Osho,
I have no words to express your love and compassion showering on me. My gratitude and thankfulness cannot be expressed in any word or language. Please forgive me for my shortcomings. Also, please forgive me, my dearest lord Osho, that you had to bend down to take my head into your hands. I know how painful your back is. It was so painful for me that because of me you had to bend down. On the day of my sannyas, you had taken my hand in your hands. Yesterday you had taken my head in your hands. I hope, pray, and beg everyone’s blessings that I can become worthy of it. My beloved master, please tell and explain to all that the journey has only begun. I am not yet worthy of their respect. Instead of respect, let all give me their blessings so that one day I can become worthy of really touching your feet. I am requesting and pleading with folded hands to you to tell all to save me from embarrassment, giving respects to me which I do not deserve yet.

Govind Siddharth, the laws of spiritual life are diametrically opposite to those of the ordinary mundane existence. In the world, one wants to be respected, whether one deserves it or not. In fact the less people deserve, the more they want. In the spiritual realm, the more you deserve the less you want.

I am happy to know that you feel embarrassed by people respecting you. That is the sign of real humbleness. And to say that you do not deserve it makes you worthy enough to be respected.

In the world, people declare themselves “the great.” When Alexander the Great met Diogenes, he introduced himself as “I am Alexander the Great.”

Diogenes laughed and he said, “If you were really great, you would not have used that word for yourself. You should be ashamed. The true greatness does not assert itself, the true greatness radiates itself. It needs no language, it needs no expression, it needs no words – its presence is enough.”

And I know the difficulty. When people suddenly start looking at you with respect for the first time, a humble person, a person who deserves it, feels embarrassed, because it is the ego that demands respect, begs for prestige, power, respectability. True greatness is simply oblivious to it. The moment you respect such a person he feels embarrassed – “What are you doing?” – because he is not expecting it, it is so unexpected.

And the humbleness, the simplicity, the innocence does not make anyone holier-than-thou. It makes you stand last in the queue, because you are so certain of your integrity, you need not go shouting about it, you don’t need any recognition from anybody. Your own feeling is so absolute that even if the whole world rejects it, it makes no difference.

Recognition from others is sought only by people who are suffering from inferiority. A real superior man is not aware of his superiority, is not in any need of recognition from others. His superiority is just his nature.

Govind Siddharth, don’t feel embarrassed if people respect you. You will have to learn and to see people’s respect in a new light; when people respect you, they are respecting their own potential. They are respecting one of their brothers who has arrived. They are recognizing you not as you; you have become a mirror and they can see their possibilities opening. They are thankful to you because you have made them feel, for the first time, not inferior to anybody; you have given them their humanity, their respectability. You have become an argument, a proof for their own possible fulfillment.

So when they respect you, accept it with love, with respect, realizing the fact that they are seeing themselves in you. You have been of tremendous help to them because you come from them, you have been a fellow traveler.