Do I need to suffer to achieve enlightenment?

Have I come here to enjoy myself or get enlightened? Does one need to suffer to become enlightened? I seem to fluctuate between the two. I'm very confused.

First, become joyous! And Jesus goes on saying it, but nobody listens. He says again and again: Rejoice! Rejoice! I say AGAIN rejoice! You ask: HAVE I COME HERE TO ENJOY MYSELF OR GET ENLIGHTENED; You have come here to get enlightened, as far as you are concerned. As far as I am concerned, you have come here to enjoy. But through enjoyment comes enlightenment, and through enlightenment just suffering. These are all ego trips. You find beautiful names, that's all, but they are all ego trips. Now, you want to become enlightened. Why? For what? From where did you get this idea of enlightenment? And this will create much suffering, because now you will be searching. What to do? Stand on your head to become enlightened? Fast to become enlightened? Go to the mountains to live in a cave? Become a masochist -- to torture yourself? Practise a thousand…

I have been to see a great number of teachers and I have given up all the pleasures of life. I have fasted, been celibate, and stayed awake nights seeking enlightenment. This way I have suffered a lot and yet I have not become enlightened. What should I do?

So when you are in love and happy you tend to forget. But when there is fighting, hatred, anger, you tend to magnify it. And those cripples -- the moralists, the priests and the politicians -- they are shouting in a chorus 'Look! We told you beforehand but you didn't listen to us. Renounce love! Love brings misery. Renounce this, renounce that -- renounce life!' And if you can go on repeating such things continuously, they have an impact; people become hypnotized. You have become hypnotized. You say you have been fasting, you have been a celibate. What has fasting to do with enlightenment? What has celibacy to do with enlightenment? Irrelevant. All that you have been doing -- 'I have been awake nights seeking enlightenment...' Can't you seek enlightenment in the day? And why should you be awake in the night? Why go against nature? Enlightenment is not something…

Beloved Osho, is it possible to become enlightened in a really easy and relaxed way, with not too much effort and lots of naps?

Gayano, you are asking me, a man who has never done anything. Just through relaxation ... without any effort and lots of naps! Mostly I am asleep. I just get up to talk to you in the morning, then I go back to sleep; then I get up again in the evening to talk to you and go back to sleep. My total hours of sleep must be eighteen. Six hours I am awake, two hours with you, one hour for my bath, for my food and the remainder I am in absolute samadhi. And I don't even dream -- so lazy! And you are asking me the question. This is my whole philosophy, that you should not make any effort, that you should relax and enlightenment comes. It comes when it finds you are really relaxed, no tension, no effort and immediately it showers on you like thousands of…

What is enlightenment?

Enlightenment is finding that there is nothing to find. Enlightenment is to come to know that there is nowhere to go. Enlightenment is the understanding that this is all, that this is perfect, that this is it. Enlightenment is not an achievement, it is an understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nowhere to go. You are already there -- you have never been away, you cannot be away from there. God has never been missed. Maybe you have forgotten, that's all. Maybe you have fallen asleep, that's all. Maybe you have got lost in many, many dreams, that's all -- but you are there. God is your very being. So the first thing is: don't think about enlightenment as a goal, it is not. It is not a goal, it is not something that you can desire. And if you desire it you will not get it. In desiring…

Osho, I keep thinking of my life in terms of goal or destination, waiting to wake up some day and find myself enlightened, and I worry that others will reach before me. Today is a tension. Why is eternity so difficult to feel and remember? You keep reminding me but I keep forgetting and lose patience. Why am I such a food? And then I think 'so what?' and then I want to scream 'no more!' but go on.

But do you think a day will come when all your invest-ments and all your worries and all your acts are complete? Will there ever come a day when you are finished with the activities of your so-called life, and you can come and say, "Right now I am ready"? It will never come, because life is such a complexity. It never begins, it never ends. You are always in the middle. It is like reading a novel from the middle. The beginning part is missing and the end part is missing -- you know only the middle. That is the mystery of life! Try some time reading a novel from the middle and you will find that even an ordinary novel becomes very mysterious. Intrigued you will be, and many times you will be tempted to look back: "What is the beginning?" But resist the temptation, go on reading…