According to Osho, grace isn’t inherently beneficent. The divine is not a person but neutral energy flowing by its own law (dharma). Aligned with that law, the same force nourishes you as ‘grace’; misaligned, it becomes ‘ungrace’—like a river strengthening rooted trees and sweeping away the uprooted. Sudden exposure can even harm the unprepared. Therefore, cultivate fitness through sadhana/meditation rather than petitionary prayer.
Grace is like a river or gravity: it helps when you stand rightly and can hurt if you don’t, so learn to stand well through practice.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, in an earlier talk you said that God—meaning Existence, the Whole, Totality—is one. But in this verse, how are beings and God, or nature and God, spoken of as two distinct categories? What is the reason?
I moved the pillow farther away. When I touched it, he reacted as if someone had touched his beloved; it showed on his face. As twenty minutes approached, I picked the pillow up to lock it in a cupboard. He rushed over, and totally outside his conscious control, he snatched the pillow, kissed it, and hugged it. Everyone burst out laughing. “What are you doing?” He began to cry, “I myself don’t understand what I’m doing. But now I feel such relief. A restlessness was building so that I just couldn’t stop myself—I had to hug and kiss this pillow. I am absolutely mad!” He had no idea what had been said to him under hypnosis. Isn’t the attraction between man and woman just like this? No one has hypnotized you—you are already hypnotized by the journey of lifetimes. It is nature’s hypnosis. The old word is maya; the new…
In one of your previous discourses you said that a sudden and direct descent of grace can become a disaster sometimes. The person might be harmed or become mad or he may even die. A question naturally arises: is grace not always beneficial? Does grace not keep its own equilibrium? The mishap can also be due to the fact that the recipient was unfit. In that case, how can grace descend on an unqualified person?
When I say mishap I am only referring to a happening for which we are not prepared. Mishap does not necessarily mean a bad or painful event; it means only the occurrence of that event for which we are not yet ready. Now, if a man wins a lottery of one million dollars it is not a bad happening. But he can die. One million dollars! -- it can stop the beating of his heart. So mishap means the occurrence of an event for which we are not prepared. The opposite may also take place. If a man is prepared for his death and it comes, it is not necessary that his death is a bad event. If a man such as Socrates is prepared to meet death and welcomes it with open arms, then for such a person death becomes samadhi. He accepts death with such love and joy…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, YOU OFTEN TALK TO US ABOUT GRACE. IT SEEMS TO BE SUCH A BEAUTIFUL WORD BUT MY UNDERSTANDING OF ITS MEANING FEELS LIMITED. I KNOW THAT IT IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE. COULD YOU SPEAK SOME MORE ABOUT IT? Deva Anupo, grace is one of the great mysteries of life. It is not something physical, not psychological but something spiritual. It is not within your power to create it. Any created grace will be false, phony. Grace comes as a flowering of your being. The moment your meditation reaches to the deepest core, to the very center of the cyclone, a tremendous silence, peace and blissfulness arise within you. Grace is the total effect of all these qualities: silence, peace, love, compassion, blissfulness, ecstasy. When these things arise in you, their flame, their fire starts radiating from your physical body. They are so much they start overflowing.
Everything that is really worthwhile seems to happen out of grace. What is the logic or illogic of grace? When is one most attractive to it?
But one day, his eightieth birthday, suddenly the whole village could not believe it -- a rumour spread like fire: 'The old man is happy today, not complaining, even smiling, and his whole face has changed.' The whole village gathered and they asked: 'What is the secret? What has happened to you?' The old man said: 'Nothing. I tried to be happy for eighty years and I could not be -- so I thought it is better to go without happiness. I tried hard to be happy and I could not be happy so I said that now it is enough -- eighty years wasted -- now I will do without happiness. That's why I'm happy.' This happens. This is what is happening all over the world. Try hard and you become unhappy. The more you try, the more frustration it brings. Ask the awakened, all those who have known…
Those are the moments of purity, innocence, those are the moments which can be called divine. They are no more human. You have transcended humanity in those moments. Slowly slowly those moments become bigger and bigger, and one day it becomes such a simple process that whenever you want to you can go into that interval, into that thoughtlessness. Fully aware yet thoughtless -- that is meditation. And that is the only thing that can liberate you from all kinds of bondages, that can bring peace to you, and bliss and god and truth. Grace is never human, it is always divine. It is the beyond penetrating the gross planes of existence. It is matter penetrated by spirit. When matter becomes penetrated by the spirit it becomes luminous. That luminosity is grace, that aura is grace. Grace belongs to the beyond, to the eternal.