“Individuality arises only when you become very clear-cut, when you attain an original shape of your being, when you do your thing, when you don’t care what others say, when you are ready to sacrifice your whole life for your freedom, when freedom becomes your ultimate value and nothing else matters – then you become baka, individual. And this is the paradox: only individuals can go into fana, into that utter dissolution, desolation, into that utter disappearance.

     “First you have to be, only then can you disappear. If you are not, then what is going to disappear? First you have to detach yourself from the crowd, only then can you take the jump. So this is the paradox: the man in the state of baka can go into the state of fana, and only he can go.

     “The mass man cannot go into fana because he does not know who he is. He has no address yet, he has no name yet, he has no identity yet. He is just a number. He can be replaced very easily, he’s replaceable. He is just a part doing a certain kind of work. He is a function. For example, he may be an engineer. If he dies, you can put another engineer there and nobody will miss him. Or he may be a doctor. If he dies, you place another doctor there and nobody will miss him. He is a replaceable part, he is a function.

     “But the man of baka is not a function; he has a totally different kind of quality in his being. He will be missed forever and ever. Once he is gone you cannot replace him. You cannot replace Jesus. You can replace the pope of the Vatican; you have replaced him many times before. Each time one pope dies he is replaced. You can replace the Shankaracharya of Puri very easily, there is no problem – one dies and you put another there. But you cannot replace the original Shankaracharya. You cannot replace Jesus, you cannot replace Mohammed. Once gone, they are gone forever. They exist as unique individuals – that is the state of baka. And they are the only people capable of going into fana. It looks contradictory because fana means losing all your definition, losing all your being.

     “But first you have to have the being to lose it. How can you lose it if you don’t have it? How can you renounce it if you don’t have it? So the paradox is only apparent. It has a very, very universal law behind it. First you have to have something in order to drop it. First gather together.” Osho