Does completing worldly experiences enhance the quality and expression of one's enlightenment?

Osho, is it necessary to live a worldly life to attain self-realization?

The world is fire—vast, blazing. All around you are flames. It is necessary to pass through these flames, for each flame carries a lesson, a teaching, and each will make you stronger. By knowing and knowing again, by falling and rising, one day you will recognize that here everything is insubstantial. The day you know this, the flower of supreme renunciation will bloom in your life. I can tell you, “All is insubstantial,” but will it become insubstantial for you just because I said so? Without tasting, it will not. I can tell you, “Neem is bitter,” but if you have not tasted it, will neem be bitter for you? Even if you trust me, somewhere a doubt will slip in: Who knows, perhaps the man is lying? Perhaps he himself was deceived? Perhaps his tongue is odd, and to him it tasted bitter? Apart from one’s own experience, there…

Osho, you have said that one must pass through the experiences of the world. People like me became sannyasins without passing through life’s sun and shade. Kindly tell us what will happen to us?

First of all, my understanding of sannyas is not against the world. So by joining my sannyas you are not stepping out of life’s sun and shade. On the contrary: the world is only sun, sun—now you have included shade as well. By joining my sannyas you have not left the world; you have gained sannyas. Understand this well. The world was nothing but blazing sun; now I have given you the shade of sannyas too. When you have the strength, walk in the sun; when you are tired, rest in the shade. I have given you meditation; I have not made you drop the world. I have given you something; I have not taken anything away. Therefore, the possibility of experience has increased for you. If you had remained only in the world, you would have only the world’s experience; now you will also have the experience of sannyas.…

Osho, “A human being can never realize the Divine while living in this world”—this is my statement. Is it true?

Come down and smear yourself with earth; be alive; drop this disease; bring color, laugh out loud, pour out fragrance; when lovers pluck you, count it as good fortune; come into their hands, go with them. O block of ice, cool and resplendent— until you melt and flow, slide down and meet the earth, you will never, as grass-green, express the thrill of the living soil; nor, as her laughter, will you bloom in colored buds and flowers; nor, as the tears of her sorrow, will you gather on the morning lashes of the petals. The concept of sannyas so far has been a dead concept—one of escapism and flight. Its foundation is fear. Run away from wherever there is fear you may get entangled, may fall into mud—run away from there. But by running you become only a coward. The old sannyas, at root, was cowardly. Therefore it could…

Another friend has asked: If one has to drop all desires, then what is the goal of life?

Perhaps he thinks that fulfilling desires is the goal of life! Desires are never fulfilled. No desire is ever fulfilled. One desire seems to be fulfilled, and it gives birth to ten more. No one has ever been able to say that a desire was fulfilled. Even before one is fulfilled, a new progeny appears and the chain starts again. The goal of life is not the fulfillment of desires. The goal of life is to attain desirelessness from amidst desires. The goal of life is to pass through desires and rise beyond them. For the moment one rises beyond all desires, one comes to know that life’s supreme blessedness was not in desires. Desires created tension, a pull and strain. Because of desires the mind would run, tire, fall, become distressed. With desirelessness, your very life-energy meets existence. There is no race left, no running about. As when a…

Osho, on the one hand you say desire is by nature insatiable; it remains forever unfulfilled. And on the other hand you also say that if any relish for the world remains, it should be enjoyed fully. Please have the compassion to remove this contradiction.

Contradictions appear because you do not see. They seem like contradictions because your eyes are not yet open. You grope in the dark; therefore contradictions appear. Otherwise, there is no contradiction. Understand. Certainly desire is insatiable; this is the dictum of the Buddha, of all the awakened ones. Desire is insatiable means it cannot be filled—do whatever you may. If you have ten rupees, you want twenty. If you have ten thousand, you want twenty thousand; a million, you want two. The gap between ten and twenty remains the same. Desire is insatiable means the ratio of your discontent remains constant. It makes no difference how much you acquire; desire will move just that much ahead. Desire is like the horizon: it appears to meet the earth ten or twelve miles away. You run and think you will reach in an hour or two. Run for lifetimes—you will never arrive.…