Being with a real master is like two hearts quietly hugging until your sleepiness falls away and you wake up as your truest self.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
In moments of deep love and merging with the surrounding existence, o fragrance, your fragrance, comes to me, and gratitude arises in my heart. Is love the only communion possible with a master?
There is no other communion, not only with a Master -- there is no other communion with anybody except love. There are three ways to be related. One we call communication. It is mind to mind. You talk. Words meet, not you. Intellects grope, try to understand each other, but you remain far away. It is a very guarded relationship. Not really a relationship, just a groping, trying to find whether you would like to come closer or not. Intellect is very suspicious, non-trusting. In ordinary life ninety-nine per cent of your relationships remain intellectual. You talk to judge You talk to protect. You talk to avoid. In fact when you are talking to people you are not saying much, in fact you are trying not to say much. Words create an illusion that you are saying many things. It may be just otherwise, you may be hiding. Have you…
Beloved Osho, when I look inside I can see your face, when I smell inside I can smell you, when I feel inside I can feel your touch. When I heard your voice two weeks ago saying, `come' I could hardly believe it. But when I looked, you had this huge smile, so I am here. Can you please talk to us about the different ways of communication with you, or about communication between master and disciple?
There are only two ways: One is between the teacher and the student, and one is between the master and the disciple. The first I call communication, and the second I call communion. I am speaking to you. It is possible just to be concerned with my words; then you are a student here, and as far as you are concerned I am only a teacher to you. You will become more knowledgeable, you will know more about and about, but your ignorance will remain the same. If you listen to me -- not only to the words, but to the heart that is beating behind them -- then there is communion. Then you may not become more knowledgeable but your ignorance will start disappearing into innocence. A moment comes between the master and the disciple when just looking in the eyes is enough, or just sitting, with the disciples…
Beloved Osho, how is it possible that you just walk past a person and you set them on fire? I have seen even people who don't know that they love you burst into flames.
The question is great. Life is not synonymous with logic, particularly the logic that Aristotle has given to the world. It has an appeal to the mind -- it is very simple, very obvious, very mathematical, scientific. But the appeal to the mind of Aristotle's logic is not that it fits with existence, that it represents life. On the contrary, mind is overwhelmed by it because it fits with the split mind, and it fits perfectly. Naturally the mind is convinced. But life is not logic. So first we have to understand the split of the mind which makes it so much impressed by a wrong logic, a logic which is not representative of existence itself. Mind has a double split. The front of the mind and the back of the mind -- that is the first split. The front of the mind is active, and the back of the…
Osho! You were just here, you were just here. The fragrance of your breath is in these breezes. The whisper of your lovely footsteps is in the air. The earth and sky that beheld you… you were just here, you were just here. When I saw you, my breath simply stopped, my Master! These eyes would not lower. The moment I came to my senses, where did you hide? You were just here, you were just here.
Meera! If you want to know the divine, to attain it, you must sustain a very paradoxical kind of awareness. Paradoxical because from one side it is awareness, and from the other it is a kind of unawareness too—an ecstasy, a divine drunkenness that is not stupor but awakening; in which within, a lamp of meditation is lit, a flame of alertness burns. Love knows this art of paradox. Love is the key that opens the lock on that door. Love knows how to sway and yet remain centered within. Love knows how to close the eyes and still come to vision. Love knows how to move not even an inch, and yet complete a journey of a thousand miles. Reason will not grasp it. For thought it is inaccessible. But for love it is natural and easy. What is needed is an awareness colored by ecstasy; and an ecstasy…
Beloved master, to meet the buddha on the way and kill him also implies the death of the disciple. Can you say something about the master-disciple experience and being in the presence of the master?
Everybody who is present is not present in the sense that I am telling you to be present. You can be present as yourself for years and nothing will happen, and you can be present the way I am telling you just for a single moment -- and you will be reborn. The presence of the master is a fire in which you have to be burned, but whatever is gold will remain and whatever is not gold will be burned. To be twenty-four carat gold is a sheer joy. Utter purity like a flower will start surrounding you. A new energy that you had not known, although it is your own but has been asleep, dormant, becomes radiant. You start to glow in a new style of life and love, in a new way you dance and sing and celebrate. If the master's presence does not become a dance…