Osho – Nirjara. It is one of the most important words in the Eastern search for truth. It comes from the Jaina tradition. That tradition is very much unknown in the West but is one of the most important in the East, as important as the Buddhist tradition. But it never gathered too many followers so it remained almost unknown.
Nirjara means a state of consciousness where all conditionings have dropped. In the fall leaves drop and leave the tree naked, bare, with no foliage, and the naked tree and the naked branches stand against the sky; that nakedness is nirjara. When all the thoughts have dropped – they are leaves – when all desires have disappeared – they are leaves – and when your being is just naked, utterly naked, with no foliage, with nothing growing in it, when all has stopped, the world has stopped, in that moment one comes to know oneself, one comes to know who one is.
When desires and thoughts continue it is impossible to know oneself because those desires are distractions and those thoughts go on imposing themselves upon your being. Your mirror is never left alone; some cloud or other is always surrounding you. When all the clouds have disappeared, that cloudless sky is nirjara, that contentless consciousness is nirjara. It is the ultimate state… and that is possible.
Coming to me is simply a gesture of your being that now something is going to happen, it is very close-by. It will only depend on how much courage you can gather to plunge into it. Nothing else is needed, only courage, and you have taken the first step by becoming a sannyasin.
Sannyas means trusting me, because the journey is unknown and no maps are available. Guides are available but no guidebooks. And the journey is such and so complicated that no books can be fair to it; they can only misguide, they cannot guide. Only an alive master can take you slowly slowly – one who has travelled the path again and again, one who has gone to the beyond and come back to the earth, has gone beyond and come back to the earth, who has been shuttling between this and that continuously.
Sannyas means trusting somebody so utterly that your life becomes a secondary value to the trust. Even if one’s life is needed, one is ready to give it. In that readiness the impossible becomes possible.
Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”