Is there hope for someone who feels like a mixture of priest, politician, and scholar?

I am a schoolmaster, a sort of watered-down mixture of priest, politician and scholar -- all that you abhor. Is there any hope for me? Also I am fifty-six -- had I best just live out the rest of this life in patience, and hope for better luck next time?

There is every hope for you, Anand Tejas. And because you have asked the question, the work has already started. You have become alert about your priest, politician, scholar -- that's good. To become aware of a disease, to know what it is, is half the treatment. And you have become a sannyasin, you have taken a step into the unknown already. If you are going to be with me, you will have to say goodbye to your priest, your politician, your scholar. But I feel confident that you can do it, otherwise you would not have even asked. You have felt that it is meaningless, all that you have been doing up to now is meaningless -- you have felt it. That feeling is of tremendous value. So I will not say just be patient and wait for the next life, no. I am never in favour of postponement.…

Osho, entangled in the hope of becoming something, nothing happened. Only the awareness remained that I am. Neither wealth came, nor a house was built, nor music arrived, nor did I become a scholar. Even living itself did not suit me. After coming here, unknowingly I gave life a new direction. The past has been spent in wandering, the present in sannyas, and you decide the future—what will it be?

Deepak Bharti! In life there is only one entanglement, the one and only—and it is there in everyone’s life without exception—the hope of becoming something. You are what you are; you cannot be otherwise. The very effort to be otherwise is anxiety, gloom, anguish. In that effort a vicious circle is born. Then with your own hands you raise new whirlpools; you sink and you rise, you sink and you rise. Your life becomes a long series of dreams—and of every dream’s shattering. If a rose wants to become a lotus, madness is certain. If champa wants to become jasmine, illness is certain. What is, as it is—its acceptance is sannyas. Sannyas means: tathata, thusness; to embrace oneself totally—not in defeat, not as a consolation, not as a sop, because that would be false; but with understanding, with awareness, by seeing this truth: a rose is a rose, and as…

At darshan, from the way you talked to me it seems clear my meditation is to live totally in the here and now. You made it clear I was not to live in hope. T.s. Eliot said, "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing. There is yet faith, but faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting." anything more to say Osho?

THE question is from Pradeepa. She understood perfectly what I was trying to show her. Maturity happens when you start living without hope. Hope is childish. You become mature when you don't project hope into the future. In fact, you are mature when you don't have any future; you just live in the moment -- because that is the only reality there is. In the past, religion used to talk about the hereafter. Those were the childish, immature days of religion. Now religion talks about herenow; religion has come of age. In the Vedas, in the Koran, in the Bible, hereafter is the basic goal. But now man is no longer that childish. That sort of God and that sort of religion is dead. It was a religion of hope, it was a religion of future. Now another sort of religion is asserting itself all over the world, and this…

Osho, in one discourse you said that India is declining in its spiritual values. Please tell us whether any ray of hope is visible ahead?

Love! Do not be in opposition to the naturalness of life; do not deny life. Embrace life, with a great yes. For through that embrace one day you will be able to embrace God too. God is hidden here—in these trees, in these people, in these hills, in these mountains. Learn to love this existence. Your so-called religion teaches you to hate existence—teaches you to hate the nature outside and the nature within you. Love nature, for nature is God’s veil. Love nature, and you will be able to lift the veil. There is certainly a ray of hope. The ray of hope is never destroyed. However dark the new-moon night becomes, the morning will come. Morning is bound to come. However long the night of new moon, and however deeply this country has sunk into wrong notions, still there are some who are thinking, reflecting, meditating. It is precisely…

Beloved Osho, you have been telling us how easy it is to drop our egos and become one with the white cloud. You have also told us that we have had millions of lives and many of them have been with buddhas, krishnas and christs -- yet still we have not given up our egos. Aren't you creating false hopes in us?

All hopes are false. To hope is to be false. So it is not a question of creating false hopes: whatsoever you can hope will be false. Hope comes out of your falsity of being. If you are real there is no need for any hope. Then you never think about the future, about what is going to happen. You are so real, so authentic that the future disappears. When you are unreal then the future becomes very significant, then you live in the future. Then your reality is not here and now, your reality is somewhere in your dreams. And you make those dreams look real because through those dreams you gain your reality. As you are, you are unreal. That's why so much hoping goes on. All hopes are false; you are real. My whole effort is how to throw you to yourself. And the ego is all…