Sannyas is always difficult. But only the first step, because it is a transformation from one style of life to a totally different style of life. Mind always finds it difficult to adjust to new ways of life. The old way you seem to be well-acquainted with; you can walk on it with closed eyes, almost asleep, like a robot. But the new way will need alertness, awareness; the new way will need learning life from scratch.
Sannyas is simply an initiation into new spaces within you, a change from the head to the heart, from logic to love, from your ordinary conditioning, to an unconditioned mind, to a freedom which you are not even aware that you are capable of.
Sannyas is something like a bird which has remained in a cage - the cage is golden, very artistic, very valuable, but to the bird it is nothing other than an imprisonment. But the bird has lived long in the cage, although it is taking away its freedom, its whole sky, its flights across the sun, its joy; it has almost destroyed the bird's capacity to be on the wing. Perhaps the bird has already forgotten that it has wings. But the cage has security, safety from the unknown. The bird needs not to be worried for the coming days - it need not worry about its food.
Even if you open the door of the cage, the bird will hesitate to get out of it. So much is involved - the security, the safety. And who knows about this vast sky, and where he will land? And he has forgotten completely that he has wings. You know something only if you use it. If a bird has never used its wings, how can it remember them?
The English word sin is very beautiful. It means "forgetfulness." There is only one sin, and that is forgetfulness.
It simply comes - and it comes so silently, so gracefully. But the idea of taking sannyas is basically wrong; hence it becomes difficult. Even if you take it, it will be false, it won't be the true sannyas; you will be simply dreaming that you have taken sannyas. The authentic sannyas simply comes one moment and possesses you - it springs up from your very heart, and there is no way to avoid it. It is your very heartbeat.
So the first thing you have to drop is the idea of taking. Just be here, enjoy for a few days. Just watch other birds opening their wings in the sky. Participate in their songs, in their dances, without bothering about sannyas. And if you start feeling that it is already happening, in a moment when you are lost in singing and dancing, when you are not there... it occupies your innermost being.
It is not something that you have to do, it is something that simply grows in you. It is not a commodity that you have to purchase, it is a quality, a grace, a search which starts growing inside you - just like a seed disappears into the soil and in its place a plant starts growing. That plant was asleep in the seed; now it has awakened.
Sannyas is asleep in you, just asleep. So dance madly, sing madly, meditate, enjoy all these people, this crazy communion, and the moment will come on its own. When you are ripe you will find that there is nothing more easy than sannyas.
You are saying, "Ever since I saw you in an interview on TV one year ago, I've never been so nervous before in my whole life." It is a good sign. I touched your heart. Your nervousness, that you have never felt before, is simply an indication that something new has started happening in you. You don't know what it is, you don't know where it is going to lead you; hence the nervousness.
People always feel good walking on the superhighway where the whole crowd of millions of people are walking. They may be going nowhere, but just because so many people are going, you feel a certain confidence that so many people cannot be wrong. But my whole teaching is that unless you start moving alone, dropping the crowd... because the crowd has never reached anywhere, and one has never heard of a crowd becoming enlightened. A crowd always remains a crowd - blind, deaf, without direction. It just goes on because it always finds somebody ahead of it is continuing on.
One scientist was trying to experiment in South Africa on a very rare species of insect which always follows the leader; they always move in a long line. If you pull one out of the line it becomes nervous, it starts feeling that it has lost its moorings, its roots. Put back in the line it is perfectly at ease. Somebody is ahead, somebody is behind, they must be going somewhere, and so many cannot be wrong.
The scientist tried one experiment and captured almost a dozen insects of that species. He put them into a big plate, a round plate, and they started moving round, and round, and round. Somebody was always ahead, somebody was always behind, and out of their conditioning of centuries, unless the leader stops.... And there was no leader because it was a circle. They are very obedient people - unless the leader stops, nobody is going to stop. They went on and on for sixty hours, until they all fell dead.
Where is the crowd going?... but it is cozy to be part of it. People are very nervous in being alone, and sannyas is the art of being aloneness. Unless you learn to be alone, you will never be an individual in your own right; and unless you learn to be alone you will never be able to enter within yourself, because the crowd cannot go there. Even your most intimate friend, your lover, your beloved, cannot go with you inside you; there you have to go alone. That path is absolutely private. That is your privilege, nobody can interfere there, and that is where your source of life is. You can call it life, you can call it God, you can call it truth - names don't matter.
You became nervous - it is a good sign. From that very moment I have been haunting you, and unless sannyas happens I am going to haunt you your whole life. You can go anywhere, you can escape to the moon, but it won't help.
You say, "Sometimes I wish I'd never heard of you." Nobody desires disasters, but they happen. And it has happened already; now there is no point in crying for the spilled milk. "And, on the other hand, I'm happy that there is someone like you to show me the way." You will remain in a dilemma: half of you is already ready to take the jump, and the other half is clinging to your past.
