I am not a guru - at the most a friend

[A new sannyasin reminds Osho that he had darshan with him a year ago but did not take sannyas because he had just left the Israeli army and wanted to see a bit of life.]

Mm mm, good, but that was not the right time - one has to wait for the right time. Many times people come to me but still they don't come to me. They can talk but they are not talking. Only when the right moment arrives, when you fall en rapport, when something clicks in the heart... then the communication! Otherwise we can talk and we can meet together but togetherness does not happen that way. It happens somewhere deeper, in your very depth of being. When it happens there, then only is it of any meaning.

So many people will come and will go back and will have to come again. Later on they cannot believe why they missed for the first time, why they couldn't get into it before. It was not right... but now the moment has come! Good!

[Another sannyasin says she is off touring. Osho tells her, you can go, but it is just the mind that is restless. You can go South, you can go North, but unless you go inwards nothing is going to happen.

Things are the same everywhere - the same nonsense, the same illness, the same madness. The houses may be a little different but the people who live in them are just the same: they fight and quarrel, are angry and possessive and full of hatred. Love has disappeared; they are tired and fed up. The real problem, he continues, is that man is not happy with himself. One has to learn the art of being happy by oneself, then one can travel. Then wherever you go you will carry a heaven around you. Right now you don't have those eyes that can see beauty, you don't have those ears that can hear music....

[A visitor says he will be staying another two months, but is unsure whether to take sannyas.]

Wait, mm? There is no hurry about it - let it come.

Let it come. It is nothing to be forced upon yourself.

And not only this, but never force anything upon yourself: anything forced remains superficial. Let it come from the very core of your being. It is coming, I can see it on the way: soon it will come and erupt in your consciousness. When it comes by itself... And it comes; one has just to be a little patient.

Being here with me, how can you avoid sannyas? It is going to happen, that's what you have come for, but this is how life is so mysterious. You are not accidentally here; you may think so but you are not accidentally here. There are connections, nothing is accidental, and there are deep causes.

So it is going to happen, it has already happened somewhere deep down; the news just has to reach to you and sometimes the news takes time. It is a very old kind of communication system, it doesn't travel very fast!

There is a parable in Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Thus spake Zarathustra'.... Zarathustra comes down from the mountains and he meets an old hermit who is praying to god. Zarathustra laughs and says, 'Have you not heard the news that god is dead? To whom are you praying? You surprise me! Have you not heard the news - that god is dead?'

The hermit is puzzled. What nonsense is this man talking? But this man looks very authentic, Zarathustra himself... one of the most godly men who has ever travelled on the earth. The hermit is shocked and doesn't say a single word. Zarathustra looks at him and he says, 'It seems I have come a little early; the news has not arrived. And the wonder of wonder is that it is you people who have killed him... and yet the news has not arrived? Man has killed god and the news has not yet reached man. It takes time....'

It is a beautiful parable. Somewhere in the unconscious you are already a sannyasin. And Zarathustra is right - somewhere in the unconscious, man has killed god. Not that he has killed god - how can you kill god? - but he has become godless, that is the meaning. And it is not suddenly this century that has become godless, it has been coming and coming for three, four centuries. For three, four centuries the human unconscious has been preparing the ground for godlessness.

We cannot take the whole credit for it, mm? It is three hundred years work of millions of people:

Marx and Freud and all kinds and all sorts of people have been working hard to make man godless.

And now when it has happened even man is puzzled, even priests are puzzled - and they have been the murderers. They are puzzled, very much puzzled: what has happened? Their hands are red with god's blood, they are the most responsible people, but even they are puzzled because the news has not reached them yet.

In the same way many things happen. Between the conscious and the unconscious there is a vast difference. and we have made our life in such a way that we don't allow the unconscious to have its say: we protect ourselves from the unconscious. The unconscious is like a wilderness and our conscious is like a small english garden - well-groomed, prepared, symmetrical, the lawn and the buses and everything cut in size and shape and everything man-made. And just beyond the fence is the wilderness. If you allow it it will run over the man-made garden; it will destroy it.

And that's how it is: the unconscious is vast and tremendous, uproarious like a sea, and we live in a small, small corner of our being where we have made everything clear and everything is put in the right order and disciplined and controlled. Somehow we go on managing that small area of our being and we are very much afraid so we create great walls around this area. We don't even want to remember that there is a wilderness outside which is waiting and knocking on the doors and wants to come in.

That's why the unconscious sometimes takes so much time to reach to the conscious. That's why it tries to convey its messages through dreams when you are fast asleep, when the conscious is no more functioning and the guards are a little sleepy.

But it is coming - it is just on the door and any moment that you slip, it will be in. And I hope you slip soon!

[The visitor says he has done some kabbalistic groups and they were very good.]

They are good. That is one of the most secret sciences and much is possible through the Kabbalah, but the Jews have completely forgotten about it. And because they have forgotten Kabbalah they are a people without religion - the only race which is without religion.... Because Kabbalah is the basic, fundamental, essential religion for them and they have forgotten about it. It is almost as if Hindus forget about Yoga - then it will be a meaningless religion. It is as if Buddhists forget about Dhyana, Zen - then it will be meaningless.

