Tag: disciple

The Three Initiations – Osho

Is it true that to be in communion with the master is the initiation?

The word ‘initiation’ is very significant and profound. There are three initiations: first, when a student becomes a disciple; second, when a disciple becomes a devotee; and third, when the devotee disappears in the master. To understand the whole process, all three steps have to be understood.

Everyone begins as a student, as an inquirer into what this life is all about, with a curiosity to know the mysteries that surround us. But the desire is for knowledge; hence, superficial. Because the desire is for knowledge, it is of the mind. And mind is the periphery of our being, the most superficial part of our individuality.

The student has questions, but he has no quest. His questions are easily answerable, he is easily satisfied – just borrowed knowledge is enough for him. He does not yet need a master; he only needs a teacher. He accumulates answers, becomes an intellectual, but does not become intelligent. The accumulation of answers happens in the memory part of the mind, and the part that functions in accumulation is mechanical, it has nothing to do with intelligence. It is possible to find very educated, cultured, sophisticated intellectuals behaving in life in a very unintelligent way. They are very efficient whenever some question is asked for which they are already prepared. But if life raises a new question for which they are not prepared, they are completely at a loss, they are as ignorant as one can be. And the problem is, life goes on posing new questions, new challenges.

Memory is good in the marketplace; memory is not good as a lifestyle. And all your universities only teach you how to memorize. It has been found that the people of very great memory are generally unintelligent people. […]

It is a well-known fact that a student is interested in collecting knowledge. His questions are easily satisfied. His mind functions like a computer. But once in a while, a student falls into the trap of a master. He is not in search of a master; he does not know any difference in the words ‘master’ and ‘teacher’. In the dictionaries both words mean the same. But in actual life, a teacher simply transfers knowledge from one generation to another generation – it is not his own experience. The master does not transfer knowledge from one generation to another generation; what he gives out is his own realization.

But if the student is caught in the trap of a master, then it is very difficult to get out of it because soon it becomes clear that knowledge and knowing are two different things. Questions and quest are two different things. Questions are simply curiosities. Quest is a risk, is a pilgrimage, is a search.

A question is easily satisfied by any logical, rational answer. The quest is not satisfied by logical or rational answers; the quest is like thirst. You can go on repeating that scientifically, H2O means water, but that is not going to quench the thirst. It is an answer, and a perfectly right answer. If somebody is asking what water is, as a question, it is very simple to answer it. But if somebody is asking about water because he is thirsty, then H2O is not going to help. Then, only real water will do. Quest means thirst, hunger. No borrowed knowledge can satisfy it. And the master slowly makes the student aware that if you are really a man, then just to be curious is childish. Maturity demands that you should go on a quest, that you should not ask only for knowledge, you should ask for ways and means and methods so that you can know – not knowledge that has come from generation to generation. No one knows whether somebody invented it, whether it is fiction, whether somebody realized it or not, how much is lost in transferring it, how much is added, how much is edited out. Knowing means “I want a personal experience.”

A genuine seeker has no questions, but a tremendous thirst.

This is the first initiation – when the master changes the student’s focus from knowledge towards knowing, from memory towards intelligence. And it is not an ordinary phenomenon, it happens to only a very few fortunate ones. Millions of people simply remain curious, childish, immature for their whole life.

Once the emphasis has moved from knowledge to knowing, your concern is no more with the past, your concern is with the present. Your concern is no more with the great philosophers, wise people; your concern is about your own consciousness. For the first time you become interested not in objects but in your subjectivity, not about other things but about the one who wants to know: Who is this who wants to know?

This is the first initiation: the student dies, and the disciple is born. The second initiation is when the disciple also disappears, into a devotee. A disciple is still interested in gaining methods, disciplines, ways to know himself. The master has to be used; hence, he is grateful. But he is the end, and the master is the means; he is using the master for his own ends. As he comes closer to the master, the master takes him into the second initiation. And the second initiation is that unless you drop this obsession with yourself you will never know yourself. It appears contradictory; it is not. Your very obsession is preventing you; it is egoistic. You drop the ego, surrender the ego; you forget yourself, and in the very moment you forget yourself you will find yourself.

