Why do people miss you after taking sannyas and why can't they see their own stupidity?

Osho, how do you feel when somebody leaves sannyas?

And this too I have felt: once you have left sannyas there is a possibility you may come back -- because then you will miss me, and then you will understand what was being showered on you. Then you will miss the nourishment, then you will miss the contact. When you are getting it you start taking it for granted. Sometimes it is good to take it away so real thirst and an appetite arises in you and you start seeing. But next time, when you come for sannyas, it is not going to be that easy. I will not initiate you so easily. Then you will have to earn it. Once you drop sannyas, coming back is going to be difficult. I will create all kinds of barriers. Unless you transcend those barriers you will not be accepted again. That too is to help you, because there are people…

Osho, you say one thing, and people understand something else. How will this stop?

A very meaningful story—the story of man. When Socrates was sentenced, the judges of Athens decided: either accept death, or stop saying what you say. Choose one of the two. If you stop speaking as you do, you may live. If you continue, there is no way but death. What was Socrates saying? He was speaking of the sea—to the people of the well. And the well-dwellers are angered by talk of the sea. Socrates seemed dangerous. The court declared his crime to be this: “You corrupt people.” Socrates corrupts people! Such pure expression of truth has seldom happened as in Socrates. “You corrupt people”—that was the court’s verdict. And that court was made of Athens’ most intelligent men, its most gifted. Unanimously they judged: “You corrupt people—especially the young; the old won’t fall for your talk, they are too experienced for you to deceive.” “Old”—those who have been in…

What do you think about people who drop sannyas?

I love them, just as I have always loved them. Sannyas is just a formality, it does not matter. They cannot drop me; I am going to haunt them in their nights, in their dreams, in their hearts. So dropping sannyas does not matter. I don't pay any respect to rituals and formalities. I know one thing: once somebody is here with me, I make a way in his heart of which he may be absolutely unaware. He may drop sannyas, but I am going with him. I am spread over all my people; they are my home. So I will love anybody who drops sannyas exactly the same as I have been loving him when he was a sannyasin -- with no difference at all. Love never depends on formalities.

They asked firmani, "how did you know that such and such a man was vicious? You refused to converse deeply with him while he was here, although everyone said that he was a saint." firmani said, "if a stranger comes to ordinary men and says, 'light is made by weaving. I wove all the light there is and was,' what do they realize?" they answered, " they realize that what he says is untrue." firmani said, "similarly, when a vicious individual enters the company of a man of knowledge, it is not difficult to judge his condition, regardless of what people imagine or say."

... And the tune is the real thing. It happens almost every day -- somebody says yes, but his whole being is saying no. Whom to believe? His words, or his whole being? And sometimes the opposite case also happens: somebody says, "No Osho, no," but his whole being is saying yes. Even the way he says no is so full of love that it doesn't mean no, it doesn't mean a negative. And sometimes you say, "Yes, okay, yes," but your yes is dull, dead; it really means no. You did not want to say yes, you are saying it under pressure. It is meaningless. And my mirror goes on reflecting your totality, and I have to decide from there. The conductor of a freight train sitting in the cupola of his caboose one day observed a tramp crawling up over a box car. "Say," he said to the…

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SANNYAS? It is a very simple phenomenon. The ancient meaning of sannyas is renouncing the world. I am against it. But I have still used the word sannyas because I can see another meaning far more significant than the old one. I mean renouncing all the conditions that the world has given to you -- your religion, your caste, your Brahminism, your Jainism, your Christianity, your god, your holy book. To me, sannyas means a commitment that "I am going to clean myself completely of all those things which have been imposed upon me, and I will start living on my own -- fresh, young, pure, unpolluted." So sannyas is an initiation into your innocence. And I don't think any intelligent person can deny it -- that we have been polluted. No child is born a Mohammedan or a Hindu.