I am Not a Person – Osho

Dear Osho, I love you. In a Sannyas Magazine you said that you are not a person.Then what are you?

The question is from Prem Bindiya. She is a small girl, ten years old.

Bindiya, nobody is a person, although everybody believes that he is a person. Nobody can be a person, because we are not separate. We are like waves in the ocean. No wave has a personality.

Yes, it has a form, but it is not separate from the ocean. It is one with the ocean, you cannot separate it from the ocean. You cannot take the wave away from the ocean; it will disappear, it will not be a wave at all. It can only be a wave in the ocean, with the ocean. It is not separate, it is part of the dance of the ocean. It has no personality. Yes, it has a certain individuality because it is different from other waves – unique it is! – But it is not separate from the existence. And it is not separate from other waves either, because they are all joined together in one ocean.

When I say I am not a person, Bindiya, I simply mean I am not separate from existence. I am one with the trees and one with the rocks and one with the earth and one with the sky. I am a presence not a person, and so are you, and so is everybody else. To believe in the person is to believe in the ego.

And I can understand your question: this is how every child is being brought up, for centuries. Your question is relevant.

You say, “I love you. But if you are not a person, the how can I love you?” 

We have been told that we can love only persons. The truth is just the opposite: you cannot love the person. Persons can only fight, persons can only be in conflict, because wherever two egos are, there is conflict, a constant war – sometimes hot, sometimes cold, but the war continues.

Sometimes the warriors are tired so they maintain a certain peace. Whenever they are back again and their energy is there again, they start fighting.

You can see it happening with all kinds of lovers – a continuous fight, a kind of intimate enmity, together and yet not together. Why is this fight there? – Because of two egos. Two persons are there, and of course each person wants to dominate.

The ego is a deep desire to dominate. The ego is a deep desire that says, “I am special, higher, bigger, greater than you.” And both are trying to do the same. Conflict is necessary, inevitable. Love cannot exist in such a state.

Love exists between two presences, not between two persons. Then there is no conflict; there is great harmony, melody, music, rhythm. When there are no more egos and both feel one with existence, they can be one with each other.

Bindiya, love is possible only when you disappear. I have disappeared, and my work here is now to help you to disappear too.

You ask me, “ Then what are you?”

I am not a person, I am a presence. I am a nobody. I am a kind of nothingness, emptiness. The host has disappeared, and the disappearance of the host has made the Guest appear. I am not, God is.

I cannot love you, but I am love. You can partake as much as you like, you can drink out of me as much as you like. I cannot be in a love-relationship with you because relationships exist only between egos. But I can share. It will be a relating, not a relationship. It will not be static, it will be a flow. And it will have no motivation in it: I love you because I am love. There is no motivation, no desire to get anything back from you. It is enough that you accepted my love.

And I know this time, just two days ago, Bindiya had come to see me. She has come back after a long time, and I could see great love in her eyes. I had to call her close, I had to hold her face in my hands and pour my love into her eyes. She is a small sannyasin, but because she is small she is still capable of receiving. Because she is small, still uncontaminated, still unpolluted, still uncorrupted, something natural is still there.

And you are fortunate, Bindiya, that you have become a sannyasin so early – now nobody will be able to corrupt you. Now you will become able to protect yourself against this corrupted society, against all kinds of corruptions. The church corrupts, the state corrupts, the educational system corrupts. You have become a sannyasin at the right time. You will be able to see all the games that are being played around you. You will become more and more intelligent, more and more loving, and less and less a person.

Those who are really with me are on the way of disappearing, evaporating. Just as in the early morning sun the dewdrops start disappearing… that is the way for the disciple to disappear when he is in a close love-relationship with the Master.

-Osho

From The Guest, Discourse  #14

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