According to Osho, asking “how long” betrays impatience; true waiting is infinite, alert, and silent. The more haste, the longer the delay; when your readiness ripens, it happens by itself. Do not impose your desires—let existence’s will unfold. Become patience itself (As‑Sabur): a wakeful, incandescent stillness. In such timeless waiting, the sought is found in the present moment.
Wait calmly and watchfully forever if needed, because rushing only delays things; when you’re truly ready, it happens by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: Third question: How long to wait? Osho! How long to wait? The very question “how long” tells me you do not know the art of waiting. “How long” is already impatience—where is waiting in that? “How long” is haste—where is waiting in that? True waiting is infinite. Anything less than the infinite is not waiting; it is a counterfeit. And the one whose waiting is infinite will find it this very moment. The more impatience you have, the longer it will take. Let this arithmetic settle within you: the more the haste, the longer the delay. The more the impatience, the longer the delay. For a mind full of impatience is agitated, trembling; it cannot be still. An impatient mind keeps peering into the future; it is not present in the present.
Osho, “A sigh needs a lifetime before it takes effect; who lives long enough for the tangles of your tresses to be set right? We agreed you would not feign indifference, but we shall turn to dust before the news even reaches you.”
“A sigh needs a lifetime before it takes effect; who lives until the tangles of your tresses are set right? We agreed you would not feign indifference, but we shall turn to dust before the news reaches you.” Become so! “We will wait for You our whole life long, yet the grief will remain that life is too short.” Do it! Let life prove too short and waiting grow vast. Let many lifetimes be encompassed; let waiting become so dense that birth and life pass like the blink of an eye. Yet let the thread of waiting continue unbroken. Bodies change, lives change, wombs change, forms change, colors change, names change—let everything go on changing—but within, let a single thread of waiting remain strung through all the beads. The happening can occur in this very moment, but the waiting must be endless. And the happening will be much delayed if…
Osho, how much longer should I wait? How long will it take? I am eager to meet the Lord, and I can no longer bear this separation.
Krishnananda! For God you need preparedness for infinite waiting. It’s not that you actually have to wait infinitely; if you are ready for infinite waiting, revolution can happen in a single instant. But if you are in a hurry, it will not happen even in eternity. Hurry is an obstacle. The more impatient you are, the longer it will take. Impatience keeps the mind unquiet; patience quiets it. Impatience agitates the mind, raises ripples, storms and tempests. And even if the Divine wants to enter such a mind, how can He? The mind has to be like a silent lake—with not even the slightest ripple. Even the idea of attaining God is nothing but desire. It’s desire in a new form, a new style—old desire in new clothes. Once you lusted for wealth, so you were impatient—let it come quickly, let the lottery hit! You didn’t even have the peace…
Osho, I have been listening to you for years. I have been with you a long time. From time to time I have heard many different statements from you, even mutually contradictory ones, yet no question has ever arisen in my mind about them. And in spite of them you have always remained one and indivisible in my vision and in my heart. Kindly shed some light on this.
You can be with me in two ways: through thought and intellect, or through the heart and feeling. If you are with me through the intellect and thought, there will be great difficulty. Day after day you will find contradictory statements. Every day you will have to sort them out, and still you will not succeed. The intellect never really resolves anything. Even where things are simple, the intellect tangles them up. And my words are very tangled. Even where everything is clear, the intellect creates problems. And I speak of paths filled with mist. Even if there were only one path, the intellect would find contradictions; here there are countless paths—contradictions upon contradictions. There is hardly a statement I have not refuted a thousand times. So if you are with me through the intellect, only two things are possible: either you will go mad and drop the intellect, or…
Osho, from listening to you, this disease of devotion seems to have infected me as well. Now I cannot keep patience. The yearning is that everything should happen right now.
You say: “From listening to you, this disease of devotion has caught me; now I cannot keep patience. The longing is that everything should happen right now.” I understand—that is how it happens. But refine your understanding a little more. This is natural, but this very naturalness will become a hindrance. Then what happens when a person becomes very impatient? Two things. Either he reaches a limit where it becomes hard to bear the impatience, and he thinks: “Forget it. None of this happens; there is no God, no prayer. What mess have I got into!”—this happens. Or the impatience becomes so much that the person breaks, falls apart, goes deranged. In both cases, the thing is missed. Put your energy into prayer, and leave the “when to come” to him. This is what I called utkranti (evolution) yesterday. You pray—that much is your effort—and then leave it to the…