According to Osho, the color of company is neither an inevitable compulsion nor a random accident; it works by law, like fire: it burns only if you put your hand in. Satsang dyes you only when you come close, open, and receptive—without masks, roles, or labels. Keep your doors shut and nothing happens; offer your whole being, and the false burns while the gold is refined.
People change you only if you open up to them; if you stay closed or hide behind masks, nothing sticks.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, does the color of company inevitably rub off, or is it only a matter of chance? Please explain!
It so happened: in the French Revolution the Bastille was broken open. There were imprisoned there France’s most heinous offenders. Only those who were sentenced to life imprisonment were confined in that fortress. There were some five thousand prisoners there—some had been inside thirty years, some forty, some even fifty. The chains and fetters put on those prisoners had no locks, because there was no need for locks; there was no key either, because there was no question of opening them—when they died, then their hands and feet were broken to remove the chains. For until death they were to remain in prison. The revolutionaries broke the Bastille and tried to free the prisoners by force, to drag them out of their dark cells. Many flatly refused, absolutely refused; they fought and quarreled—“We don’t want to go!” I understand them. Do not laugh; you too should understand. A man who…
About George Gurdjieff, an opponent spread in France: Avoid Gurdjieff as one avoids plague. There is truth in it — the plague’s victim may survive; Gurdjieff’s victim will not. The one who is struck in satsang is struck forever — he cannot return as he was. Hence people avoid. Or if they come, they go deaf and stone-like; or, if they join, they join half — never whole. And until you are one hundred percent, you are not joined — for less than a hundred, no union happens. Have you seen? Water becomes steam at a hundred degrees. Do not think that at ninety-eight some steam should appear — not even one percent. Even at ninety-nine it does not. Let there be the slightest lack — water will not turn to vapor. At exactly a hundred it does. So it is with His color.
Osho, you have dyed thousands in your color; what is the magic behind it?
The magic belongs to God; there is nothing of mine in it. As long as there is “mine and yours,” magic never comes. Where mine-and-yours vanish, from there the magic begins. That is the one who colors; the color is his. Understand it like this: you take up a brush and paint a picture. The brush does not paint; it is in someone’s hand. I am in his hand. If there is victory, it is his; if there is defeat, it is his. I am utterly carefree. I have no stake in it. I am not making any effort to color people. You see, I don’t even step out of my room—but people keep coming! I don’t know who summons them! I had set out alone toward the destination, but— I had set out alone toward the destination, but— People kept joining along the way, and a caravan formed. I…
Low-born, vile, slow of wit. And yet where have you seated me! Now I understand: I am as much yours as are Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira. Your compassion makes no distinctions. Your grace showers alike. Whoever opens his vessel is filled. I too, a carder, am filled. In the sky’s great dome the carder sits—my Satguru taught me the art. What art? The art of disappearing. The heart must be pierced by love’s spear. Only one thing must happen at the feet of a true Master; then know you have been with him. Being with a Satguru is not physical proximity. It means: be near by being nothing; be near by disappearing. Wipe yourself out. Do not protect yourself. Lay your whole being at the feet. The leaves of sin and the burrs of bad intelligence fall off—effortlessly, effortlessly. Then miracles upon miracles—I have seen them, says Dariya.
Osho, I find your words very full of rasa, very delightful. But as a stage actor I want to go deep into the art of acting. So I am not yet ready for sannyas. Nor do I want to be limited to a single ochre color. I am interested in colorful clothes, because life too is colorful, rainbow-like. Can I come from time to time for your darshan without becoming your sannyasin?
But I had to choose some symbol. And I chose saffron deliberately. Deliberately—because for some five thousand years saffron has been in the wrong hands. It must be taken back from them. This lovely color has become a symbol of the denial of life. Yet it is the color of life, of spring. Hence its other name: basanti—the color of spring, when all flowers bloom. I don’t know how this spring-color fell into the hands of the wrong people—enemies of flowers, lovers of thorns—people who lay thorn-beds and sleep upon them, who long for thorns, who torment themselves in every way, who are filled with violence. Since there is risk in doing violence to others—for others will answer back—they do violence to themselves. No one can answer that, no one can defend against it. It became the symbol of the self-violent. It became the symbol of hypocrites—those who say one…