You are asking: You talk a lot to us about how important satsang is, being in the presence of an enlightened, liberated man. Yet a lot of your sannyasins spend most of their lives away from you. If it was up to you would you have all of us live here in Poona with you all the time?

No. Because to be in the presence too much can be an overdose. Rather than helping it can hinder you. Everything should always be in proportion and in balance. It is possible when something is sweet that you can eat more of it than you should. You can forget your need; you can overstuff yourself. And satsang is sweet it is the sweetest thing in the world. In fact it is alcoholic...you can become a drunkard. That will not liberate you; that will create a new bondage.

Being near a Master can either become a bondage or a liberation, it depends. Just by being near, there is no necessity that you will be liberated: you can get indigestion; and you can become addicted to the presence. No, that is not good. Whenever I feel that somebody needs a space of his own, whenever I feel that somebody needs to go away from me, I send him away. It is good to create hunger, then satiety goes deep. And if you are with me too much you may become even oblivious of me. Not only indigestion, you may completely forget me....

Things are complex. Sometimes I send you away to feel me more. It is needed. A separation is needed so that you can come close again. There must be a rhythm of being with the Master and not being with the Master. In that rhythm many possibilities open because, finally, you have to be on your own. The Master cannot be with you forever and forever. One day suddenly I will disappear--"dust unto dust." You will not be able to grope for me. Then, if you have become too addicted to me and you cannot be without me you will suffer, unnecessarily suffer. And I am here not to give you suffering; I am here to make you capable of more and more bliss. It is good sometimes that you go far away in the world, have your own space, move in it, live in it.

And whatsoever you have gained here with me, test it in life, because an ashram is not in life. An ashram at the most can be a discipline; it is not an alternative life. At the most it can be a school where you have a few glimpses. Then you carry those glimpses in the world--there is the criterion, the test. If they prove real there, only then were they real.

Living in an ashram, living with a liberated man, living in his energy field, you may many times be deceived that you have attained something. It may not be your attainment; it may be just because of the magnetism that you touch new dimensions. But when I am not there and the atmosphere of the ashram is not there and you move in the ordinary day-to-day world, the world of the market, the office, the factory--if you can carry the goal that you have attained here and it is not disturbed, then really you have attained something. Otherwise you can live here in a dream, in an illusion.

No, if it were possible for me to have you all here, then too I would have sent you. I would have actually done as I am doing now; there would have been no change. This exactly is helpful as it is.

Don't feel hurt when I send you away--you need it. And don't feel too elated when I tell you to be here--that too is a need. Both are needs. And don't make a fixed principle, because things are very complex, and every individual is unique.

Sometimes I allow somebody to be here because he is so dead he takes a long time to evolve. Somebody evolves so soon--then within weeks I say, "Go." So just being here don't feel elated, and don't feel hurt if I send you away. Sometimes I retain somebody because he is very balanced and there is no fear yet that he will eat too much, fall the victim of the disease of overdose; then I allow him.

Sometimes when somebody, I feel, has attained something, then too I send him away; because only the world can be the proof of whether you have attained or not. In the isolation of an ashram, in a different atmosphere, you may have glimpses because you become part of the collective mind that exists here. You start riding on my waves; they may not be yours. But when you go home you have to ride on your own waves--may be small, but better because they are your own, truer to you, and finally they alone have to take you to the other shore. I can only indicate the way.

A Master should not become a bondage; and it is very easy for a Master to become a bondage. Love can always be converted into bondage. It can always become an imprisonment. Love should be a freedom; it should help you to be liberated from all fetters and bondages. So I have to keep myself continuously alert: who has to be sent, who has to be allowed to stay here, and how much.

So when you come to me and ask, it is not that I answer. I have to search into your heart to see what really would have been your decision if your own heart were functioning. I never give any decision on my own because that would be destructive. It would be something from the outside. So when you ask, I look into you; I don't decide. I look into you, I feel you, I see your own heart which you cannot see, and I let that heart decide. So at the most I interpret your heart to you. I am a midwife.

So if you can decide, good. By and by you will start listening to your own inner core and what it is saying. And that trust has to arise. Otherwise trusting in me can become dangerous to you, because then you're always depending on some outside agent. It can become a habit, so that when you are alone or when you have gone far away from me you will be at a loss as to what to do.

So even while you are here, whatsoever you can decide, decide. When you feel that it is almost impossible for you to come to a decision, the pros and cons are almost balancing, you are divided half and half, then only come to me. And then too, I can help you; I don't impose anything on you. At the most I become a bridge between you and yourself. That's my function.

So by and by you can see the bridge, and you can go on moving from yourself to your real self; my need is less and less. One day there is nothing that you cannot decide. Then you have come of age. You become mature and ripe.

So the first effort should be to decide on your own, otherwise people start coming for small things; that's bad. That is dangerous, a very harmful practice, because then you will lose all direction and you will always depend on some outside authority to tell you what to do and what not to do. That's what has happened to the whole of humanity. Every child is being directed by the parents, the society, by the teachers, the authorities, the priest, the state. There are so many people leading you so you lose all sense of direction. Whenever these authorities are not there, you are simply stuck. You cannot move; you are paralysed. So if your father is not there, you seek a father-figure.

