Surrender is the gate

Discourses

Osho says, “When you surrender, the door opens. So don’t bother much where to surrender, simply think about more and more surrendering.”

Osho discourse in Garden

Once surrender has happened completely, the master becomes the door for you. Then a different world of light, life and bliss opens – satchitananda Hindus have called it. The true existence, the true consciousness, and the true bliss, satchitananda, becomes possible for you. The master becomes the door, and once you have attained this you are enlightened. Now you can help others to pass through your fire. Now you can help others to have a glimpse of the absolute, or to reach the ultimate and be dissolved in it.

But before you can become a master you have to be totally a disciple. Before you can teach you have to learn, and before you can help you have to be helped. You have to allow somebody to help you deeply. And that deep help is possible only when you are not there, because you are the disturbance, you are the hindrance. You continuously create barriers for your own growth in fear of the unknown. You cling to the known and then there can be no meeting, because the master is one who is unknown. You remain in the world of the known, the past – the master is the unknown. And a meeting of two points is possible: the unknown meeting the known. The known will dissolve, the known will burn, the known will be found no more, just like the darkness dissolves, disappears, when the sun enters.

Be a darkness before a master – humble, knowing your ignorance well, ready to surrender and wait – then Jesus can transform you, Buddha can transform you. In fact, Jesus and Buddha are just catalytic agents. Your surrender transforms you, they are just excuses. If you can surrender even without a Buddha, without a Jesus around you, if you can surrender to the cosmos, the same will happen. Then it will be difficult for you to surrender because there will be no object to surrender to. It will be more difficult – that’s why I say Buddha, Jesus, they are just excuses.

And then I would like to tell you of one very strange phenomenon that sometimes happens: even surrendering to a wrong master, sometimes you become enlightened – the master himself is not enlightened. It has happened, it can happen again, because the basic thing is to surrender. The transformation comes through surrendering, the master is just an object. Right or wrong does not make much difference.

When you surrender, the door opens. So don’t bother much where to surrender, simply think about more and more surrendering. That’s why even before a stone statue it can happen, or before a tree it can happen. It happened before the bodhi tree – that’s why Buddhists have been preserving that tree for so long, because it happened before the tree itself. Just the feeling that Buddha attained under this tree, and you surrender to the tree.

Surrender is the thing, everything else is just a help towards it. If you can find a right master, so far so good; if you cannot find one, don’t bother much. Surrender anywhere you like, but let the surrender be total. If the surrender is partial, even a Jesus or Buddha cannot help you. If the surrender is total, then even if they are not there, any ordinary man can also be helpful to you.

This emphasis has to be remembered, otherwise the mind goes on playing tricks. It thinks, “How should I be certain that this master is right? Unless I am certain, how can I surrender?” And you cannot be certain before you surrender, there is no way to be certain. If you want to be certain about the taste of the food, then the taste of the pudding is in its eating. How can you be certain without eating it? There is no way.

You have to eat Jesus, you have to drink Jesus – that’s the only way. You will be transformed because you believed, because you trusted and surrendered, and then many hidden dimensions will be open to you. The life that you see is not all; it is such a minute, atomic part of the whole. The pleasures that you have known are just rubbish. Not even a single ray exists in them of the bliss that is possible, that is your birthright.

All that you have accumulated is junk – if you can come to know the real treasure that is hidden within you. All your life is a begging, and the emperor waits just within your heart – this is what Jesus calls the kingdom. Don’t be a beggar, you can be kings! But then one has to dare. A beggar need not dare, but to become a king one has to dare and pass through transformations.

Surrender is the gate.

Osho, The Mustard Seed: My Most Loved Gospel on Jesus, Ch 16 (excerpt)

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