What is the difference between the old sannyas and the new sannyas?

Another friend has asked: What is the difference between meditation and samadhi?

Remember, there is none other than the Divine all around—inside and out, only that One is. He is in the sky, in the earth, in the winds, everywhere—inside and out, only the Divine is. When we were not, He was; when we will not be, He will be. The wave rises and subsides; the ocean is eternal. Remember, recognize: this ocean of bliss and light all around is the Divine. This inner existence of bliss, this inner light, is the Divine. Other than the Divine, there is nothing. Everything other than the Divine is untrue. Only the Divine is truth. Remember, remember. Recognize, recognize—this is the doorway to Him; this is the path to Him. Only bliss, only light, only the Divine. All around, only He is—within as well, without as well. Be submerged, become one. That which you have been seeking for lives upon lives—this is that place. That…

Osho, what is the definition of God?

Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…

September 28, 1970 was a memorable day. At Manali in the Himalayas, Osho initiated His first group of sannyasins. This event was followed by this special evening discourse, on the significance of Neo Sannyas. To me, sannyas does not mean renunciation; it means a journey to joy bliss. To me, sannyas is not any kind of negation; it is a positive attainment. But up to now, the world over, sannyas has been seen in a very negative sense, in the sense of giving up, of renouncing. I, for one, see sannyas as something positive and affirmative, something to be achieved, to be treasured. It is true that when someone carrying base stones as his treasure comes upon a set of precious stones, he immediately drops the baser ones from his hands. He drops the baser stones only to make room for the newfound precious stones. It is not renunciation.

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.

(On 26 September 1970 in Manali, Osho inaugurated “Neo‑Sannyas.” Some sixteen people received initiation into Neo‑Sannyas from him. On the night of 28 September 1970, in an additional meeting, Osho gave this special talk on Neo‑Sannyas.) For me, sannyas is not renunciation but rejoicing. Sannyas is not a prohibition, it is an attainment. Yet until now the earth has seen sannyas only in a negative sense—about giving up, about leaving, not about receiving. I see sannyas as receiving. Certainly, when someone finds diamonds and jewels they drop the pebbles. But dropping the pebbles simply means making room for the diamonds. We do not “renounce” pebbles; we renounce only what we value greatly. Pebbles are thrown out the way we throw trash out of the house—we don’t keep accounts of how much trash we have renounced. Up to now sannyas has kept accounts of what is dropped.