow of its own accord. You are not to plan for it.
But we have become great planners. You come from the office and you start planning on the way what your wife will ask and how you will answer, and you prepare everything. You go to the office from the house and you know what your boss is going to say and what you are going to answer. You go on preparing. You don’t trust life.
To trust life is to be appropriate. What do I mean by trusting life? I mean let the moment come, let it happen; be there present, be available. And then whatever happens through you is good, is virtue.
Virtue is not a decision on your part. Sin is a decision on your part. Whatever you decide becomes a sin. The word decision is beautiful. It is made of two words: de, cision – it means “cut off.” Every decision cuts you off from life. When you act out of decisions, you act against life. When you allow life to take possession of you, everything is appropriate.

The third question:
Osho,
I am gathering courage to ask this question. No buddha ever hung his picture round the neck of his disciples – yet you are doing it.
Is there any purpose behind it?
Every buddha has his own eccentricities and craziness – this is mine. And I am not supposed to repeat anybody else’s eccentricities: I can have my own.
And remember: there is no purpose behind it. There is no purpose behind any of my activities here. It is just to make you a fool, that’s all – so that when you go into the world, you look ridiculous!

The fourth question:
Osho,
You have said not to condition children with our ideas. What about sannyasin children? Why not let them choose consciously whether and when to take sannyas? For example, for children living in the West – outside of the ashram, anyway – can’t the fact of their being sannyasins condition them in their relationship to other children or to their environment?
Can I ask you a question? Have you taken sannyas consciously? Who has taken sannyas consciously? If you are conscious, then what is the need, in fact, of taking sannyas? In that way, everybody is the same as children; grown-up makes no difference.
Children are truer. It often happens: a sannyasin mother or father brings a child to take sannyas and he falls asleep – and that is the true picture of a sannyasin! But he is authentic and you keep your eyes open, that’s the only difference. You are fast asleep with open eyes and the child is true: he is asleep so he has closed his eyes – that’s all. Why keep your eyes open when you are asleep? What is the point of it?
The only difference I see between you and the children is that you are asleep with open eyes, unnecessarily straining your eyes, and the child is perfectly at ease.
Sometimes it happens: I give sannyas to children when they are snoring but that is my experience with you too. So I don’t see the point, why they should be prevented. If they are to be prevented from sannyas, then everybody has to be prevented. And if you are not prevented, then why be hard on children?
Sannyas is just an initiation toward consciousness. It can’t be expected from you that you should be conscious when you take sannyas.
Sannyas is medicinal. When you are ill, medicine is needed. If a doctor makes it a condition: “Come only when you are healthy – I am not going to pour my medicine into such an ill body. First get healthy and then come,” then what is the point? Sannyas is medicinal – because you are unconscious, it is needed. I cannot expect you to take sannyas consciously; that is impossible. If you can take sannyas consciously, then you can do anything consciously. Then what is the problem? If you can take sannyas consciously, why can’t you eat consciously? Why can’t you walk consciously? Why can’t you love consciously? Where is the problem then? Then you will be conscious. You will be a buddha and sannyas will not be needed.
You cannot be conscious, that’s why sannyas is needed. Sannyas is a beginning, not an end – first thing.
Second thing: the question is – “You have said not to condition children…” Sannyas is a process of unconditioning, remember it. It is not a process of conditioning: it is a process of unconditioning.
What am I doing here? I am not giving you knowledge – I am taking your knowledge away. It is a kind of mind-wash. I am simply cleaning your mind, effacing things, taking your ideas, helping you to drop those stupid fixations. I am not giving you anything as a substitute for them. You would like that very much.
People come to me and say, “But give us some philosophy to live for!” Life is enough. What do you need a philosophy to live for? Life in itself is more than enough. They say, “That’s right – but something to live for, something to hope for, something for inspiration” – something so that they can plan, so that they can destroy the future, so that they can stop being spontaneous.
People say, “Some discipline is needed.” Particularly religious people, when they come to me, are very shocked that I don’t give any particular discipline to sannyasins. Do you think wearing orange is a discipline? Or having the mala around your neck is a discipline? Or the change of your name is a discipline? Do you think these are disciplines? These are games. These are not disciplines.
