According to Osho, set a goal only as a present-moment impulse, then forget it and play totally with the work at hand. Treat each step as the peak; results are secondary and will arrive only in the present. Action—not daydreaming—opens meditation. Drop the calculating ‘I,’ be absorbed like a child, and let the outcome unfold by itself.
Decide what you want, then stop thinking about winning and just play fully with what you’re doing right now; the result will come when it comes.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, if we put it in the language of science, perhaps we could say this: suppose we have some goal to be attained in the future—should we take it as lila, as play, and let it go into the unconscious mind, while keeping the conscious mind only on what needs to be known in the present, in awareness? Like a scientist who stays with the process he is engaged in, the operation he is carrying out—remaining with that—and forgets what he is to achieve in the future?
No—he has to forget; otherwise he cannot do the process at all. The scientist has to forget; otherwise mistakes will happen right now. He forgets—only then can he arrive. He becomes totally present in what he is doing. For him there is no future, no result, no end. What is happening now is the peak. From that very happening, the end will also come—but that is secondary. That is not the point. A goal has come into your mind—then it has already sunk in. Why keep bringing it up again and again? You are engaged in some work, you are doing a research. The search has already become part of your consciousness. Why keep remembering it? Now plunge wholly into the work. And in fact we don’t notice that the very idea of the search also arose in some present moment. I do not call that the future. Imagine a…
You have said that there are no goals in life, no purpose. And yet we are all here with enlightenment as our goal. Please speak on this.
Then you start a totally different way of life. You start being playful, you start being alive moment to moment with nowhere to go -- whatsoever the life gives, you accept it with deep gratitude. Grace happens to you. This is what I call: to become a god. The moment you start playing, living in the moment, you have become a god. I am here to persuade you that you are already gods. You may be here to become gods -- that's your trip, I'm not concerned with it. I know what I am here for: just to persuade you to look at your own face once again; to search within and not to go without, searching for something which doesn't exist. Life is a purposeless play, a play of infinite forces -- beautiful if you don't have an achiever's mind, ugly if you have ambition to become something, to…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS THE GOAL OF LIFE AND HOW CAN IT BE ACHIEVED? To live in the moment needs a thoughtless awareness, because even a small thought is bigger than the smallest atom of time -- the moment. Hence my insistence on meditation. It is nothing but a method to drop thoughts and to be available to the present moment. Live it as deeply as possible. The next moment will be born out of this moment. If you have lived this moment totally, intensely, your next moment is going to be still more golden. And that's how life goes on growing -- otherwise people only grow old. If you have a goal you will grow old. If you don't have a goal you will grow up. And these are two different processes. Growing old you reach to death; that is the goal.
It is not a difficult process because the process of looking is the same, just the object changes: you start turning your consciousness upon yourself. You may have seen many pictures of snakes swallowing their own tails. Those pictures are very ancient symbols of mystery schools; they represent this inner transformation. When your consciousness starts turning upon itself you become a circle, and the moment you are a circle you are no more the same old person. Your life starts having a new grace, a new beauty, a new beatitude. You become golden, you become precious. For the first time you have a contact with god, and that contact is a magical transformation. It is sheer magic and a miracle. Enjoy the trip, don't be too fixated on the target, Osho said in conclusion. Bliss is not a pond, it is a river. It is not static.
Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin -- empty.
GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS INFINITELY. SWEET HEARTED ONE, MEDITATE ON KNOWING AND NOT-KNOWING, EXISTING AND NOT-EXISTING. THEN LEAVE BOTH ASIDE THAT YOU MAY BE. ENTER SPACE, SUPPORTLESS, ETERNAL, STILL. In siddhasana, the gravitational pull is at its minimum. The body is inactive and passive, closed inside, it has become a world unto itself. Nothing is moving out, nothing is coming in .Eyes are closed, hands are locked, feet are locked -- energy moves in a circle. And whenever energy moves in a circle, it creates an inner rhythm, an inner music. The more you hear that music, the more you feel relaxed. SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM -- just like an empty room -- WITH WALLS OF SKIN -- EMPTY. Go on dropping into that emptiness. A moment will come sometime when you feel everything has disappeared;…