According to Osho, destiny is real only for the unconscious. When you live mechanically, biology and conditioning script your life. With awareness you step out of that program: you consciously do what is practical, and you stop doing where the essential must happen—love, grace, insight. A wise life balances clear action with surrendered openness, letting the higher 'happen' while shaping the rest.
If you’re on autopilot, fate runs you; if you wake up and act mindfully, you do what can be done and let the big, beautiful things happen by themselves.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, is there anything like destiny in life or do we create our future moment to moment?
It all depends on you. If you behave mechanically, unconsciously, life has a destiny. Then you are simply following a certain program that your biology, your physiology, your chemistry, your hormones, have given to you. You appear to be free but you are not. And you know -- when you fall in love, you know you are not free. It is not your choice. Suddenly you feel you are in love and there is nothing that you can do either to improve upon it or to get away from it. In either case, you will destroy the delicate phenomenon of love. Almost everybody has done that. Either people are trying to do too much... and love is not something that you can do. You can be loving but you cannot be a doer. Loving is a relaxed state of non-doing. You simply are. You cannot increase it; you cannot have…
Osho, is my destiny nothing but a long series of sadness and frustration written in advance?
It is in your hands. If you go on writing it, it will remain written. No one else is giving you melancholy; it is your choice. You have chosen it. No one else will give you bliss either—if you choose it, you will have it. What you find, what you choose—that is your destiny. Let us understand a little. The old notion of fate says: it is written—and written by someone else, not by you. I want to tell you: destiny is not already written; it has to be written day by day. And not by someone else—your own hands write it. It may be that you write in such unconsciousness that your own hands seem alien. It may be you write in such unawareness that only after it is written do you realize something got written. You cannot catch yourself red-handed. Your awareness is lacking. But no one else…
Osho, if life is a storyline in which each person’s role is fixed and one only has to enact it as ordained, isn’t that fatalism?
The word has been spoiled; with too much use it’s become debased. Otherwise “destiny” is a very lovely word. Destiny means things happen; they are not “done.” Destiny means the plot is decided—don’t worry needlessly. Destiny means what has to happen will happen; what had to happen has happened; what has to be will go on happening. Don’t carry the burden on your head. You are not responsible. Think of it like this: a Ramleela is being performed; the leela, the play, is on. Rama knows perfectly well that Sita will be abducted. There’s no need to stay awake nights, worrying. It’s all fixed. It’s a script. Sita will be abducted, Rama will wander from forest to forest, asking every tree, “Where is my Sita?” And he will ask with great feeling. Then the curtain will fall, and backstage they’ll laugh and chat. Ravana will be sitting there too. They’ll…
Osho, is sannyas a human possibility or an ultimate destiny? Please tell us.
Those great knowers said “it will happen, it is going to happen” and emphasized it strongly to wake you from sleep: if it is going to happen anyway, then let it happen now. Why delay? Why postpone it till tomorrow? If it is going to happen tomorrow, let it happen today. Why suffer till tomorrow? Why endure anguish till tomorrow? Let it be today. Accept it today. If it is going to be anyway, why erect obstacles? All your obstacles will break and the event will occur. The wise said: do not create obstacles—that was their purpose when they said sannyas is destiny. And they also said it so that, if you understand destiny, you will be freed from the past. The moment you see that someone abused you yesterday and that it was bound to happen, then the abuser bears no responsibility. It had to be. That abuse was…
A friend has asked: Osho, even before the Mahabharata war began, Arjuna saw that within the Divine’s cosmic form all the warriors were entering the jaws of death. Then was that great war, in that very moment, an unavoidable destiny that everyone was compelled to fulfill?
In trying to drive the future, man becomes disordered. After many experiences India decided: leave the future to God. It is inevitable. What is to be will be. You are nothing in between. Its direct result is that you are instantly freed from the future. No worries remain. Whether happiness comes or sorrow, good or bad, whether you survive or not—it is no longer in your hands. You can live in the present—here and now. Many teachers—Krishnamurti, for instance—go on saying, “Live in the present.” But man cannot live in the present so long as he believes the future can be made. How can he? The teaching is correct but incomplete. How can he live in the present if he knows that, should he wish, tomorrow could be different—and if he does nothing, something else will happen? The notion that tomorrow can be changed will agitate today. If tomorrow cannot…