Osho – You don’t surrender to me. You simply surrender your ego

Question – You said nobody should dictate what you should do with your life. How does that fit with being available and surrendering to you?

Osho – In the first place I am a nobody. Now listen to the question again. YOU SAID NOBODY SHOULD DICTATE WHAT YOU SHOULD DO WITH YOUR LIFE. Don’t surrender to me because I dictate to you. But if you feel like surrendering, what can I do? If you feel like surrendering, it is your feeling. If I am dictating to you to surrender to me, don’t listen to me. But if your heart is dictating, then what are you going to do? If I tell you to be available to me, don’t listen at all. But if your own understanding says, ‘Be available to this man’, then be.

And here there is nobody. If you look deeply into me you will not find anybody there. The house is empty, the whole space is yours, just for the asking. I am just a space. The man you see here sitting in the chair died long before. There is no entity who can dictate anything to you.

Just last night one woman seeker was saying, ‘I would like to do what other sannyasins are doing, but I cannot surrender. I cannot lose my freedom. I have lived in many confinements from my very childhood, in many disciplines. Now I am afraid to get involved in another imprisonment.’ I said, ‘Don’t be worried. I confer freedom upon you, an absolute freedom.’

Sannyas is freedom. If you understand rightly, it is absolute freedom. And the woman understood the point because I said, ‘Now you are afraid that you may get into another trap. But are you aware that your ego itself can become the trap, and the greatest of all? You have lived within many other commitments and you found they all became imprisonments — but your own ego can become the imprisonment.

When you surrender to a nobody he cannot imprison you, and the very danger of your own, ego becoming an imprisonment for you also disappears. When you surrender to me you are not really surrendering to me, because I am not here. And I’m not enjoying your surrender at all — whether you surrender or not makes no difference to me.

In fact, when you surrender to me, you surrender yourself. You don’t surrender to me. You simply surrender your ego. I am just a device, an excuse. It will be difficult for you to go and surrender to the river, or to the sky, or to the stars — it will be very difficult and you will look a little ridiculous. So I pretend to be here just to help you so that you don’t feel ridiculous. You can put you r ego here. There is nobody to receive it and nobody to be happy about it, but it helps.

Buddha used to call such things devices — UPAYA. It is just a UPAYA, a device to help those who cannot put their egos down unless they find some feet. I make my feet available to you, but inside there is nobody.

Source – Osho Book “The Art of Dying”