Discipline is when you move into a Christian monastery. Discipline is when you become a Jaina monk – then what to eat, what not to eat, how much to eat, when to go to sleep, how much to sleep, then a twenty-four-hour program is given to you. Sooner or later you become a robot, you become just a machine, a perfect machine; efficient, but a machine. You are no longer human beings.
I am not giving you any discipline. I give you only awareness – because to me awareness is the fundamental thing. If you are aware, you will find your discipline yourself. Who am I to give it to you?
And any fixed discipline will create problems – it will be inappropriate. How can you decide for tomorrow? And when you have a character, you have decided for tomorrow – that is the meaning of character. That’s why in society, people who have character are respected: because they are predictable people, you can rely upon them. You know that this man never speaks a lie; he can be used in business – you can rely upon him, he will never speak a lie. He has character. This man will not steal; he has character – you can rely on him, otherwise he will take your money. This man will not start an affair with your wife; he has character – you can rely on him, he can be allowed to remain in your house and work. This man will not suddenly jump upon you and kill you; you can rely on him, he has character. He has never done anything like that. He has certificates.
A man of character simply means one whose past is so fixed that you can rely on it that he will not be able to change it in the future either.
I don’t give you any discipline, any character. My basic approach is that one has to be utterly characterless. To be characterless means to be without the past. I am not saying that you have to commit murder and you have to start stealing and robbing people – I am not saying that. But I am saying this: that you should not be predictable like a man of character.
Yes, you will not commit murder – not because it is your character but because of your awareness you cannot do such an ugly thing. Not because it is against the Ten Commandments and Moses and Manu and Mahavira, no – but because your inner voice is against it. You will not rob anybody, not because it is written in the scriptures that you will suffer in hell, but because the very idea does not arise in a conscious mind.
A conscious mind has a fluid discipline about it – but fluid, it changes according to circumstances.
A man of character is like one who goes out to the market and it starts raining but he will not open his umbrella because he has never opened it before – he is a man of character. But my sannyasin will open the umbrella! And when it stops raining will close the umbrella. The umbrella is to be used; it is not a fixation. When it is too hot, you move inside the house, you search for coolness. When it is too cool and getting cold in the house, you start moving outside to search for the sun’s warmth.
Life should be fluid, natural. That’s what sannyas is: it is an unconditioning. It takes your character, your knowledge, your past – you – away from you. It makes you fluid. It helps you to melt. It is unconditioning.
You ask, “You have said not to condition children…” Yes, don’t condition them – and sannyas is a way to protect them from conditioning.
“You have said not to condition children with our ideas.” Sannyas is not an idea. It is a device. It is a method, not an idea. Just by becoming a sannyasin, you stop being a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist. Just by becoming a sannyasin, you stop being an American, an Indian, a Japanese, a German – these are ugly boundaries. They are no more valuable than what dogs do – they urinate and make a boundary, and that becomes their territory. These national boundaries are nothing but dog boundaries made by urinating. They are ugly.
By becoming a sannyasin you become a citizen of the earth – you are no longer an Indian, no longer a Tibetan, no longer a Chinese. You claim the whole earth, and that is the beginning of claiming the whole universe. Passports are ugly, visas are ugly. They simply show that the world is not yet free. They simply show that there is no freedom of movement in this world, that you cannot enter a country freely, that there are a thousand and one obstructions, that you cannot choose your country freely, that this whole earth is not available to you, that these nations are nothing but big prisons. You are allowed to move inside, but you are not allowed to move outside. This is ugly.
A sannyasin is a world citizen. Sannyas is the beginning of a new concept of consciousness, that we are all one. This may be the only place on the earth where nobody bothers who is a Jaina, who is a Hindu, who is a Mohammedan.
I was worried about my old parents when they came and stayed here – I was worried that it would be too much for them. But I was very happy when they went to take their meals with Krishna Mohammed and Radha – I was so happy! That was a great step. Otherwise, they are orthodox Jainas.
In my childhood I had a Mohammedan friend. It was very difficult for me to invite him sometimes for tea or for food, very difficult. And even if I would insist, my family would allow, but then we would have to sit outside the house to eat because the Mohammedan cannot sit inside. And when I insisted again and again, then they had to prepare separate pots and things for my friend. They were kept only for him; nobody would touch them.
The world has lived like that, with a thousand and one divisions – of religion, of sect, of politics. To be a sannyasin means you are dropping all divisions. You are declaring humanity is one, and this whole planet belongs to us. This is our home.
