Question 1

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?

Osho, 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 a 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, "Beyond Enlightenment. #11, Q1"