What happens when the mind agrees to take sannyas?

I have been entangled in the scriptures till now; now your point appeals to me—that there is nothing in the scriptures. I’ve been thinking about taking sannyas; two years have passed like this. But I feel that until the mind agrees a hundred percent, it is not right to take sannyas. What do you say?

All I can submit is: then sannyas will never happen. You wasted half your life in the scriptures—now will you waste the other half thinking about sannyas? Mulla Nasruddin had been on the phone with a friend for half an hour. His wife stood by the table waiting with the food. When it got too late she said, getting upset, “Stop it now—enough talking!” Mulla put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Don’t disturb me. Do you know who I’m talking to—a very learned man who has spent half his life in research!” His wife shouted back, “So is he planning to spend the other half talking on the phone? Half is already ruined—don’t ruin the other half. And the food will get cold. If the plan is to spend half his life on the telephone…” Don’t let your feeling for sannyas go cold! Don’t let the food get…

Osho, I have been listening to you for years. I have been with you a long time. From time to time I have heard many different statements from you, even mutually contradictory ones, yet no question has ever arisen in my mind about them. And in spite of them you have always remained one and indivisible in my vision and in my heart. Kindly shed some light on this.

You can be with me in two ways: through thought and intellect, or through the heart and feeling. If you are with me through the intellect and thought, there will be great difficulty. Day after day you will find contradictory statements. Every day you will have to sort them out, and still you will not succeed. The intellect never really resolves anything. Even where things are simple, the intellect tangles them up. And my words are very tangled. Even where everything is clear, the intellect creates problems. And I speak of paths filled with mist. Even if there were only one path, the intellect would find contradictions; here there are countless paths—contradictions upon contradictions. There is hardly a statement I have not refuted a thousand times. So if you are with me through the intellect, only two things are possible: either you will go mad and drop the intellect, or…

Osho, the feeling for sannyas arises, and then the mind runs away. I can’t decide whether to take sannyas or not! Because it feels as if I’d be deceiving myself. It seems to me that I am not worthy of taking sannyas.

Three years passed. He thought and thought, listing hundreds of reasons pro and con: If I marry, these gains, these losses; if I don’t, these gains, these losses. In the end he found one extra gain in marrying—experience. And one loss in not marrying—no experience. The pan tilted. After three years he knocked on her door. Her father opened it. Kant said, “I have finally decided—one reason more on this side; I will marry.” The father laughed. “Too late. My daughter is married—and already has a child. You came far too late. Think again. And if someone else proposes, have your decision ready beforehand; don’t take so long.” He never married—no one else proposed. If you live by thinking, you’ll end up trivial. The vast requires a leap, not thinking. It requires courage—the gambler’s heart, not a shopkeeper’s book-keeping. Jamuna Singh, if you want to take it, take it. If…

Once you say 'One should not feel angry at one's master' then what will you do with that anger? And it is there! Just by saying that one should not feel it, it is not going to disappear. You cannot do any magic -- it is still there. You can do only one thing by thinking that one should not be angry at one's master, that this is not right, this is ugly -- you can do only one thing: you can put it by the side where you don't look at it or you can throw it in the basement. So when the well is dug deeper, again you will have to come across it. Or if you hide it so permanently that you never come across it, then something of your being will remain undeveloped, discarded, disowned.

Once you can remain in your body, but unconnected with it, meditation has happened. This is the first satori. Many hours may pass but you will not feel the passage of time. But this happens only when fear has disappeared and your mind has become acclimatised to the new experience and it is not too terrified by it but becomes curious. Your mind will become so interested that it wants to know more about it and the fear will become transformed into a witnessing of what has happened. Go into it more and more, little by little, and if you start feeling that you will go mad, absorb that madness also by and by. Many people have gone mad. If they are working without a master and not knowing what to do, they land themselves in something which they cannot manage, and they can go mad.