According to Osho, you don't bypass devotion to be his friend; true friendship with a master inherently contains devotion, reverence, love and gratitude. It is a spiritual, multidimensional bond beyond ordinary friendship and beyond dictionary meanings. Trust the heart’s felt truth—its tears—not the mind’s definitions. Let the heart be master and the mind its servant, and the relationship naturally includes all that is beautiful.
You don’t choose between friendship and devotion; real friendship with a master already includes devotion, so follow your heart.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, in my heart I feel full of devotion and respect for you. Slowly, something inside is opening up towards friendship with you. Do I have to pass through devotion to become your friend? I shall remain respectful and pass both of them together.
They only can exist together. The friendship with a master is no ordinary friendship. It has a reverence in it, love in it, devotion in it, tremendous gratitude in it. It is a multidimensional phenomenon. The ordinary friendship is a worldly thing, mundane. The spiritual friendship is not of this world, it belongs to the beyond. I have to use the same words which are used for the mundane because there are no other words, so you have to be alert and aware that whatever I say, you cannot find its meaning in a dictionary. It has much more in it. It is immensely rich. The word is small and very soft and the experience is vast and very infinite. And I can see in you it is not just an intellectual question, your heart is feeling immense pain because you are thinking that friendship means you have to bypass…
Beloved Osho, the other day when you said something like, the more devoted one is the more one can absorb you, I got scared. I don't know what devotion is. In fact, I know it less now than I did five years ago. Osho, am I missing?
When love is so deep, the respect is so immense that everything is forgiven, the disciple can slap the master and yet the master simply laughs -- because he knows his devotion. He knows that this slap has not come from a logical mind, it has come from a loving heart. It is as if with his own hand he has slapped himself -- no distinctions are there anymore. Even to say that the devotee is close to the master is not right, because closeness is still a distance. The devotee is one with the master. His oneness is something not of this world. I will tell you another story -- because there is no other way to explain it. A master is staying in a temple. The night is cold. And in Japan the statues of Buddha are made of wood. There are many statues in the temple, so…
Beloved Osho, many of your sannyasins were happy to hear from you that you are our friend, but it was a great shock for me. My beloved master, will you say something about the master-disciple relationship?
He went, because Buddha promised him; but it was a trouble. Every day he had to be informed of what direction Buddha was in. And morning and evening he would bow down on the earth, tears of joy in his eyes -- just dust in his hands, but he would touch it as if he were touching the feet of Buddha. And people would say to him, "Mahakashyap, you yourself are now a master. It doesn't seem right for you to behave like a disciple." Mahakashyap's answer was, "As long as Gautam Buddha is alive I cannot be the master, I can only be the disciple. Because to be disciple is so beautiful; under the shade of the master it is so cool, it is so protected. When Buddha dies, of course I will be a master -- under the hot sun, there will no longer be any shade over…
Beloved Osho, for some time now you have been saying that you are our friend and we are friends. I'm having difficulty in truly getting it. Osho, to me you are my most beloved master. Please show me where I am missing.
The question is from Vivek. I can understand her difficulty. The same will be the difficulty of all those who have come close to me, loved me, received me in their hearts as a master. I have been saying that I am your friend, and you are my friend for a very strange reason that may not be obvious to you. There was another question from Milarepa -- why are a few sannyasins feeling very resentful towards you, angry with you? This has been an historical thing, that amongst disciples there are always a few who are accidental. The wind was blowing this way and they arrived. They saw a tremendous energy in the disciples, and they became greedy. But it was not a search for truth, it was not a search for love; it was simple greed. They also wanted to be spiritually powerful. They became sannyasins, they became…
Beloved Osho, what is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?
Whether you are for it or against it doesn't matter -- your concern shows where your ego is hanging. And I will include the capitalist in it also: his whole concern is how to gather money, hoard money -- because money has power over matter. You can purchase any material thing through money. You cannot purchase anything spiritual, you cannot purchase anything that has any intrinsic value; you can purchase only things. If you want to purchase love, you cannot purchase; but you can purchase sex. Sex is the material part of love. Through money, matter can be purchased, possessed. Now you will be surprised: I include the communist and the capitalist both in the same category, and they are enemies, just as I include Charvaka and Mahatma Gandhi in the same category, and they are enemies. They are enemies, but their concern is the same. The capitalist is trying…