And when we have a really great number of sannyasins roaming around the world, then many things can become possible. It depends. If we have enough sannyasins around the world, it can usher a new era. Passports should be dropped someday, visas should be dropped someday. We should declare that we are free to move. Nobody can prevent us! We are free to live wherever we want. And the freedom of movement is one of the basic freedoms.
Why are nations so afraid? Why so many visas and passports and boundaries and borders? There are very, very deep reasons you may not be aware of. In fact, the traveler is a dangerous phenomenon for closed societies. Why? Because the traveler brings new concepts of life; his existence is disruptive to the orthodox, to the conventional.
For example, my sannyasins moving in India are a problem. What is the problem? They don’t do any harm to anybody.
Just the other day, a couple was just holding hands outside the ashram. Not doing anything – just sitting silently holding hands, and a man jumped upon them and started shouting and abusing, “You are destroying our Hindu culture! I don’t allow my children to come in Koregaon Park because if they see you people, they will be destroyed.”
I would like my sannyasins to roam around the earth as much as possible, to destroy children, to destroy these chauvinists – Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan – it doesn’t matter who they are. Roam around the earth, be mobile, and with you the fragrance will spread.
That’s why Russia does not allow people to enter – there is great fear. Communist countries are very much afraid. If hippies start moving in Russia, Communism will be gone – because then the Russian youth will see what is happening in other parts of the world: “People have become so free, and we are prisoners!” They are not to be allowed to see that.
That’s why people in Pune are against my sannyasins. What is the fear? If you are right and your religion is right and your morality is right, then why be afraid? The fear is that your morality is not right – it is repressive, it is forced, it is violent. And if your children see my free people, of course they would also like to be free. That is the fear. They would also like to hold a woman’s hand – it is natural, graceful, lovely, divine. But the Hindus are very repressed – even to hold the hand of your own wife is a great revolution; even to talk to your own wife, one feels guilty. Now, these ugly hangovers of the past can be protected only if new fresh winds are not allowed to blow.
Sannyas is the beginning of a world citizenship. It is the beginning of a world which will be religious but without religions. Sannyas is not an idea, it is a device, it is a method – a method to uncondition you. And it is very good that children should be sannyasins from the very beginning – so nobody can condition them. Once they have tasted freedom…
Neerja was telling me that little Siddhartha falls in love with little girls – little Siddhartha! – and not only that: sometimes he tries to make love to them. Now this is great! Now he has no inhibitions, no taboos. He will grow up into a beautiful human being.
To be a sannyasin means you will be allowing freedom to the children, you will not impose anything on them, you will not impose your ideas; you will not like them to become imitators. Sannyas is just symbolic of a great freedom.
“Why not let them choose consciously whether and when to take sannyas?” In fact, many of them choose as consciously as you choose – many of them. When their parents become sannyasins, they are thrilled with the idea. Sometimes it happens just otherwise.
Geet Govind is here from Esalen: his daughter took sannyas first – just a small girl. She has turned Esalen on – a small girl, five or six years old. She became interested first in Dynamic meditation and now it is difficult to prevent her – she goes on doing it, morning, evening; whenever she has time she does Dynamic. Geet Govind was asking me how to stop her. And she enjoys it and she is going crazy in it. She became the catalytic agent – then the father, then the mother, then other people.
Life is so mysterious. One never knows from where the thing will start. And it is not the first case: many times it has happened that children have taken sannyas first because they are of course more courageous. They don’t care about others’ opinions. They are not calculative. They are not worried about their jobs – they have none. They are not worried about their wives or husbands – they have none. They are not worried about their children – they have none. They have no investment yet in life. They are free.
It happens many times: children take sannyas first, then the mother starts feeling, then the father starts feeling; then they also gather courage. So, often the children take sannyas on their own. Sometimes the parents take first, then the children. The children are interested; they also want to be orange people: “What is it?” They want to be insiders. They don’t want to be left outside.
And sometimes, only sometimes, very small children have been initiated – because their parents would like to protect them, to protect them from Christianity, to protect them from Mohammedanism, to protect them from Hinduism. I cannot say no because I know sannyas will be protective.
