According to Osho, alertness and preparedness mean recognizing that life is a journey born of our present imperfection, seeing our limitations clearly, and letting that clarity ignite the will to grow. Alertness is the lucid awareness of our incompleteness; preparedness is the readiness to seek light, to move, to practice, to strive toward wholeness—without pretending we’re already perfect.
Notice you’re not finished yet, and get ready to learn and act to become whole—like turning on a light in a dark room.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Someone questioned, "what do you mean by this alertness and preparedness?
First thing to bear in mind is that life is a journey. We begin at one point and move on to some other point. We are not perfect, but we have to strive to be perfect. For the perfect, there is no travel and no destination. But, for the majority of us, who are far from being perfect, the journey, the quest, the search, -- call it what you will -- -is essential. When we feel that life is a journey, it is a sign of imperfection. But this feeling is important. Concentrate on this imperfection; see the limitation; or at least have a glimpse of your incomplete state. He who realises he is imperfect, will be filled with ambition to be perfect; just as he who is ill and ailing wishes fervently to be well; or just as he who enters a dark room, instinctively thinks of switching on…
Question: Osho, you once said that within fifty years, if there are not people like Krishna, Christ, Buddha, and Mahavira on the earth, the whole of humanity could be destroyed. And, like Vivekananda, you said that you are searching for a hundred individuals who can courageously experiment and rise to the highest peaks of the soul; then it will be possible to save this land and all humanity. For this you go from village to village, looking for eyes that can become a flame. You said, I am ready to make the total effort. On my side, the preparation is complete to take one inward. Let me not, at the time of dying, have to say that I was looking for a hundred people and I did not find them. If your readiness is there, come. Please clarify the meaning of “my preparation” and “your preparation.” What preparations are needed?
Osho, please understand one thing: in any country, if the society happens to be spiritualist, then those who don’t get a chance in it are pulled toward materialism; and in other countries, those who are materialists—when they don’t get a chance—are pulled the other way. So it is the chance-less who have erected the opposite cult. What do you say about this?
And remember, this small path that takes us from sleep into awakening is religion in the fundamental sense—this small path! Neither temples, nor rituals, nor sacrifices have anything to do with it. All this is meaningless. These are the devices of sleeping people. Temples, prayers, fire rituals, chanting mantras, repeating “Ram, Ram”—these are the creations of the sleeping. A sleeping man also manufactures a kind of religion—and then it becomes the cause of quarrels: Hindu, Muslim, Christian. These are differences of ritual, not of religion. One sleeping man builds one kind of temple—he doesn’t know what a temple is; he is building it himself. Ten other sleeping men build a mosque; ten more build a church. Then the three fight: ours is the true temple; whoever does not come to our temple will go to hell. Sleeping men also coin doctrines, create systems. They try to explain. But the explanations…
Wakefulness is the way to life. The fool sleeps as if he were already dead, but the master is awake and he lives forever.
HE WATCHES. HE IS CLEAR. HOW HAPPY HE IS! FOR HE SEES THAT WAKEFULNESS IS LIFE. HOW HAPPY HE IS, FOLLOWING THE PATH OF THE AWAKENED. WITH GREAT PERSEVERANCE HE MEDITATES, SEEKING FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS. SO AWAKE, REFLECT, WATCH. WORK WITH CARE AND ATTENTION. LIVE IN THE WAY AND THE LIGHT WILL GROW IN YOU. BY WATCHING AND WORKING THE MASTER MAKES FOR HIMSELF AN ISLAND WHICH THE FLOOD CANNOT OVERWHELM. The rabbi shrugged his shoulders and said, "In America? It would have been impossible. Where can you find a virgin, firstly? And secondly, where will you find three wise men?" And without a virgin mother and three wise men, how can Jesus be born? I have heard: In a church, the priest asked the audience, "Please stand up, all the women who are virgins!" Just one woman with a small baby girl stood up. Certainly she was a mother,…
Osho, “If there is awareness, the other is always beneficial.” Is this what you mean by a buddha, an awakened one?
If there is awareness, the other is neither beneficial nor harmful; if there is awareness, you draw your well-being from everywhere. Without awareness, you draw your ill-being from everywhere. If there is awakening, wherever you are, heaven begins to be created—because of your awakening. If there is no awakening, wherever you are, the stench of hell begins to rise—because of you. Understand it this way: to live in stupor builds hell; to live awake builds heaven. No one has ever suffered while awake. No one has ever known happiness while asleep. In sleep, at most you can hope for happiness; happiness never arrives. In the hope of happiness you can bear a great deal of suffering, but happiness never arrives. What comes with wakefulness—that alone is happiness. There is no relation to the other at all. If you understand rightly, there is no other; it is you. Your idea about…