Exactly like that, once Jews have forgotten Kabbalah they have forgotten everything. Then you go on carrying your dead scriptures and.... But that is history, it is not religion, and kabbalah is one of the most fundamental sciences ever developed for human transformation... it is almost a science.

[A sannyasin said that he imagines he is being asked to leave India because of a past experience in the States with a guru, and he feels this guru is still watching over him.]

It is just your imagination again... just your imagination!

[The sannyasin answers: But nevertheless I feel physical sensations.]

Yes, you can create them because imagination is a great power. The guru has no power but imagination is powerful. The power of the guru is nothing but the power of your imagination, and the real guru will make you alert about and aware of your own power.

The pseudo guru will pretend that it is his power; it is your imagination, and you are free to give as much power to your guru as you decide to do. If you want to you can give him all power; it is your projection. But imagination is a powerful faculty, the most powerful: reason is just impotent in comparison to imagination.

All that happens through imagination; nothing happens through reason. First it happens through imagination; then reason comes in and figures it out, that's okay. Reason comes only secondary:

it gives explanations, analysis, makes things clear, de-mystifies things, but nothing ever happens through reason.

Just the other day I was reading about Albert Einstein. He says that his theory of relativity didn't happen through reason. He relates a very strange phenomenon. He says, 'It happened in my body...

it was kinesthetic.' He says, 'Obviously, naturally, I was very much puzzled.' He could not figure out what was happening. It was something of a bodily sensation and he could not even find where to put it, how to pigeon-hole it, into what category, and what concepts to use for it.

For months he remained dismayed but he continued to search and seek to put it into rational terms.

But this is very strange that he says, 'It happened first in my body, a bodily sensation, and then for months I had to find words and language and mathematical formulae to put it in order.'

All that happens is intuitive. It is your power; please don't bring that guru in! Nobody has power over you except yourself. You can give this power to somebody, then he has power over you, but my work here is really to make you free of all kinds of gurus.

I am not a guru, at the most a friend, and I would like you to be unburdened of all the gurus... and I am included! If you start giving power to me, I don't like it. It is your power. Because if I accept - and it is very flattering... When you go and give some power to somebody it is very flattering to him, he will not be able to reject it. He will accept it with a smile. You are falling into his trap on your own.

Why should he say 'This is your power'? Gurus have exploited people as much as leaders have...

but these are not really gurus.

In the East we have two words, 'guru' and 'satguru'. The guru is just a teacher, the satguru is the master. The master is one who makes you utterly free of all kinds of entanglements, who makes you really free of all kinds of bondage. He will not allow you to put any kind of projection on him; he will not function as a screen.

It is your imagination and that very imagination is telling you to go away, to do this and that. That imagination will create many troubles for you because the imagination is there, the power is there, but you are not yet in a state of meditation. Imagination becomes very destructive if there is no meditative quality around it - then it can go berserk.

The same imagination can become madness. Madness is imagination gone berserk, that's all. Mad people are very imaginative people: they could have been great poets or painters or inventors or mystics. Many mad people have the qualities of the mystics and all the mystics have the qualities of mad people; it is the same imagination.

Imagination alone is dangerous, imagination plus meditation, then you are in a right balance. Then the meditation will never allow you to go beyond the limit and it will use your power of imagination in a creative way.

[The sannyasin says he has done nine groups but no meditation, except everyday living.]

That's very good, but for a later stage. That's very good, mm? but just wait a little. Become first a paramahansa, then...!

Just do a few meditations - you need meditation, you need it urgently, because this imagination is....

And you have a powerful imagination; it can drive you anywhere. If you don't do meditation and you simply eat and sleep, then what will you do? You will imagine, you will dream.

Put your energies into meditation, at least one meditation. For twenty-three hours be la y, one hour pull yourself out of it. And I don't feel that this is the time for you to go - be here.

Prem means love and prateeksha means waiting with infinite patience. Love waits, love can wait infinitely, only love can wait. If you love, you have such trust that you can wait.

And god comes only to those who know how to wait. God never comes through desiring, he comes through waiting. Waiting is a passive desiring: you desire and yet you don't desire; you desire and yet you don't say 'right now!' You say, 'Whenever it happens, I am happy and I am contented.

Whenever you decide, that's the right moment: this life or another life, it doesn't matter. I will be waiting, I will wait forever!'

Time becomes irrelevant for one who can wait; hurry is no more there. And when there is no hurry and no time-consciousness, in that very instant god happens. God can happen this moment. We just need to be utterly silent and waiting.

So this is the paradox: if you ask that he should happen right now you will have to wait very long...

maybe forever; if you are ready to wait forever he can happen right now. In fact if you can wait he has already happened in that very waiting. He comes so silently, even the footsteps are never heard.

So meditate over it and allow that feeling of waiting....