What happens when I choose sannyas over a political career?

It is asked: “I haven’t met you personally yet, and still I am filled with strange feelings toward you. Sometimes I cry; sometimes I just keep gazing at you.”

The friend who has asked—this is a new, fresh contact. New experiences are rising in it. Before these experiences lose their meaning, before these waves become inert, before you slowly accept even these waves and they, too, grow old—take the leap. “Sometimes I cry; sometimes I just keep gazing at you.” Tears are a sign that the connection is being made through the heart. If it were made through the intellect, tears would never come. If the connection is through the head, at most one nods: “Right”; or if not, one shakes the head: “Wrong.” Only the skull nods a little. Tears have nothing to do with the head. Tears flow from the eyes—but they come from the heart, from the innermost core. Tears are more meaningful—than doctrines, ideas, sects. Tears are more meaningful. Tears bring the news that the heart has been struck, something within has trembled. Before the…

Osho, I would very much like to take sannyas but it will be totally ruinous for my career as orange clothes will not be accepted at my place of work. Is there any alternative to this?

Shirish Ghurye, remember only one thing: if you really want to do something, do it. If you don't want to do it, don't do it, but be clear. Don't be a hotch-potch, don't be a mess. When you really want to be a painter, become a painter then, whatsoever the risk. Yes, you will not be able to become a prime minister by becoming a painter. You will not be very respectable in the society, because your paintings are not useful to the society in any way. They are not utilitarian. And the greater they are, the less utilitarian they will be. The more original they are, the less they will be understood and sold. But if you want to be a painter, be a painter -- even if that means remaining poor, even if that means remaining starved, even if that means that you will be dying earlier. Suffer,…

Sannyas is a quantum leap, a jump into the unknown, a great courage to become discontinuous with your own past. It is a rebirth. It is a change so great... as if the old dies, and dies utterly and totally and the new comes into being from nowhere, from nothingness, out of nothing. If the new comes from the old it remains the old. If the new is continuous with the old then it is only a modification of the old -- maybe a little bit colored and decorated and changed, with a new dress, with a new mask, but it is not a revolution, it is not a conversion. And sannyas to be true has to be a revolution so total that the old identity is simply dropped -- just as the snake slips out of the old skin and never looks back.

Osho, sannyas was born in this land; it was granted the dignity of Gaurishankar (Everest). But today its honor has become merely superficial. Inside, the individual and society alike are afraid of it. Why have sannyas and the sannyasin lost their meaning? Please explain.

In my sannyas there is no prohibition—no “leave this, run from that.” Awakening is enough. Cowards run. Those who awaken remain where they are and are free there. My sannyas does not want to give you knowledge; it wants to give you meditation. Meditation means emptiness; it means: I do not know. Life is such an ultimate mystery that nothing definitive can be known about it. And I want to give sannyas a new posture—creativity. I will call him a sannyasin who sings a new song; who strikes a new music from the veena; who dances a new dance; who makes this world a little more beautiful, brings a little more blessedness to the earth. Then sannyas can regain its dignity. And I would have the sannyasin not imitate. Listen, understand, contemplate—but live from your own individuality. Therefore I give my sannyasins no codes of conduct—only processes to awaken the…

Osho, some of us take sannyas and do spiritual practice; some do not take sannyas and still practice—in both cases we follow your path. Please tell us: what special difference does sannyas make in life?

There is no way to know the difference without taking sannyas. Sannyas is a taste. Sannyas is the taste of coming close to me. Sannyas is the courage to surrender. You do sadhana; but the sannyasin is not alone—you are. You practice; the sannyasin also practices. The sannyasin is with me; you are not with me. I am with both! But you practice in your own way. You listen to me, but you go on choosing. The sannyasin does not even choose. Once he has chosen me, he drops choosing. He says, Enough! I am with both, but the sannyasin comes to be with me—and that makes a revolutionary difference. But you will know it only when you know it. There was a famous Christian woman—Theresa. She was a poor beggar. One day she announced in her village, “I want to build a great church for Jesus.” People laughed. “How…