Can a mathematician also become a sannyasin?

Sannyas is a quantum leap, a jump into the unknown, a great courage to become discontinuous with your own past. It is a rebirth. It is a change so great... as if the old dies, and dies utterly and totally and the new comes into being from nowhere, from nothingness, out of nothing. If the new comes from the old it remains the old. If the new is continuous with the old then it is only a modification of the old -- maybe a little bit colored and decorated and changed, with a new dress, with a new mask, but it is not a revolution, it is not a conversion. And sannyas to be true has to be a revolution so total that the old identity is simply dropped -- just as the snake slips out of the old skin and never looks back.

Beloved Osho, what is sannyas?

Moses, sannyas is a crazy way of living life. The ordinary way is very sane, mathematical, calculated, cautious. The way of sannyas is non-calculative, beyond mathematics, beyond cunningness, cleverness. It is not cautious at all; it is knowingly moving into danger. Friedrich Nietzsche says, "Live dangerously." He had it written on his table in golden letters: "Live dangerously" -- but he never lived dangerously! In fact, a person who is not living dangerously needs to be reminded of the fact again and again every day. On his table, when he comes to work -- "Live dangerously." If you are living it, there is no need to be reminded. Friedrich Nietzsche lived in a very cowardly way. He had great ideas -- just as all philosophers have -- but they were mere ideas. The life and the ideas of philosophers are polar opposites: they say one thing; they do exactly the…

To be a sannyasin means to be ready to take this jump. Move from logic to illogic, from rationality to irrationality. It is a kind of superior madness, but that has been always the way of the mystic; he is madly in love with God but his madness is a superior kind of sanity Our so-called sane people are not really sane, just normally insane. You have been searching for long -- now the time has come to be totally committed and involved. A little search is not going to help; it needs your totality. How long will you be here? KAVYO: A year or six months. OSHO: Good. do as many groups as possible... and lose your head! (LAUGHTER). My people are very very skillful at cutting off heads. Soon you will be running around without a head.

Osho, sannyas was born in this land; it was granted the dignity of Gaurishankar (Everest). But today its honor has become merely superficial. Inside, the individual and society alike are afraid of it. Why have sannyas and the sannyasin lost their meaning? Please explain.

In my sannyas there is no prohibition—no “leave this, run from that.” Awakening is enough. Cowards run. Those who awaken remain where they are and are free there. My sannyas does not want to give you knowledge; it wants to give you meditation. Meditation means emptiness; it means: I do not know. Life is such an ultimate mystery that nothing definitive can be known about it. And I want to give sannyas a new posture—creativity. I will call him a sannyasin who sings a new song; who strikes a new music from the veena; who dances a new dance; who makes this world a little more beautiful, brings a little more blessedness to the earth. Then sannyas can regain its dignity. And I would have the sannyasin not imitate. Listen, understand, contemplate—but live from your own individuality. Therefore I give my sannyasins no codes of conduct—only processes to awaken the…

Sannyas means demolishing the whole structure, clearing the ground completely so that a new temple can be built. Sannyas is very destructive in the beginning and very creative in the end. The destructive part is very essential. It has to destroy your ego, it has to destroy your mind, it has to destroy your ideologies, belief systems -- Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, communism. It has to destroy all that you have been up to now. It has to shatter the whole identity, it has to create an identity crisis. Only then can you move into the new -- when you are completely free from the old. To be free from the old is the beginning of the new. And then one can create. One can really be creative and a multi-dimensional creativity can explode. Then life is a joy, then life is a splendor. Then life is a celebration.