Osho Quotes on Recognizing The Real Awakened Person – Enlightened Master

Osho Quotes on Recognizing The Real Awakened Person

1. It is absolutely essential to avoid the teachers, they are fake masters. It is very difficult, because they speak the same language. So you have not to listen to the words, you have to listen to the heart; you have not to listen to their doctrines, their logic and arguments, you have to listen to their grace, their beauty, their eyes; you have to listen to and feel the aura that surrounds a master. Just like a cool breeze it touches you. Once you have found your master, you have found the key to open the treasure of your potentialities.
2. Remember it: if you can’t recognize enlightened people when you come across them, don’t throw the responsibility on them. Watch inside — are you ready yet? It has happened that people who were not enlightened have sometimes helped people to become enlightened. If the desire of the seeker is tremendous, then even an unenlightened Master is enough.
3. It is a question of being open, and immediately you can recognize who is only a teacher and who is a master. The difference is very great, but very subtle. And all depends on your receptivity. All depends on your open heart. Only your heart can say whether you are confronted by a master or just listening to a teacher. With a teacher you don’t have a love affair. With the master you have a great love affair. With the teacher, you may be convinced by his arguments. With the master, the arguments don’t matter but his presence, which quenches your thirst. Just being close to a master, you start feeling a new, fresh breeze. The teacher is stale, carrying old, rotten scriptures. He does not have a fresh experience of the truth.
4. It is very difficult to recognize a contemporary Master. His fate is to be condemned, condemned from all quarters, in all possible ways. He is not respected  — he is not a respectable person. It takes time, thousands of years, for people to forgive him; only then do they start respecting him. When they are free of the guilt of having condemned him once, they start respecting him, worshipping him.
5. How will you recognize the real awakened person? How will you recognize that he is authentic, true, that what he is saying he knows? How will you recognize him? That is one of the most important questions that has been asked for centuries, and it has not been answered adequately because it can’t be answered adequately. Only a few hints can be given. You cannot recognize a true master through the head. To your head he may look very illogical. Let that be one of the hints — because the pseudo master tries to be very logical. He has to convince you, and you can be convinced only if he is logical. He tries even to give logic about God. He creates theology, which is the most stupid thing in the world — logic about God! There is no way to prove God logically, but the pseudo master tries to prove everything logically because you can understand only logic. The true master speaks paradoxically. He is a living paradox. He contradicts himself, because truth is the meeting of the opposites. And in the true master the truth has happened, the opposites have met. The polar opposites have disappeared in him; they have become one, they have melted into one unity. He is as paradoxical as existence itself. That should be the first hint.
6. People come to me and they ask, “How can we recognize whether a master is enlightened or not?” You cannot recognize an enlightened master as you are. It is just like a blind man asking how he can recognize whether the light is on or off. How can a blind man recognize this? Recognition needs eyes and the blind man’s eyes are closed. You cannot recognize whether a man is realized or not, enlightened or not, whether he is really a Christ or not — you cannot recognize. Otherwise, how could Jesus have been crucified if people had recognized him?
7. Life is hard, but the hardest thing is to hear of the way: to find a buddha, a master — a Christ, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu. It is very hard to find a buddha, and harder to hear him and to understand what he is saying. It is easier to misunderstand him, it is easier not to recognize him. You can find a thousand and one rationalizations and deny him. In fact you will try, because your ego is at stake. If you recognize somebody as a buddha, that means you have to surrender. Recognizing a buddha and not surrendering to him is impossible. Recognizing a buddha and surrendering to him is a natural phenomenon.
8. To seek a master is to seek somebody in whom you can recognize, somebody who becomes the proof — in whose being you can taste something of the divine; in whose eyes you can glimpse and see something of the divine; in whose love you can feel something being showered; in whose song you can feel, you can know beyond doubt, that the infinite is flowing. The master is nothing but a reed, a flute — an empty flute, an emptiness. God flows through him. If you can recognize it, already you yourself have become one with it. Now others can recognize it in you and it can spread.
9. The master is not a person but a presence. The person died the day enlightenment happened. After enlightenment, there is no person as such but only a presence, a light. You can recognize it only if you have some of the qualities: love, awareness, compassion, consciousness — just a small window. Not that you have to be perfectly awakened — then, certainly you will recognize, but then recognition is of no use. Recognition is of use when you are on the path moving towards the unknown, not knowing exactly whether there is something ahead of you or you just have fallen victim to some fallacious philosophy.
10. I am taking you into all these experiments with meditation so that it becomes possible for you to recognize the buddha when the meeting happens; so that you do not turn your back on the door when it opens; so that you won’t miss even if the door opens only for a single moment. Meditation will help you to recognize the master. Now this is a puzzle, because normally we approach the master in order to learn  meditation. But I am telling you, without meditation you will never be able to recognize the master. Where will you look? Only meditation will make you capable of seeing the master. If you go to recognize the master through your thinking, you will miss.
11. It is rare to find a master today, and there are many pretenders. One of the things that can be said about the pretenders is that you can recognize them immediately. The moment they ask you to believe in anything, the moment they ask you to follow a certain rule, regulation, the moment they ask you to have faith in them… never doubt, never question, have indubitable faith — these are the indications of the pretenders. Wherever you find these, escape from the place as fast as you can.
12. It seems more logical too, that a Master should choose first  —  because he is more aware, he knows. He can penetrate to the very possibility of your being, the very potentiality. He can see your future. He can see that which can happen. When you choose a Master, you think you have chosen  —  you are wrong. How can you choose a Master? You are so blind, how can you recognize a Master? You are so unaware, how can you feel a Master? If you start feeling him, that means he has already entered in your heart and has started playing with your energies  —  that’s why you start feeling him. Before a disciple ever chooses a Master, the Master has chosen him already.
13. Why should you be so much interested in a Master? For what? You should seek yourself. If you seek yourself, you will find the Master. The ancient saying is: When the disciple is ready, the Master appears. How can you seek a Master? You will not even be able to recognize one. You may come across… you may not be able to see.
    Seek your own being! Go deeper into your own being, go deeper into your own silence. And then suddenly, when you need a Master, he will appear — he always appears.… The Egyptian mystics say. “When the disciple is ready, the Master comes. When the devotee is ready God appears.” This is a very significant saying, of profound significance. The disciple cannot find the Master. Even if he finds, how will he recognize? It is always the Master who finds the disciple. Whenever the disciple is ready the Master appears, never before it. All directions have to be dropped. Those directions are the cause of why you have not been Able to disappear into God. Your search is the cause of why you have not been able to find. Stop searching and find! In fact the moment you stop searching God finds you.
14. A student cannot recognize the master, only a disciple can. The difference is great. A student looks through the head — he thinks, argues for and against. The disciple is one who looks through the heart — silently looks, observes, with no prejudice. In that non-prejudiced state something from the master starts flowing into the disciple, some vibe. Yes, there is no better word than ‘vibe’ — some vibe, invisible to everybody else, enters into the disciple. The master knows and the disciple knows that it has happened: they are bridged. But you can become a disciple only if you are meditating. If you are only thinking, you will never become a disciple. Meditation will give you a little glimpse, a little taste, that the truth is inside you: now you need somebody who can throw you into your own inside. On your own it will be very difficult to go into your own inside, because you will be going into love and death — which frightens, which scares. The master does not give. you anything, he simply gives you your own being. He gives you that which you already have. He takes away, certainly, a few things from you — your fear, your unconfidence in yourself, your doubt in your possibility, in your capacity, in your potential. He takes your doubts away. Kabir says: SATT GAHAI SATGURU KO CHINHEN. Only two things are needed: start moving inwards, and recognize a master.