According to Osho, to be fully alive drop life-denying conditioning, refuse obedient guilt, and say a wholehearted yes to existence. Celebrate the here and now: sing, dance, love, play so totally that the doer disappears and only flow remains. Wisdom and the longing for life are natural; renunciation is not. Live intensely, innocently, without postponement.
Stop obeying ideas that shame life; enjoy this moment so completely—by dancing, singing, loving—that you forget yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, would you talk some more on the art of how to be fully alive?
A meditator neither bothers about the past that is gone, nor bothers about the future that has not come yet. He is focused in the present, and whatever he has, he enjoys it to its full. He squeezes the juice of the present moment to its maximum. Naturally, his life is not the life of a beggar. He is never asking for more, although he is living at the maximum with totality and intensity. Otherwise, you have to be satisfied. That's what your religions teach you -- to be satisfied with little. Satisfaction and contentment have been raised to great values. They are simply opium to the people so that you can at least tolerate the suffering that surrounds you and the misery in which you are drowning continuously. A man is playing golf, and he hits his ball into the woods. He goes to retrieve it and comes upon…
Beloved Osho, why such an enormous fear of allowing myself to be really alive?
The Jews have been tortured for two thousand years because they crucified Jesus, and now this is a crucifixion for all the Jews -- Israel. They have poured their money into it, they have come from faraway lands, they have been working hard, because it is a desert; and besides there is continuous harassment from the Mohammedans who are not going to accept that Israel is not theirs. On their maps they still show Palestine, not Israel. The trouble has increased more and more just now, in a way in which the Jews were not even aware would happen. There are outside enemies all around, and now there are inside enemies. Firstly, the Mohammedans who have been living for centuries in the land are still there; they function as informers to the Mohammedans, because their devotion is to Mohammedanism. And now something new, inconceivable is happening... because some Jews have…
Life is not to be renounced but experienced, lived, loved, because it is only at the innermost core of life that you will feel the presence of god. Hence my sannyasins have to be lovers of life, and they have to be dancers, singers, musicians, poets, creators, because the fundamental of my religion is, if you want to come closer to the creative energy of existence you have to be creators yourself. That's the only way to come close to the creative energy, or call it the creator. By your becoming creative, you start participating in god's creation. Celebrate -- don't miss a single opportunity to celebrate. Go on searching for opportunities to celebrate. If you cannot find them, invent them, because the whole point is celebration, not whether there is a real opportunity or a fictitious opportunity -- that doesn't matter.
The art of being total
My effort here is to help you to get out of that conditioning. I want to declare that life is god, that life and god are synonymous. Life is god's manifestation. Renouncing life means renouncing god. If you renounce his visible form you are automatically renouncing his invisible reality. The invisible can be found only through the visible; the visible is the entrance. Life is the door to god. Rejoice in it -- it is a blessing. Make it a dance, a song, a celebration. Love life, worship life, let your life be as sincere, as authentic and true as possible, and let it be as total and whole as possible. When life is whole one is holy. For me, that's the only way to become a sage, a true sage. <q>BECOME A CELEBRATION</q> Man ordinarily lives a life which is a drag. (laughter) He lives in such a boring…
Beloved Osho, you have recently said that most of humanity is vegetating, not living. Please explain to us the art of living so that death may become also a celebration.
In India the real brahmin, the real knower, has called himself dwij, twice born. Why twice born? What happened to the first birth? What is the need of the second birth? And what is he going to gain in the second birth? In the second birth he is going to gain what was available in the first birth but the society, the parents, the people surrounding him crushed it, destroyed it. Every child is being stuffed with knowledge. His simplicity has to be somehow removed, because simplicity is not going to help him in this competitive world. His simplicity will look to the world as if he is a simpleton; his innocence will be exploited in every possible way. Afraid of the society, afraid of the world we have created ourselves, we try to make every child be clever, cunning, knowledgeable -- to be in the category of the powerful,…