The first question:

Osho,
Why can’t I take sannyas? I go on thinking and thinking and thinking.

Sannyas has nothing to do with thinking at all. It is the crazy man’s way to enlightenment! By thinking you can never come to a decision as far as sannyas is concerned. Thinking, at the most, can only help you to postpone it, and you can go on postponing it ad infinitum. Thinking, in fact, is a process of postponement.

Sannyas is not something that you can think about. You don’t know it, you have not experienced it. Thinking moves within the world of the known; it has no approach towards the unknown, no bridge with the unknown. And sannyas is unknown for you. You may have seen sannyasins; that does not mean that you know what sannyas is. By seeing lovers you cannot know what love is. By seeing meditators you cannot know what meditation is. There are things which are known only existentially.

Sannyas is not a philosophical phenomenon, it is something existential. You have to take the jump…then think later on, then think as much as you want, to your heart’s content. But once you have tasted it, then there is no way of going back.

Thinking is part of the head and sannyas happens in the heart; it is a love affair. It is utterly mad, as mad as love or even madder, because love happens biologically and sannyas happens spiritually.

Sannyas happens only to a very few, rare human beings. Love is ordinary; it happens to animals, to birds, even to trees. It is nothing special. Religion is absolutely supernatural: it surpasses your instinctive world. But our hearts are not functioning, and the head cannot work in the place of the heart.

That’s what you are doing, Richard. You can go on doing it, but you will never arrive in the world of sannyas. The head is impotent; it cannot act because it is never spontaneous. It is only the heart that acts. The head only reacts; the head only goes on repeating the past. You have not been a sannyasin before, so how can you think about it? What can you think about it? There is no base to begin with.

Only the heart is courageous enough to take a jump into the unknown, into the unfamiliar. But with the unfamiliar open up millions of possibilities. With the unknown you start growing. With the known you go on moving in circles. Be a little heartful, not so thoughtful.