Is experiencing setbacks part of the transformation process?

Elusive, mm? Surround him from everywhere, and hit him hard! And (to the participant) don't give them an easy job. You resist as much as you can. (laughter) Let it be a challenge... otherwise if you allow them too easily then you will again be moving on the surface. So give a good fight. If you really fight, they will be able to force you, mm? If you simply say okay, I will come, you will not go far. [Osho told the participant to join forces with the next sannyasin who said she was feeling very resistant. Osho told her to be as resistant as possible, because only through the tension of resistance would a peak come, and then a relaxation ] [Another group member says: I discovered a lot but I would also forget a lot by the next moment. Is it important to remember everything?

Beloved Osho, these days, looking inside, I do not find a personality with certain characteristics, but rather an ever-changing flux, totally unpredictable. It makes life in this body feel very fragile, vulnerable and momentary -- a feeling which extends itself to everything around me, shaking me to the roots.

Settle in that witnessing, and all that you are feeling disturbed by will disappear. It is just the first encounter of entering into oneself. Don't go back; go deeper into it. Ginsberg sits down in a Moscow cafe and orders a glass of tea and a copy of pravda. "I will bring the tea," the waiter tells him, "but I can't bring a copy of pravda. The Soviet regime has been overthrown and pravda is not published anymore." "Alright," says Ginsberg, "just bring the tea." The next day, Ginsberg comes to the same cafe and asks for tea and a copy of pravda. The waiter gives him the same answer. On the third day, Ginsberg orders the same and this time the waiter says to him, "Look, sir, you seem to be an intelligent man. For the past three days you have ordered a copy of pravda and three times…

Beloved Osho, I have heard you say, "let go -- no effort is needed." but I am afraid of letting go because then I slip into my old patterns. Please comment.

It is one of the difficulties. Letting go, one can slip into old patterns, old conditionings. Still, take the risk. The fear has some validity; you can fall back into your old patterns. But don't be afraid, just remain watchful; and meanwhile, if it happens that way.... It is not necessarily so that it will happen to everybody, to fall into old patterns. Only those friends who have forced themselves into the new discipline will find it happening, that if they let go they will become their old selves. But it will be good, because that will show you that whatever you were thinking you had become, you have not become. It was just an enforced, controlled, suppressed, inhibited phenomenon. Letting go will make it clear to you. So it is going to help both kinds of people. Those who have grown up into the new lifestyle by letting go,…

I have done very many groups, and had many pertinent growth experiences in which I have really felt that I had changed and gained tremendous new insight. But I still make the same mistakes, and despite everything I have done, still repeat the past as if I have no choice. What to do? Can change be permanent? Or is the work we do on ourselves simply illusion, signifying nothing? Can sannyas be permanent change?

Don't stand in the way of God, that's all. And then He is in the flower, and in the bird on the wing; then He is in the breeze passing through the trees. When you are not there to distort, you will find Him everywhere -- because He is everything. It is a miracle how we go on missing Him. But you are asking for something permanent. The ego can never be permanent; it is a momentary thing. And out of the ego, whatsoever you gain will be lost. You are asking: Cannot a wave be made permanent? The wave cannot be made permanent. The only way is to freeze it so it becomes ice. But then it is not a wave, it is just a piece of ice. Then it is no more a wave because it cannot wave. The aliveness is gone, the dynamism is gone. You fall…

Do you feel, Osho, that the pose of simplicity is merely a kind of somnambulism?

A man who awakens does not need to go to a temple to take a vow: “Now I renounce anger; now I will not be angry.” The situation reverses. If you try to make him angry, it will be difficult. If he has to be angry, then at most—just as earlier he used to act forgiveness—now he can only act anger. And why would anyone want to act anger? Why would anyone want to act hatred? Why would anyone want to act enmity? Awakening must be to all the states of our consciousness, and to all our relationships—because life is in relationship. The man who was imposing simplicity upon himself would run to the forest. Alone, it is easy to impose simplicity, because then we do not even come to know our complexity—it is an escape; we don’t see it. Complexity is revealed in relationship. When you are walking down…