Can someone who is not open wake up?

Question: BELOVED MASTER, CAN SOMEONE WHO IS NOT OPEN WAKE UP? Deva Ashoka, it is impossible to wake up if you are not open. Opening to existence is what waking up is all about: open to the sun, to the moon, to the rain, to the wind, open to this whole celebration of the trees, of the rocks, the earth and the stars, of animals, birds, people. Existence is a celebration, a continuous festival, a carnival. If you are not open, if you are closed, if you don't have any windows and doors towards existence, how can you wake up? Waking up and being open are synonymous. People remain closed in their minds. They never come out of their minds and they never allow reality to penetrate to their hearts. A very transparent China Wall divides them from the world. And the world is divine, existence is God.

Osho, what is being open?

Devena, BEING OPEN SIMPLY MEANS being without mind. If the mind is there you are closed. Mind is a wall surrounding you. It is a transparent wall, hence you can see through it and you can go on living behind it without ever becoming aware that you are living in a prison cell. Prisons should be made of glass, then very few people will suffer so much in prisons. They will be able to see the people walking on the road, talking; they will be able to see everything, and they will believe that they are free. If they are not going out and mixing with the people, that is simply their own decision that they don't want to mix with the crowds. They are "aristocrats," they are not ordinary people, they are "special" people. And these walls which cannot be seen will not be thought of as walls, they…

I am groping in darkness. Osho, can't you take me out of it?

I DON'T SEE ANY DARKNESS ANYWHERE. Only you are keeping your eyes closed; the darkness exists not. It is your creation. The sun is everywhere, the light is everywhere, it is full noontide. But you go on clutching your eyes shut, you go on keeping your eyes shut -- hence the darkness. Now, nobody can force your eyes to open. There are a few things you will have to do yourself. If you want to sneeze, you will have to sneeze -- I cannot do that for you. If you want to blow your nose, you will have do it yourself -- I cannot do that for you. There are a few things you will have to do for yourself. This is one of the most fundamental things in life, and it is good that you have to do it yourself. Otherwise, even in your freedom you will be a…

Osho, in a letter you wrote: Do not remain in indecision; do not look back. The temple doors are wide open. After thousands of years such an opportunity descends upon the earth. And know that these doors will not remain open forever. It can be missed easily. Therefore I keep calling: come and enter! I stand at the door, knocking and knocking. And I knock because in some other birth and another age I had given a promise.

At night a chariot arrived. The sound of wheels at the door. In his sleep the head priest felt, He has come. He said, Listen, does anyone hear a chariot? The other priests said, Stop this nonsense. All day you plagued us; will you not stop now? Your head has gone bad. No chariot is coming; it is thunder. They went to sleep. Then someone alighted from the chariot, climbed the steps, knocked at the door. One of the priests muttered in his sleep, Seems someone is knocking. The suspicion was there, the mind wavered—perhaps the dream was true! The chief priest said, This is the limit! It isn’t only I who am entangled in dreams—you are too. It’s just a gust of wind rattling the door. Who will knock at midnight? And is God a thief, to come at midnight? God comes in broad daylight, under the sun. Now…

Osho, you spoke of two kinds of sleep. One is the ordinary sleep from which we wake in the morning when it is complete. The other is what we call spiritual sleep, in which we are all asleep—even during the day. To wake from that sleep too, is it necessary that it also be allowed to complete itself?

When Buddha was born, astrologers said that when he grew up he would either become a renunciate or a great emperor. His father grew very anxious. To become a great emperor—this a father can desire—but if he becomes a renunciate, that would be a painful event. It is easy to touch the feet of a renunciate, but if your own son wants to renounce, it hurts deeply. If someone else’s son renounces, you even go and touch his feet. The father was troubled. He asked the astrologers, “Then what can be done so that he does not become a renunciate?” They said, “Only one thing: see that his sleep is never disturbed at all. Because sometimes, through a disturbance, a man wakes.” It is not necessary that only an alarm awakens you—the alarm is merely a disturbance. Clouds may thunder in the sky and your sleep may break. Some circumstance…