Question – What makes someone a guru, a spiritual master?
Osho – When you are not there, when you have completely disappeared, the other becomes an open book to you. The more other-oriented you are, the less you can know what is happening to the other. The more you become self-oriented, the more possibility there is of knowing what is happening within someone else. A moment comes when you are completely dissolved. Then you know the other totally. Then the other is not the other; he is not something separate from you. You don’t react him; there is no need. There is a response, not a reaction. Only in this way can one become a guru and help others, otherwise not.
To me, a spiritual master needs this capacity of being totally uninvolved, of being totally unrelated – just being an absence: with nothing to impose, nothing to project, no need to react. Then he can help you. He cannot come to any conclusions about you; he just responds to you.
That is what being with a guru means: being with a person who doesn’t react. Just by being near him, you become more and more aware of yourself. If you are really a disciple… And by being a disciple, I mean being open to the presence of the master. You may be sitting before a mirror with closed eyes. Then the mirror cannot show you anything. The mirror is a mirror because it does not do anything on its own. It is a non-doer; it is only a presence. It cannot do anything positive.
The moment you begin to do something positive with someone, you become disturbed. You begin to change your form, you become violent. Even to do good is a violence, a subtle violence. If I don’t accept you as you are, I have to cut you somewhere: destroy something, change you like a sculpture, break you. Some pieces have to be thrown, something has to be rejected. I will hammer you. It is a violence, a very subtle violence. The violence of good man, the moralist, the religious man.
A real master will not even try to make you good. Only then is he a master. He is mirror-like, just a deep absence. But you cannot be helped by the mirror, by the no one, by the nothingness, if you are closed. You can sit with closed eyes, but then for you there is no mirror at all.
By being a disciple I don’t mean being a follower. No. follower, again, is someone violent – violent against himself. He is in need of someone who can be violent with him. He is a masochist. He wants someone to cut him, to change him, destroy him, transform him. He is a follower. He says, ”Give me a discipline, give me the way. Tell me, order me, and I will obey.” He’s really in search of some slavery.
Question – But may be some people need slavery.
Osho – No one needs slavery. One may want it, but wants are not always needs. One wants slavery because the moment you become a slave, you are completely without responsibility. You are free in a way, a slave is free in a way. Now he is not responsible.
Even if he does something wrong, the master will be responsible. ”I am following you. If I have not reached, you are responsible. I have obeyed you.” Now the master is going to be guilty, not him. He says, ”I surrender completely.” This is not surrender! Really, it is something criminal. He is trying to say, ”Now, from this time on, I will never be guilty again. You are going to be guilty. If I do not reach the divine, you are responsible; you will have to answer for it. I have surrendered myself to you.” That’s why he wants to be a slave.
But it is not a need. You can never be free from responsibility. The more you are freed from it, the less conscious you become. You can become freed from responsibilities only when you become an automate, a machine, a mechanical device. So followers become machine-like. The more they follow, the more machine-like they become.
This is not really the need. It is not a growth. But this is what many people want. You want to throw the responsibility, the burden, on someone else. And really, a person who is throwing away his responsibility can never be free.
Source – Osho Book “The Eternal Quest”