Go to the Master not to get something, but to drop your ego and be empty so truth can fill you.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I earnestly pray that you do answer this question. How should I come for the Master’s darshan? When a disciple goes to the Master, how should he go? With the Master, how should the disciple be—what should he do and what should he not do? Asked by “Vishnu Chaitanya.”
A disciple is one in whom the unquenchable longing to learn has arisen; in whom the thirst to learn has been kindled. The thirst to learn is not ordinary; the urge to teach is very ordinary. The thirst to learn is extraordinary. Everyone wants to be a guru; to be a disciple is rare. You claim to know even what you do not know, because the claim of knowing satisfies the ego. You answer even about things you know nothing of—how could you admit that there is an answer and you don’t know it! You give such advice that, if someone followed it, he would fall into a ditch, because you are not advising from experience—you are enjoying the taste of advising. Have you seen how people relish giving advice! Just get caught in their clutches and everyone is eager to advise. It is good that people do not take…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, HOW CAN I BECOME A DISCIPLE? What is the need to become a disciple? Why should you ask such a question? Do you feel your life is meaningless, that you need some meaning? Do you feel your life is empty and you would like fulfillment? Do you feel you are in darkness and you would like to be in the light? The whole thing depends on you. If you are contented as you are, if you are not missing anything as you are, there is no need to be a disciple. Why bother a master, and why go into an unnecessary search? But if you have emptiness, meaninglessness, anxiety, anguish, confusion, darkness; if you feel your whole life is nothing but misery, then to become a disciple is very simple.
Osho, you say the same thing in countless ways. But when I listen to you, it feels as if I am hearing it for the first time. And I feel so much joy that I don’t feel like going back home. What should I do—what can I do—so that I can just keep listening to you!
You will feel as if you have been made to rise out of season, before time—as if you were not yet to go and yet had to go. And if you go in that way, your home will become even more desolate than before. I do not want to make your home desolate; I want to make your home a temple. I want that when you go home, your home’s new form is revealed. I do not want to tear you away from home, from the world, from family life. That is the newness of my sannyas: I do not want to sever you from the world; I want to join you to the world in such a way that your connection with the world becomes a connection with the Divine. Let the world no longer be a barrier between you and the Divine; let it become a means. If…
Osho, yesterday you explained that with joyful awareness (sukh-purvak surati) resolution happens on its own. Yet I find myself having to go through great effort, practice, and labor—why? How long, and why, must a seeker pass through so much effort, toil, and austerity?
If there is laziness in the mind, even little things feel like great effort. It’s a matter of your interpretation. In truth, you are not exerting at all. I tell you, those who are near me and engaged in “practice” are the people on earth who are laboring the least. You have no idea what real effort is. When a person is deeply lazy, even trivial things seem like toil. What are you actually doing? What is it you keep calling “great effort”? Which great effort are you making? You dance a little—and you call that great effort? Is dancing an effort? Dancing is joy! But your perspective is wrong. If you take joy to be effort, you have missed. Dancing is celebration, a juicy happening. Where is the effort in it? If even dancing is effort for you, then what would non-effort be? If I tell you, “Just sit…
Osho, the witness, the seer, consciousness is always separate—virginal and unbound. And the whole play of life is nothing but the movement of the gunas within themselves. In such a situation, if a person’s qualities of sattva, rajas, and tamas are calmed in a scientific or chemical way, or if a person is made sattvic, will he then attain that ever-free witness? If the witness is forever free and present, then by chemically altering the three gunas will it not be revealed? Would the person not then become religious? What is the fundamental difference between solving the problem arising from the
Sadhana means we are dissolving the current itself, not breaking the bulb. There is no point in breaking the bulb. In fact, the bulb is useful; it tells you whether the current is flowing or not, whether there is current or not. Your anger within tells you you are still sunk in ignorance. Lust tells you your life energies have not yet become aware. If we remove these elements, anger will stop manifesting and you will also stop knowing that you are in deep ignorance. It is as if a man is sick and we snatch away the symptoms of his disease so that he doesn’t even come to know he is ill. And keep in mind, anger is an opportunity. Only the unwise say anger is simply bad; I do not say so. Anger is an opportunity; you can use it badly or well. Anger is a chance. In…