Sannyas should be available to everybody. The whole country must be able to become sannyasins, but that is possible only if you can be a sannyasin in ordinary life — if you can go to the office, if you can work in a shop, if you can be a laborer, or a teacher, or a doctor, or an engineer and still be a sannyasin.
Sannyas is something which can be received only in deep innocence.
My sannyas is not a character that will confine you. My sannyas is an awareness that will give you more and more freedom. And if one day you feel that my sannyas is making a prison for you, then drop out of it — that will be the true sannyas spirit. But never allow it to become an imprisonment.
My sannyasins belong to no race, to no country, to no religion. That’s what my sannyas is all about: getting out of all kinds of prisons, becoming simply human; declaring one’s universality, declaring that “The whole earth belongs to us.”
This is my observation: that true sannyas happens only when you have come to the verge of suicide. When you see that the outside world is finished, then there are only two alternatives left: either commit suicide and be finished because there is nothing to live for any more, or turn in. “The outer world has failed, now let us try the inner”: that is sannyas. Sannyas and suicide are two aspects of the same coin. If you are focused and obsessed with the outside, then suicide; if you are a little loose, flexible, then sannyas.
Sannyas is nothing but an effort to wake you, an effort to shake you, an effort to shock you into awareness. Sannyas is nothing but an alarm.
The reality is already there, you are not to achieve it. You have only to do one thing: you have to put aside your dreams. And you will no longer be a rock, you can fly with me to the very end of the sky. Receive my invitation, receive my challenge. That’s what sannyas is all about.
The phony sannyas is escapist. It teaches you not to enjoy ,life, it teaches you not to love music, it teaches you not to cherish beauty. It teaches you to destroy all the sources that beautify your existence. It teaches you to escape to the caves, ugly caves, to turn your back towards the world that God has given as a gift to you.
The sannyas that teaches indifference is phony. The sannyas that teaches you how to live in the world and yet float above it like a lotus flower, like a lotus leaf, remaining in the water and yet untouched by the water, remaining in the world and yet not allowing the world to enter into you, being in the world yet not being OF the world, that is true renunciation. That true renunciation comes through witnessing; it is not indifference.
Sannyas is real suicide, because it destroys the mind, it takes you beyond the mind. And if you are beyond the mind you will not be born again. Why be born again and again? Why go on in this vicious circle?
I persuade you, I seduce you into sannyas. Great persuasion is needed, great seduction is needed. And that’s why I have created sannyas. Otherwise there was no need; you could have come here, listened to me, and gone. You would have listened to me, but you would not have come close to me. This is a bridge. You would have heard me, but you would not have tasted of my silence. You would have known what I say about love, but you would not have known my love. Sannyas makes it possible. It is an energy-field, it is a buddhafield. It is communion: nonverbal, heart-to-heart, and, one day, being-to-being.
Sannyas is going to undo all that the society has done. It is not just accidental that priests are against me, politicians are against me, parents are against me, the whole establishment is against me; it is not accidental. I can understand the absolutely clear logic of it. I am trying to undo what they have done. I am sabotaging the whole pattern of this slave society. My effort is to create rebels, and the beginning of the rebel is to trust in oneself. If I can help you to trust in yourself, I have helped you. Nothing else is needed, everything else follows of its own accord.
Sannyas is an effort to reclaim that which is yours and to drop that which is not yours. Sannyas is an effort to drop that which you really don’t have, and to claim that which you always had with you all along.
Sannyas is not renunciation, it is a way to live life in its totality and intensity. It is the art of living life in all its dimensions, it is the way to live life in all its richness. It is not the old idea of sannyas. I am not creating monks and nuns — no, not at all. I am creating alive people, vibrant, pulsating, zestful people, young and fresh, ready to go on any adventure in search of truth, in search of love, in search of God.
Sannyas is not denied to anybody, because sannyas is an opportunity. A few people surrender even before taking sannyas, a few surrender after taking sannyas, a few surrender after being sannyasins for months or for years. Hence sannyas is not denied; it creates a space, a context, for surrender.
Sannyas I give to all. But only those are accepted who REALLY take sannyas. That’s why I say sannyasins are the chosen few. It is out of my compassion that I don’t reject anybody. The most unworthy is also to be respected, loved, received, welcomed. And who knows? The unworthy may change. Man is unpredictable; the baser metal can any day become gold.
Sannyas is an ultimate love affair: the search for God, the search for truth. It is possible only when you have failed many times, loved and suffered, and each suffering has brought you more and more consciousness, more and more understanding. One day the recognition arrives that love can give you a few glimpses — and those glimpses are good, and those glimpses are glimpses of God — but it can only give you glimpses; more than that is not possible. But that too is too much; but without those glimpses you will never seek and search God.
Sannyas is a way to live your life in total danger. What do I mean when I say sannyas is living dangerously? It means living moment to moment without any past.
Sannyas is rebellion against all slavery; it is living life in absolute freedom. To live life in absolute freedom, without traditions, without conventions, without religions, without philosophies, without ideologies — political, social, and others — to live unburdened is sannyas. But it will look crazy to the whole world. Freedom looks crazy because everybody is living an imprisoned life. To prisoners, the person who escapes from the prison looks crazy, because for them prison is comfortable, convenient, secure, safe.
Sannyas is a risk! The people who cannot take any risk cannot be sannyasins.
Sannyas is not something outward, it is something that arises in you, an urge, a deep longing.
Sannyas is not a trip. It is an understanding in which you drop all the trips, in which you say,’Now I have arrived. Finished. Now I am not going anywhere. Now there is no future and no desire to go anywhere. Now I have to come to terms with the present, now I will be living in the herenow.’
Sannyas will make you more free, not less. Sannyas is not a sort of slavery, it is freedom — freedom from the formalities of the society, freedom from the oppressive burdens of the others, freedom to be yourself. Sannyas is an effort to become an individual. My help is available here but it is only your decision which will change you. Even if you take my help, it is you who takes it. I am like a river flowing — it is your decision to drink out of me or not. It is absolutely yours, and let it be so.
My sannyas is not dropping out of the world but getting deeper into it, getting to the very core of it, because God is at the very core of the world. God is the soul of the world. You cannot find him by escaping from the world. You can find him only by going deeper and deeper into the world. When you reach the very center of existence, you will find him. He is hidden in the world, the whole world is permeated by him. He is in the trees and in the rocks and in the birds and in the people. Yes, he is in your wife, in your husband and in your children. He is in you! And the best possibility to find him is in the world, not out of the world.
Sannyas is nothing but a decision, a total decision, a commitment, an involvement, that “Now my whole energy is going to move into one direction — the direction of freedom; I have decided to be free, free from all desire and free from all sorrow. Freedom without bounds is my goal.” And it can be attained. Once the decision is there and you are pouring your energy into it and nourishing it, nobody can prevent you from attaining it. It is your birthright.
WONDEFUL photograph, how wonderful.
And how wonderful site!
I am in love.