Gardening 

 

 

When you come to me, why you have come is going to play a great part in the whole drama that is going to follow. And I have to watch that I do not help a wrong beginning, because once started it will be more and more difficult to change it. It will become stronger and stronger. It has to be stopped from the very beginning. The seed has to be burned if it is wrong. Once I start and the sprouts come out of the earth, the seed is already gaining roots, becoming stronger. And once the tree has become very big, then it will be difficult... very very difficult.

 

A seed can be burned very easily, but to cut a tree and burn a tree is going to be very difficult. And you are the tree! So when you have many branches, many leaves, many fruits -- maybe wrong, bitter, poisonous, but still then you will resist: nothing should be cut. When you resist even when the tree is not there, just the seed is there, you can imagine how much resistance you will create, how much you will fight when the tree is there and you feel you have grown -- and you can grow wrongly. Remember this, growth in itself does not mean much. One can grow in a wrong way.

 

Growth in itself is not the goal. There is a right growth and there is a wrong growth. In the West now there is much work going on around the concept of growth, but I have not come across anybody in the growth movement who is aware that growth in itself is not the goal and cannot be the goal. You can grow wrongly, you can grow rightly.

 

So growth in itself is not the goal -- but right growth. And once you grow wrongly it becomes more and more difficult on each step, on each level of growth.... The further you have gone the more difficult it is to move back, because growth becomes a rigid pattern. Right growth is a totally different thing. From the very beginning one has to be aware; hence the need of a master, because from the very beginning how can you be aware? You will be aware at the end. From the very beginning, how can you be aware? You can only grope in the dark.

 

So if you move on your own, ninety-nine possibilities are there out of a hundred that you will grow wrongly, because who will say that this is not the way to grow? And every growth in the beginning feels good because you expand, you become bigger. Every growth, even wrong growth, feels good. And wrong growth does not need much effort. It is like weeds in the garden -- they don't need much care, just a little water now and then and they will grow. But if you are trying to grow roses, they need care, they need a gardener. Weeds don't need a gardener, but roses do need one.

 

In the West the growth movement is moving in many dimensions, but completely oblivious of the fact that you can help people to grow wrongly -- and then there will be difficulty. Then you have created something which will be more and more difficult every day to destroy. A master is needed,

 

who can see the seed from the very beginning, and can help you to destroy it, so that the right seed can be found within you. You carry the right seed also.

 

You are a confusion of right and wrong. You are a confusion of good and bad. You are a confusion of weeds and roses. Somebody has to be there to sort it out for you, because you cannot do this at this moment of your consciousness. Your whole being is a confusion.

 

When a disciple comes to a master the first thing that arises in the master is: Why has he come to me? He starts looking into the disciple: Why? for what reason? what has brought him to me?

 

I must have watched thousands of people coming to me. Rarely it happens that a person has come for a right reason -- rarely. Humanity seems to be in such a bad shape; rarely it happens that a man comes with a right reason. He may think he has come for a right reason. That is not the point. His thinking is not of much value because the reason is hidden deeper in the unconscious, not on the surface. He cannot think about it.

 

The first thing that comes to a master is: Why? -- why has this man come to me? And he cannot listen and believe in you. Whatsoever you say is not of much worth because next moment you will change it. Tomorrow you will change it, you are a flux. You don't have a crystallized center in you which can reply. The master has to go deeper into your unconscious, to the very roots of your being, and see why you have come here. He cannot listen and believe in you, you are not yet believable. You are so deceptive that you don't know, you may be deceiving yourself. Once your why is known then something can be done. Then it has to be brought to your consciousness. And only on the right reason can your future growth be founded and based. [....]

 

There is a distinction between disciples and followers. A follower is one who is not yet a disciple, attracted but not yet fallen into the trap of the master. He cannot leave him, but also cannot trust him. A follower is somebody who hangs around undecided whether to go away from the master or to come closer. He is afraid to come close because a master is a death; he is also afraid to go away because a master is a resurrection.

 

A follower is just either on the way to become a disciple or on the way to become an enemy. Either a follower will come closer and will become a disciple, or he will have to find excuses to go away and will become an enemy. Whenever a follower goes away he has to become an enemy; otherwise what rationalization does he have to go away?

 

-Osho, "Just Like That, #2“