Don’t worry if it’s literally true; using the idea that you’re not the doer helps you relax, stop questioning, and become quiet inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you said, “You are free—now, here, in this very moment”; but how do I get free of this “I”?
This is the marvelous principle of destiny, of fate: everything is happening by itself. The wrong people took it in the wrong sense—that was their mistake. Properly understood, fate means only this: if you understand the principle of destiny rightly, you become a witness, and there is nothing to do. But people did not become witnesses through fate; they became inert, indolent. There is a difference between a non-doer (akarta) and an idler (akarmanya). The idler is lazy, sluggish, dead. The non-doer is overflowing with energy—he simply does not say, “I am doing.” The Divine is doing. I am only seeing. This play is happening; I am watching. Man is very dishonest; he uses even the most beautiful truths in ugly ways. Fate is a very beautiful truth. It means only this: everything is happening; nothing is happening by your doing. All is ordained. What has to be, will be.…
A friend has asked: Osho, it is said that not even a leaf moves without God’s will. If that is true, then our whole life runs according to His will. Then the good and bad thoughts that arise in us, the good and bad actions that happen—are they also according to His will?! Then what is the purpose of sadhana? What meaning is there in changing oneself?
If this point truly lands, then sadhana has no further purpose. Sadhana has begun. If only this much occurs to you—that whatever is being done, God is doing it—then my sense of doership is finished. All of sadhana is only this: that my ego dissolve. Then He is doing the good, He is doing the bad. Then there is no question of good and bad at all. He is doing it—both are His doing. He gives suffering; He gives joy. Birth is His, death is His. Bondage His, liberation His. Then there is no question of me. There is no need for me to come in between. Then there is no need for sadhana—because sadhana has happened; it has begun. This very understanding becomes the supreme sadhana. This very insight cuts the root of life’s disease. For the whole disease is the ego, the notion that “I am doing.” This…
The past is no more and the future is never going to be, so this is the moment. You can celebrate it: you can love, you can pray, you can sing, you can dance, you can meditate, you can use it as you want. And the moment is so small that if you are not very alert it will slip out of your hands, it will be gone. So, to be, one has to be very very alert. Doing needs no alertness, it is very mechanical. But don't use the word 'wait' -- because that means the future has entered again from the back door. You follow me? If you think that you should just wait, then again you are waiting for the future. So doing or waiting are not separate things. There is nothing to wait for. The existence is as perfect this moment as it will ever be.
Osho, yesterday you said that jealousy is included in respect. I have immense respect for you, but the jealousy inherent in it keeps poisoning it, and I feel guilt and pain. Does reverence transcend this poison-laced respect?
It needs a little explaining—it's a delicate point. Whenever you respect someone, you do so because you see in that person something you do not have. You respect because you glimpse in the other something you would also like to possess. A beggar respects an emperor because he, too, longs to be an emperor. So on the one hand he respects, and inside he also envies. Because he is not yet an emperor but wants to be. You have attained what he wants to attain. He respects you as skillful, successful: “I stand far back in the line; you have gone ahead to where I should have been.” So you are powerful, clever, intelligent, strong—he respects you. But inside a fire of jealousy also burns—if he gets the chance, he would like to be in your place and push you aside. And if the beggar gets that chance, he will…
Osho, this doing and undoing that you are speaking about, and you in action and inaction, and like the wheel and the axle—in these three, from within and without, it seems that non-doing would mean there is nothing on the outside. But in truth you are saying that outwardly there will be maximum action, and inwardly...
The outer action has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it? Yes, nothing to do with it.