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Beyond Psychology

Beloved Osho,
You say freedom is the greatest value for you. You also say your attitude to life is that of Let-Go. It seems to me that you used your freedom to choose to give up the freedom to decide anything, in favour of letting existence take care of you. Is the ultimate in freedom actual total enslavement?

No, I have not chosen anything. I have not chosen, out of my freedom, to allow the existence to take care of me. Freedom is choiceless. In freedom I have discovered, not chosen.
With the eyes free, with the consciousness free, I have discovered that let-go is the way existence functions. There was no question of choice - whether to be with existence or not. It was not either/or, but just the realization that this is the only way existence works. I relaxed with it.
The people who are not living a life of let-go are choosers, because they are going against nature, against existence; they have to choose. The ego is a chooser. When you are completely free of ego, of self, when you are simply freedom, you see it happening that the fight is disappearing and let-go is taking its place. You are nothing more than a watcher. If you choose it, then it is not let-go. How can it be let-go if you choose it?

It happened...

One man came to Gautam Buddha, and he wanted to surrender himself unto Buddha's feet. Buddha looked at him and said, "You cannot surrender."
He said, "Why? Everybody else is allowed, and I am not allowed - what is my disqualification?"
Buddha laughed and he said, "There is no question of disqualification. Just the nature of surrender is such that you cannot do it - it happens. If you do it, it is your doing; it is not surrender. And if you do it, you can take it back. It is never total; you are outside of it. It was your action, so you can decide any moment: no more surrender! But if it happens then it takes all of you, the whole of you, leaving nothing behind which can ever do anything against it."

Simple things... but they become complicated because our mind is accustomed only to doing. And these are not mind things. Surrender, let-go - these are not mind things. For the mind it is impossible to think of them. It can agree to surrender, it can agree to let-go, but it has to be the master, doing it, and it has to be an act - and that's where everything goes wrong.
Surrender is once and forever; let-go is once and forever - just as death is once and forever, because nothing is left that can change the course of things. All has been taken in. You are no longer there to have a second thought.
Just the other day I was shown a statement of Rajen, one of our therapists, who is doing as much damaging work as possible. His statement was, "Up to now I was helping Osho's work through surrender; now he has given me freedom. I will still continue to do his work but my work will be different. My work will be to help people to be free of Osho."
Now, in the first place if he was really surrendered, then there is no going back: you cannot do anything about it anymore. It has happened, and you are dissolved in it.
Secondly, I cannot give you freedom, because if I give you freedom I can take it back. Freedom has to be your realization - and that would have come through surrender, on its own. Surrender flowers into freedom, because in surrender the self is gone, and all the hell that the self creates is gone. Your whole energy is now available to blossom.
I cannot give freedom to anyone. Freedom is not a commodity that I can hand over to you; it has to happen at the innermost core of your being. Surrender only removes the hindrances. You surrender only that which is blocking the way for freedom to come to you.
So on the second point also he is wrong. And then on the third he goes really stupid, saying that now his work will be to help people to be free of Osho. The whole world is free of me - that is not helping them! But what he means... He is now persuading sannyasins not to be sannyasins. And he thinks he is helping people to be in a state of freedom.
There are things which only happen. Let-go is not an action on your part, but just an understanding of the fact that this is the only way the universe functions, and if you are not functioning in this way, you are going to remain in misery. You are not being punished, you are simply being foolish. The old religions have given the idea to people that if you do wrong, you will be punished; if you do right, you will be rewarded - because they were all dependent on doing, and that's their basic fallacy.
Religion begins when you cross the boundary of doing and enter into the world of happening. Then let-go happens, because you see that this is the only way things work. If you go against it, you are miserable.
Nobody is punishing you; you are simply being stupid. If you try to get out through the wall and hit your head, do you think it has been a punishment? And there is the door, always available for you to get out. Knowing about the door, you try to get out through the wall and smash your face. Old religions call it punishment. It is not punishment, it is simple foolishness. And the person who goes out of the door into the garden, in the sun, in the air, is not being rewarded; he is just being intelligent.
So if you ask me, I will say intelligence is the reward; unintelligence is the punishment. In its ultimate form: unintelligence is hell, intelligence is heaven.

(Osho - Beyond Psychology #22)