Question : How is One to know that Sannyas is Good?
Osho : Sir, the proof of the pudding is in its tasting. Become a sannyasin: there is no other way. It is an experience; you have to know it through your own experience. And it is such an interior experience that nothing can be said about it from the outside. And it is of such depth that no word is capable of expressing it.
It is as if you have a pain in the heart: only you know. Or you have a headache: only you know. You may have come across people who have no experience of headaches… I know one person. He is sixty years old and he has never had a headache. It is impossible to explain to him what a headache is. The more you explain to him, the more he seems puzzled. he
has never had any experience – how can you convey it?
Sannyas is a very deep experience. It goes to your very roots. it shakes you out of your sleep, it starts transforming you from within. It is not something on the outside. The orange clothes and the mala and the new name – that is not sannyas. That is just an indication, a gesture; that is just a beginning, the first step. And everything else that happens then is very interior.
And you say: HOW IS ONE TO KNOW THAT SANNYAS IS GOOD?
The mother ran into the nursery when she heard her five-year-old son howling. His baby sister had been pulling his hair.
”Don’t mind the baby,” his mother said. ”She doesn’t know that it hurts you.”
A few minutes later, the mother ran back to the nursery. This time it was the baby doing the
screaming. ”What’s the matter with the baby?” the mother asked.
”Nothing much,” her five-year-old son replied. ”But now she knows.”
But that is the only way to know. So please let me pull your hair! Become a sannyasin and you will know: it is good. It is immensely good, there is nothing like it.