According to Osho, the master-disciple experience is a paradoxical, non-relational oneness: in two bodies one heart throbs. It exists to dissolve duality - the disciple's ego and even attachment to the master. The master is a compassionate stepping stone, not a destination. When the final clinging is 'killed,' master and disciple vanish together, leaving utter inner silence and direct realization of the infinite.
A true master joins with you to help you forget your small self, and when you're ready, asks you to let even them go so you can find the quiet truth inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, to many people in the west, the master/disciple relationship is outside their experience. What does it involve?
Chris Lister, Allen Jewhurst, Lesley Rogers, the East has contributed a few tremendously significant things to human consciousness. One of those beautiful things is the phenomenon of the master/disciple relationship. It is an Eastern contribution; just as science is a Western phenomenon, mysticism is Eastern. Science is extrovert, mysticism is introvert. Science is trying to know the objective reality, and mysticism is an exploration of the subjective reality, of the interiority of your own being. In the world of science the teacher/student relationship exists, because science can be taught -- hence the teacher/ student relationship. But religion, mysticism, cannot be taught, it can only be caught. Hence in mysticism there is no relationship like the teacher/student relationship. A totally different kind of relationship exists: the master/disciple. The differences are tremendous, the differences are great. Between a student and a teacher, doubt is the method. The teacher is there to help…
Beloved Osho, sitting in your presence is such a beautiful experience. We call it discourse. This word seems to me so poor next to what is happening here. Is there a word in any language that could point to, if not describe, what is happening between the master and the disciple?
I have talked about Zen: Mahakashyap was the first -- not Gautam Buddha -- to initiate the process which culminated in Zen, because it was his disciple, Bodhidharma, who took the message to China. And perhaps Gautam Buddha would not agree with everything Zen consists of, because the real master of Zen and its origin is Mahakashyap, who has a totally different personality from Gautam Buddha -- less serious, with a sense of humor, with no idea of holier-than-thou. The man who was finally the decisive factor was Bodhidharma; he comes in the fifth generation of disciples of Mahakashyap. He was very decisive in giving a certain character to Zen, which it still carries. Bodhidharma is farther away still from Mahakashyap. He has a great sense of humor, is very straightforward, knows no etiquette, no manners, is very simple and innocent, has no philosophical background, speaks in an ordinary way.…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, YOU HAVE BEEN MY FAVORITE UNCLE AND MY FATHER, MY MIDWIFE, A LAUGHING CHILD; MY BEST FRIEND, AN ANCIENT SAGE, MY FAVORITE STORYTELLER, AND MY MASTER... MY FIRST THOUGHT ON WAKING, MY LAST AT NIGHT.... YOU HAVE BEEN WARM BROWN EYES, A GENTLE HAND, FEET FOR MY HEAD; A TINGLING IN MY BODY... SOMETIMES A SILENCE, SOMETIMES A SONG.... YOU HAVE BEEN A HIT, A GLANCE, A PRESENCE, AN ABSENCE; DAY AND NIGHT, SUMMER AND WINTER -- A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS; A PROMISE OF FULFILLMENT, THE ONLY HOPE, THE ULTIMATE DESTROYER OF ALL DREAMS; THE ONLY REFUGE -- AND THE ONE I SOUGHT TO ELUDE; A MAGICIAN, AND JUST ONE ORDINARY MAN. YOU WERE AN ENIGMA, YOU WERE ME. YOU WERE THE MOON, THE STARS AND ALL THAT MOVED AROUND THEM. YOU WERE THE GREEN AND BROWN, THE BLUE AND GOLD, OF MY EARTH.
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…
Beloved Osho, being with you in these days has been like a shower of love, gratitude, like an open ocean. Being away from you has been sometimes so hard and so deep at the same time. Can you please say something once again about the relationship between master and disciple?
The relationship between the master and the disciple is a scientific lab in which the false has to be burned and the original has to be discovered. And it is the original that we are all missing. That is our misery, that is our pain, that is our anguish -- that we do not know who we are. All that we know is so stupid. A Sufi story will help you. A Sufi mystic comes to a great fair. All the caravanserais are full; he goes from one place to another, it is becoming midnight, he is tired. One manager of a caravanserai has compassion for him and says, "I can arrange something, but I cannot give you an individual room. In one of the rooms one person is there; he is well known to me, so I can persuade him just to let you also sleep there. Now, where…