Master/disciple – Sat Sangha Salon

I Am Not Your Shepherd – Osho

Can a true rebel be a disciple of a master, or must he be simply a friend of the master?

A rebel needs no master. If he needs a master, he is not a rebel. A rebel is a master unto himself. Rebellion is his religion, and there is no other religion for him.

To follow a master, and at the same to think yourself a rebel, is a contradiction in terms.

A rebel can only be a friend. A rebel can learn from all the sources available, but a rebel cannot be a follower. He cannot be a believer. A rebel cannot afford a master. He has chosen his individuality, his freedom, and he is not going to be enslaved by any master.

That’s why I go on insisting to you that I am not your master, because I don’t want anybody to be enslaved. It is a psychological slavery: whatever I say you believe, whatever I do you believe – and still you think you are a rebel?

To be a rebel needs guts.

Yes, you can be my friends – and I am available to you: whatever I know, whatever I have experienced, is always available to you. And I don’t ask anything for it – your trust, your surrender, your faith, no! I cannot be inhuman to any human being.

In the past, your so-called masters have all been inhuman to you. What does it mean when Jesus says, “I am the savior”? What does it mean when he says, “I am the shepherd and you are the sheep”? What more humiliation do you want? And still there are millions of Christians who think that they are sheep, and their shepherd is hanging on the cross.

I am not your shepherd; you are not my sheep.

A rebel is a beautiful human being. A sheep? – you have fallen far below being human. Have you seen sheep? They always move in a crowd – so close to each other, rubbing their bodies against each other. They cannot move alone. No sheep is a rebel – they feel comfortable and cozy only in a mob.

Only lions move alone. Lions don’t move in a crowd – they are rebels. I would like you to be lions, not sheep.

I am not your master; you are not my disciples. You love me – that’s enough. I love you and respect you, and respect your freedom. In this freedom and love, if something can transpire and transform you, that will be beautiful. But nobody was the master and nobody was the slave.

This is not a religion, this is a love affair; and in love, nobody is a master. This is the highest that can be possible. And I would like you to live at the highest peak of human growth.

There is not much difference between me and you, a very little difference: you are asleep, I am awake. But that is not much of a difference. You can be awake any moment. I was also asleep one day. If I can be awake, why can’t you be? The capacity to sleep proves the capacity to be awake.

You can sleep only if you can be awake. Stones don’t sleep, because they cannot be awake.

All that is needed is just a little shaking, a little cold water thrown into your eyes. That’s what I am doing every day, day in, day out. Once in a while you open your eyes too, but old habits die hard; then you close them again. Once in a while you hear me too, but then you pull the blanket over yourself again. Just human – just a little bit more rest, just a little bit more of a beautiful golden dream.

And naturally, sometimes you get angry at me because I am disturbing your dream. But I am not angry. Even if you pull up your blanket again, turn to the other side, start snoring again, I am not going to leave you. I know that you are not dead – you can pull up the blanket, you can move to the other side. So it is very close; just a little more effort and you will be awake.

I am not your savior, just a friend who knows both the states: the state of sleep and the state of being awake. And I feel that you are missing such a great joy, of opening your eyes and seeing the sunrise, and the birds singing, and the fresh morning air. And I feel compassion for you, that you are unnecessarily wasting your time in dreaming, while real life is waiting for you.

So remember it: there is no question of anybody being your master. These masters have exploited you enough! It is time to stop this exploitation. An authentic human being cannot reduce you to a sheep. If there is any sin, Jesus has committed it, and that was making you sheep, and posing as your savior.

And when he was being caught, just a few minutes before, his disciples asked, “What about us?” He said, “I will be coming soon to deliver everybody who has faith in me from all suffering and misery. And I will take you to the house of my father in paradise.”

Two thousand years have passed, and that guy has not been seen since then. How long can you stretch the word “soon”?

And I can say, with categorical certainty, that he is not going to come back again. He could not save himself! – how can he save the whole humanity?

He died in tremendous doubt. At the last moment he shouted, looking at the sky, “God, my father, have you forsaken me?” He was expecting a miracle – naturally. He was believing himself to be the only begotten son of God. The only begotten son is being crucified, and God – sitting on a white cloud with angels playing on their harps – does not come to save him? Jesus died shaken. His faith was only that of a crackpot, it was not authentic experience.

I do not expect anything; nobody can disappoint me. I don’t have any God – I am happy just being myself.

