My message to you is, please don’t efface yourself. Be yourself, look within yourself, and in that very seeing, the ego disappears. Even to say disappears is not right: the ego is not found, it has never been there. Its existence depended on your not looking within yourself. Seen, it is no longer there – it has never been there.

And then you are individuality, uniqueness, a unique expression of the divine. And then there is great rejoicing. You start blooming, the spring has come. You start dancing, you start singing. Great gratitude arises in you that existence has made you a unique individual.

There has never been a person like you before, there is nobody else like you right now in the whole world, and there will never be anybody like you. Just see how much respect existence has paid to you. You are a masterpiece – unrepeatable, incomparable, utterly unique. Even the hardest heart, the rocklike heart, will start melting in gratitude. Tears will start flowing, tears of bliss and joy, tears which laugh.

But please remember, empty yourself, don’t efface yourself.

The second question:

Osho,
What of those who take sannyas in Pune, only to drop it back in their home environment?

They are assholes. And they are assholes not because they drop sannyas but because they take it. Their idea is that by taking sannyas here they will gain something, and then back home they can drop it.

But if this idea is there from the very beginning, that “I am going to drop it when I am back home,” sannyas will not be a blessing to you. It cannot be a blessing to such a cunning mind. You will become a sannyasin and yet you will not become a sannyasin.

I know there are people, at least ten percent of the people… I know immediately when they come to take sannyas – their eyes say it, their vibe says it, their whole being stinks of cunningness. But I respect people, I cannot say no. And then I think what is the harm? Let them play the game of being a sannyasin. And who knows? Sometimes a few of these people are caught too. In the beginning when they take sannyas they are just taking it to see what it is all about. But unawares they may be caught in it, they may be trapped.

Being here for three or four months as a sannyasin, they may find it almost impossible to drop it back home. But even if they drop it, that is their business. They are just being stupid. They are trying to have intimacy with me, because that intimacy can transform you, can give you a new birth. But the intimacy is possible only if there is not a wall of cunningness between you and me. And the wall is there.