Is sannyas essential to relate to a spiritual teacher?

Osho, is sannyas essential in order to relate to you? I have not yet taken sannyas, nor have I met you personally. Yet I become filled with strange feelings toward you; sometimes I weep, and sometimes I just go on gazing at you. Osho, why does this happen? And what should I do? First, someone has asked: “Is sannyas essential in order to be related to you?” That is like asking whether, to be related, being related is essential.

Buddha called the state of samadhi “dharma-megha samadhi”—when one attains samadhi, one becomes a cloud. Dharma-megha samadhi! The water of dharma begins to pour from him, as rain falls from the cloud. Rise, O rise! For many lives to come, fill yourself today— the cloud has thundered. Do not let this time slip by. The call has arisen; do not suppress it. The attraction toward sannyas has arisen; do not miss it. Because if you wish to do the auspicious, do not delay. And if you wish to do the inauspicious, do not hurry. If anger arises, say, “Tomorrow.” If love arises, do it now—who knows of tomorrow! If you must make enmity, put it off—tomorrow, the day after, keep postponing. But if you are to make friendship, do not delay even a moment. Right now, here. Only then will friendship happen. If you think “again, sometime,” then never. I…

Sannyas means a surrender to God, saying to God, "Thy will be done. All is yours -- I am yours, so whatsoever will happen from now onwards is good." One drops all valuation, judgment, and to live without judgment is to live in beatitude. Prem means love, satsang means a communion with the Master -- a loving communion with the Master. Sannyas is a declaration from your side that you are ready to receive. If the door is knocked on you are ready to open it. If you are called forth you will not hesitate. If some risk is to be taken you will not only take it, you will take it willingly. And then communion starts. Communion means a state of love between the Master and the disciple where all conflict has been dropped. It is the ultimate in a love affair.

This phenomenon of the master and the disciple is one of the greatest contributions of the East to humanity. In the West there have been only teachers and students. Even a man like Socrates is thought only as a great teacher, and Plato and others are his students. In the East we have a great distinction between a teacher and a master. A teacher is only to give you information. A master has to give you transformation -- it is a totally different process. Information is not difficult: you can go on memorising it. That's what schools, colleges, universities are doing: they go on feeding your biocomputer, they go on putting more and more information in you. The master has to transform you; hence deep surrender is needed, because the master will start working on you and it hurts -- it is surgical.

According to me Sannyas is a direct relationship between an individual and God. There cannot be any intermediary. Sannyas is a direct surrender by an individual. When God is present on all sides, there is no need for anyone to be an intermediary between them. If a person wants to surrender to God he can do so. An unfit person begins to be fit by surrendering himself to God. Moreover, the beginning of fitness qualifications takes place by the determination, surrender, and prayers of the unfit. A Sannyasi is not a realized person, to be a sannyasi is simply to make a firm determination to start on a journey to become a realized person. A Sannyasi is simply the first point of that holy journey, it is not the end. It is only the blessed beginning, it is the milestone on that road, it is not the destination.

Osho, can I not be your disciple without taking sannyas?

Narayandas Tiwari! You can be a student, not a disciple. And the difference between a student and a disciple is as great as the difference between a poet and a seer—no less. A student means: someone who will walk away with bits of information, who will gather a little trash of knowledge, whose memory will be a little more stuffed, who will learn to repeat a few fine sayings. But you cannot be a disciple without becoming a sannyasin. For the first prerequisite of a disciple is: to drop curiosity. And not only curiosity—to drop inquisitiveness as well, and to take up mumuksha. What is mumuksha? Curiosity is a childish thing; small children have it—they go on asking and asking. “Why this? Why that?” They drive you crazy. Whomever they latch onto, they make his life difficult. Because before one question is finished, they have already posed another. They don’t…