I am a new beginning

As far as I am concerned, I am not part of any old category of masters. I am a new beginning in the sense that the old master demanded surrender. I don’t demand anything from you, because to me surrender is a subtle spiritual slavery. Of course, with a master the surrender feels beautiful but even if slavery is decorated with flowers I cannot be deceived by it.

I want my people to be individuals living in freedom. If they love me it is out of their freedom, not out of fear, not out of desire, not out of some longing for achievement. The old disciple was surrendering himself because he wanted to be enlightened. The master was being used as a means. I don’t allow myself to be used as a means. That is ugly.

The old master was using the disciples for his own egoistic ends. The masters in the past used to brag about how many disciples they had. The number of the disciples decided the greatness of the master. The master was also dependent in a certain sense on the disciples. It is something to be understood that you cannot make anybody dependent without yourself becoming dependent too. And the same is true if you are independent, you would love to make everybody independent. Because independent individuality has such beauty and grace, such joy, such freedom to fly in the sky with no boundaries and no chains, with no conditions, no expectations, that a master would love his disciples to be ultimately free, free even of himself.

Zarathustra has said to his disciples: “Beware of me.” That small statement contains great meaning, because a disciple can renounce everything to be one with the master, to come closer and closer to the master; he can even sacrifice himself. But in this sacrificing he will enjoy a certain unburdening, because now he is no longer responsible. The whole responsibility is on the shoulders of the master. The disciple has become a sheep and the master has become the shepherd. Now the shepherd will take care.
One can think in this way that the sheep has attained a certain freedom – freedom from responsibility. But becoming a sheep, even if you become free, your freedom has no meaning. It is fear; it is irresponsibility. In a deeper sense you have lost yourself to gain something. It is not out of love that you have surrendered to the master; out of love there is no surrender, there is no need.

Love is a far bigger phenomenon than any surrender. Surrender is of the mind and surrender is an effort. Love is of the heart and it is not an effort. You suddenly find yourself in love with someone. Even if you try to be in love with someone you cannot succeed. No effort is going to be successful. Love comes just like the spring comes, and when love comes it brings many flowers.

There have been two kinds of masters. The majority of the masters in the past demanded surrender, total surrender. It was a kind of spiritual slavery. The master was enjoying a great ego, and the disciple was enjoying a great unburdening from all responsibilities. Now the master is going to save him. Now the master is his salvation, liberation, enlightenment. All that he could do he has surrendered himself. He has become an absolute yes.

To me this kind of relationship was not healthy, something was basically wrong. Because of this situation in the past one man stands separate from the whole crowd of masters, and that is J. Krishnamurti. He denied he was a master and he refused to accept anybody as a disciple; this was another extreme. The other masters were demanding absolute surrender. J. Krishnamurti has lived with masters who have asked absolute surrender from him, and as he became more and more mature he saw the whole game: the master enjoys the ego, the disciple enjoys irresponsibility. But neither the master is a true master nor the disciple is a true disciple; both are exploiting each other.

There is no question of love when there is exploitation. Krishnamurti refused to be master of anyone and he refused to allow anyone to think that he is a disciple. He has taken a great step but he has moved to the very extreme. And always remember: if one extreme is wrong the other extreme cannot be right. The right is always somewhere exactly in the middle, the golden mean. Only in the middle is there balance, and only in the middle, exactly in the middle, is there transcendence of the polarities, of the opposites.

My position is exactly in the middle. I don’t ask any surrender from you; hence, I am not on the old track. I don’t deny you the beauty of being a disciple. I don’t insult you; I don’t reject you. I accept your love, but I will not accept your surrender. In accepting your love and your disciplehood I am your master, but there is no relationship of surrender.
I am not here to erase your individuality.
I am here just to erase your ego.

That does not need any surrender, it needs a deep meditative understanding on your part.
I can give you love, I can share my own understanding with you, but there is no condition attached to it.

My joy will be to see you as a growing individual in total freedom. And in total freedom, yes is as much possible as no.

I can understand Maneesha’s problem, that no is very difficult, more difficult to a master who does not ask surrender. No becomes more difficult because the master allows it. If the master does not allow no, he is repressing something in you, and his not allowing no does not destroy the possibility of no in you. On the contrary, the master himself is afraid that if you are not prevented, you can say no.

The yes from you is meaningless if you are not free to say no. Your yes has meaning only because you are absolutely free to say no. It does not mean that you have to say no. It does not mean that there will be a situation where you have to say no. In fact it will become more and more impossible for you to say no.

To say no is easy when you are prevented, prohibited. Then, it becomes a question of your individuality; it becomes a question of your spiritual freedom. And certainly anybody who has any dignity is bound to find situations where he would like to say no. If he does not say it he is behaving as a hypocrite. He is not saying no because he is afraid to lose the love of the master and to lose the possibility of getting higher states of consciousness.

But this is business, this is cunningness. And there should not exist any business or any cunningness between the master and the disciple.

Krishnamurti has moved to the very extreme: no master, no disciple. But that created an absurd situation, for his whole life, and he lived long, ninety years. He started being a teacher at the age of fifteen, and he wrote his first book At The Feet Of The Master at the age of fifteen. It was so early that later on he could not even remember whether he had written it or not. It appeared as if in a dream, far away, just an echo.

From the age of fifteen to the age of ninety, almost seventy-five years continuously – no master has been teaching so long. Gautam Buddha was teaching for only forty-two years; so was Mahavira. Jesus taught for only three years, because at the age of thirty-three he was crucified; he started his teaching career at the age of thirty. Perhaps Krishnamurti is the only person who has been a teacher for seventy-five years.

But the question is that his situation is very absurd. If he does not accept himself to be master and he does not accept you as disciples, then what is he doing for seventy-five years? Running around and around all over the world what is he doing…to whom he is talking?

The word disciple does not mean anything else other than a learner; that is its original meaning. If he is not talking to people who are ready to learn, then what is the point of talking? And if Krishnamurti is not a master, from where does he get the authority to talk, to say anything to anybody? He goes on denying that he is a master, and everybody knows he is a master. And he goes on saying, “You are not the disciples,” and everybody who listens to him, learns from him, feels a certain disciplehood.

Both are denying actualities. Out of fear that they may not get trapped into the past relationship of master and disciple. This whole seventy-five years of J. Krishnamurti are full of fear, the fear of the past heritage, centuries of master and disciple relationship, because it has become a spiritual slavery. The disciple could not say no. Rather than allowing the disciple to say no he simple denied that there is a disciple. It is not a great revolution; it is just a reaction, moving from one extreme wrong situation to another wrong situation, another extreme.

I am standing exactly in the middle. I can see both the extremes, the right and the left. And I can see that both are half, incomplete. Both are not going to help anybody to attain to spiritual freedom. The first because it insists on surrendering, and the second because it simply denies that you are a disciple. And Krishnamurti goes on teaching for seventy-five years continuously, and becomes angry when the listeners don’t listen rightly.

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Osho