According to Osho, restlessness is inherent to being human—an incomplete bridge between animal past and divine possibility, pulled by memories and hopes. Its false relief comes from falling back into unconscious pleasures. Use it instead as fuel to move forward: turn tension into awareness, self-knowing, and meditation, realizing your oneness with the divine. Completion dissolves agitation; peace returns as fulfilled simplicity, not bestial sleep.
Your jumpy feeling means you’re still growing; don’t numb it—use it to look within, grow up spiritually, and real calm will come.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
A friend has asked, Osho, I am very restless, and so much energy gets used up in this restlessness. How can I make use of it, and what is its cause?
But the anger remains there; it will not change by your turning away. It will change by your standing your ground and seeing it. If you turn your back, anger will make deeper wounds within and lay down roots. Fix both your eyes on anger. This is the moment to consciously see anger. When lust seizes the mind, do not run. Do not panic. Do not chant Ram-Ram. Look lust straight in the face. A direct encounter with the passions is necessary. But man has been taught to run. He has been told, wherever something bad appears—run away. But where will you run? The bad is within you; it will go with you. There is no way to run away from yourself. If evil were outside somewhere, we could run. It stands within—we will have to change it. We will have to use this manure. And using it is not…
First, I have asked one question. And I have also asked one or two related questions. It is asked: Osho, the mind is restless. Without effort and without renunciation, how can it become steady?
No. I will say to you: it is not an effort. If I am clenching my fist and ask you, “How do I open this fist?” what will you say? You will say: “To open it, you need do nothing. Please stop doing what you are doing to clench it; the fist will open by itself.” Opening is not an effort; the moment you cease the effort that clenches, opening happens. Or if I pull down a branch and hold it, and ask how to return it to its place—what will you say? “Do nothing to return it. Just stop doing what holds it down; it will return by itself.” What are we doing continuously with the mind? We are doing something. If we stop that, the mind will quiet by itself. It will quiet by itself. As I said this morning, we are constantly engaged in resistance—twenty-four hours resisting.…
Osho, yesterday you said that jealousy is included in respect. I have immense respect for you, but the jealousy inherent in it keeps poisoning it, and I feel guilt and pain. Does reverence transcend this poison-laced respect?
It needs a little explaining—it's a delicate point. Whenever you respect someone, you do so because you see in that person something you do not have. You respect because you glimpse in the other something you would also like to possess. A beggar respects an emperor because he, too, longs to be an emperor. So on the one hand he respects, and inside he also envies. Because he is not yet an emperor but wants to be. You have attained what he wants to attain. He respects you as skillful, successful: “I stand far back in the line; you have gone ahead to where I should have been.” So you are powerful, clever, intelligent, strong—he respects you. But inside a fire of jealousy also burns—if he gets the chance, he would like to be in your place and push you aside. And if the beggar gets that chance, he will…
Understand the mechanism of mind. The mind is restless; you say it should be quiet. The mind was restless; you have added a new restlessness—that now it should be quiet. Understand the restlessness of mind. You have ten thousand rupees; you wanted a million; therefore the mind is restless. You were not content with what is. You demanded what is not. Restlessness arises from the demand for the ‘no’. Restlessness comes from lack. From what is, restlessness never arises; from asking for what is not, it arises. The wife you have—you want one more beautiful. The husband you have—you want one more renowned. The son you have—you want one more intelligent. The house you have—you want one bigger. The prestige you have—you want it deeper. The position you hold—you want one higher. Restlessness comes from wanting what you do not have.
Please explain the nature of the experiences we call boredom and restlessness.
No woman can believe that her husband is attracted to other women. There is the whole point, the whole crux. If he is not attracted to other women, how can she expect that he will be attracted to herself? If he is attracted to other women only then can he be attracted to her, because she is also a woman. The wife wants him to be attracted to her and not attracted to anybody else. Now this is asking something absurd. It is as if you are saying, 'You are allowed to breathe only in my presence and when you go near somebody else, you are not allowed to breathe. How dare you breathe anywhere else?' Just breathe when the wife is there, just breathe when the husband is there, and don't breathe anywhere else. Of course, if you do that you will be dead and you will not be…