Sannyas gives no ideology, but it protects you from other ideologies. Otherwise you cannot avoid it – your children will be conditioned. The church is after them, the politician is after them. You have to create some protection for your children, so that the priest and the politician don’t come in. Otherwise, they will grab hold of them – in the name of religious education, in the name of Sunday school, Bible class, this and that, they will catch hold of the child.
And once the child is conditioned, it becomes an unnecessary waste of life and time and energy to uncondition him. It is better to leave him wild, leave him open.
And with sannyas, there is one thing: if your child wants to leave sannyas when he is grown up, there is nobody to prevent him. I am not preventing anybody from leaving. The moment you want to leave, you can leave without any guilt. That is for you! If the child later on feels that he does not want to be a sannyasin, then who is after him? He can leave it.
Sannyas is given easily and sannyas can be dropped as easily. There is no commitment as such. If there is any commitment, that is of your consciousness, that is your inner feeling – but nobody is after you, nobody will condemn you: “You have become a sinner and now you are bound for hell!”

The fifth question:
Osho,
Today you told us to become responsible for our own lives and be responsive to our own inner being, and thus to take the reins back into our own hands from the hands of others. How does this fit in with surrendering the reins to you? I listen to my inner voice and sometimes it revolts against what you want me to do. Am I only hearing my ego? Are there any limits to surrendering to a master?
The question is from Swami Prem Pramod.
First thing, Pramod, do you think you have surrendered to me? Ever, for a single moment? My observation is that you have never surrendered. What do you want to take back? You have never surrendered! You have never surrendered those reins – they are in your hands.
You were just befooling yourself that you had surrendered. What happens actually is: you ask me if you can do something with a decision already in the mind. If I say something that goes with your decision, you feel surrendered. You say, “Perfectly good. How deeply I am surrendered to Osho!” If it does not go with your idea and your decision, then your inner voice says, “This is not right.”
Surrender comes only when things go against your decision – not when they go with your decision. Then what is the point of surrender? And I have been watching Pramod: if things go his way, then he is absolutely surrendered. If even a slight thing goes against his idea, then the revolt.
Nobody is telling you to be in such a trouble. You can drop sannyas! Why create anguish unnecessarily for yourself? And I am interested now in helping many people to drop sannyas. Before the new commune, I want to sort out my people. Either you are with me or you are not with me – both are good. Don’t feel guilty. If you cannot surrender anything, at least you can surrender your sannyas to me – and that will be a great favor.
You have some idea that you are obliging me by surrendering – what are you surrendering to me? I am not obliged to you. I am not gaining anything from your surrender, remember this perfectly well. What do you have to surrender to me? Your diseases, your madnesses, your ego, your mind, your past. I don’t gain anything out of your egos or out of your illnesses and anxieties. So don’t think that I am obliged to you, that you have done something great, a great favor to me by surrendering. Don’t be stupid!
And when you surrender to me, do you think anything reaches me? I am just an excuse. If you can surrender without any excuse, perfectly good. I am just a peg – you can hang your things on me, so that you are unburdened. That’s the point. And once you have known the freedom of unburdening, once you have known the freedom that non-ego brings, then you will see the point, see what surrender is. Then you will see that nothing was to be surrendered. You had nothing to surrender – just the idea of “I,” a very illusory idea, has been destroyed by surrender.
Surrender is like a thorn: you have a thorn in your foot… You have been walking in the garden and you have got a thorn in your foot and I supply you with another thorn. This thorn can help the other thorn – you can take the other thorn out with it. When it is taken out, you have to throw away both because both are thorns.
Ego is a thorn, surrender is a thorn – surrender is just to take the ego out of you. It is a device. Once the ego is gone, surrender is gone too! When the illness is gone, the medicine has no more relevance; you don’t carry the bottle and the prescription. It is finished. But you will always be grateful because without the other thorn, you would have suffered from the first.
Surrender is a device to bring you out of your ego. If you don’t want to come out of your ego, I am not much interested in bringing you out of your ego; it is none of my business. If you are interested, I am available. If you are not interested, perfectly good. The door is open.
And what inner voice can you have? The inner voice comes only when the ego has gone; otherwise, the ego goes on pretending to be your inner voice. The ego is a great pretender – beware of it.

And the last question:
Osho,
Is the quality and expression of one’s enlightenment richer, deeper, and more creative if one allows oneself to complete one’s worldly trips, rather than dropping them in the name of spirituality?
