“Don’t go on pretending and laughing while your heart is crying. Don’t smile if your eyes are full of tears. Don’t be inauthentic, because by being inauthentic you are simply protecting your wounds from being healed. Your whole being will become rotten.
Ecstasy is only out of agony — and the deeper the agony, the deeper the ecstasy will be; total the agony, total will be the ecstasy.
“Everything has to be paid for. For ecstasy, we have to pay in agony. One has to go through deep pain to get rid of pain. Pain is cleansing. Pain is a fire; it burns the rubbish in you, it destroys the unessential. Just as we purify gold through fire, consciousness is purified through pain. Pain has something to deliver to you.
“Don’t avoid pain! If you avoid pain, you are avoiding pleasure. Don’t avoid the world! If you avoid the world, you have avoided God. Don’t avoid darkness. If you avoid darkness, dawn will never come. It is out of the dark night that the morning is born. And when the night is darkest, the sunrise is closest.
For ecstasy, we have to pay in agony. One has to go through deep pain to get rid of pain.
“Remember this fundamental law of life, this paradox.
“If I have to cleanse you, purify you, I have to become a fire to you. Jesus has said: I am fire and I have come to burn you! Every master is a fire. If you come across a master who is not a fire, but just a kind of ointment, escape from there! He will give you consolations, but he will not be able to transmute your life-energies. He may be able to make you comfortable in life, but he will not be able to help you to transcend life.
“The real master is always a fire. A real master is always there to destroy.
“Yes, I will touch your wounds again and again. You are hiding them. You are hiding them, that’s why they are not healing. They have to be brought to sunlight, to fresh air. They have to be exposed. Only in that exposure will they start healing. And, yes, when I touch your wound it hurts. The more you want to be healed, the more it will hurt, because much pus is there. You have been hiding the wounds for so long — much pus has gathered there. The pus has to be thrown out of your system, the poison has to be thrown out of your system.
You have been hiding the wounds for so long — much pus has gathered there. The pus has to be thrown out of your system…
“This agony is not a curse, it is a blessing — because out of this agony, slowly, slowly you will arise in a totally different dimension. Acceptance is the bridge. Accept the pain, accept the wounds, accept yourself as you are! Don’t try to pretend to be somebody else, don’t try to show that you are not this. Don’t be egoistic, and don’t go on pretending and laughing while your heart is crying. Don’t smile if your eyes are full of tears. Don’t be inauthentic, because by being inauthentic you are simply protecting your wounds from being healed. Your whole being will become rotten.
“That’s how people are! Pus and pus and pus…. And they are somehow managing so that nobody should know how much it stinks inside them. They don’t go inside themselves because it stinks too much, it is horrible. And they don’t allow anybody to enter their being — that’s why they don’t love, because love will need exposure. They don’t make contact, because if you contact somebody he may smell things that you are hiding. You know. You keep aloof, you go only so far.
[S]annyas is a surgery. Many rotten parts have to be cut and much poison has to be taken out — it is going to be painful. But be courageous.
“You don’t go inside yourself, you don’t allow anybody else to go inside you. But when you have come to me you have to allow me to come inside you. That’s what sannyas is all about. A declaration that for me your doors are open. By becoming a sannyasin, you have handed the key to me. Now, pain is going to be there, because sannyas is a surgery. Many rotten parts have to be cut and much poison has to be taken out of your system — it is going to be painful. But be courageous. Go through it and great will be your joy.”
This article has been published in the HuffPost, India
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Osho, The Rebellious Spirit,Talk #4 – The P{pilgrimage Is Endless