According to Osho, the litmus test is joy. True detachment makes you healthier, freer and more loving; joy, freshness, and a spontaneous delight for no reason expand as attachments fall away. Indifference is a counterfeit: it brings dullness, sadness, contraction, and a lifeless control. Track your inner climate: more fragrance, song, and dance means detachment; heaviness and depression signal indifference.
If you feel lighter, happier, and more loving without clinging, that’s detachment; if you feel dull, heavy, and joyless, that’s indifference.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
How can I know if detachment or indifference is growing within?
It is not difficult to know. How do you know when you have a headache and how do you know when you don't have a headache? It is simply clear. When you are growing in detachment you will become healthier, happier; your life will become a life of joy. That is the criterion of all that is good. Joy is the criterion. If you are growing in joy, you are growing, and you are getting towards home. With indifference there is no possibility that joy can grow. In fact, if you have any joy, that will disappear. Happiness is health, and, to me, religion is basically hedonistic. Hedonism is the very essence of religion. To be happy is all. So remember, if things are going right, and you are moving in the right direction, each moment will bring more joy -- as if you are going towards a beautiful garden.…
Osho, in a lecture you spoke about non-identification, that one should become a witness. But in the west many people are alienated, they cannot get involved. They are simply indifferent to everything. That is also my experience. Please can you make clear the difference between non-identification and alienation?
The sannyas that teaches you how to live in the world and yet float above it like a lotus flower, like a lotus leaf, remaining in the water and yet untouched by the water, remaining in the world and yet not allowing the world to enter into you, being in the world yet not being OF the world, that is true renunciation. That true renunciation comes through witnessing; it is not indifference. Indifference will make you alienated, being alienated you will feel meaningless, joyless, accidental. Feeling accidental, the desire to commit suicide will arise, is bound to arise. Why go on living a meaningless life? Why go on repeating the same rut, the same routine, every day? If there is no meaning, why not end it all, why not be finished with it all? Hence many many more people are committing suicide every day, many many people are going mad…
With deepening meditation, one becomes more and more sensitive to objects, events and persons. But due to this heightened sensitivity one feels a sort of deep intimacy with everything, and this usually becomes a cause of subtle attachments. How to be sensitive and yet detached?
Let me tell you a story. Buddha was staying in a village. A woman came to him, weeping and crying and screaming. Her child, her only child, had suddenly died. Because Buddha was in the village, people said, "Don't weep. Go to this man. People say he is infinite compassion. If he wills it, the child can revive. So don't weep. Go to this Buddha." The woman came with the dead child, crying, weeping, and the whole village followed her -- the whole village was affected. Buddha's disciples were also affected; they started praying in their minds that Buddha would have compassion. He must bless the child so that he will be revived, resurrected. Many disciples of Buddha started weeping. The scene was so touching, deeply moving. Everybody was still. Buddha remained silent. He looked at the dead child, then he looked at the weeping, crying mother and he said…
The root of this division is mind. If there is no mind, there is no division. Therefore, concentrate your mind on the universal consciousness which is your interiority.
KNOWING THAT YOU ARE THE PERPETUALLY BLISSFUL SOUL, ALWAYS REJOICE IN THIS BLISS WITHIN AND WITHOUT YOUR VERY SOUL. THE FRUIT OF DETACHMENT IS KNOWLEDGE, THE FRUIT OF KNOWLEDGE IS RELAXEDNESS, AND THE PEACE THAT DESCENDS FROM EXPERIENCING THE SELF-BLISS IS THE VERY FRUIT OF RELAXEDNESS. IF EACH ONE OF THE AFORESAID DOES NOT HAPPEN IN SUCCESSION, KNOW THAT THE PREVIOUS ONE HAS GONE FRUITLESS. ABSTENTION FROM THE SENSE-OBJECTS IS IN ITSELF THE SUPREME CONTENTMENT AND INCOMPARABLE BLISS. THE ROOT OF THIS DIVISION IS MIND. IF THERE IS NO MIND, THERE IS NO DIVISION. THEREFORE, CONCENTRATE YOUR MIND ON THE UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS. And then came the monk who gave a hit on the head. The flow of thinking had stopped, the dozing had set in, the monk gave a hit on your head -- for a moment the dozing was broken. In that single moment a glimpse of meditation happens.…
Mind is always imitative. Mind is a monkey, literally a monkey. It is curious, very curious about everthing, but it has no perseverance, no patience. It goes on jumping from one branch to another branch. It never sticks to anything; it never digs any well really deep but goes on scratching the ground here and there. That is not the way to dig a well. One has to be totally involved, one has to put all one's energies to the work. Mind cannot do that; only the heart is capable of doing it. It is the heart that gets involved and committed. Mind is always a Judas, it can never become a Christ. Judas was the most knowledgeable disciple of Jesus. All the other apostles were illiterate; he was the most cultured. And it is natural, not accidental, that he betrayed Jesus.