According to Osho, heaven need not be brought to earth - earth is already heaven; only awakening is required. Mind-made sleep, culture, and ambition veil it, turning bliss into misery. Hell is discontent; heaven is contentment and grateful awareness, as seen in children. A healthy, unambitious, loving society becomes possible when individuals drop the chase for 'more,' protect innocence, and live in remembrance and gratitude.
Heaven is here when we wake up, stop chasing more, and stay simple and thankful like children, and then our world becomes kind and loving.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, can heaven be brought down to earth? Can there ever be, in the future, a healthy, unambitious, unexcited, and loving society? Experience from the past suggests that here and there a few rare individuals attained liberation while the rest of society remained the same. You are certainly unique; your experiment is original and revolutionary. You say humanity, too, has matured. This time, can we hope for something new?
But how long can they obstruct? If even eight people sit—those eight are my sannyasins—if even eight sit, the train will start. Once it starts, the number of passengers will keep growing. Today the whole world rides; no one worries whether the train will stop or not. No one asks how to stop it, where the horses are, the oxen, who is driving, whether there are ghosts inside, whether the devil’s hand is in it. The engine even looks a bit devilish, like Yama’s messenger—thundering along with such force—who knows what will come of it? In the last five thousand years humanity has discovered all the needed pieces—slowly. Something from Buddha, something from Patanjali, something from Mohammed, something from Christ, something from Moses, something from Lao Tzu, something from Zarathustra—countless explorers discovered countless fragments. What remains is to seat those fragments together. That is what I am trying to do.…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, IS IT TRUE THAT ONE HAS TO GO THROUGH HELL? This neurotic society exists because individuals are neurotic. This world is ugly because you are ugly! You contribute your ugliness to this world. And everybody goes on pooling ugliness, neuroses, and the world becomes more and more a hell. You need not go anywhere else; this is the only hell there is. But you can come out of it. By understanding how your mind is helping to create this hell, you can withdraw. And a single person withdrawing himself from creating this hell, noncooperating, rebellious, becomes a great source of bringing heaven on the earth, becomes a gateway. You need not go to hell, you are already there. You need to go to heaven now.
Osho, you always praise a simple, innocent consciousness. What is this simplicity, this innocence?
The man said, “Then send me to the Indian one; I don’t want the German.” That difference was enough. The Germans refined it further—they read your scriptures and perfected them. German intellect knows how to refine things, arrange them, run everything by the clock. Even in the ashram I have given the electricity work to Haridas—a German sannyasin. However many times Pune’s electricity fails, the ashram’s does not. Let Pune fail, but not the ashram. Haridas takes great care; he has arranged everything—automatic generators: the moment the power fails, they kick in; you can’t even tell there was a failure. Where has this been learned? This much evil in the world—your saints had already arranged for it in the scriptures. Hell for others, heaven for themselves. These are not marks of simple-hearted people. A simple person—why would he think of hell and heaven? He has no such notions, no such…
What is your idea of heaven?
There is no heaven and there is no hell. They are not geographical, they are part of your psychology. They are psychological. To live a life of spontaneity, truth, love and beauty is to live in heaven. To live a life of hypocrisy, lies and compromises, to live according to others, is to live in hell. To live in freedom is heaven, and to live in bondage is hell. You can decorate your prison cell beautifully, but that makes no difference, it is still a prison cell. And that's what people have been doing, they go on decorating their prison cell. They give it beautiful names, they go on painting it, putting new pictures on the walls, arranging the furniture in new ways, purchasing more and more things -- but they live in prisons. Your marriage is a prison, your church is a prison, your nationality is a prison. How…
Heaven is a state of being, it is a state of love. When you are full of hate you are in hell, when you are overflowing with love you are in heaven. The English word 'paradise' comes from a Persian word 'firdaus'. Firdaus means a walled garden with many flowers, streams, birds. That garden is your potential. Seeds are there, everything is there as a potential but you have to actualise it. God only provides seeds and the challenge of life to sow those seeds, to grow, to protect, to water, to nourish, to wait. And then spring comes and one day the mysterious has happened. The seed has never given any clue as to what it contained; when suddenly lotuses bloom you cannot believe that they were hiding in such small seeds, in ugly seeds -- closed, windowless.