According to Osho, sadness after a discourse arises from misunderstanding, not rejection. When he seems hard, he is protecting the master–disciple space, purifying ordinary, possessive love into a higher, conscious love. What feels like a small death is a resurrection. Trust the living vibration beyond words; his love is showering and inwardly present, guiding your growth wherever you are.
Your sadness means you misheard—he isn’t rejecting you; he’s tough to lift your love from clingy to clear, so feel the love beneath the words and let it grow you.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
I don't understand what you say, Osho, but while sitting alone or in discourse something happens to me and tears start coming out of my eyes. What is this all, oh my master?
SO YOU HAVE STARTED LISTENING TO ME. Shivananda, that's the way to listen to me -- through tears. That's the way to listen to me -- through love, through the heart. Pulsate with me. Let my words be drowned into your tears. You will not be at a loss, because what I am saying is not important. Far more important is some other energy that goes surrounding those words that reach you. Don't pay too much attention to the words. If your heart is open, the energy will be released into the heart. My words are just carriers, they are containers. The content is utterly different. The content is diametrically opposite. The container is the word, but the content is a wordless silence. It is my love. The word is just a capsule. The capsule is not the medicine; the medicine is inside it. Forget about the capsule. Drink me…
Beloved Osho, whenever I sit silently, doing nothing, a deep sadness surrounds me. Osho, what is this sadness? Am I not sitting silently in the right way?
And it was a great joy for me, because he kept his eyes closed, I kept my eyes closed. Really, I slept; that was my time to sleep. And he thought that perhaps I was also a celibate; he had great respect for me. One day it happened that those two girls were absent. He started teaching with his eyes open, but I was accustomed to my sleep, so I closed my eyes. He said, "You can open your eyes, because those two girls are not here." I said, "Girls or no girls, this is my sleeping time." He said, "My God, and I had so much respect for you and I thought that you were also a celibate." I said, "All nonsense. If I were a celibate I would always have an umbrella with me! You could have figured it out, that this man never carries any umbrella. Without…
Osho, before the discourse, when Jagjivan’s verses were recited, my heart suddenly filled, my eyes welled up, and as the recitation continued my tears kept flowing on their own. When the recitation ended, the tears stopped. I understood the meaning of those verses after your discourse. Why did this happen?
Sumer Singh, you are fortunate that your feeling was soaked, and afterward understanding came. First dive, then understand. First be colored, then understand. First let things descend into the heart; afterward the intellect will do the arithmetic on its own. Those who say, “First we will do the intellectual accounting, and then we will drown the heart”—their heart never drowns, because the intellect’s accounting is never complete. It never completes! The intellect never comes to a conclusion; it has no conclusions. The intellect does not know how to conclude. It cannot conclude, because its nature is doubt. The heart’s nature is trust. The intellect can doubt, can think; it cannot conclude. The heart cannot think, cannot doubt; it takes the leap—and the conclusion happens. These two processes are very different. Therefore conversation between the intellectual and the feeling one cannot really happen; even in conversation, dilemma arises, dispute arises. There…
Beloved Osho, I have the most beautiful master ever -- life has given me so much since I have been with you -- but still, except for moments of beatitude with you or in my meditation, deep down in myself there is always a deep-rooted sadness and a longing for some space that I hardly can remember. Can you please comment?
Meditation always opens doors, different doors to different people. Sadness is not necessarily something bad. Don't judge it as a bad or negative quality. When a person who has never been silent, for the first time becomes silent, the very silence feels sad because there is no excitement, no firecrackers. You can misunderstand your first acquaintance with silence as sadness, but it is not sadness. It is just that you have been always engaged in a thousand and one things and now they have all disappeared. You feel a little lost. Before silence becomes a song, a small period, a transitory period, is absolutely necessary. You know sadness. And sadness has something of silence in it -- whenever you are sad, you are a little silent. So there is an association between your sadness and silence. When you become silent for the first time, the only thing you can feel…
Osho, when I listen to you I become very sad seeing the futility of my life. Deliver me! Save me!
Soon this atmosphere will smile… Wait a little. Do not be frightened by sadness. Do not suppress it. Do not plaster it over. Do not quickly blow breath again into your dead hopes. Do not water hopes that have died. Soon this atmosphere will smile… These eyes that have become sad—they will smile. Just wait. …soon light will appear. Now everything has gone dark; do not be afraid. It is from just such darkness that one reaches the light. When false lamps go out, there is darkness. But if you sit in that darkness, and remain seated, then true lamps will be lit. Certainly they are lit. True lamps are already burning, but your eyes have grown accustomed to recognizing false lamps; that is why it takes a little time. Have you not seen? When you come home returning from the bright outside, the house seems dark. Sit a little,…