From knowledge to knowing, the student was never interested in himself. He was interested in things, objects, the whole world. The first initiation brought him into a new world of interest about himself. The second initiation takes away the ego. The second initiation teaches him love. Because knowing oneself is a byproduct – if you can love, you will know yourself without any difficulty.

Only in loving light does the darkness within you disappear. Love is light, and the flame of love has to be taught.

The master loves, his presence is love. His very presence is magnetic. Without saying a Word . . . just to be close to him, you will feel a certain pull, a certain love, a trust. And you don’t know the man, you don’t know whether he is trustworthy or not. But you are ready to risk. The presence of the master is so convincing that there is no need of any argument to prove it. […]

The master is not a teacher. He loves; it will be better to say he is love. He respects; it will be better to say he is respectfulness. Naturally he creates a gravitational field of love, respect, gratitude. In this gravitational field, the second initiation happens. The disciple is no longer interested in knowing about himself. His only interest is in how to be dissolved into the master, how to be in harmony with the master. And the day the harmony comes to its peak, the disciple disappears; the devotee is born.

The devotee is miles away from the student. The whole journey has taken such revolutionary changes. The devotee is on the verge . . . the life of the devotee is not long. The longest life is that of the student. In the middle is the disciple. And the life span of the devotee is very small. It is something like a dewdrop on a lotus petal in the early morning sun, slipping slowly, slowly towards the sun into the ocean. The dewdrop is just that small fragment of time that it takes to slip from the lotus leaf into the ocean.

The devotee’s life is not long, it is very short – because once you have tasted the harmony, you cannot wait to taste oneness. It is impossible to wait. The dewdrop runs fast, drops into the ocean, becomes one with the ocean.

There are two ways to say it. Kabir, one of the great mystics of India, is the only one who has used both ways. When for the first time he slipped into the ocean, he wrote a small statement in which he said, “I had been searching for myself, but, my friend, instead of finding myself, I have disappeared into the ocean. The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean.”

After almost twenty years, when he was on his deathbed, he asked his son, Kamal, “Bring the notes you have been taking of my statements. Before I die, I have to correct one thing.” He said, “I have said at one place that the dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean. Change it. Write down, ‘The ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop.’”

His own words are tremendously beautiful. The first words are Herat herat hey sakhi rahya kabir herayi; bunda samani samunda men so kat heri jayi. And the second: Herat herat hey sakhi rahya kabir herayi; samunda samana bunda men so kat heri jayi. In the first, the dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean. In the second, the ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop. Perhaps two sides of the same coin . . .

This is the third initiation, and only after the third initiation is there communion – because there is union, there is no more separation, there is at-oneness.

The path of a mystic begins as a student, ends as a master . . . begins as a dewdrop, ends as an ocean.

-Osho

From Beyond Enlightenment, Discourse #12, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Thou Hast Reaped – Osho

The spiritual search starts as a seeking for eternal bliss, as a seeking for eternal liberation, as a seeking for divine light and divine life. But the center remains with you. In the beginning it is a self-centered search. Whatsoever you are seeking you are seeking for yourself.

This self-centeredness ultimately will prove a barrier, because you cannot be in total ecstasy if you are self-centered. This self-centeredness is a deep hindrance, but in the beginning, it is bound to be so. It’s natural that one should start the search for himself. There is no other way. You cannot start for someone else.

It has to be self-centered in the beginning, but it must not be so in the end. In the beginning it is okay. In the end it is dangerous. A point comes where your self-centeredness must cease. Only then your being will flower into total bliss.

It is just like this: you take breath in, you inhale. This is half a breath. You also have to exhale. That is the other half. And both breaths – inhaling and exhaling – make it a circle, a total breath. If you think only to inhale, and you see no point in exhaling – “What is the use?” – you will die. Inhaling, which is necessary for life, will become dangerous for life if there is no exhaling. The breath must be released.

The same happens when you start receiving blissful moments, when you start receiving ecstatic moments, when the eternal starts pouring into you. The first thing is inhaling – you will inhale blissfulness – but then, exhale it. Otherwise, you will die of your own blissfulness. That blissfulness will become poisonous. Exhale it, distribute it, give it to others.

