According to Osho, pratyahara is not hard but utterly natural: you never really left your source. Like the Ganges returning to Gangotri and the tree folding back into the seed, withdrawal happens by itself; the 'practice' is simply to wake up to it. Drop identification with thoughts and habits, stay aware in ordinary acts—even running a paan shop—and awareness itself brings you home despite worldly obstacles.
You don’t need to force anything—just wake up and see you never left your inner home.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, this pratyahara seems like an impossible experiment. Is it really possible for the Ganges to return to Gangotri and for a tree to return and merge into a sapling and a seed? Yet Shankara—and you too—are asking us to practice exactly this!
Does the Ganges returning to Gangotri or the tree folding back into the seed seem impossible to you? It is happening every day! The seed becomes a tree again and again. Look at the seed pods hanging on that gulmohar beside you—the whole tree has become seed. And the Ganges returns to Gangotri every day—rising into clouds, into rain-laden skies—then pouring on the Himalayas, returning to Gangotri. This is happening every single day. Then you will ask, “If it’s already happening, what is there to do?” The doing is only this: to see, awake, what is already taking place. It is happening while you sleep. Many times you come back home, but you are not conscious. You have become so accustomed to stopping in inns that even when you return home you take it to be an inn. A friend of mine has a business that keeps him traveling day…
Beloved Osho, this pratyahar looks like an impossible experiment. Is it possible for the ganges to return to gangotri and is it possible for the tree to again become a seedling and a seed? And shankara and you are both asking us to do this.
The return of the Ganges to its source, to Gangotri, and the tree becoming a seed looks impossible to you, but this is what is happening every day. The tree is becoming a seed again daily. Just look at the seeds hanging on that gulmohar tree: the whole tree has become seeds. And every day the Ganges returns to Gangotri through the dark clouds; it rains on the Himalayas and the Ganges returns to Gangotri. This is happening every day. You ask what has to be done. Really, this is happening unconsciously; you just have to see this happening in wakefulness. Many times you return home but you are not conscious. You have become so used to staying in guesthouses that even when you return to your own home you think it to be a guesthouse. A friend of mine has to travel day and night in connection with his…
Osho, I feel that in the journey of life I have wandered very far from my true nature. Will the journey of returning—of retracing—back to my nature be just as long? Or is some shortcut possible?
But we manage to extract futility out of everything. So there are people “remembering God,” chanting “Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram.” They have turned their shawl into a “Ram shawl,” covered with Ram-Ram. Remembrance of the Lord means that what is hidden within me becomes evident to me. By repeating Ram-Ram awareness will not arise. Let my eyes, which have been wandering outward, turn within; let my ears, which listen outside, begin to listen within; let my mind, which thinks about the external, turn inward—let its lamp, its light, fall inside. This very moment you can be established in your nature, because in truth you already are. No one has ever been able to dislodge you from there, nor ever will. That is why, even after wandering for thousands of births, you never truly wander away. Your capacity to reclaim it is, at every instant, exactly what it has always been; not the…
Osho, is there any practical process for being in the realm of existence beyond thoughts, in the void?
The way to thin them out is non-cooperation. Right now we are their makers—that is, we are the ones maintaining them. When we sit idle, some thought or other is running, because without our cooperation they cannot run. Withdraw your cooperation from whatever thoughts are running, and do nothing else; regard just this as samayik, as meditation. If all thoughts dissolve, you will feel no ego and no person within. You will know only being—only being will be known, in which the distinction “I am an individual” or “I am the whole” will not be felt. Only pure being will remain—pure existence. In truth, because of the thoughts accumulated upon that pure existence, we appear to be a person. This sense that I am “A,” you are “B,” you are “C”—the A, B, C we have pasted on—is our thought-power. We commonly say, “I will become liberated”—this is not quite…
Osho, why does pratikraman—the return home—feel uneasy, difficult, almost impossible to us?
Hence whenever a living Master appears, those who uphold old scriptures become his opponents, because because of him people begin to set scriptures aside. When scriptures are set aside, the pandits are set aside, the whole business is set aside. It becomes hard. The pandits become enemies. Then when this Master dies, the same pandits who were his enemies gather at the cremation ground—to offer homage. They then make scriptures out of him. Their enmity was with the living, not with scripture. So they themselves make the scriptures. It is amusing: Mahavira was a Kshatriya, but all his ganadharas were Brahmins! Strange—what is this? The moment Mahavira died, the Brahmins rushed in: “Good opportunity—now we can make scriptures again.” At once they set up scriptures. Jainism got constructed. Now if once again someone brings living religion, the scholars, the pandits, the worshipers of scripture, are in trouble again; their business…