If your belief in one religion is gone, you immediately turn to another religion. If you stop going to one church, you start going to another church, but somewhere or other you are seeking the priest, somebody to tell you what is right, somebody to give you the commandment: 'This is right'; somebody to give you a sense of certainty that he knows. If you stop going to churches, you go to a psychoanalyst to tell you something, or you go to the politician. But you always go to somebody and you never come home.

A master is not an authority, and whenever you see that a master has become an authority, he is not a master; he has become poisonous. A master is at the most a very polite hint, not an authority.

He simply cares about you. He has no ideas to impose, no directions to give. He has no commandments. He is not in any way an expert. He simply loves you, cares about you, and under his care you start growing.

Now it is a very paradoxical thing: you have to be helped but in such a way that the help does not become a habit; that is the paradox. Help can be withdrawn completely but then you are not helped. Then your freedom will become licence. You will move not knowing where you are going. You will stumble here and there almost like a drunkard, or you may start moving in a vicious circle.

So to be left totally alone is dangerous and to depend totally on somebody is also dangerous. Somewhere between the two is the golden mean--to depend and yet not to depend. Take as much help as you can from me, but the help is to make you more mature. The help is to make you so alert that less and less help is needed; the help is not to make you more helpless. So, increasingly less and less help should be needed. That should be the basic effort. So always decide.

Your profession should only be a part of life. It should not overlap into every dimension of your life, as ordinarily it does. A doctor becomes almost a twenty-four-hour doctor. He thinks about it, he talks about it. Even when he is eating he is a doctor. While he is making love to his woman, he is a doctor. Then it is a madness; it is insane.

To avoid this, people escape. Then they become twenty-four-hour sannyasins. Again they are making the same mistake--the mistake of being in anything for twenty-four hours.

My whole effort is to help you to be in the world and yet to be a sannyasin.

Of course it is more difficult because there will be more challenge and situations. It is easier to be either a doctor or a sannyasin. It will be difficult to be both because that will give you many contradictory situations. But a person grows when there are contradictory situations. In the turmoil, in that clash of the contradictions, integrity is born. You become more centred.

My suggestion is that you go back but with this decision: that you work for six or eight hours and then for the remaining sixteen hours you are not a doctor at all. Use those sixteen hours for other things: for sleep, for music, for poetry, for meditation, for love, or just fooling around.

That too is needed. If a person becomes too wise and cannot fool around, he becomes heavy, sombre, serious. He misses life.

So a wise man has to be so wise that he can allow himself a little foolishness also. That is the greatest wisdom: to use foolishness also as a part of life so that you can laugh--not only at others but at yourself also; so that you can play for no profit, no motive; so that you can simply relate to people for no reason whatsoever. You can do many things that are not economical, not political; things that are just for pleasure.

One should also remain a child. If you can find an old man collecting stones on the seashore, then he has understood life. If he can still enjoy collecting seashells just like a small child, with reverence and awe, full of as much wonder and surprise as if he has come across treasures, then he is really wise. He has matured.

Real maturity always retains something of childhood, and a real wise man always remains available to foolishness also.

So my suggestion is that you be here for as long as you want, and then go. Continue your profession back there as a sannyasin. Move in orange and let people laugh. You can also laugh with them.

Life should be multi-dimensional; then it is rich. A doctor is monotonous; a politician is monotonous. Just one tone, just one note, they go on repeating, repeating, repeating. So seek, discover, investigate new realms and make life as rich as possible.

Life should be of many colours, rainbow-like. All the colours should be there. One can face God only when one has become like a rainbow, with all the colours absorbed--nothing sacrificed, nothing excluded, everything included.

You will feel sadness but it is good; that too is part of growth. Sometimes one needs sadness too. Remaining just happy by and by becomes shallow. You need to move to the opposite polarity. The day should become the night too. And height is good but depth is also needed.

Somehow humanity has missed the beauty of sadness. It is tremendously beautiful, because the pain that it brings is a growth pain, a birth pain. So it is good to be here with me, and happy; then to go and be a little sad. Then you will come again with more possibility to grow.

It is going to be just like a little fast, mm? The fast helps the hunger to come back. If you are here with me too long, by and by there is every possibility that you will start forgetting me, because that which is too close, that which is too obvious, is forgotten. That's how we have forgotten ourselves--we are so close to ourselves, and a little distance is needed.

I know you will be sad, but accept that sadness and be grateful. That too is good. Go with total acceptance of whatsoever is. Say yes to everything, whatsoever happens, and then each moment brings infinite possibilities for growth.

And I am coming with you. You will just have to learn how to feel me when I am not physically close; that's a learning. Once you know the knack of it, it is very simple. And you can feel even closer than when you are physically near me, because when the hunger is deep and you miss me, the urge is greater. When the urge becomes intense, the distance, the physical distance disappears, and the distance in time also disappears.

People who still love Jesus become contemporaries of him, and he of them--after two thousand years. People who love Buddha suddenly can move into a different world; suddenly they are walking with him after twenty-five centuries--they can be with him.

But very great intensity is needed, mm? So if you are really intense--and the intensity will come the more you will be there, far away--when you really feel the urge to be near me, keep this box in your hand this way, (Osho places the small wooden box in his left hand with the right one covering it) as if you are protecting something tremendously valuable, delicate, fragile...a flower. Then close your eyes and just remember me. Just remember as I am sitting here, just the same way. And immediately the whole climate will change. Either I will have to be there, or you will be here, but the climate will change Good.