I have been teaching you all the methods of meditation. You can choose any method that suits you. There are only one hundred and twelve methods; there is no possibility of adding more. It is exhaustive. All the methods possible have been explored. The simplest is witnessing.

So now that you no longer have any outer symbols, it is good, if you want to be a sannyasin, for you to remember only one thing: how to go into the discipline of witnessing; otherwise there is a possibility that wearing red clothes and the mala you are completely satisfied that you are a sannyasin. You are not. Clothes don’t make anybody change, neither does the mala make anybody go through a transformation. But you can deceive yourself.

Now I am taking all that away from you, and leaving only one simple thing. You cannot deceive: either you do it or you don’t do it. Without doing it, you are not a sannyasin. So the movement has come to its purest state, the most essential stage; it has not been dropped.

But it is a good coincidence that on the same date I had started the sannyas movement, and on the same date I have made it absolutely purified of all unnecessary, nonessential things. But it is purely a coincidence, because I am not good about dates, days, years. Forgive me for that.

I live in a timeless space. I don’t know what day it is, I don’t know what date it is. I use the watch only for you – in the morning discourse, in the evening interviews for the press – otherwise, the whole day I don’t use it. I don’t have any need to know what the time is. What am I going to do with the time?

Just for your sake…because I am such a crazy man that I may go on speaking and speaking – three hours, four hours, five hours – the watch prevents me. It is simply for your sake, a compassionate gesture.

Osho,
Please share with us your vision of the benefits of the arts for our process of growing towards ourselves, in therapy, meditation, worship.

The arts can be immensely helpful in therapy, in spiritual growth, in your meditations. But it is taking a hard and long way unnecessarily. The shortcut is: first, meditation, and then out of meditation comes creativity of its own accord. Otherwise, it is a long journey; even one life may not be enough.

For example, the paintings of Picasso are nothing but his nightmares, as if somebody is not painting but vomiting. It has helped him to relieve himself of his tensions, schizophrenia, paranoia and all kinds of mental repressions. But it is not of much use to you. In fact, if you go on looking at a Picasso painting for a long time, you will feel sick, because it is vomiting. You will start feeling nauseous. This is not real art.