According to Osho, yes: even a desire-driven quest can culminate in desireless witnessing—when repeated frustration exposes that desire is the very source of anxiety and hell. Seeing this link with total clarity, desire and its journey drop by themselves; not by suppression but by understanding. Brief experiments in desirelessness reveal overflowing bliss, empowering responsibility and the key to sustained awareness.
Chasing wants hurts until you see wanting causes the hurt; then the wanting falls away and calm, clear watching appears.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, can a journey motivated by desire end in desireless witnessing?
The question is: Can a journey motivated by desire end up in a desireless awareness? Yes, because every desire is going to give you anxiety, anguish, misery, suffering. So any journey motivated by desire is a journey towards hell. And how long can you continue it? How long can one suffer, be miserable? There is a limit to endurance, and everybody comes to the limit. And the moment you come to the limit you can see it clearly that the suffering, the misery, the hell, is created by your desire. You cannot avoid misery and suffering and hell, and save your desire. The moment you see the connection, immediately the desire and the misery and the suffering drop from your hands. You need not drop them. The very understanding that desire is creating all this hell that has become intolerable, all this nightmare... that each moment has become just pain…
Osho, yesterday you said that when anger is watched consciously, it dissolves. But why is it that when sexual desire arises, even in awareness its intensity persists? Why is it so?
There is no entanglement in the breath. If you try to practice on anger… Anger is not happening every moment; it happens sometimes. And when it happens, it happens with such intensity that you are already going deep into it; so much is at stake in those moments that you may think, “We will look into awareness later; first let’s settle this now.” Lust is very deep, because existence has made it so deep; life depends on it. If lust were so easy that you decided and were freed, perhaps you would not even have been born—because many before you would have become free, and the possibility of your being would have been almost nil. But your parents, and their parents, did not become free; therefore you are. You too will not get free so easily, because your children are also to be—they are waiting: “Do not run away midway.”…
Desirelessness is the perfect knowledge. And the peace that flows from this experience
OF INNER BLISS IS THE PROOF OF DESIRELESSNESS.] THAT WHICH DOESN'T HAPPEN IN SUCCESSION FROM AMONG THE ABOVE-MENTIONED STEPS INDICATES THAT THE STEP PRECEDING IT HAS BEEN FRUITLESS. TO SHUN THE OBJECTS OF ENJOYMENT IS THE HIGHEST CONTENTMENT, AND THE BLISS OF SELF One who is totally relaxed becomes silent. Nothing happens in him now. There is no happening, because every happening is noise, every happening has its own noise. Now there is no experience inside, because every experience disturbs silence. The man of total relaxation is absolutely silent. Now nothing happens in him. He is; simply he is. No experiences now -- NO experiences, remember this. You will not have visions, because visions are a disturbance. You will not see light, you will not hear sound; you will not be taking an interview with God. No experience. Silence means no experience now. Everything has fallen. You have become just…
Osho, can the ultimate state not be attained through continuous witnessing and without meditation? And when only witnessing remains, how does one become free of that too?
Begin with action—and go to non-action. Begin with meditation—and go to samadhi. Start in shallow waters, then slowly go deeper… then into the bottomless depths. Do not hurry. Gently, step by step… But you seem to be in a hurry. The question is quite extraordinary: “Can the ultimate state be attained through continuous witnessing and without meditation?” And then: “And when only witnessing remains, how to be free of that too?” You are in a great rush! Witnessing has not happened yet. Meditation has not happened yet. Meditation hasn’t even begun; theoretically you have adopted the notion: it would be good if witnessing were accomplished—without meditation. If it had happened, you would not be asking. It has not happened. Yet you go further: “If witnessing is accomplished—without meditation—then how to be free of that?” Not such haste. If you leap like this, you will break your hands and feet. The…
Question: wasn't buddha's desire for realization a desire?
Mind is desiring. The mind cannot do anything without desire. You cannot transcend the mind through desiring, because the mind is the desiring. So the mind has to desire even that which is found only when there is no desire. But begin with the wall. Know desire, and you will stumble upon the door. Even Buddha had to begin with a desire, but no one told him -- the fact was not known to him -- that the door opens only when there is no desire. As I understand it, struggling with desire is the disease. Giving up the struggle is the freedom. That is the only real death: when you just give up. If you can just lie down and die with no struggle to live, without even an indication of struggle, that death can become a realization. If you just lie down and accept -- with no movement…