Sannyas Is Not So Cheap
I want my people to understand it clearly. Neither your clothes,
nor
your outer disciplines nor anything that has been given to you by
tradition and you have accepted it just on belief, is going to help.
The only thing that can create a revolution in you is going beyond
the
mind into the world of consciousness. Except that, nothing is
religious. But to begin with and with a world which is too much
obsessed with outer things, I had to start sannyas also with outer
things. Change your cloths into orange, wear a Mala, meditate, but
the
emphasis was only on meditation.
But I found that people can change their clothes very easily but
they
cannot change their minds. They can wear the Mala, but they cannot
move into their consciousness. And because they are in orange
cloths,
wearing a Mala, having a new name, they start believing that they
have
become a sannyasin.
Sannyas is not so cheap. Hence it is time and you are mature
enough
that beginning phase is over. If you like the orange color, the red
color, perfectly good - it cannot do any harm, but it is not a help
either. If you love the Mala, if you love the locket with my picture
on it, it is simply your ornament, but it has nothing to do with
religion. So now I reduce religion to its absolute essentiality. And
that is meditation. If you are meditating and if you are reaching
higher and higher into your consciousness, thoughts are left far
behind. You experience that your body is just outside you, your mind
is just outside you and you are standing in the middle, the center
of
the cyclone, in utter silence, in absolute beauty, in great light,
in
utter fulfillment. Except the process of meditation, everything is
non-essential.
I don′t want my people to be lost into non-essentials. In the
beginning it was necessary. Now years of listening to me,
understanding me, you are in a position to be freed from all outer
bondage. And you can for the first time be really a sannyasin only
if
you are moving inwards.
The day you take the initiation into
sannyas is not necessarily the beginning of sannyas. It is simply your
indication that, "I am willing to wait for sannyas to happen to me." Initiation
is only your saying yes to existence, and opening all your doors and windows for
the fresh breeze and the sun to enter and cleanse you and make you part of the
whole.
Some day sannyas will begin. It can begin in the moment of initiation, if your
intensity, integrity, your trust and your love are total, but it is rarely so.
It is always sixty percent, forty percent; seventy percent, thirty percent...
There are people who may have ninety-nine percent trust, but that one percent
doubt is enough to prevent... years, even lives. Unless you are one hundred
percent open, unless the very word ′no′ has dropped from your vocabulary, the
great revolution of sannyas will not happen to you.
People who would like to be initiated into Osho′s neo-sannyas should read this.
Read also:
- Confusion, Clarity and The Way
- Are there any sannyasins who have become enlightened? Find it out here.