Question – What is Neo – Sannyas all about?
Osho – Neo-sannyas is an effort to introduce the concept of ’sannyas without any renunciation of the world’. To me, India has given only one thing to the world, to human consciousness, and that is the concept of sannyas the concept of renunciation. But this renouncing can be one of two things.
It can be of the world. Then it becomes negative: it becomes life-denying; it goes against life. To me that negative, life-denying aspect of sannyas is a disease. And because of that life-denying aspect, sannyas, religion, has suffered much. It couldn’t become a major part of life, it couldn’t become a part of human consciousness.
The main current of it is life-denying. Neo-sannyas is a total yes to everything in life – including everything that gives you higher consciousness, including everything that gives you a nearness to the divine, including everything that has been denied only because it was life-affirming.
For example, love. Neo-sannyas accepts life in its totality. And also, sex in its totality. But not drugs, because drugs are an effort to be more and more unconscious, to be chemically seduced into a deep lethargy. Anything that helps consciousness, anything that makes you more alert toward the reality is included.