According to Osho, yes: the sole value of all spiritual methods is to exhaust the urge to do, so you see that nothing real happens through doing. When doing loses its allure, the doer collapses; ego empties, and the door to the Divine opens. Failure becomes the liberating device, dissolving ‘I’ and allowing effortless alignment with the whole.
You keep trying until you realize doing won’t deliver truth—then the need to push drops, ego softens, and life moves you.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, from what you said yesterday, it seems that the only usefulness of the practices a master prescribes and a disciple undertakes is to realize the futility of doing. Is it essential for a seeker to know the futility of doing? And do the various practices have no value in themselves?
A seeker simply means one who is now ready to break the ego. And the ego will break only when the sense of doer-ship disappears. The sense of doer-ship will vanish when all your actions fail, when all your methods, all your techniques, all your paths prove futile—when you reach a place where you can say, “Nothing happens by what I do; nothing will ever happen by what I do.” This supreme failure—only in this supreme failure does a person realize, “I am helpless.” Only in this supreme failure does one know, “There is no center of ego within me; I am but a wave upon the ocean.” From one angle this is failure; from another, this is the very birth of religion, the greatest success. From the worldly side it is the greatest defeat; from God’s side it is the greatest victory. One who is not ready for this…
Question: OSHO, EXACTLY HOW DO YOU NOT DO IT? So there are only two types of non-doers in the world: one who by sheer understanding relaxes and finds the state of non-doing, of peace, of silence; and the other type, who will go thousands of miles, torture themselves in every possible way, do yoga exercises, stand on their head and fast, starve, renounce, repress, pray, go into the monasteries and do all kinds of stupid things. And finally, simply by being tired, exhausted, they sit down -- and suddenly it is there. Perhaps they may think it has come because of all their doing. That is not the case -- it has come in spite of all their doing. Otherwise, they are such practiced doers that it was possible they might have continued still, because the more you run, the better your running becomes.
A friend has asked: Osho, the soul cannot be seen. Why is so much importance given to what cannot be seen? And why are you also speaking about this same unseen soul?
A tree is visible; its roots are not. The roots are hidden in the earth. But that does not reduce the value of the unseen roots. In fact, the visible tree depends entirely on those invisible roots. And whoever wastes time caring only for the tree and ignores the roots, his tree is bound to dry up. That tree will bear neither leaves nor flowers nor fruit. The life of the tree is hidden in its unseen roots. Whatever is truly important in life is hidden. What appears is only the outer shell. What remains unmanifest is the inner life-breath. The body is visible because it is the outer shell. What is within the body is not visible. But the value of what is unseen does not diminish for that reason. Rather, precisely because it is not visible, its search becomes all the more necessary. Let it not happen that…
A friend has asked, Osho, if all human beings become non-doers, accept the Gita’s teaching, then what juice would be left in life and in the world?
What juice is there in life right now? Right now you are doers, contrary to the Gita—what juice is there in life? And if life is already juicy, then what need is there to read the Gita? What need to hear it? If life is already juicy, why even raise the question of religion? Why talk of God, liberation, meditation, samadhi? If there is juice in life, the matter is finished. Juice itself is God. Then nothing remains to be done. Then become even more of a doer so that you get even more juice. Plunge deeper into the world so that you find deeper sources of juice. And if, by being a doer, you are already getting juice, then offer the Gita and the rest into the fire. There is no need. And do not listen to Krishna and the others—otherwise they will destroy your juice. You are in…
Anand Tirth has asked: “I got up from here and left, very blissful. A gentleman who follows U.G. Krishnamurti met me right at the door. (He had been listening in here—if he was listening here, what was he doing here?) And he said: all this is mind’s play—confusion, hallucination.”
People come to me as well and say, “Come to our home once.” What will happen by my coming to your home? You come to my home. If I come to your home, what will that do? You didn’t get anything from living there; what will you do by bringing me there? Come to my home; you will receive something. And remember: unless you bow, you will get nothing. But then they have difficulty where the ego is hurt. Where balm is applied to their ego, they feel great joy. “In Shri U.G. Krishnamurti’s satsang, a sharp disfaith toward practice has been born in many minds.” They never practiced, and they never had faith in practice. Wherefrom will disfaith arise? Remember: generally people say, “I have disbelief in God.” He is using the wrong word. Only if there was faith can there be disbelief. And if someone had faith, how…