According to Osho, being in the here-now isn’t just possible—it’s the only reality. You can never be anywhere but this moment and this place; the future never arrives except as another now. The problem isn’t time, but our habit of worrying and planning, which wastes the present. Live intensely and joyously now; from a fulfilled present, the next moment naturally unfolds with greater blessing.
You’re always in the present—so stop chasing tomorrow, enjoy and act in this moment, and the next will take care of itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, is it really possible to be in the "now-here" all the time? Most of my time seems to go in planning for, or worrying about, the future.
Nitin, whether you know it or not, you cannot be anywhere else than here and now. Wherever you are it will be here and now. You are given only one moment at a time -- and you are wasting that moment in planning or worrying about the future; and the future never comes. What comes is always here, now: it is a series of `nows' -- one now, another now -- but you are always living in the now. There is no future -- so how can you worry about the future? It is because of this kind of worrying and planning for the future that a certain proverb exists in all the languages of the world: Man goes on desiring, planning, worrying about the future -- and God goes on disappointing him. There is no God to disappoint you. In your very planning, you are sowing the seeds of…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHERE IS THIS MOMENT? I KEEP LOSING IT. Here! You ask me, "Where is this moment?" Your question implies it must be somewhere else. You have already lost it. It is always here! Don't try to find where it is, because while you are finding where it is, you are losing it. You are missing the train continuously. Time knows no tenses: past, present, future, no -- absolutely no! Time knows only one tense, and that is now. It is always now. But your mind can carry the past and destroy the beauty of the now. Your mind can project the future, and can lose the precious moment. Please, start relaxing here and now. This is the taste of it.
Question: WHAT IS HERENOW? DOES 'THOUGHT' FORM PART OF IT? IF SO, THEN ALL-TIME AND ALL-THINGS ARE NOW. OR... IS HERENOW ONLY IN NO-MIND? Man started looking for the same experience without becoming dependent on the other. Then, if it depends only on sexual experience, it cannot last forever. You can have sex once in a while -- and what about the other times? All other times you will remain dull and dead. Is it possible to have that joy continuously, as a continuum, like a river flowing always? These were the speculations of man, but they came from sleep and love. In love sometimes it happens, and that is the moment which is called orgasm. If time stops, if thinking stops, and you are UTTERLY herenow, it is orgasmic. This orgasmic experience will give you the taste.
Osho, if we remain aware within the present—if we don’t think of the next moment and attend only to this one—could it not happen that, after a moment, the next contact that comes will again pass us by?
But where is it now? It isn’t here yet, is it? The moment this moment passes, that moment will become the present. Then you can make full contact. You can only make contact when it... Whenever it comes, it will come as the present; there is no way for it to sneak past. It has to pass right in front of your house; there is no back alley from which a future moment can slip by. Every future moment has to become the present. And if you are aware in the present, you need not worry. Now no moment of time can pass you by without asking. Yes, the reverse can happen: if you are anxious about the future, the present moment can pass by. You won’t even notice. It will have to come into your hands—and you be aware. Hence someone once asked... There was a Sufi fakir, Bayazid.…
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
Akbar, the great Moghul emperor, drew a line on the wall, and he told his wise men not to touch it and yet make it smaller. They were puzzled and they thought, "It is impossible!" Then one of his wise men, Birbal, drew another line near it, a bigger one, without touching the first line. When the bigger line was drawn the first line became smaller. If you draw a small line then the first line will become bigger. So there are two ways. Either you make your being bigger -- then the world becomes smaller, smaller, smaller smaller... a moment comes when your being becomes the total, the BRAHMA, the world disappears. then there is no more world. Then there is another way, and the other is just a trick. You go on saying the world is illusory, MAYA, it is not there. You go on denying the reality…