Certainly. How can you drop if you have not lived your life totally? If you have not known sex, how can you drop it? It will linger, it will surround you in subtle ways; it will become an undercurrent in your unconscious. How can you drop anger if you have not lived it?
Nothing can be dropped without experiencing it in totality. Only total experience helps you to go beyond.
The spirituality that comes without experiencing life is impotent. That is the difference that I want to bring to your consciousness. That kind of spirituality has existed on the earth down the ages, and that’s why man is so ugly. It is because of that kind of spirituality. It has made you repressed; it has not transformed you. It was against this, against that – against everything. It was against life, it was antilife. It has not allowed you to live your life joyously – to see, to feel, to experience, and to go beyond through experiencing.
Knowledge liberates – not the knowledge that you gather from scriptures, but the knowledge that comes through experience. You become angry again and again and again, and you start feeling the foolishness of it, the utter ridiculousness of it, the poisonousness of it, the destructiveness of it. One day the fruit is ripe; not that you decide “I will never be angry,” but just the fruit is ripe and it falls of its own accord. And anger disappears as if it had never existed in you. It simply evaporates.
Live your life. Live a life of variety, a multidimensional life, and you will be richer. And, naturally, when a man has lived in all the dimensions of his life and comes to enlightenment, his experience is going to be richer. At least his expression is going to be richer.
And finally: you can only come to enlightenment when you have lived truly. Those who think that they have come to enlightenment without living life are only deceiving themselves and nobody else. They are carrying the whole world in them – unlived, it remains there. They are carrying seeds.
Patanjali divides samadhi, enlightenment, into two types: samadhi with seed and samadhi without seed. What he calls sabeej samadhi – samadhi with seed – is when you have not lived and subtle desires are still hankering to be fulfilled. You have repressed the seed but it is there, and it will assert itself when the right season arrives. When the spring comes, it may start sprouting again. You can repress your sex for your whole life, but even at the moment of death it may assert itself.
Repression is not revolution. Revolution is through experience. Maturity is through experience. Enlightenment is ultimate maturity, beyond which there is none else. How can you find a shortcut to it? There is none. You have to go through the whole of life, tasting its sweetness and its bitterness, feeling its agonies and its ecstasies, watching its ups and downs, the sunlit peaks and the dark nights in the valley, the sadness and the joy of it. All has to be lived.
You have to be a sinner and a saint. One who is only a saint is a poor saint, and one who is only a sinner is a poor sinner – you have to be a saintsinner or a sinnersaint. You have to live all that existence makes available to you. You have to live it unconditionally. And then one day: the quantum leap, enlightenment.
A beautiful story for you to meditate…

Pope Paul XV lay in the Vatican close to death. Scores of doctors were consulted, but none could come up with an answer. A pall of anxiousness hung in the air. All the possibilities were canceled out. Finally, one doctor came and said that the pope’s state was due to his life-long celibacy and the only thing to do was for him to make love. Once would be enough.
A very embarrassed bishop came to break the awful news. “Your-a Holiness-a,” he began, “You hafta maka da love to a woman-a to save-a your life-a. Terrible-a news-a I have-a to geeve-a you.”
The pope looked up slowly. “Dees is a sad-a, sad-a day-a for da Catholic-a church-a; there’s-a no-a other-a way-a?”
The bishop shook his head. “No-a, Your-a Holiness-a, I’m afraid-a not-a!”
“Well-a,” said the pope. “Eef I-a must-a, den I-a must-a do-a dees-a terrible-a thing-a. But I do eet on-a four-a condeetions-a only-a.”
“Yes, yes-a, anything-a,” said the bishop, some-what relieved. “And what-a are your-a four condee-tions-a?”
The pope drew a long breath.
“First-a, she must-a be a Catholic-a.”
“Of course-a, Your Holiness-a.”
“Second-a, she-a must-a be a virgin-a.”
“Yes, Your Holiness-a.”
“Third-a, she must-a wear-a a blind-a fold-a so-a she-a does-a not see-a who ees-a doing dees thing-a to her-a.”
“Yes-a, Your Holiness-a, and-a da fourth-a?”
“Fourth-a, fourth-a, she gotta have da beeg-a tits-a and da nice-a bum-bum!”

Enough for today.