CHAPTER 3. TARIQA – THE METHOD
So one has to wait until he grows again, opens a little more, becomes ready, has a little more space, then again he can be taught. ’HE IS HERE IN THE FLESH, BUT ABSENT IN EVERY OTHER WAY.’ When the seeker comes to the Master for the first time, he comes only as a body.’ HE IS HERE IN THE FLESH, BUT ABSENT IN EVERY OTHER WAY.’ So one has to start with SHARIA, because you are in the body. People come to me: ’Now what is the point of changing our clothes? Can’t we become sannyasins from within? What is the need of orange clothes and the mala and the new name? Can ’t we become sannyasins from within?’ Certainly, but you will have to wait. You are using the word ’within’ without even knowing the meaning of it. You have never been within. You have lived in the body, with the body. These are the same people who pay too much attention to their clothes. In fact, to protect their old clothes they are bringing in this argumentation: what is the point of changing the clothes? These are the same people. One Indian woman wanted to take sannyas but she said, ’I am ready for everything, but I have got three hundred sarees and I love them, and they are my only love. I can leave my husband if you say so. I can leave my children – I am fed up and tired – but three hundred sarees? Just think.’ I know the woman. I have stayed in her house in the past and I know that she has really a great collection of beautiful sarees – the most costly possible. And it takes hours for her to choose which one to use that day. It was really a problem for me too! – because I would be going to a lecture, and the husband would be sitting there in the car, and I would be sitting there, and he would be honking the horn... and she would not come. And he would say, ’She must be choosing a saree.’ Now she says, ’What is the point of changing the clothes? Can’t one become enlightened in any other colour?’ Now this is argumentation. And I know this woman; she is a saree – nothing else. Within the saree you will not find anybody. She is just her body. For hours she stands before the mirror – they are very rich so she need not work. She has to do only one thing: to stand before the mirror. I told her once, ’Even the mirror will be getting fed up with you.’ One day Mulla Nasruddin was catching flies, and he caught three. He told his wife, ’I have caught three. One is male, two are female.’ The wife was surprised. She said, ’How did you know that one is a male and two are female?’ He said, ’Two were sitting on the mirror and one was sitting on the newspaper! ’ That’s how things are. You ask me, ’What is the point of changing the clothes? ’ You are clothes and nothing else – hence I have to change them. Things start with SHARIA. Then, by and by, through TARIQA YOU will have to grow a psychology. People have a wrong notion that they have a psychology already. They don’t have. You don t have a psyche, you have only heard the word. You have only a behaviour, you don’t have a psychology Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1
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Osho