According to Osho, spiritual growth demands fearless exploration into the unknown—'deep waters' where no one has gone—risking comfort, certainty, even the self. Shallow curiosity, fashions, and secondhand beliefs cannot reveal truth. Only a wholehearted, risk-ready voyage uncovers one’s own depths and the ultimate mystery. True seekers leave safe harbors, accept uncertainty, and stake everything for direct experience.
To grow inside, you must bravely go beyond the safe and familiar, testing truth yourself instead of just believing others.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Fearlessness is the first condition for the life of spiritualism. One who cannot take courage to that, cannot dive deep into his own self. The courage which is required for going alone in dark nights, in darkness and in unknown and fierce path, a greater courage than that is required to go into the self, because it breaks the sweet dreams which one has built up about his own self and because as one has to face such ugly and condemnable sins from which one has taken himself to he entirely free. Look at yourself after removing all your clothes. Look what you are after removing all your doctrines. Take your face out of the sands and see.... This opening of eyes.... to see that way is a change.... a beginning of a new life.
You can discover it only, you cannot create it. And that discovery can be helped by Gurdjieff's statement. If you are shaken, and you cannot sleep anymore, knowing that you may not have the soul at all -- because you have not encountered. One thing is certain. You are not aware, so you cannot deny him. You know your mind. You know your body, but you don't know the knower, who knows the mind, who knows the body -- but he is there. Knowing the mind, knowing the body is enough proof that there is a third entity in you, which knows these both. And it is from the very birth. In fact, if you listen to children, in the beginning all the children of all the races use third person for themselves. They don't say, "I am thirsty." They say, "The baby is thirsty.
Deva means divine, neeten means morality -- divine morality. And there is a morality that man can create but that is worthless; it is only an imposition from the outside. There is another kind of morality which man cannot create, which is beyond man, which comes from the above. Man can only be the receiver of it, not the creator: that is divine morality. Whatsoever man creates remains limited, and whatsoever man can create can never be bigger than man himself. Naturally, the creator is always bigger than the creation. So your morality is not of much value... at the most a social utility, at the most, good in living with people. It is helpful, convenient, respectable, but nothing much; it doesn't go very deep. The real morality has to arise from the centre, from your very being -- not as your work but as a gift of god.
If in the past there could be only A few Buddhas and a few Christs Now there can be many more. The time is ripe For a great explosion of consciousness. It has never been ripe, because life is evolving And we are coming to a climax. If we don't attain to a radical transformation Then this same state of evolved humanity Will become a strain on us. Man is no more a child And if he continues to wear the old clothes Which were made for children He is bound to be in difficulty. He will remain unnecessarily crippled For the simple reason that the clothes are small And he has become big. Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Mohammedanism These are all clothes Made for another state of humanity When man was more childish.
Sannyas is a concentrated effort to use this opportunity to live
So if you have to suffer as a sannyasin, don't blame me! (laughter) It's natural. Accept it with no complaint, no grudge, with deep thankfulness, because that is how the crowd recognizes you: it says, 'Yes, now we recognize you, that you are on the right path.' The moment that the crowd starts torturing you, starts going against you... That's its way of declaring that, 'Now this man is coming closer to the truth,' -- very close to the truth that they don't want to see. But it is beautiful to suffer on the way towards god, far more beautiful than to be happy in the world of lies. It is better to suffer and sacrifice on the way towards god because each suffering will create integrity in you, each suffering will bring a blessing in disguise. It is passing through fire -- and it is only through such fires…