THE SUICIDAL IDEA ARISES BECAUSE OF INTELLIGENCE

Beloved Osho:
Before taking sannyas, I WAS ON THE VERGE OF COMMITTING SUICIDE. Now I am too happy to say, but still I am searching for something I don't know. Osho, after all, what do I want? Please say something.

//Osho://
SANNYAS IS A REAL SUICIDE. You say, "Before taking sannyas, I was on the verge of committing suicide." You have committed it -- and you have committed it on a deeper plane. DESTROYING THE BODY WOULD NOT HAVE HELPED MUCH. You would have been born again in a similar pattern of body, because your mind would have remained the same.

BY COMMITTING SUICIDE, by jumping into a river, or in the ocean, or from a hilltop, YOU CAN DESTROY THE PHYSICAL PART OF YOU. But your physical part is not basic, your mental part is the base. Your mental part carries the blueprint for the physical. Your mind will jump into another womb and will start gathering another physical part. It will be born again.

SUICIDE IS USELESS. I am not against suicide because it is a crime, I am against suicide because it is futile, it is foolish, it is stupid.

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO COMMIT SUICIDE, then become a sannyasin. Then you will be destroying the mind, the deep blueprint for your future lives. That's what Buddha said -- become a srotapanna, enter the stream. Rather than jumping from the cliff, rather than jumping into the ocean and dying a physical death, JUMP INTO A BUDDHA AND DIE A SPIRITUAL DEATH. That's what sannyas is all about -- dying in me. It is carrying your own cross.

IF YOU ARE REALLY FED UP WITH YOUR LIFE, then destroy the very possibility of its being repeated again and again -- become a srotapanna. Then you will become a skridagamin; once more you will come. Then you will become an anagamin; no more you will come.

THE ANAGAMIN IS THE ONE WHO HAS COMMITTED REAL SUICIDE; he never comes back. He is really finished with the world, he has closed his accounts with the world. He has now far better ways of being. He does not come into this mess, he does not descend into this darkness, this ugly hell. He goes on soaring higher and higher towards the very source of light.

You say, "Before taking sannyas, I was on the verge of committing suicide."

In fact, ONLY A PERSON WHO IS ON THE VERGE OF SUICIDE CAN BE A REAL SANNYASIN. When you are really fed up with life, bored with it, looking at its ridiculous absurdity, the vicious circle moving round and round and leading nowhere... WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND THAT NOTHING IS HAPPENING IN IT AND YOU ARE UNNECESSARILY SUFFERING -- you are becoming more and more dark, heavy, weighty, you are losing wings; you are becoming more and more like a dead thing... When you see this -- that life is killing you, not making you really alive -- then two doors open: suicide or sannyas.

Let me tell you, in the East, few people commit suicide. In the West, many more people commit suicide. The eastern people think that they are less suicidal, that's why it is so. Western psychologists think that the western mind is more suicidal, that's why it is so. Neither what the eastern people say, nor what western psychoanalysts say is the truth.

The truth is that in the West, sannyas has disappeared, so whenever one is fed up with life, only one alternative is available -- suicide. In the East, sannyas is as much an alternative as suicide. If you count sannyasins and the persons who commit suicide in the East, then the number will come exactly the same. There will be no difference.

SANNYAS IS A TRANSFORMATION OF LIFE; SUICIDE IS AN ESCAPE FROM LIFE. In both the ways, you go beyond. In both the ways, you get rid of this so-called life. But by suicide, it is only a temporary thing -- again you will be back, again and again you will be back.

WITH SANNYAS, THE DOOR OPENS. You may not come back, or, even if you come, you will come in a better way, more aware. Even if you come, you will come to learn something, to mature.

In the East, the whole concept of growth is to grow out of life, to grow beyond life.

SANNYAS IS CREATIVE, SUICIDE IS DESTRUCTIVE. In suicide, you are simply doing something desperate. In sannyas, you are doing something very deliberate to transform your ways, your very style of life. In fact, it is not with life that you are fed up, IT IS WITH YOUR WAY OF LIFE. It is not really with life that you are fed up -- because in fact you don't know what life is -- but with your pattern of life, THE NARROWING THAT YOU HAVE MADE YOUR LIFE, the tunnel-like phenomenon that you have created out of your life, the imprisonment that you created out of your life.

You don't know what life is, YOU KNOW ONLY A TUNNEL THING -- dark, dirty, confining, crushing, crippling, paralyzing -- AND IN THE END YOU SEE THERE IS NOTHING BUT DEATH. So what is the point of being tortured? Why not commit it today? If it is going to happen tomorrow, then why wait for tomorrow? That is the logic of the suicide.

In fact, people who commit suicide are more intelligent than those who never think about it. Only idiots never commit suicide; only idiots are never bored; only idiots never become aware of the futility of their life...

Intelligent people are bound to think sometimes, 'What is the point of it all? Why am I going? For what? Nothing has happened, nothing seems to happen, nothing can be hoped out of it -- the whole thing seems to be hopeless. Then why go on?' THE SUICIDAL IDEA ARISES BECAUSE OF INTELLIGENCE. So, I say, idiots never think about suicide; intelligent people think about suicide.

BUT THOSE WHO ARE REALLY INTELLIGENT -- not moderately intelligent but at the very peak of their intelligence -- THEY THINK OF SANNYAS. Because they think, 'This whole exists. If I am not able to find the meaning of it, maybe it is my style that is not allowing me to find the meaning of it. If I am not capable of being happy, maybe somewhere I have put conditions which don't allow me to be happy. MAYBE THERE IS ANOTHER WAY TO LIVE.' That 'another way to live', that alternative way to live, is what sannyas is.

'Can't I live non-ambitiously? AMBITIOUSLY I HAVE LIVED AND FOUND MISERY COMES, grows more, becomes intense... suffering and suffering and suffering. I have tried ambition; now let me try non-ambition. Let me have a one hundred and eighty degree turn. Let me be converted.'

CONVERSION MEANS A ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DEGREE TURN, ABOUT-TURN. 'Greed I have tried; now I will try no-greed. Possessiveness I have tried; now I will try sharing. Mind I have tried; now I will try no-mind, meditation. Sex I have tried; now I will try love, compassion.

'I HAVE LIVED IN AN UNNATURAL WAY -- the way the society has forced on me. Now let me try the natural way -- the way of tao, the way of dhamma, the way of rit. I have lived in conflict, struggle, fighting; now let me try surrender, now let me try let-go. I have been trying to go upstream; NOW LET ME TRY GOING DOWNSTREAM, WITH THE STREAM, WHEREVER IT LEADS.' This is what sannyas is.

So, let me repeat. THE MOST STUPID PERSON NEVER THINKS ABOUT SUICIDE. Of course, he cannot even dream about sannyas. He has not that much intelligence to look into the futility of so-called life. In the middle are those intelligent people who become aware that life is futile, but who are not too intelligent to become aware that 'maybe it is just my style, not life itself'. They think of suicide, and they sometimes commit suicide.

Then there are the pinnacles of intelligence -- a Buddha, a Christ, a Lao Tzu, a Zarathustra -- who immediately see the point: 'I AM MISSING BECAUSE MY WAYS ARE WRONG.' And they change their ways. They change their life pattern radically. That radical transformation is sannyas.

I would like to say to you that YOU HAVE REALLY COMMITTED SUICIDE -- and in a better way, in a very intelligent way; the way it should be committed. You have become a sannyasin.

OSHO
The Discipline of Transcendence
Vol 2, Ch #2: Happy for no reason am in Buddha Hall