Divine Stranger

Man is a stranger on the earth; this is not his true home, hence the search. All search is basically the search for the source, the true home. And whatsoever we make here on the earth disappears: all these palaces that we make are made of playing cards. All that we think is very real finally proves dream-stuff, and by the time one is finished on this earth, one’s hands are as empty as they were when one entered. We don’t bring a thing into the world and we don’t take a thing from the world. The whole turmoil between these two emptinesses seems to be just futile, because it creates nothing. That’s why you see people so frustrated. They may be aware of it, they may not be aware of it, but frustration is writ large on every face, in every eye. People may be different, but they are all living in the same ocean of frustration.

One has to find the home; and you have come very close to it now. This has been your search for your whole life. Don’t miss this opportunity. It is difficult to get the opportunity: it is very easy to miss it. One can find a thousand and one excuses to miss; and it is natural that the excuses look very valid, relevant, because they belong to your mind and to your past. And the thing that is going to happen is unknown, you have never tested it, so there is no proof for it. You have to risk that which you know to find that which is unknown.

That is the beginning of being a sannyasin, and that is the initiation into a totally different kind of world that exists side by side on this earth but which is invisible to the worldly eyes, unavailable to the mundane, mediocre mind.

Every authentic person feels this – that he is a stranger, a foreigner, lost in something alien; nothing seems to fit.

There is a beautiful parable about Jesus: when he was crucified, after the third day he rose again. He goes in search of his disciples. He meets two disciples on the road but they can’t recognise him – not only do they not recognise him, they ask him ‘Sir, are you a foreigner here in Jerusalem? You don’t look as if you belong to this place. Are you a stranger here?’

His own disciples asking him that! But I love the story: Jesus is a stranger in Jerusalem, that’s why he is crucified. He is not only a stranger to the enemies, he is even a stranger to his own friends; even they cannot see his true reality. They also recognise only his former identity. Now that former identity is crucified. Now he has come in a new radiance, with a new purity, with new innocence: he is resurrected. This is his essential core! Even the disciples cannot recognise the essential core. They could have recognised the old garments, but they are gone. Now this is true Christ-consciousness, but it looks alien, strange.

Jesus is not only a stranger in Jerusalem, he is a stranger everywhere else. And any person who starts feeling himself a stranger is coming close to Christ-consciousness.

That is the meaning of pravasi: one who has become aware that he is living in a strange world which is not his true home. Once this settles in your heart, the search takes on a passionate intensity. This becomes the seed of awakening.

And this is my whole effort here: to make you alert that whatsoever you think you are, you are not, that you are totally something else; that you have fallen into a dream and you have become identified with the dream, that you are not part of the dream, that you are not a character in your dream, that you are the witness of the dream, that you are only pure awareness call it Christ-consciousness, Buddha-consciousness, or any word, or no word.

And it has been a long search for you. Now relax – now you can relax.

The sannyasins are not a crowd, they are not even a society, they are not even a family: they are an organism. And I welcome you into this organism, into this energy-field. Dissolve yourself into it, utterly, with a total yes, and miracles are possible.

Osho, Turn On, Tune In and Drop the Lot, Ch 5

Related Gem: Why Are We Here?