When you feel that you are filled with bliss, express it. Share it; don’t try to conserve it within you. Don’t force it, don’t make it a point that it is your own. Don’t try to own it; allow it to be shared with everyone. Really, celebrate it in such a way that the whole existence shares it. A flower blooms and the perfume spreads. The winds take it away, far away, to the far comers of the earth. Allow your perfume, your bliss, to be taken far away from you, to be shared, to be shared by the existence itself.

Why? Because then bliss has become total: inhaling and exhaling both. It becomes a circle. And the more you distribute it, the more you get. The more you throw it away, the more you find it, because now you are in contact with the infinite source.

Don’t be a miser. Otherwise, you will kill the whole process. In the beginning it is okay if you are self-centered, but when the bliss starts happening, it is dangerous.

This sutra is concerned with this exhaling.

Out of the silence that is peace a resonant voice shall arise. And this voice will say, it is not well, thou has reaped, now thou must sow. And knowing this voice to be the silence itself thou wilt obey.

You have reaped. You have reaped bliss, you have reaped ecstasy. Now sow it for others. In the world, you sow first and then you reap. In the spiritual dimension, everything is just the reverse. First you reap, and then you sow.

You have reaped what Buddha has sown, what Jesus, Krishna and Mohammed have sown. They have sown seeds and you have reaped them. Now, sow seeds for others. And remember well that sowing is just exhaling. It is part of the whole process. You will remain half, incomplete, imperfect, unless bliss has started flowing from you toward everything.

This is a very necessary law. When you become silent, you hear it. No one else is saying it to you. Your own heart, your own innermost being, tells you this. This indication, this teaching, this message is not from without. It is from your own innermost self. That’s why: thou wilt obey. There’s no possibility of not obeying it; it is your own. But if you know it well, it will be easy.

It will be easy if you know that it is part of the process: that bliss should be distributed and shared; only then will it grow more. If you don’t know this law, your miserliness, your old self-centeredness may delay the completion of the process.

It can only be delayed; it cannot be disobeyed forever. But why delay it? So remember this: whenever you feel any moment of bliss happening, share it.

That’s why my insistence, so much insistence, that after meditation you must express your bliss; you must celebrate it. You must make it a point that whatsoever happens to you – allow it to be shared. Dance and sing. These are just symbolic; they are just to serve as a continuous remembrance.

When you have gone from here, many things will happen to you if you continue meditation. But whenever something happens to you, don’t keep it to yourself. Share it. Even if you cannot do anything else, just smiling, smiling to some stranger, may be enough. Just taking the hand of some stranger in your hand and feeling the friend.

Or if there is no one there and you are sitting under a tree, then dance and feel that you are dancing with the tree. Sing, and feel that you are singing with the birds. And sooner or later you will come to understand that when you share, even a tree is ready to share back with you.

They have done some recent research in a Russian university. Through many experiments, one psychoanalyst, Pushkin, has come to conclude that trees have similar emotions as man. Not only that – trees can be hypnotized. Not only that – if a person is hypnotized under a tree and under hypnosis it is suggested to him that “you are very sad,” the person will become sad and, simultaneously, the tree will become sad.

These are experimental conclusions. Now there are mechanical recording devices that can record whether you are sad or happy, whether you are depressed, whether you are angry, whether you are sexual. With every emotion, a different electrical wave is released from your mind. That electrical wave can be recorded.

But this has been a very strange conclusion: that the same wave is recorded from the tree also. You are dancing under a tree, happy. Your mind will give an indication that you are happy and it will be recorded. If the device is connected with the tree also, the tree also records the same wave. So Pushkin says that if you are dancing under a tree, very happy, the tree shares it. It is very happy, with you.

And if a tree can share, why not birds? They are more alive. Why not animals? They are still more alive. And why not the whole existence? Sooner or later we will find that even stones share. Their soul may be hidden very deep, but it is there; and one day we are going to find out instruments which will give us indications that even a stone, a rock, has emotions.

So wherever you are, whenever you feel that some ecstatic emotion has happened to you, dance to its tune, sing to its tune, and share your happiness in whatsoever way it happens to you, in whatsoever way you feel to share it. But share it! It will grow more. With sharing, it grows. With miserliness – with not sharing – it dies down, it shrinks.

