Osho – A true guru will never impose himself upon you

Osho – The word “guru.” Guru means one who has gravitation, around whom you suddenly feel as if you are being pulled. The guru is a tremendous magnet, with only one’ difference. There is a man who has charisma — you are pulled, ut you are pulled towards him. That is the man of charisma. He may become a great leader, a great politician. Adolf Hitler has that charisma; millions of people are pulled towards him. Then what is the difference between a charismatic leader and a guru? The difference is tremendous. The difference is: when you are pulled towards a guru you suddenly feel that you are being pulled inwards, not outwards.

When you are pulled towards Kabir, Nanak, Buddha, you have a strange feeling. The feeling is that you are being pulled towards them and at the same time you are being pulled inwards — a very strange paradoxical phenomenon at the closer you come to your guru, the closer you come yourself. The more you become attracted towards the guru, the more you become independent. The more you become surrendered to the guru, the more you feel that you ave freedom you never had before.

So it is a very subtle difference. Remember it. If you are Pulled towards a man and that pull creates a slavery, that an is not the guru. That man may have charisma, may have magnetic power — maybe his great intelligence, his physical beauty, or his sheer vitality pulls you — but you will be going away from yourself. It will be an infatuation. You will be obsessed with this man, and you will be off your center. Avoid such people; these are the greatest mischief-mongers in the world. Adolf Hitler, Napoleon, Alexander — these are the people who have created great havoc, because people feel tremendously attracted and people feel like surrendering.

Remember, if your surrendering gives you freedom, then the man is a guru, a Master. If your surrendering makes you a slave, makes you a robot — as all the followers of Adolf Hitler were turned into mechanical robots…. They lost their souls; he simply exploited their souls. They lost all their awareness. This happens in the spiritual world also, because these charismatic people are everywhere. So make it a criterion inside: if by the presence of your guru, of your Master, you are becoming freer and freer, more and more independent; by surrendering, the paradox is happening — that by surrendering you are gaining more willpower, by surrendering you are becoming powerful not impotent — then you are near the guru.

The guru is one who pulls you towards himself just to throw you back into your own being. He functions as a mediator; via the guru, you arrive at your own self. Because you cannot go directly, he helps you via him. But his whole effort is to make you yourself.

A true guru will never impose himself upon you. He will never impose his life-style on you. He will never give you any rigid discipline. He will not enforce anything on you, regiment you. He will not try to create soldiers of you. No, he will help you to become yourself. He will help you to be yourself, whatsoever that is. He will help to give you more and more understanding about yourself. You will become more and more centered, rooted, near him. More and more you will feel he has given you back to yourself — that which was lost or forgotten, he has made you aware of it.

That’s what I say to my sannyasins: that I have nothing else to give to you; I give you back to yourself. You surrender to me, and I give it back to you. It is difficult for you to know yourself right now because you have lived in forgetfulness for so long. You need a shock; I give that shock to you. But I don’t give you any discipline. And I don’t force my life-style on you, because each person has to find his own life-style and each person is so unique that each person has to live in his own way. Nobody else’s life-style is going to help you. You will become second-rate, secondhand; and God loves only firsthand people. Never be a carbon copy. If somewhere you are forced to become a carbon copy, avoid that place like the plague, escape from there.

Source – Osho Book “Ecstasy – The Forgotten Language”