Expectation

Osho, when—at what moment—does the feeling of expectation drop utterly from within a sannyasin-disciple?

Expectation will remain until you have experienced that there is nothing to be gotten from life. Life only gives assurances; it never fulfills them. Life is a deception. From afar the great oases appear; on coming near they prove to be desert. From a distance there seems to be great beauty. The drums heard from afar sound so sweet! On coming close, all becomes ugly. The deeper your experience grows that all beauty belongs to distance, that the whole juice of life is in the future, never in the present—seems like “I’ve got it, got it, got it,” yet it is never gotten; you seem to be approaching but you never arrive—the more you see that this goal keeps receding. Like the horizon, where sky seems to touch earth—seems just a few miles away; you advance, it keeps advancing—the distance remains the same. The day it dawns on you from…

Otherwise, people are always lagging behind. Life is always running ahead and they are far, far behind. They are simply dragging themselves. And they are so far behind that they are bound to be miserable -- because they will be almost dead, and by the time they reach to where life is right now, life has moved again. It is like a river: it is not stagnant, it is dynamic. A sannyasin has to see it clearly that everything changes, nothing remains the same, even for two consecutive moments. Then the whole desire for keeping things as they are forever drops. And in that dropping you are free. Suddenly, a great freedom is felt. Then you are no longer disturbed by anything, nothing can disturb you. Things disturb you because you were hoping for something else and it is not happening that way.

[A sannyasin couple and their baby are present. The man says he expected to come here and feel better, more loving. Instead, he says, in some ways he feels more sad, tense, angry.] Expectation always creates misery. If you expect something, that very expectation will become the barrier. So live a life without any expectations. Your expectations are your demands on life and a demanding mind always becomes miserable. Bliss is where demand is not, because only in a non-demanding state can you relax and receive it. So this is not a problem which is personal to you; this happens to many people. Naturally, you come with great expectation -- that this is going to happen, that is going to happen... many fantasies in the mind. Because of those fantasies you cannot relax; you are always waiting for the result.

Question: IT WOULD NOT BE BETTER IF THINGS HAPPENED TO MEN JUST AS THEY WISH. UNLESS YOU EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED YOU WILL NEVER FIND THE TRUTH, FOR IT IS HARD TO DISCOVER AND HARD TO ATTAIN. NATURE LOVES TO HIDE. THE LORD WHOSE ORACLE IS AT DELPHI NEITHER SPEAKS NOR CONCEALS -- Expectation means your known projecting itself into the future, into the unknown. That's why I say if you are a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or a Jaina, you will miss -- because what does to be a Christian mean? It means a Christian expectation. It means a god seen through Christian eyes. It means a conception, a philosophy. What does it mean to be a Hindu? It means a system of belief.