Death is a shrinkage. Shrinkage is death; life is expansion. Allow it to expand. And once you know the feeling of expansion you will allow it to happen, because it is your own innermost self-dictating.

Thou who are now a disciple, able to stand, able to hear, able to see, able to speak, who hast conquered desire and attained to self-knowledge, who has hast seen thy soul in its bloom and recognized it, and heard the voice of the silence, go thou to the hall of learning and read what is written there for thee.

To hear the voice of the silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance; to go to the Hall of Learning is to enter the state in which learning becomes possible. Then will many words be written there for thee, and written in fiery letters for thee easily to read. For when the disciple is ready the Master is ready also.

To hear the voice of silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance. When you are silent, really silent – after the storm has passed, when you have fallen into silence spontaneously – you have not cultivated it; it has come to you, it has arisen in you spontaneously – in this silence you will come to feel and understand and realize that now the true guidance is possible from your own innermost being. Now the master, the inner master will appear to you.

Your own innermost center is your real master. Outer masters can help, but their help is basically directed toward finding the inner master. And when the inner one is found, there is no need for the outer master. You have become master in your own right.

But this happens only when you have come to realize a total inner silence, without any thoughts, without any words, without any imagination, without any ripples of any kind. When you have come to understand and feel a rippleless silence, a thoughtless, nonmoving silence – this silence becomes your inner master. Now, out of this silence, guidance will be given to you.

For when the disciple is ready the Master is also ready. When you are ready to receive the inner guidance, the inner guidance comes naturally, automatically. But the disciple must be ready.

What is meant by the disciple being ready? It means to become totally receptive, humble, egoless, surrendered, in a deep let-go. When you are not saying anything but are just receptive to listen, when you are not imposing any theories upon truth – you are naked, vacant and ready to allow the truth to reveal itself in its own way; you are not in any way, consciously or unconsciously, forcing anything upon the truth; you have stopped forcing; you are ready to be carried away to wheresoever the truth leads you – then, you are a disciple.

There is a difference between a student and a disciple. A student is hankering for information. A disciple is not hankering for information. His search is for knowledge, authentic experience. He is not interested in what others say. He is interested in what he can feel. The student will collect information; he will train his memory. And the more his memory is trained, the more information is accumulated, the more egoistic he will become. A student can never be humble, a scholar can never be humble. His basic search is egoistic.

Someone accumulates riches and someone else accumulates knowledge. There is no difference. Every accumulation feeds the ego. Whatsoever you accumulate – the greater the quantity, the more egoistic you will feel. So a student or a scholar is not a disciple. The very dimension is different.

A disciple is not in search of accumulation. Rather, on the contrary, he is ready to throw all accumulations. If the truth happens only in that emptiness, he is ready to throw all accumulations, all knowledge. In his old age, Socrates is reported to have said, “Now I can say that I do not know anything. I am ignorant.” He was a disciple.

It happened that one seer declared Socrates to be the wisest man in Athens. Those who heard the seer came running to Socrates. They said, “Socrates, have you heard or not? The seer has said that you are the wisest man in Athens.”

Socrates said, “There must have been some error. Go back and tell the seer that Socrates says he knows nothing. He is absolutely ignorant.”

The people went back to the seer and told him, “Your prophecy has been denied by Socrates himself. He says, ‘I do not know anything. I am ignorant.’”

The seer laughed. He said, “Because of this I say he is the wisest man – because only a perfectly wise man can say, ‘I do not know.’”

Ignorant people always claim knowledge. The more ignorant, the more they claim they know. This is part of ignorance. A student, a pundit, a scholar – they are all claiming knowledge. They are not disciples.

And remember, if you are a student, you can become a teacher but never a master. Only a disciple can become a master. If you are a student, a scholar, you can become a teacher – never a master. Only a disciple can become a master. Discipleship means egoless surrender. And once you surrender, your innermost self is revealed to you. That is the master who is waiting for you. He has been waiting for you for lives and lives.

In any moment of surrender, the master will be revealed to you. And that master is no one. It is your own innermost self; it is your own atman. So really, this can be said: when you are a perfect disciple you have become a master. You are no longer a disciple at all. Discipleship achieved; you are now transformed into a master.

-Osho

From The New Alchemy: to Turn You On, Discourse #9.

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.