One thing has to be remembered, that the past is no more, and clinging to the past is clinging to the dead. It is very dangerous, because it hampers and hinders your life, in the present and for the future. One should always go on freeing himself of the dead past. That is one of the fundamentals of sannyas, to go on renewing yourself every moment, to die to the past and be born anew. That which is gone is gone - don't even look back. Looking back is not a good sign.
Small children never look back, they always look ahead. They don't have anything in the past to look back on - there is no past, they have only the future. Old men never look at the future, because in the future there is only death, and they want to avoid it, they don't want to talk about it. They always look back. They decorate their memories; they make them look very beautiful. All that they have is a collection of memories, and they go on improving on those memories, but when they were actually living them, they had not enjoyed them. But now the future is darkness; one needs some consolation. They can find consolation only in the past.
A person who lives in the present - neither bothering about the past, nor bothering about the future - is fresh, young; he is neither a child nor an old man. And one can remain young to the very last breath. The body may be old, but the consciousness remains fresh, just like a fresh breeze, cool, fragrant, in the early morning sun. The whole problem is that we are caught up with our past. It is holding us back, it does not allow us to go against it. And if you don't go against it, your whole life will be simply boredom, because you will be repeating and repeating the same past, the same routine.
The most important philosophical school of our age is existentialism, and they have brought a few new problems for the philosophers to think about. One of their problems is boredom. If you look into an existentialist treatise you will be surprised: God is not talked about at all; there is nobody concerned about the soul, about heaven and hell, and angels and the devil. The things that they are talking about are boredom, anguish, meaninglessness, society - strange subjects, but in fact far more significant than God, the devil, heaven and hell, because they were all fictions, and these are realities.
A man who lives according to the past remains in the grip of the past. He is bound to feel boredom, meaninglessness, and a kind of anguish, "What am I doing here? Why am I continuing to live? What is there in tomorrow - another repetition of today? And what was in today was a repetition of yesterday." So what is the point? Why go dragging yourself from the cradle to the grave, in the same routine?
It is perfectly good for buffaloes and donkeys because they don't think, they don't have the memory of the past, they don't have any idea of the future. So they are doing the same thing every day, the buffaloes go on chewing the same grass their whole life; they don't change even the grass - but they are not bored, because for boredom a certain consciousness is needed. This consciousness is aware that you have done it before, you are doing it again, and you will be doing it tomorrow also - because you don't move from the past, you don't let it die, you keep it alive.
This is the dilemma that everybody faces in life, and the only solution is to let the past die. There is a beautiful story in the life of Jesus. He comes to a lake; it is early morning, the sun has yet not risen, and one fisherman is just going to throw his net into the lake to catch fish. Jesus puts his hand on his shoulder and says: "How long are you going to do this thing, every day - morning, afternoon, evening - just catching fish? Do you think this is all life is meant for?"
The fisherman had never thought about it - a simple, poor fellow. He said: "I have never thought about it, but because you have raised the question, I can see the point, that life must be something more."
Sannyas is such a simple happening, but it is a simple happening only to the intelligent, not to the retarded. It is not for idiots... at least, I have never seen any idiot even thinking about sannyas. The idiots belong to the world of the buffaloes. They are perfectly at ease, although their life has no meaning, no flowers, no fragrance. No song ever arises in their heart; they don't ever feel like dancing to abandon. Their life is very lukewarm. It never gets to such an intensity where one becomes almost a flame - a torch burning from both ends simultaneously. And only these few people have known the truth of life and the beauty of life and the ecstasy of life.
You are saying, "But to take sannyas... I feel such an egoist - jealous, lazy - that maybe I shall never be a good sannyasin."
And as far as laziness is concerned, sannyas is exactly the art of how to be spiritually lazy. I call myself the lazy man's guide to enlightenment - because I teach nothing but sitting silently, doing nothing, and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. You don't have to pull the grass, it grows by itself; you have just to wait.
I am reminded of a small story. In India there is one state, Rajasthan, which is the most ancient place of warriors; it has created great warriors. In a small village there was a great warrior, and in India, to have your mustache pointing upwards is thought to be the sign of a great warrior. He was such an arrogant and stubborn fellow that he had told everybody in the town, "You can have your mustache, but they should be always pointing downwards. If I see anybody having his mustache pointing upwards, I will kill him!"
Jealousy is almost like a shadow of love. If we can grow our love, it takes over the whole energy of jealousy and transforms it into love. It is an alchemical change. And I can say it with guarantee, because it has happened in me, it has happened in my thousands of sannyasins who have forgotten what jealousy is. Their love is so much.
And these things are not alone - there are many, many things. Ego is surrounded with depression, with anxiety, with anguish, with all kinds of sick ideas. My problem is that your sick ideas should not disappear suddenly; otherwise you will start feeling yourself empty. They have been there for so long, and you have been feeling so full.
Things go on growing. Whatever you have is not going to remain the same, because everything in life is always growing. If you have thorns, then thorns will be growing; and if you have roses, then roses will be growing.
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