According to Osho, yes—basic comforts are necessary, not as ends but as supportive means. A relaxed, well-cared-for body-mind provides the ground for meditation and awareness. Neither self-torture nor indulgent luxury helps; both distract. Use comfort to create ease and energy, then turn inward and go beyond dependence on it.
Have enough comfort to be healthy and relaxed so you can look inside, but don’t chase comfort or glorify hardship.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
A friend has asked: Osho, is austerity needed in spiritual practice or not?
What I am telling you—purification of body, purification of thought, purification of feeling; emptiness of body, emptiness of thought, emptiness of feeling—this is austerity. What do people think austerity is? A man standing in the blazing sun—“he is doing austerity!” Someone lying on thorns—“he is doing austerity!” Someone sitting hungry—“he is doing austerity!” Our concept of austerity is extremely materialistic, very physical. For us, austerity means tormenting the body. If someone inflicts pain on the body, we say he is practicing austerity. But austerity has nothing to do with bodily torture. Austerity is something wondrous; it is something altogether different. A man is fasting. We think he is practicing austerity. He is merely starving. And I would even say he is not fasting at all; he is simply without food. Being without food, not eating, is one thing; being in upavasa is quite another. Upavasa means dwelling near the divine.…
Osho, some people say pranayama is helpful—does it really help?
No, in my understanding it is not helpful. That is why I deny every so‑called support. If I grant even a little, you will find in a few days that the support has become primary—you will start worrying about the support itself, and that becomes the whole work. No supports. I want to keep just one small point before your eyes: let nothing else come in between. No support. Otherwise, then everything in life becomes a support—eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, sitting—everything. Pranayama can be helpful for health. It is useful for health. But even that needs great care and understanding; otherwise it can also be useful in bringing ill‑health. About life and the body my view is: let them be lived very naturally, spontaneously. The more naturally and spontaneously you live them, the less you meddle, the better. Pranayama is not as valuable as simply allowing clean air…
Osho, the famous psychologist A. H. Maslow has placed self-actualization at the last rung in the hierarchy of human needs. In your view, is enlightenment an essential need of human life, and have terms like religion and spirituality been unnecessarily attached to enlightenment? Please explain.
Hunger is a man’s first need, but van Gogh must have been receiving something that no one could see—some stream of savor must have been flowing. Otherwise why? What purpose? No prestige, no name, no money—hunger, pain, poverty—yet he goes on painting. When he began to paint, hunger vanished, the body vanished—he became bodiless. When all the paintings he had to create were done, he committed suicide. In the letter he left he wrote: “Now there is no meaning left in living.” This is most intriguing. He wrote: “What I had to paint, I have painted; what I had to hum, I have hummed; what I had to pour into colors, I have poured; what I had to say, I have said; what was hidden within me has been expressed; now there is no meaning in staying.” Those “meaningless” paintings were his very meaning. When that work was finished, he…
Osho, as long as we are identified with the body, we don’t really care for it; we only use it as a means to gratify our ego. But as that identification lessens, a new recognition arises, a new feeling of friendship toward the body. Why this paradox?
As a person becomes more silent, the feeling of enmity begins to drop. It’s not a question of toward whom; the very vibration of hostility starts falling from within. A blissful person can feel only friendliness. As your meditation deepens, you will feel you have become friendly with everyone. Those who were yours remain yours; those who were strangers also become yours. The ignorant, however identified they may be with the body, still regard it as other. And however much they live in the body, they live with an inner enmity toward it. You may adorn the body as much as you like, yet inside there is a kind of hostility. You may not recognize it, but you are an enemy of the body. And that enmity can be fulfilled in two ways. One way is to make the body a means of indulgence. Then you will only destroy it.…
Osho, in the meditation experiments you lead, there is a synthesis of yoga and devotion. So, are both necessary for pratyahara?
Life can be of two kinds: one life is built only on what is necessary; and one life is built on excess, on overflow. Watch the peacock dancing. Are those feathers, spread with the colors of the rainbow, necessary? If you cut off the feathers, would the peacock face any difficulty or hindrance in life? He would still live. Feathers are connected neither with the stream of life, nor with food, nor will they obstruct procreation. The feathers are surplus; they are a sign of more-than-needed, not of need. These birds are singing—stitch their beaks shut; will anything be lost? What difference would it make? The birds would still live. The songs would cease, because songs were never necessary—they were a flood, an exuberance. You dance—don’t dance; run your shop, come home. You sing—don’t sing. Will there be any obstacle? You love—don’t love; doing business is enough. If you don’t…