HOW CAN WE KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SURRENDER AND DEPENDENCY, NOT JUST WITH YOU BUT WITH ALL THAT COMES UP IN OUR LIVES?
The difference is so absolutely clear that once you have experienced surrender you will never miss understanding what is surrender and what is dependency.
Surrender is out of love, dependency is out of fear. Dependency is a relationship in which you are hankering for something, desiring something; there is a motive. You are ready to become dependent — that's what you are willing to pay for something. Surrender has no desire in it. It is sheer joy, it is trust, it is unmotivated.
It is like falling in love. In fact it is exactly falling in love — a love that knows no bounds, a love that is totally different from what you ordinarily call love. Your love is again a kind of dependency. You become dependent on the person you love, because in fact you don't love, you are simply finding somebody to cling to; otherwise you feel very lonely. You want to avoid your loneliness, you want somebody to fill your inner black hole, your emptiness.
But real love is not an escape from loneliness, real love is an overflowing aloneness. One is so happy in being alone that one would like to share — happiness always wants to share. It is too much, it cannot be contained; like the flower cannot contain its fragrance, it has to be released.
Surrender is the highest form of love, the purest form of love. You will not feel dependent, because there will be no clinging in it. You will not feel dependent, because it is not out of loneliness that you have surrendered. If you have surrendered out of loneliness then it is not surrender at all, then it is something else.
Another thing: surrender always happens, it is not a doing. You cannot do it — how can you do surrender? If you do it, it is not surrender. You are the doer — and if the doer is there then it can be taken back any moment.
Surrender happens; the doer is not found. You simply find yourself melting into somebody, into something. You may find yourself melting into a sunset, and it is surrender. You may find yourself melting into the starry night, and it is surrender. You may find yourself melting into a woman or man, and it is surrender. You may find yourself melting into music, and it is surrender. Surrender has many dimensions, but the taste is the same: you simply find yourself melting. You simply find yourself no more; a kind of egolessness is felt.
You are… in fact you are very much, and yet you are not. Presence and absence both together — surrender is paradoxical. Presence, because the ego is not there, so you are just awareness; and absence because the ego is not there, so you cannot say "I am."
Dependency is ugly, surrender is beautiful. Dependency will make you feel reduced, surrender will make you feel enhanced, expanded. Dependency will create reaction in you to revolt. Surrender will bring more and more trust.
But the distinction is delicate. Once known it is not difficult, but if you have not experienced it yet then surrender will look like dependency, because dependency is what you know.
I cannot explain it to you, I can only indicate a few directions. In the morning when the sun is rising, just sit silently on the riverbank. Watch it. Doing nothing, just sitting silently, watch it. And some time in some blissful moment it will happen: there will be no observer, and nothing observed. The observer becomes the observed. It is not that you are separate from the rising sun — you are it.
Sitting by the tree, just close your eyes, feel the tree. Hug the tree, just be one with it, as if you are with your beloved. And sometimes… and it is not predictable; I cannot say that it will happen each time. Only once in a while it will happen — because it has to happen in spite of you, that's why only once in a while.
Or, loving your woman, melt into her warmth. For a moment forget sexuality, for a moment forget all that goes on in your head, in your fantasy. For a moment just melt into the real woman. Don't carry any pornography in your head, don't make sexuality something cerebral. Let your sexuality be a deep sensuousness, sensitivity, a gut feeling. Melt into the woman, as if you are again a child in the mother's womb. Unless you have known this with your beloved, you have not known your beloved. A child again in the mother's womb, absolutely together, all distances gone — and in that moment you will know what surrender is.
But the male ego creates trouble everywhere. Even being with your woman, you are trying to control the situation. Even in our language, ugly expressions have entered: we call it lovemaking. How can you make love? Nobody can make love. But it has come into language not without any reason. People are trying to make love; even in love they are doers. So the greatest opportunity of knowing surrender is missed.
And now you have manuals: How To Make Love, How To Attain Total Orgasm. And people are reading these manuals and following the instructions. I know of some foolish people who make love to their woman, and by the bedside is the manual and they go on looking into it: how to make total orgasm.
Some moments in life when you are not a doer, not a knower, when you simply are, you will have the taste. It can come through beauty, it can come through poetry, it can come through music, it can come through so many doors. God has many doors to his temple.
But my feeling is that you know only dependency, hence the question has arisen. One who has known surrender cannot ask the question. Be in relaxation a few moments. It can be any kind of situations — swimming in the river, relax with the river, or sunning on the beach, relax with the sun — anything. Life is full of opportunities. Remember Atisha. He says life is full of opportunities, life is the opportunity. Don't wait for the opportunity, the opportunity is already here.
But you will have to learn a totally different kind of consciousness — not that of a doer, but that kind of consciousness which is simply existing… that simple consciousness, innocent.
And that happens so many times to you here while listening to me. In the pauses, when sometimes I stop… it is there. Drink it.
OSHO