Remember one thing: if there is a God, then you are all slaves, and freedom is impossible. The first principle of rebellion is that there is no God, no savior, no prophet, no messenger; you are alone, and you have to learn to depend only on yourself. That brings independence. And independence is such a joy, is such a beauty, is such a maturity, is such a flowering, that nothing more is needed.

You feel so contented, so fulfilled, and the whole existence becomes your paradise.

It is not a question of going into paradise. It is a question of going within yourself, reaching to your very center of being, which changes your perspective. This very existence becomes paradise. They are the same trees, the same birds, the same people, and yet they are no longer the same because you are no longer the same. Now you are not dreaming; now you are awake.

For the awakened one, this existence is paradise. Every moment it is paradise. And when I say this, I am not saying it according to any holy scripture. There are no holy scriptures, there are only books.

I am saying it out of my own experience, out of my own authority. I am ready to share with you. And it is not something that can be sold or purchased. Only in deep friendship, in love, does the transfer, the transformation happen.

You are all rebels.

Only rebels can have a contact with me.

And I would like you to be a rebel always.

I respect your rebellion. It would be so ugly for me to have five thousand sheep around me. Even if I become the shepherd, what would be the joy from it?

I want five thousand rebellious spirits, five thousand burning torches, lights unto themselves – and then to be amongst you is a joy.

-Osho

From From Bondage to Freedom, Discourse #16, Q2

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.

Just a Liquid Friendliness – Osho

I am familiar with the master disciple relationship after years of being around you.

Could you please comment on the disciple-disciple relationship?

There is no such thing. Disciples in the past have created organizations. That was their relationship, that “we are Christians,” that “we are Mohammedans,” that “we belong to one religion, to one faith and because we belong to one faith, we are brothers and sisters. We will live for the faith and we will die for the faith.”

All organizations have arisen out of the relationships between disciples. In fact, two disciples are not connected with each other at all. Each disciple is connected with the master in his individual capacity. A master can be connected with millions of disciples, but the connection is personal, not organizational.

Disciples don’t have any relationship. Yes, they have a certain friendliness, a certain lovingness. I am avoiding the word ‘relationship’ because that is binding. I am not calling it friendship even, but ‘friendliness’ – because they are all fellow travelers walking on the same path, in love with the same master, but they are related to each other through the master. They are not related to each other directly.

This has been the most unfortunate thing in the past: that disciples became organized, related amongst themselves, and they were all ignorant. And ignorant people can only create more nuisance in the world than anything else. All the religions have done exactly that.

My people are related to me individually. And because they are on the same path, certainly they become acquainted with each other. A friendliness arises, a loving atmosphere, but I don’t want to call it any kind of relationship.

We have suffered too much because of disciples getting directly related to each other, creating religions, sects, cults, and then fighting. They cannot do anything else. At least with me, remember it: you are not related to each other in any way at all. Just a liquid friendliness, not a solid friendship, is enough – and far more beautiful, and without any possibility of harming humanity in the future.

-Osho

From Beyond Enlightenment, Discourse #2, Q2

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.

The Real Master Gives You Fire – Osho

Man is in a raw condition; much has to be transformed before a man really attains to his destiny. Man is gold which has yet to be purified through fire. And unless it is purified, a great hankering, a great thirst, a great hunger, continues deep down in the soul, because one can never feel at home unless one has come to one’s true nature. The gold simply represents one’s true nature, the highest – it is symbolic. Much mud is mixed with it, although even if the gold is deep down in the mud it remains gold. But the desire to get rid of all that is foreign, to get rid of all that is not one’s real essence, is natural. But to get rid of the unreal one has to go through many pains, growing pains. Hence I use the word “fire.”

The journey is not easy – the journey is arduous because one has to drop many cherished things and one has cherished those things for long, maybe for lives together. To drop them means becoming poor, becoming a beggar. That’s what Jesus means when he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.” To be poor in spirit, that is the fire.

One has lived with great ideas, opinions, knowledge, and one has been clinging to them because they were all that one had. But to be initiated into a path of purity, into a path of transformation, all that rubbish has to be dropped. I cannot give you anything, because you need not have anything from the outside. That which you need is already there – it is already the case – but I will have to take many things from you, things which are not your nature.

