Is deep longing a hindrance on the path or the fire that keeps me going?

Beloved Osho, oftentimes, when I close my eyes and look inside, I get in touch with a deep longing in my heart, for nothing in particular, just a longing. Beloved master, is this a hindrance on the path, or is this the fire that keeps me going?

All the great illumined people have been killed, destroyed, poisoned, for the simple reason that the crowd could not tolerate it, it was too much. They were flying so high that it was hurting millions of people: "They belonged to us, they have been amongst us, and it is humiliating that they have attained such height and such flight and we are still crawling on the earth. The only way to forget our humiliation is to destroy them." They don't think of the other possibility. A few think of it, and those few go through the transformation. Those few are very blessed. Those few start looking at those who have reached to the height as their pioneers, as glimpses of their own future and their potentiality. They start also moving in the same direction. But these people are very few. The majority take the easiest course, and that is to…

I don't understand. You said that longing is in and of itself divine. Yet you have often said that all desiring, even for god, is mundane and not spiritual.

Deva Ashoka, longing in its purity is divine, longing when it longs for nothing is divine. The moment an object of the longing arises, it becomes mundane. Longing is a pure fire that purifies, longing is a smokeless fire, a smokeless flame. But the moment it becomes attached to any object whatsoever -- worldly, otherworldly; money, meditation, God, nirvana, it doesn't matter -- any object, and the longing is no more pure, it is contaminated by the object. Then the object becomes more important than the longing itself. Then the longing is only a means, it is no more the end in itself. And the whole effort of sannyas is to help you drop all objects of longing. Longing will not disappear -- in fact, the more objects are dropped, the more intense, the more total the longing will become, because the energy involved in the objects will be released.…

What is the difference between waiting for godot and waiting for god?

It is as if the sun has risen in the morning and you are sitting in your room with closed doors and windows, in darkness. Open the doors, you become available to the sun. The sun was already available -- just the meeting happens. You cannot wait for God. All waiting is for Godot. Godot means the one who never comes, who CANNOT come, whose arrival is impossible. And the only impossible thing is that which has already happened -- how can it happen again? You are alive, and you are waiting for life, Now, this is ridiculous. The real man of religion does not think in terms of God. He thinks in terms of life or, even better, of living -- because life can again become an abstract idea. Living, moment-to-moment living. In that very living, one knows what God is, because one knows who one is. Your idea…

Beloved Osho, it is true that listening to you I often feel surrounded by softness, peacefulness, silence, but within all that is such a deep longing. It happens also sometimes when I am overwhelmed and delighted by a sunset, a full moon, a beautiful piece of music. There is always a longing, almost like a sweet pain. Osho, what is it that I long for?

Anything of beauty, anything reminding you of the beyond, will create a longing in you, a longing that you cannot figure out what it is for. You don't know the name of the object because in fact it is not for any object. Listening to beautiful music, looking at a sunset or just a bird on the wing or beautiful roses, or sitting here in silence, a sweet pain can be felt. The longing is how to become one with this state of feeling. It should not be a fleeting thing that comes and goes but something that remains with you, that becomes you, because the same music which was sweet today may not be sweet tomorrow, may be boring the day after tomorrow. So it is not the music. It is something else that is triggered in you: the longing to be peaceful, to be musical, to have all…

Osho, to long for you is easy, but you are difficult. I have not been able to quiet this longing for you. A lifetime has passed in longing, yet you did not come. Death has begun to glimmer in life, yet you have not come.

Santosh Saraswati! To realize the Divine, first there must be an intense longing—in the first stage—indomitable, unwavering, unmoving. A longing bold enough to stake everything. Like a moth racing to the flame—such a longing! The longing to be annihilated. The courage to take every risk. Such urgency, such density that only one longing remains, and all other longings are absorbed into it. Let your heart become a single arrow, catch the flight of the Divine, and set out for the Divine’s destination. First such longing is needed. And then comes a very paradoxical law: the longing must be dissolved. No one arrives merely through longing; and without longing, no one arrives either. Longing is indispensable—but in the final moment the longing itself becomes the obstacle. In that last hour, longing too must fall away, in that very instant. First, longing refines you, shapes you, makes you undivided; then the longing…