Age

Beloved Osho, you have said recently that a sannyasin has no nationality anymore. Do you say the same thing about age? Since I have been a sannyasin, I have felt ageless. I am sixty-two and young people accept me as one of them. How is this possible?

Meditation is a transformation of your whole being. You are no more part of a crowd, no more a cog in the wheel. You have taken your responsibility on your own shoulders; you have become a free individual. Nationality will disappear, because these are all arbitrary lines, man-made -- and their existence is ugly, because their existence shows that man is not mature yet. Otherwise, what is the need to have so many nations, and every nation having great armies.... People are dying in poverty and seventy percent of the national income all over the world goes to the military. Humanity is living on only thirty percent, and the army gets everything better -- naturally, because they have sold their lives and they are being prepared for death, either to kill or to be killed. This seems so useless. Why should there be wars? Why should there be violence? And…

Questioner: was it because he was old?

No, not because he was old. Even when ke was not old he walked that way. This gesture of Gandhi's is symbolic and significant. In this country where woman has always been leaning on man, where she is taken to be the weaker sex, where she is treated as a second-class citizen in society, Gandhi is the first person to go against this long-established tradition. Gandhi, by leaning on the shoulders of two women, declares that the woman is not the weaker sex, she is as strong as man and man can equally lean on her shoulders. It is a step against an old tradition; it is a protest. It is nothing more than a protest. However, Gandhi does not look right when he walks leaning on women, nor do the two women feel good about it. They must be feeling awkward, heavy and crushed under Gandhi's weight -- physical…

Mind is always old, never young. Even the youngest mind is not young. It cannot be young because mind means the accumulated past. Your mind consists of your past experiences -- how can it be young? It can be one day old, it can be ten years old, it can be eighty years old, but it cannot be young. Even the child who is just born has a mind, a few seconds old. By its very nature mind is old. And meditation is young, always young; hence the meditator retains a certain inner youthfulness. Of course the body will become old. If you go into Indian temples you will be surprised: you will not see a single statue of Rama as an old man -- not that he never became old. You will not find a single statue of Krishna as old, yet he died when he was eighty-five.

Osho, I have heard that a seeker has to pass through four stages of sadhana: tariqat, shari’at, marifat, and haqiqat. The last is haqiqat, where the seeker meets his beloved and comes face to face with Truth. Osho, please explain the first three states.

These words are from the Sufis—very significant, and very straightforward. The first is tariqat. Tariqat means: the way, the method, the discipline, the means, the yoga. Tariqat means: something has to be done; only then will you attain—without doing, you will not receive. One has to walk a path; find the way; make a footpath. One has to bring some discipline into life, give it an order. Tariqat means learning the way to become worthy of it. When you go to have an audience with an emperor, you learn the etiquette of his court. You don’t just walk in. If you do, you will not be accepted. You learn how to sit there, how to stand there, how to bow there. If you are going to meet an emperor, you must taste something of the flavor of the emperor’s way of life. If you are going to meet the Divine,…