According to Osho, drop the very beginning only if the search has truly begun. First, let a single, total desire for the Divine absorb all other desires; this focused yearning is a device. When inner oneness arises, abandon even that last desire—stop, be empty, and the ever-present Divine is revealed. But if no search has begun, there's nothing to drop.
Really want the Divine so much that nothing else matters, and when only that wish remains, let it go and be still—if you haven’t started, there’s nothing to drop.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
A friend has asked: Osho, Krishna says, “The devotee who lets go of all beginnings is dear to me.” So should one also let go of the very beginning of the search for the Divine?
The idea of the Divine, meditation on the Divine, is there to remove all the thorns of this world—but it too is a thorn. But don’t be hasty, thinking, “If it’s a thorn, then what have we to do with it? We are already troubled by thorns—why pick up another?” Don’t be so quick. That thorn serves to remove all these other thorns. And the day your thorn is out, that day both thorns must be thrown away together; you don’t keep the second one either. As all desires fall away, in the end the desire to realize the Divine also has to be dropped. It is the last desire. The very moment it drops you realize: it has always already been attained. There is a limitation in our language: it makes it seem as if the Divine is somewhere to be sought, hidden somewhere far away, to be located;…
Osho, you said that God-realization cannot be added as one more desire to the mind’s many cravings. “Let the One alone dwell within; to none other give your mind.” In this context, how then does the journey on the spiritual path begin?
There are many desires. There are thousands of things to get. Naturally it seems that if the desire for the Divine arises, it will arise as just one more among these desires. If all desires must fall away before the desire for God can be meaningful, then how will it arise? Understand: there are a thousand desires; God cannot be the thousand-and-first. Then where does the beginning happen? It begins when the futility of these thousand desires starts becoming visible to you. If the thousand remain meaningful and the thousand-and-first also becomes meaningful, your world just gets bigger; religion is not born. Let it become clear to you that these thousand are futile—that you are running after mirages. As one desire after another drops, nine hundred and ninety-nine remain; the space that opens is consecrated to God. When nine hundred and ninety-eight remain, a little more space opens—consecrate that too…
Osho, I want to be rich, I want a high position, and I want a beautiful woman too. What should I do?
A man once placed an advertisement—meant for people like you: “Send two rupees and learn the formula to become a millionaire overnight.” Now who wouldn’t want to become a millionaire for two rupees! Almost a hundred thousand people sent their money. A week later, everyone who had sent the two rupees received the reply: “Do exactly what I did.” He had indeed become a millionaire overnight! One lakh people sent two rupees each—two lakhs landed in his lap. This is how you’re being duped—through gambling, matka. And it’s not only people who run these scams; governments do it too. Governments that claim to be Gandhian run lotteries! A lottery is gambling—a cheat dressed up nicely. But the greedy get hooked: “Just one rupee for a chance at lakhs. If it comes once, that’s enough…!” But what will you do after getting lakhs? There’s a famous story by Tolstoy: A tailor…
A friend has asked: Osho, if creation and the creator are one, and if we ourselves are God, then isn’t the very idea of attaining or seeking God incongruous?
Certainly it is incongruous. There is no greater mistake than someone setting out to search for God. You can only search for what you have lost. What you have never lost, there is no way to search for it. But the search is incongruous only when it has become clear that “I am God”; before that, it is not incongruous. Before that, you will have to search. The search will not give you God; through seeking you will only discover that what you are looking for is nowhere out there—it is where the seeker is. It is the futility of seeking that brings you to God, not the success of seeking. This may be a little difficult to understand, but try to understand it. Here the seeker is the very one who is being sought. What you are looking for is hidden within. Therefore, so long as you keep seeking,…
Osho, to long for you is easy, but you are difficult. I have not been able to quiet this longing for you. A lifetime has passed in longing, yet you did not come. Death has begun to glimmer in life, yet you have not come.
Santosh Saraswati! To realize the Divine, first there must be an intense longing—in the first stage—indomitable, unwavering, unmoving. A longing bold enough to stake everything. Like a moth racing to the flame—such a longing! The longing to be annihilated. The courage to take every risk. Such urgency, such density that only one longing remains, and all other longings are absorbed into it. Let your heart become a single arrow, catch the flight of the Divine, and set out for the Divine’s destination. First such longing is needed. And then comes a very paradoxical law: the longing must be dissolved. No one arrives merely through longing; and without longing, no one arrives either. Longing is indispensable—but in the final moment the longing itself becomes the obstacle. In that last hour, longing too must fall away, in that very instant. First, longing refines you, shapes you, makes you undivided; then the longing…