Hence the Master’s work is really not of giving something to the disciple but of taking everything that the disciple has, leaving him utterly poor in spirit; and that is the journey and the arduousness of it. When a disciple comes to a Master he comes hoping that he will get something; a real Master is bound to frustrate it.

Only the pseudo Master gives you solace; the real Master gives you fire. Only the pseudo Master pretends to give you something – knowledge, wisdom, enlightenment. The real Master knows that nothing can be given to you because in the first place all that you need is already there. It is hidden behind a great heap of rubbish; the rubbish has to be taken away. But you have cherished that rubbish very long, you have saved it like a treasure, so when it is being taken away it hurts, it leaves wounds. One wants to escape from a real Master. A thousand and one times one wants to escape from a real Master. A thousand and one times one is frustrated with the real Master, because basically he never fulfills your desires.

You come with one idea; he has some totally different idea of how to do things. He will not fulfill your expectations – he will not fulfill your expectations about how a real Master has to be either. He is going to shatter all your ideas. When a disciple comes to a Master he has many ideas about how the real Master should be, how an enlightened person should be. You cannot tame God, you cannot tame real enlightenment – there is no way; it remains wild. So he has to frustrate your desires, he has to frustrate your expectations, he has to frustrate your idea of a real Master. It is hard, and only the very courageous remain long enough to be transformed.

I am saying it to you, because it happens to every disciple – it is going to happen to you too: a thousand and one doubts will arise. The Master really makes trust almost impossible, but when it is impossible and still you trust, then it works; only then does it work. If the Master makes trust very simple and possible, if he fulfills all your ideas of being a Master, then trust is cheap, very cheap… meaningless too.

-Osho

From God’s Got a Thing About You, Chapter Ten

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.

Free From Everybody – Osho

The fruit falls on the ground when it is ripe. One day, you will leave us, and it will be impossible to have another master in your place. How can anybody else be the substitute for the Master of masters?

When you leave the physical body, will your meditation techniques help our inner growth as they do now?

My approach to your growth is basically to make you independent of me. Any kind of dependence is slavery, and the spiritual dependence is the worst slavery of all.

I have been making every effort to make you aware of your individuality, your freedom, your absolute capacity to grow without any help from anybody. Your growth is something intrinsic to your being. It does not come from outside; it is not an imposition, it is an unfolding.

All the meditation techniques that I have given to you are not dependent on me – my presence or absence will not make any difference – they are dependent on you. It is not my presence, but your presence that is needed for them to work. It is not my being here but your being here, your being in the present, your being alert and aware that is going to help.

I can understand your question and its relevance. It is not irrelevant. The whole past of man is, in different ways, a history of exploitation. And even the so called spiritual people could not resist the temptation to exploit. Out of a hundred masters, ninety-nine percent were trying to impose the idea that, “Without me you cannot grow, no progress is possible. Give me your whole responsibility.”

But the moment you give your whole responsibility to somebody, unknowingly you are also giving your whole freedom. And naturally, all those masters had to die one day, but they have left long lines of slaves: Christians, Jews, Hindus, Mohammedans. What are these people? Why should somebody be a Christian? If you can be someone, be a Christ, never be a Christian. Are you absolutely blind to the humiliation when you call yourself a Christian, a follower of someone who died two thousand years ago?

The whole of humanity is following the dead. Is it not weird that the living should follow the dead, that the living should be dominated by the dead, that the living should depend on the dead and their promises that `We will be coming to save you.’? None of them has come to save you. In fact, nobody can save anybody else; it goes against the foundational truth of freedom and individuality.

As far as I am concerned, I am simply making every effort to make you free from everybody—including me—and to just be alone on the path of searching.

This existence respects a person who dares to be alone in the seeking of truth. Slaves are not respected by existence at all. They do not deserve any respect; they don’t respect themselves, how can they expect existence to be respectful towards them?

So remember, when I am gone, you are not going to lose anything. Perhaps you may gain something of which you are absolutely unaware. Right now I am available to you only embodied, imprisoned in a certain shape and form.

When I am gone, where can I go? I will be here in the winds, in the ocean; and if you have loved me, if you have trusted me, you will feel me in a thousand and one ways. In your silent moments you will suddenly feel my presence.

Once I am unembodied, my consciousness is universal. Right now you have to come to me. Then, you will not need to seek and search for me. Wherever you are… your thirst, your love… and you will find me in your very heart, in your very heartbeat.

-Osho

From Beyond Enlightenment, Discourse #11

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.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: