Darshan 30 March 1978
[A sannyasin who is leaving says: It's like a step into the unknown, to go back. I don't know what's happening and I don't know how I'm going to live anymore.]
Yes, it is... it is. You will be back soon. Once you have lived with me you cannot live anywhere else.
Sooner or later every sannyasin has to come to me and be here forever. The world won't taste so beautiful again. You will feel like a stranger and you will not feel that you are being understood.
We are creating here a totally different milieu of understanding, of accepting, of reverence, of respect for the individual. We are creating a different kind of world based on love, in love and for love. The ordinary world is against love. It does not give freedom to the individual, it does not have any respect for the individual, it does not accept the individual and his way of life. It enforces its own ways, its own structures, on the individual. It accepts the individual only if he is ready to yield to its pressure.
It accepts the individual only if he is a slave; that means if the individual is not an individual.
So it will be difficult, it will be hard, but it will be a great experience too. You will be able to see what has happened to you here; in contrast it will be very very clear and loud. So it is very good to go back once and then one feels one is finished with the outside world. Then you can come and become part of my heart....
[Another sannyasin, leaving says: I seem to have lost all certainty. I know nothing....
That's good, says Osho. All certainty is stupid, it is part of the stupid mind. When you open up to existence, certainly certainty is lost. It is so vast, you can't figure it out. This is beautiful - it simply shows that you are losing your knowledge. Now I am taking away the ground on which you have been standing. Soon you will be falling into an abyss. But uncertainty is beautiful... it is intrinsic
to life, to its flow. It means there are still things to know, things are still growing, you haven't made conclusions.
Let all your certainty be lost; become a child again - innocent, ignorant.]
[Another sannyasin, leaving, says: I wrote you a letter last week... I was feeling rather desperate at the time. It was just telling you about how I'd come here and how confused I've become... It's better now.]
That I know - that has to happen to every seeker who is going to come to me. You come in search of certainty and I take your certainties away. You come in search of knowledge, not truth. People think that they are searching for truth when really they are only searching for knowledge. And I would like to give you truth, but for truth to happen to you, you will have to become absolutely unknowledgeable; that is confusing. What is confusion? - confusion simply means that now you no more know what is what. Confusion is a freedom.
It is as if a person has lived in prison for thirty years, chained, in a dark cell; then suddenly one day he is released from the gaol. He stands on the road, confused; now he does not know where to go. He has forgotten the taste of freedom. He does not know where he will get his food and where he is going to find a shelter for the night. For thirty years everything was taken care of: food was given at the right time, it was always the same food, the same time to get up in the morning, the same work, the same time to go to sleep, the same wardens and the same gaolers and the same prisoners. Everything was certain; one was comfortable! Those chains were there but they were no more hurting, they had become part of one's being. One had forgotten the sun and the open sky and the fresh air.
Now he is standing in the open. The sun seems dazzling, hurts his eyes. The air smells strange; it is no more the same stale air of the prison cell, it is very unfamiliar. The traffic noise... nowhere to go...
and all the discipline of the gaol - when to eat, where to eat, what to eat - is gone. He had become almost dependent. He would like to go back to the prison cell; then he would be comfortable again and he could rest. He will be missing the weight of the chains on his hands and feet. It is very confusing. In the night he will not be able to sleep because he will miss the sounds of the chains.
Each time he used to turn and toss there was that sound, and it had become so familiar; it was a kind of lullaby. Now he is utterly confused, standing there in an alien world, in a crowd. Nobody seems to be interested in him, nobody knows him.
This is the situation that is going to happen to every sannyasin who comes to me. 1 destroy your prison, and I confuse you. That is the function of a master: to confuse the disciple, to confuse the disciple so deeply that he can never find the old certainties again.
You will try, everybody does, but you will not be able to find them because now you know.... And this is the beauty of knowing: once you know something, you cannot go against it. Now you cannot go back; you will have to go forward into more uncertainty, into more confusion. But with more confusion and more uncertainty you will be moving closer to god.
Knowledge will disappear, then truth happens. Truth is not knowledge. Truth happens in innocence, and this confusion is just preparing the ground for innocence. It's perfectly good. Just be a little courageous and soon you will see that confusion has also gone. First I create confusion, then by the time I see that you have started settling with the confusion, that you are even turning confusion into a certainty, then I take that away too. The whole work is in eliminating everything that you can cling to. When there is nothing left to cling to there is freedom. That freedom is god, that freedom is love.
[Another sannyasin, leaving, says he worries about small things, like where I'm going later in the day or my parents and going home. He feels it cuts him off from taking part in Osho and in the ashram.]
Continue to worry a little, there is no hurry. Mm? you have not yet worried enough. Go deep into your worries, just really go madly into your worries. That is the only way to get out of it: one has to suffer it. Suffering liberates. You want to get out of it without getting into it; that won't be possible, you have to pay the price. The way is through, remember. Never escape from anything. If this worrying is happening then it must be something essential for your being to go through. This is what I call acceptance, trust.
And don't call those things small. They are important to you, otherwise the worry wouldn't happen.
The worry always happens around something important. Those things may not be important for somebody else but for you they are. They may not be important for me but for you they are. The Buddha may say that they are not important but that is about his consciousness that he is talking, not about yours.
A child worries about his teddy-bear and a grown-up laughs at it; but the child has to become grown- up first before he too can laugh at it, and that is the only way he can become a grown-up. If the child listens to the grown-ups and thinks that this is not good; he is worrying about the teddy-bear which is just a toy, such a small thing... he should worry about great things: god and enlightenment and he is worrying about a teddy-bear. What kind of a fool is he?... Then the child will get into more of a mess, because god is meaningless and enlightenment does not mean anything to him. If you put enlightenment on one side and the teddy-bear on another, he will choose the teddy-bear. And I think I am perfectly with him - he is right!
So whatsoever you are worrying about is natural at this stage. So worry! Nothing to be worried about - worrying.... Worry! Accept it. Play with this teddy-bear a little more and soon you will come to a point where it disappears of its own accord; you need not drop it. If you have to drop it, it will come back, because dropping it will mean violently. forcibly, dropping it. The work was not yet complete, you were not ripe yet. For one or two days you may remain enlightened and then you will fall again.
You will be holding your teddy-bear and you will say, 'To hell with god and to hell with enlightenment; I don't want them, I don't care about them!'
Nothing can happen unless the time for it has come, nothing ever happens unless the time is right.
The problem arises because we go on listening to many kinds of people. Somebody says, 'Think of humanity; humanity in such a trouble and you are playing cards? Think of humanity, think of Israel; you are playing cards?' He can create trouble in your mind. You can start thinking, 'What am I doing? - playing cards and people are dying in Israel. Millions are dying from starvation and I am playing cards?'
You can drop those cards but sooner or later you will come back. In fact the more worried you become about Israel, the more you will feel that it is better to play cards. Just to forget all about Israel you will have to play cards!
Just do whatsoever comes natural to you. I respect nature and my respect is absolute. Relax and worry... and things will change.
When will you be coming back?... start worrying about it! Come back soon!
[An 'esoteric' visitor says: I was hoping you'd have something to say to me.]
Become a sannyasin. Risk!
That's why it is better to ask rather than to ask me to tell you, because you may not be able to listen, so what is the point? You may not be able to listen or understand or follow, so don't ask me to tell you something; it is better if you have something to ask, to ask it.
[She asks: what is the next step?]
Mm mm! The first step has to be taken first, the next can only follow. It is very difficult to take the next step unless you have taken the first. It is impossible.
[Osho suggests she do a few groups and meditations.]
They will help immensely. Things will become clear, and you will come closer to me.