According to Osho, experimenting with alcohol, especially when you already want it, won’t awaken you; it only fulfills desire and chemically helps you forget suffering. Gurdjieff urged drinking only to shatter resisters’ patterns. Instead, drink the "water of life": awareness and meditation. Being broke is a blessing: no allowance needed, total self-dependence. Look within for joy, remember yourself, and avoid the trouble and self-forgetting alcohol brings.
If you’re broke and curious about alcohol, skip it; it’s an escape—choose awareness and meditation, which are free and actually wake you up.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master I would like to try experimenting with alcohol a la gurdjieff, except I am broke. Can I have an alcohol allowance?
Deva Shraddan, George Gurdjieff would not have given you that experiment. That was given only to people who are against alcohol! For example, if Morarji Desai had gone to George Gurdjieff, then he would have forced him to drink alcohol -- instead of his own urine! But not for you. So it is very difficult for me to allow you an alcohol allowance -- that would be against the spirit of George Gurdjieff. He would never forgive me! The essential core of the experiment is to disturb you, to shatter you, to shatter your patterns, fixed patterns. If you are desiring alcohol, then that is the LAST thing that is going to shatter you. It will be fulfilling, it will not be shattering. Instead of alcohol, start drinking the water of life! "You know, you are the first man I have met whose kisses make me sit up and open…
I had heard that wine is bitter and burns the breast, but the taste of your wine is something else.
I say unto you, enjoy life with the witnessing consciousness. But you want to drop the witness. You catch only 'enjoy'. Enjoy life but if you enjoy it without remaining the witness, you didn't enjoy it. Real enjoyment is only when you remain a witness. Drink wine but if consciousness is lost you didn't drink it. You have drunk real wine only if consciousness grows as you drink. There is no other wine than samadhi. As I see it, the attraction for alcohol will continue in man until the attraction for samadhi grows. People will go on drinking fake wine until real wine is available to them. False coins will pass until the real coin is available. Governments throughout the world try to stop the consumption of wine, but it doesn't happen. They have always been trying to do it. Religious people have been advising governments to enact prohibition. They…
Question: The final question: Osho, do you also drink alcohol? And there is nothing else truly worth drinking. For years I haven’t drunk water—that much I can assure you; for ten years at least I haven’t touched it. I drink soda and wine. Soda on the outside, wine on the inside. I believe in balance—a little of the outer, a little of the inner. There is a wine that has never been distilled; toward it no one has ever been able to gaze. There is an elixir like that. I drink this undistilled wine. I live on this unseen elixir! And I want to make you drunkards too. Bhakti means wine. Shandilya means a drunkard. The devotee’s temple is a tavern—intoxication, sweetness, mellowness. Drink the Divine; then no other wine will remain worth drinking.
Osho, the presence of a person seems indispensable for the experience of bliss. But if all around is only the expansion of me, then who will experience bliss? Just as sannyas seems essential for life to become blissful, isn’t the person equally essential for the experience of bliss?
It is precisely because of the person that bliss is not happening. The person is necessary for the expectation of bliss; for the experience of bliss, he is a barrier. For the longing and the craving for bliss, the person is needed; for the realization of bliss, the person is not needed at all. When bliss happens, you are scarcely there. In fact, only when you are not, bliss is. You yourself have tasted this, at least in unpremeditated moments: whenever you were not, a glimpse flashed. Your beloved comes home; you sit hand in hand. For a moment the presence of the beloved absorbs you so totally that you disappear—no thought of yourself remains. A drop slips in, the nectar begins to flow. Have you ever watched the sun rise? You sit on the riverbank. The sun begins to climb. This morning breeze, the coolness of the water, the…
Question: Fourth question: Osho, if alcohol is an obstacle to meditation, then what to speak of the samadhi of sat-chit-ananda! From experience I understand that only by getting out of this pit can one come to meditation. Kindly tell me the way to get out of this pit. Asked by Lalbhai. A confirmed drunkard. But still, he asked—good. The path will be made by this very asking. When the urge to question arises, the first ray has arrived. If the feeling arises that you must get out of this pit, you will get out. You yourself went into the pit; the same feet that took you there will bring you back. If you begin to recognize that what you have fallen into is a pit, how long will you lie there? A man remains in the pit only because he thinks it is a palace, a palace of gold.