Why am I afraid of neo-sannyas but not of old-style sannyas?

Osho, why am I afraid of your neo-sannyas? I do not feel even a little afraid of the old-style sannyas.

Does any Jain read the Gita? Could a Jain really understand it? Impossible. He would find himself opposed at every turn; anger would arise at every step. He would find arguments against Krishna immediately. For Krishna tells Arjuna, “Do whatsoever God wills.” The Jain will say, “And if God is making him renounce, why are you making him fight? How can you decide what God wants?” If Arjuna were truly a Jain, he would have thrown down the Gandiva bow and said, “All right. Now I shall do only what God makes me do. God says, ‘Take the peacock-feather whisk and the begging bowl; sit under a tree; do tapas.’ It is the voice of my inner self!” You know this “voice of conscience.” Delhi politicians have popularized—or polluted—the phrase. Whenever they need to come or go, suddenly their “inner voice” is heard! Krishna deluded him—that is how Jains will…

Question: Second question: Osho, why am I afraid of sannyas? Harish! Fear of sannyas is natural. You are dyed in the colors of the world—well dyed. With birth itself you are initiated into the world. If you are forty or fifty now, that is forty or fifty years of the world’s hypnosis. We start hypnotizing little children in the language of the world. We tell them, “If you study and write, you’ll become a nawab. If you play and frolic, you’ll be spoiled.” To make them nawabs you’re busy ruining their heads. You don’t see the state of the nawabs—that all the nawabs have become kebabs—yet you keep trying to make the kids nawabs! “Study and become a nawab,” and, “If you play you’ll be ruined.” The poor child gives up play and begins to study and write. Study becomes ambition. “Come first! Bring the gold medal!

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…

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…

Beloved master, although I want to surrender myself to you and take sannyas, I feel helpless to do so. Why is it so? Please clarify this.

S.D. Prasad, it is very simple, there is nothing to clarify. You are afraid of people, you are afraid of the society. You are afraid of the established church, the established religion, the priests, the politicians -- you are simply afraid. It is fear that is preventing you. Sannyas needs courage, sannyas needs guts, particularly my sannyas. The old sannyas no longer needs guts, because it is already part of the status quo. It is accepted, respected. If you become an old-style sannyasin people will worship you. If you become MY sannyasin you will be in constant danger. People will think you are mad, people will think you are hypnotized. People will think that something has gone wrong -- that you have gone nuts. People will say, "Such a good man! We had never ever thought, dreamed that this was going to happen to you." People will laugh, rumor about…