[A sannyasin visiting for the first time says: I was very clear when I came but now being here these days I’m full of doubt and wondering if I’m supposed to be here. Things like that have come up.]
Osho – That is natural…. If you come full of doubts, the first impact is that your doubts disappear and you are full of trust. If you come full of trust the first impact is that your trust disappears and you become full of doubt. And the reason is that the mind has both together. Half of your mind is a trusting mind and half of your mind is a doubting mind. So if you come with a trusting mind, by the time you reach here you are already tired of it, so you shift. It is just for a change, you shift to the doubting side. If you come with the doubting mind, the same thing happens: you are tired of it so you shift. This happens to almost everybody. It does not happen to people who come without any doubt and without any trust, who simply come with no particular attitude. Then it doesn’t happen, because it can’t happen. It depends on you.
That’s why it is easier to believe in a dead master, because he will never create any doubt in you. It is easy to believe in Jesus, because now Jesus is just a fiction of your own mind. You can project anything on him, and he has to be like that. When he was alive it was not so.
When you come to me you come full of expectations, and they are very unconscious! If they are not fulfilled, doubts arise. And how can they be fulfilling? If I am going to fulfil the expectations of everybody who comes here, just think what will happen? Thousands of people come with thousands of expectations. I have to be simply myself; I cannot fulfil anybody’s expectations. And it is very rare for a person to come without expectations; that’s not the way of the mind. The mind has already decided a few things; without knowing anything the mind has already concluded, it has many a priori ideas.
If a Mohammedan comes here he expects me to be like Mohammed, and I am not! It is very unconscious…. He will not find Mohammed here, and then he is disturbed. He would like me to say things which are written in his Koran and I will be saying things which I have to say; then there will be disturbance. And there is a gap of fourteen hundred ears between me and Mohammed, so how can I say things which Mohammed used to say? It is impossible, I will be so out of date.
And how can I fulfil…? because here are Mohammedans, and Christians and Jews and Parsis and Jainas and Buddhists and Hindus and Sikhs. Almost all the religions of the world are represented by people here; they all come with their ideas.
You will be surprised, you don’t know this: there is a sect of Jaina monks who don’t speak in the night. Now if a Jaina comes from that sect and he sees that I am talking in the night — finished! I am no more enlightened! Because how can an enlightened person speak in the night? They don’t even sit in the light in the night, because the light may kill a few insects. It creates heat, a few moths may come and die; then who is responsible? And they believe in absolute non-violence, so in the night a Jaina monk sits without light. He cannot read, he cannot talk, because if you talk hot air comes out of your mouth: It can kill small germs in the air.
There are three hundred religions on the earth and all have their own a priori conclusions. So whenever you come, you will have to learn one thing: drop your expectations. You will have to see me as I am, not as you would like me to be.
And I have no expectation of you — that again creates the problem. Because if you go to a Christian you can expect a few things from him; in return he expects a few things from you. So there is a mutual arrangement: you fulfil his expectations; he fulfils your expectations. But with me there is no question of any mutual arrangement. I fulfil nobody’s expectations and I have no expectations of anybody. I help you to be yourself, whatever that means. I don’t impose a pattern on you, I don’t want you to be a certain kind of person; I simply want you to be free, to be yourself. I give you freedom and I teach you freedom, because I don’t have any expectations of you, of what you should eat and what you should not eat and how you should live and how you should not live.
You will have to learn at least that much, that I don’t expect anything of anybody; nobody should expect anything of me. Then there is no question of doubt, no problem arises. You are here simply to learn if something can be learned. Why bother about doubt? What has that to do with you? You are here to imbibe something, to learn something. If it is useful, learn it; if it is not useful, forget an about it. But give it a try. And your doubts won’t allow you to give it a try; they will disturb you. So be here neither as a believer nor as a non-believer; just be here to be available. to see what is happening.
And people get disturbed over such small things, ridiculous things, but they get disturbed about them. One has to be very alert. To be with me means to be with a certain phenomenon about which you cannot have any expectation; otherwise you will miss the whole opportunity.
And I am not saying to trust. I am simply saying to drop your a priori expectations and doubts will disappear. And when there is no doubt arising what is left is trust. I am not saying to trust me. Trust is not against doubt, it is just the absence of doubt. Then there is trust. Trust is not belief or faith; trust is just an open heart. Trust does not mean that you believe in me, because belief presupposes doubt. First you have to doubt; only then can you believe. Belief is a process of repressing the doubt. So I am not telling you to believe in me. Why should you believe in me? There is no need. I am simply saying to put the doubt aside so you can learn something.
It is not going to harm me whether you doubt me or not — it is going to harm you. So it is your problem and you have to see it: if you doubt me you ill miss the opportunity. That’s your choice. If you put the doubt aside seeing that it is your expectation…. And why should you expect anything from me?
Why should you expect anything from this commune? This commune is not run according to your idea, so there is no problem. This commune has no commitment to run according to anybody else, so there is no problem. These people have decided to be with me, so let them be! You are here to learn something, to meditate, to sing, to celebrate. Why bring in these things to disturb you? Put them aside and then you will start finding a trust arising in you which is not belief, which is not faith; it is nothing but love. It is neither belief nor disbelief, it is just pure love, and in that love there is great splendour. In that love there is great benediction. Just dance and sing and those expectations will disappear, and with those expectations doubts will go. Doubts are shadows of expectations.
Source – Osho Book “The Sacred Yes”