According to Osho, the issue isn't being 'my' sannyasin but being a sannyasin - surrendered not to a person but to existence. Begin with whatever little trust you have; like learning to swim in shallow water, trust deepens through living naturally and attentively. As surrender to life matures, you'll discover, indirectly and authentically, your connection with me - one that cannot betray because it arises from your own insight.
Yes - start with a tiny bit of trust in life itself, grow it gently, and one day you'll naturally feel close to me without forcing it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, to have such an incredible opportunity to ask you a question, and to be so fearful of doing so, shows me how little trust I have. Can I still be your sannyasin?
And this has happened all over the world. Everybody is feeling unworthy because he aspired in the very beginning to find the end. Naturally it was impossible -- he could not reach it -- and that stopped him even starting the journey again. I used to live with one of my professors, in the same house. I was living alone and he felt that, looking at the condition of my cottage... he said, "It will be better you come and start living with me" -- because I had my bed just near the door, so that I could simply jump into bed, jump out of it... I never used to enter the house, because who is going to clean it? When he saw this situation he said, "I have never seen such a way of living." Just in front of me was my bathroom; that much space was all that…
That is the way of a sannyasin: to live like a lotus leaf in the pond. Live in the world but remain absolutely unattached, non-possessive, non-clinging. Live as freedom, then God is yours, then truth is yours, then you are yours! Anand Sanatano. Anand means bliss; sanatano means eternal. Happiness is momentary, hence happiness is bound to be followed by unhappiness. They are like day and night: one is followed by the other inevitably. Hence even when you are happy, you cannot be really happy, because deep down you know unhappiness is on the way. Bliss means something which is timeless, a happiness which is not followed by unhappiness. It comes and remains forever. It only happens once, then it is forever, that's why it is called eternal: it has a beginning but no end. And that is the goal of life; sannyas is only a methodology to attain it.
Beloved Osho, why don't I trust you?
How long will you be able to pretend with a person with whom you have to live in love? You can pretend in the marketplace, you can pretend in the Lions' Club and the Rotary Club -- smiles, all smiles. You can do beautiful acting and role-playing. But if you live with a woman or a man for twenty-four hours a day, then it is tiring to go on smiling and smiling and smiling. Then the smile tires you, because it is phony. It is just an exercise of the lips, and the lips become tired. How can you go on being sweet? Your bitterness will surface. Hence by the time the honeymoon is over, everything is over. Both have known each other's reality, both have known each other's phoniness, both have known each other's falsity. One is afraid to become intimate. To be intimate means you will have to…
It is from a new seeker, greg ewart. Osho, I want to become a sannyasin; but surrender means love, and I have never experienced love, nor have I ever established a meaningful relationship with anyone else. If I take sannyas now, my decision to do so would be an intellectual, maybe a hypocritical one. I would feel as though I were using you. How can I become a simple, sincere sannyasin?
I am the black door -- and there is no other way to know me except by entering me. You say you have never loved. Unless you love, how will you know? You say you have never been in any deep, intimate relationship. Unless you are, how you are going to know it? Love, surrender, trust, are like swimming. You have to go to the river. You cannot make it a condition that you will not get into the river unless you know swimming. If you make that condition you will never learn, because there is no other way to learn it. You have to go, cautiously of course, slowly of course; there is no need to go to the deepest part. But enter -- find a spot where you can learn swimming and where you are not afraid to die. Don't enter into me, just give your hand to…
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.