Surrendering means surrendering to life; surrendering to the source from where you come and to where one day you will go back again.
You are just like a wave in the ocean: You come out of the ocean, you go back to the ocean.
Surrendering means trusting in the ocean — and of course, what can a wave do except that? The wave has to trust the ocean and whether you trust or not, you remain part of the ocean.
Non-trusting, you will create anxiety — that’s all. Nothing will change. only you will become anxious. tense, desperate. If you trust, you flower. you bloom. you celebrate. knowing well that deep down is your mother, the ocean. When tired, you will go back and rest in her being again.
When rested, you will come back again to have a taste of the sky and the sunlight and the stars. Surrendering is trusting and it has nothing to do with any concept of any God, any ideology of any God. It is an attitude.
Then you can understand the meaning of Buddha s last utterance.
Be a light unto yourself. When he says. Be a light unto yourself. he means: if you have surrendered to life you have become a light unto yourself. Then life leads you. Then you always live in enlightenment.
When he says. ‘Be a light unto yourself, he is saying don t follow anybody, don’t cling to anybody.
Learn from everybody but don’t cling to anybody. Be open, vulnerable, but remain on your own, because finally the religious experience cannot be a borrowed experience. It has to be existential; it has to be your own. Only then it is authentic. If I say something and you believe in it, it is not going to help.
If I say something and you search, and you surrender, and you trust, and you also experience the same — then it has become a light unto yourself. Otherwise my words will remain words; at the most they can become beliefs. Unless you experience the truth of them, they cannot become trust, they cannot become your own truth. My truth cannot become yours, otherwise it would have been very cheap. If my truth could be yours then there would be no problem.
it is good that the religious truth cannot be transferred to you otherwise you would never achieve the same ecstasy as Buddha or Jesus or Krishna. Never, because you would learn. it in a school textbook — any fool could transfer it to you. Then the whole orgasmic experience will be lost.
It is good that religious experience has to be experienced individually. Nobody can lead you there. People can indicate the way but those indications are very subtle — don’t take them literally. Buddha said, ‘Be a light unto yourself.’
He is saying, ‘Remember, my truth cannot be your truth; my light cannot be your light. Imbibe the spirit from me, become more thirsty from me, let your search be intense and be totally devoted to it, learn the devotion of a truth-seeker from me — but the truth, the light, will burn within you. You will have to kindle it within you.’ You cannot borrow truth, it cannot be transferred, it is not a property. It is such a subtle experience that it cannot even be expressed. It is inexpressible. One at the most tries to give a few hints.
OSHO
From : Ancient Music in the Pines ch. 4
