The fifth question:

Question 5

I FEEL A RAPPORT WITH YOUR WRITINGS -- ALMOST LIKE A CONTEMPORARY. SURELY THIS FEELING WILL CHANGE IF I BECOME A SANNYASIN. WILL THIS CHANGE BE BENEFICIAL?

To feel en rapport with my writings is one thing, to feel en rapport is totally another. To be convinced by my writings will not change you, it will simply add to your knowledge. To fall en rapport with me will destroy you, annihilate you, will transform you. When you are reading you are the master, you own the book, and you can go on finding ways and means to defend yourself against the book. And the book cannot do much; you are free to interpret it in your own ways.

That's what you must be doing. That's why you are saying, "I feel a rapport with your writings -- almost like a contemporary." Your ego is being fulfilled through them.

What is actually happening is you are not being convinced by what I say, you are really convinced that whatsoever you have been thinking before is right! -- "Osho also agrees with me." That's what you think falling en rapport is. It is not you getting into agreement with me, it is me getting into agreement with you. And with a book, that you can do very easily: you can forget those portions that don't agree with you or you can interpret them in such a way that they start appearing to be in agreement with you. The book is dead. You can do anything to the book.

I am alive. And I am SO contradictory. I relish contradictions. That is my nourishment -- that if you agree with me today, tomorrow I will create trouble. If you agree with me again, next day I will create trouble again. By and by you will relax and you will forget agreeing with me: "What is the point? This man goes on contradicting himself every day."

This is a device so that you stop agreeing with me through the mind. Then arises a different kind of agreement -- a conversion -- you start agreeing with my being. That is true rapport.

Sannyas is nothing but a gesture from your side that you are ready to go with me into the dark unknown, that you trust me, that now you are ready not only to listen to my thoughts, you are ready to listen to my silence too. The book can give you only the thoughts, it cannot give the pauses in between. And they are really valuable, they are really significant, not the words.

Looking into my eyes is more significant than reading my books. Sitting close to me, feeling me, being overwhelmed by me, opening your heart towards me -- that is the real thing. The book has only one work to do: it can bring you to me, that's all. Then its work is finished. The book is not the end, the book is just the beginning. Don't get stuck there.

You must be feeling very good; that's why you say, "almost I feel like a contemporary." You are not! -- because to be contemporary with me you will have to exist in no-time, because I exist in no-time. I don't exist in the twentieth century. I am not a thinker. You can be contemporary with Bertrand Russell. If you think in the same way, with the same logic, with the same conclusions, you are contemporary with Bertrand Russell -- but to be contemporary with Buddha is a totally different phenomenon. You will have to go deep into silence because Buddha exists in silence, Buddha exists in no-time. He exists in eternity. That's why even TODAY you can become a contemporary with Buddha, even today you can become a contemporary with Lao Tzu, and for centuries to come you can at any time become contemporary with a Christ. Whenever you transcend time you become contemporary with enlightened people.

Just by agreeing with my thoughts you will not become my contemporary. You will be contemporaneous to my thoughts, that's all -- but not to me. And I am not a thought but an experience.

You ask me, "SURELY THIS FEELING WILL CHANGE IF I BECOME A SANNYASIN."

Surely. It is going to change, it has to change. You will feel totally differently. The ego will start disappearing. It will hurt.

Becoming a sannyasin means you have become a disciple. Now you will put your mind aside, now you will get more and more in tune with my vibe. This in the East WE call SATSANGA: to be in the presence of the Master, to see the Master, to touch the Master, to be touched by the Master, to be seen by the Master. It is not a verbal communication. Verbal communication has its own purpose. Because you cannot start without verbal communication, that's why I have to go on speaking. If I had been totally silent here you would not be here. You are here because I have spoken.

But if you remain here only just to hear me you miss the whole point. Then you will gather only words; those words will turn dead in your hands. Howsoever alive and warm they are when I release them, the moment they get into your clutches they will be cold, dead stones. Unless you become contemporaneous with my being... and that can happen only in meditation. Meditation is the bridge between the Master and the disciple.