If you stop wanting anything from the master and just love, you feel him inside you everywhere and always; wanting things makes distance and time seem to matter.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I feel warm love in your presence and now I realize that when I am not close to you it does not happen in the same way. Is it still true that time and space do not make any difference in the great affair between master and disciple?
People's understanding was absolutely wrong that Ananda, who had burst into tears, must have loved the master more. Asked, he said, "I am crying because he was alive, and for forty-two years I have been his most intimate disciple -- intimate in the sense that I was always with him. In these forty-two years not even for a single day was I separate; even in the night I used to sleep in his room, just to be present in case he needed something. I am not crying because I was the most intimate, I am crying because even with such a long physical intimacy I have remained separate from him. Something has remained like a barrier." Gautam Buddha was not dead yet. He had closed his eyes, and he was relaxing into the eternal. He came back, opened his eyes, and said to Ananda, "Don't be worried. It was my…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, YOU HAVE BEEN MY FAVORITE UNCLE AND MY FATHER, MY MIDWIFE, A LAUGHING CHILD; MY BEST FRIEND, AN ANCIENT SAGE, MY FAVORITE STORYTELLER, AND MY MASTER... MY FIRST THOUGHT ON WAKING, MY LAST AT NIGHT.... YOU HAVE BEEN WARM BROWN EYES, A GENTLE HAND, FEET FOR MY HEAD; A TINGLING IN MY BODY... SOMETIMES A SILENCE, SOMETIMES A SONG.... YOU HAVE BEEN A HIT, A GLANCE, A PRESENCE, AN ABSENCE; DAY AND NIGHT, SUMMER AND WINTER -- A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS; A PROMISE OF FULFILLMENT, THE ONLY HOPE, THE ULTIMATE DESTROYER OF ALL DREAMS; THE ONLY REFUGE -- AND THE ONE I SOUGHT TO ELUDE; A MAGICIAN, AND JUST ONE ORDINARY MAN. YOU WERE AN ENIGMA, YOU WERE ME. YOU WERE THE MOON, THE STARS AND ALL THAT MOVED AROUND THEM. YOU WERE THE GREEN AND BROWN, THE BLUE AND GOLD, OF MY EARTH.
Beloved Osho, for ten years I have thought that when you said there is no time-space separation between the master and the disciple, and when you said the disciple has to melt into the master so that their hearts beat together, I thought that you were simply being poetic. The other evening when you were talking about this relationship, I suddenly got that you mean what you say so poetically. I would like to take you home with me in my heart, my beloved master, and I am a slow learner with a frightened heart and only six weeks. Will you come with me this time?
Prem Dheera, the first time you were right, when you thought I was simply being poetic. The second time you were wrong, when you started thinking that I mean what I say so poetically -- I don't mean. If I start going into everybody's hearts it will be impossible to put me together again! You can love me wherever you are. You can feel me wherever you are. But poetry is poetry; don't make it something pragmatic and practical. When I talk about melting and about merging and about having a heart-to-heart communion, don't take it that that's actually what I mean. Those are only indications towards a very subtle phenomenon in which I remain I, you remain you. In fact, you become more yourself than you have ever been before. If love cannot give you individuality, uniqueness, that love is impotent. The power of love consists of giving you…
Last night you spoke of satsang and the importance of the disciple's proximity to the guru. Does this mean physical proximity? Is the disciple who lives at a great physical distance from the guru at a loss?
Yes and no! Yes, a physical closeness is necessary in the beginning because you cannot understand anything else right now, as you are. You can understand the body; you can understand the language of the physical. You exist at the physical, so yes, a physical closeness is necessary -- in the beginning. And I say no also because as you grow, as you start learning a different language which is of the non-physical, then physical closeness is not necessary. Then you can go anywhere. Then space doesn't make any difference. You remain in contact. Not only space, but time also doesn't make any difference. A Master may be dead, you remain in contact. He may have dropped his physical body, you remain in contact. If a trust happens, then time and space both are transcended. Trust is the miracle. You can be in closeness with Mohammed or Jesus or Buddha…
Beloved Osho, thoughts of death have been a frequent visitor during my disciplehood. How can a disciple die in a master's presence, especially when the master is physically distant? Osho, is mahakashyap the only answer?
They opened the door to see whether Ananda was still sitting outside -- because they had told him, "You sit outside. If we need some confirmation from you, we will ask you, but you cannot enter the conference." They saw a transformed being. The old Ananda, the old egoist was gone. An innocent being with tears of joy... and they all could see the light surrounding him. They invited him -- "You come in. Now there is no need for us to be worried. But it is strange... you could not become enlightened for forty-two years, and just after twenty-four hours you have attained that state" -- and this was continuously emphasized by Gautam Buddha. Ananda said, "It was my fault. His death became the death of my ego too." All the scriptures that are in existence are related by Ananda. There were other enlightened disciples who did not die…