According to Osho, humanity forgot its Buddha nature not in a distant past but whenever authority, prohibition, and borrowed knowledge seduced the mind into imagination. Like Adam and Eve, being told don't created obsession, conditioning, and second-hand truths. This veiled our innate clarity; only direct seeing - your own knowing - restores the original, unconditioned awareness.
We lost our natural innocence when we followed rules and ideas instead of directly seeing for ourselves.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, you often tell us that we lost our awareness of our buddha nature because of conditioning processes of every kind. This far, I can imagine, but if mankind originally had this awareness, how did we lose it in the beginning? How did conditioning start originally? And if existence is just a flowing, why is it important that many people become enlightened? Why do you make the effort, or don't you make any? And is your being here, and everything, also just a flowing?
I have come across thousands of intellectuals, the so-called intelligentsia, and they are the most stupid people you can ever come across. You will find farmers, gardeners, carpenters, who are far more intelligent than professors, theologians, scholars. They are full of rubbish! Of course, they have read much and they can repeat all that they have read; they have great information, but information is not wisdom. Information can be collected by a computer, and far more efficiently, but a computer is never wise. I don't think there will come a time when you will come across a computer who has become a buddha! It is not going to happen ever. Yes, a computer can become an Albert Einstein, certainly, there is no doubt about it. And he will function far better than Albert Einstein, because it will be just a mechanical thing. Mathematics is mechanical, but love is not mechanical.…
Beloved Osho, I have heard you say that we are all enlightened, and that we have just all forgotten it. Did we forget it at a precise time, and if so, why?
Prembodhi, yes we have forgotten it at a precise time, and I will tell you why. Just try to remember backwards -- how far back can you go? Four years of age, or at the most when you were three years of age. Beyond that comes an absolute blank -- no memory, no remembrance. One thing is certain, that in those three years many things must have happened. You must have cried, you must have been loved, you must have been left alone, you must have been afraid in the dark night -- a thousand and one experiences must have happened. You may have fallen, you may have been hurt, you may have been seriously sick ... but you cannot remember anything. It seems as if in those three years, nothing was recorded by your memory mechanism. That's exactly the time when you forgot your self-nature. Let us say it…
If we are all buddhas why did we fall into ignorance and unawareness?
In fact, the more money you have, the less is the value of the money. Value depends on poverty. One rupee in a poor man's pocket has more value than the same rupee in a rich man's pocket because the poor man can use it; the rich man cannot use it. The more money you have, the less is the value. A point comes of saturation when the money is of no value -- whether you have it or not makes no difference; your life will continue the same. To be rich means to destroy the value of the money; then the money is valueless. You have the house that you wanted, you have cars that you wanted, you have everything that you wanted -- now the money is nothing, just a figure. You can go on putting figures in your bank balance -- of no use. Then sudden]y hope…
Osho, if an enlightened person cannot lose his buddhahood, how does a baby born as a buddha lose his?
Innocence plus consciousness is equal to Buddhahood. Innocence minus consciousness is equal to childhoodness. And how one can be conscious? The only way -- and let me emphasize -- the ONLY way is to lose it and gain it again. You ask me, Hajo: IF AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON CANNOT LOSE HIS BUDDHAHOOD, HOW DOES A BABY BORN AS A BUDDHA LOSE HIS? The enlightened person has lost it and found it. The baby has not lost it, and has not yet found it; he is born with it, oblivious of it. Hence you will see in the eyes of small children something of the saints, something of the same beauty; but also a deep ignorance. The innocence is there but full of ignorance. The saint is innocent but full of awareness, knowing. His innocence is not mixed with ignorance; it is wisdom. And the children are bound to lose their…
Osho, why, in the first place, have people been distracted from their original self?
The brahmin said, "I am not leaving, I will come back, but I don't have time to convince you. The train will be missed -- the station is two miles away from my house. But nobody was listening to him, and I was provoking people: "Stop him, otherwise his wife, his children... you will have to look after them -- who is going to feed them?" They brought him back with his bags, and of course he was angry and threw his bag at his wife. His wife asked, "What have we done? Why are you...?" And I was there outside in the crowd He said, "Nobody has done anything. That boy told me there would be a reaction. The reason is that three days before, in the temple, I was teaching the philosophy of action and reaction and this boy was present there. Now he is teaching me." He…