Many people come to me and they say, "Is there any difficulty if we don't become SANNYASINS, if we are not surrendered to you? And still, we love what you say. Still we want to listen to it. Is there any problem? Can't we do that?"
I say, "You can do that; the problem is not there. But then you will collect only the superficial. You will collect the words. Then you will collect only the fallen dregs from the table. You will not really be a guest to me. You will miss all that is essential; only the non-essential wi!l be your fate. You have to decide."
Once you are surrendered, a totally different world opens between me and you. The heart-to-heart communication starts. Then you can listen to my words, but you listen in such a different way, with such deep sympathy and love, with such gratitude and receptivity, that those words are no longer words; they start becoming alive. You have made them alive with your receptivity. You become pregnant with what I am saying to you, with what I am communicating to you. Then, there happens a transfer; then words are just excuses. Hanging around the word, I send you something which cannot be managed in the word. Then not only is the word reaching you, but the climate that it carries through my heart.
If you are in love with me, then there is a totally different kind of understanding between me and you. If you are not in love with me, then we are far apart. Then you are on some other planet, thousands and thousands of miles away from me. I may shout: you may hear a few words, but nothing special is going to happen that way. You may become more knowledgeable, but that is not the point. You should have more being, not more knowledge. If you are really becoming richer here, in close contact with me, then your being is growing. Then you are becoming more and more crystallized, more and more authentic, more and more alive, more and more divine. That is not possible without love.
And what is surrender? Surrender means surrendering the ego, surrender means surrendering all that you know. Surrender means surrendering your knowledge, your mind, your intellect. Surrender is a suicide, a suicide of the past. If you carry your past within you in a secret way, then your gesture of SANNYAS is impotent. You can take SANNYAS and still go on carrying your past, hiding and guarding it like a treasure. Then just on the surface you will be a SANNYASIN, but not surrendered to me. And then if you are not fulfilled, nobody else is responsible but you.
The first Baul standpoint is that existential things can be known only through existential ways. Love can be known only by loving.
Somebody asked Jesus, "How to pray?" and he said, "Pray." But he said, "That's what I am asking. I don't know how to pray." So Jesus said, "I will pray. You sit by my side and you also try."
How to teach prayer? It can be caught but it cannot be taught. If you are open to me, you can catch many things. If you are not open to me, nothing can be taught.
A prayer is like an infection. Love is also like an infection: it can be caught but not taught. You can catch it. It is flowing all around you, but if you remain like an island, closed, then there is no way to teach it to you.
The Bauls say,
GOD IS DESERTING YOUR TEMPLE AS YOU AMUSE YOURSELF BY BLOWING CONCH SHELLS AND RINGING BELLS. THE ROAD TO YOU IS BLOCKED BY TEMPLES AND MOSQUES. I HEAR YOU CALL, MY LORD, BUT I CANNOT ADVANCE. MASTERS AND TEACHERS BAR THE WAY.
God is all around you, but you are so full of scriptures, knowledge, so full of your own ego that there is no space left inside you where God can penetrate and enter into you. It has become impossible. It is becoming impossible only because of you.
OSHO