According to Osho, heaven and hell are not places in space but inner states of consciousness: bliss feels ‘above’ and cool, suffering ‘below’ and burning. Humanity turned such feelings into pictures, which priests later mistook—and used—as literal geography. Sin and virtue are pointers to inner harmony or discord; transform your consciousness, and you change your ‘place.’
Heaven and hell are moods inside you, not destinations—make your inside peaceful and you’re in heaven; make it miserable and you’re in hell.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, the scientists went into space and reached different planets, but they are not yet able to locate heaven and hell. Could you tell me, where is heaven and where is hell?
They will never locate heaven and hell anywhere. They are fictions, lies told to humanity to keep it enslaved, to console it in its suffering and torture, to prevent it from any revolution that could change the whole scene on the earth. But in a certain sense, those words are significant. They are usable but only for your psychology, not for your geography. And you know perfectly well where they are. Everybody knows moments when he is in hell and moments when he is in heaven. These are states of the mind. Most of the time you are in hell. Once in a while, on the weekend, perhaps you have a little bit of heaven too. That little bit of heaven is dangerous. It keeps you in hell, hoping for that little bit of heaven: "Tomorrow it will be coming. So it is only a question of somehow passing today,…
Osho, what is hell? Is there really such a place?
If you have intelligence, awareness, even in hell you can manage to air-condition it. That's what I am doing. Can't you see the hell all around? But somehow I have got a few people banded together and we are trying to create a small heaven of our own. What to do? People have decided to live in hell, they are not ready to listen, then the only wise choice is: we can create our own heaven. And if we can create our own heaven, that will become an example, a model, that this way also one can live. When people come for the first time to our commune they are surprised. Just the other day a young priest wrote a letter to me, a Catholic priest, who now has become interested in me, and wants to get married, and wants to get rid of the Catholic church. He has written…
Does hell really exist?
Praying to Christ -- and for seven days he had not slept, thinking the whole night, thinking the whole day -- he fell asleep before the statue of Christ and he had a dream. In the dream he saw a train ready to leave for heaven. He jumped in. He said, "This is perfectly right. Why shouldn't I go there and see with my own eyes? If I see Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Tamburlaine, in heaven, then the question is solved. Or if I see Socrates, who did not believe in God but was one of the most virtuous of men, if I see Gautama the Buddha, who did not believe in God but was one of the most godly persons who ever walked on the earth, then the question is solved." He rushed into the train and the train left. He reached heaven. He was a little surprised, puzzled,…
Is there really a hell?
Heaven and hell are only two sides of your mind. The religions that were born outside India have remained with these two ideas, heaven and hell. They could not rise above them. Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- all the three religions born outside India, have no idea of something transcendental. In India we have a third word MOKSHA, NIRVANA. Hell is a wrong psychology, ill, abnormal, neurotic, pathological; heaven is a right psychology, normal, healthy. But there is a beyond where you are no more a mind, when both sides of the mind have been dropped, where you are a no-mind, where you are neither negative nor positive, where you are neither dark nor light, where you are neither this nor that -- where you are just a witness to all, to misery and bliss, to all, just a witness, where you are not identified with either misery OR bliss, where…
A warrior came to the zen master hakuin and asked "is there such a thing as heaven and hell?" hakuin said "who are you?" the warrior replied "I am chief samurai to the emperor." hakuin said "you, a samurai? With a face like that, you look more like a beggar." at this the warrior became so angry he drew his sword. Standing calmly in front of him, hakuin said "here open the gates of hell." perceiving the master's composure, the soldier sheathed his sword and bowed. Hakuin then said "and here open the gates of heaven."
To make a distinction between the momentary heaven and the eternal heaven Hindus have a different word -- MOKSHA. Hindus have three words; Christians, Mohammedans, Jews have only two words. Heaven and hell are the two words for Mohammedans, Christians and Jews. Hindus say naraka for hell, swarga for heaven, and moksha -- beyond both. A third word. Hindus say heaven is not worth achieving; it can be lost. When the state of heaven becomes permanent, when it cannot be lost, it is moksha, it is absolute freedom. Then bliss has become your nature then heaven and hell have disappeared. Then wherever you are, it will make no difference. This third state is the aim. But you cannot reach the third if you are flickering, if you are wavering between heaven and hell; then nothing can be consolidated, integrated. Then you live in a flux, there is no crystallization, your…