According to Osho, meditation is not a brief rest or entertainment; once allowed in, it permeates your whole life. It brings such bliss and peace that no one would discard it, nor can it be bought, sold, or conquered. It transforms your very being—the 'soul of your soul'—and demands courage, sincerity, and practice rather than spectatorship.
If you really let meditation in, it won’t be a quick fun break—it stays, changes you, and you wouldn’t trade it for anything.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, that friend has asked: might this become just a short rest, a brief entertainment?
No. Let it be for a little while—soon it will take hold of your whole life. This meditation is such a guest that once it slips inside, you will not be able to send it out. Once it is in, you simply cannot expel it. Because it brings such bliss—who can throw bliss away? It brings such peace—who would drive peace out? Try it once—let it come in—and then it will never be able to leave. And even if someone says, “We’ll take it out and give you ten million rupees,” you will not agree to part with it even for ten million. I have heard that in those days an emperor, Shrenik, came to Mahavira. Shrenik said to Mahavira, “I have attained everything. Now I hear so much talk about meditation—what is this thing? How much will it cost? I am ready to buy.” He was an emperor—accustomed to…
First, they have created a great hurry in people -- that's why the West is in so much of a hurry. The roots go deep into the religions that have dominated the western mind. If there is only one life, only this life and then you will be in the grave, who knows for how long... who knows when the last Judgement Day will come? For almost an eternity you will be in the grave, so make as much as you can make of your small life -- it is not much. If you are going to live sixty years, twenty years will be wasted in sleep. Of the remaining forty years, for twenty years you will be working as a clerk or as a teacher or as a D.T. collector or as an engineer. There are thousands of kinds of stupid professions in which one can waste one's life.
Forget the past, don't go on carrying it. It has not given you anything. It has been tragic -- no need to remain burdened with it. Become free of it so that you can experiment afresh. Then sannyas is a great adventure. (Meditation is not-minding. This was the message to Dhyan Sandesh. Mind is our prison, said Osho.) We are imprisoned in our thoughts, ideologies, philosophies. We have to go beyond words and scriptures and theories, only then does one start experiencing the truth. Theories are about truth, but to know about truth is not to know truth itself. Meditation makes you capable of knowing the truth directly. I don't give you any ideas about truth, not even definitions about truth. I only give you certain strategies, devices, which can help you to go beyond the mind. I provide ladders so the prisoners can jump out of their prisons.
meditation transforms you into a beloved of the whole existence as the meditator becomes centred, silent, aware the whole existence starts converging upward the same world but no more the same before it was cold, alien now it is cosy, a home a man without meditation lives in the world as a stranger as you enter meditation you enter a love affair with existence and for love everything is possible even the impossible is not impossible all that is needed is a deep, profound silence in your being that becomes a magnetic pull then whatsoever is beautiful in existence starts moving towards you meditation creates gravitation for truth for beauty, for love for freedom, for godliness for all that is really valuable one need not go searching for anything one has simply to rest in one's being and all that is needed follows in its own course meditation is the…
Meditation needs that kind of strong spirit, then certainly one comes to taste the fruits of the ultimate. One comes to taste nectar, one comes to know eternity. So put all your energies with great hope, with great patience and with an unwavering determination to create a meditative energy in you. (To Arlene) -- This is your name: Ma Dhyan Anubhuti. Dhyan means meditation. Anubhuti means experience. Meditation is not a thought, it is not philosophy. It is existential, it is an experience. It is like love: just by thinking about love You cannot know love.