According to Osho, to be total means to drop the inner split created by social conditioning and act wholly from your natural self, with no division, guilt, or borrowed commandments. Live each act with undivided awareness and sincerity; follow your nature, never against it. This wholeness brings immediate bliss and begins an endless expansion in consciousness.
It means doing whatever you do with your whole heart from your true nature, not from others’ rules.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, can you please talk about what it means to be total? Is it the same as not being split, or is there more to it?
Not to be split, not to be schizophrenic, is only the beginning. And then there is the whole infinity, the whole eternity of ecstasy, blissfulness, understanding, awareness. There is much more to it. My insistence on being total in each of your acts is just to give you the first step. But the first step itself is so blissful, you would like to go a little more ahead, because the second step will be facing you.... There is no end, you simply go on and on and on, and everything goes on expanding. Even the sky is not the limit! You can spread yourself over the whole existence. But a split person dies without knowing anything of life. And to make you split is very simple. Every society -- cultured, uncultured, primitive, contemporary -- they all have used the same methods to split you. The split is: they give you…
How to he total? How to give everything?
Every evening, people come to ask me: "How to share?" And my problem is that I don't see anything that they are going to share! There is nothing. When you don't have anything, this question arises: "How to share?" This question keeps you happy that you have something to share but you don't know how to share. This keeps you unaware of the fact that you don't have anything to share -- because when you have, it happens spontaneously. You cannot resist it, it has to be given forth. There is no way to avoid, it is inevitable. So first thing, you ask: HOW TO BE TOTAL? Not to be is to be total. Second, you ask: HOW TO GIVE EVERYTHING? Know that you have nothing. And wait... and wait in silence, in patience. Something will start flowing out of your being. It will take you unawares. It will be…
Question: OSHO, DURING THE TWO MONTHS THAT I HAVE BEEN HERE, I OFTEN FEEL THE THREAT OF A NEW KIND OF TOTALITARIANISM. IT IS CONTINUALLY PRESENTED AS THE SOLUTION: BE TOTAL IN THIS AND THAT EVEN IN NOT BEING TOTAL. BEING TOTAL, WITHOUT FRAGMENTATION ANY MORE, IS NOT THAT A FINAL STATE, THE LAST STAGE ON THE WAY? SO IS NOT THIS ADAGE CREATING A NEW IDEAL WITH ALL ITS FRUSTRATIONS AND NEUROSIS TO FOLLOW? ANYWAY, FOR ME, NOT BEING A SUPERMAN, IT IS VERY RARE THAT I AM ABLE TO DO, TO EXIST, TO FEEL MYSELF TOTAL IN ANYTHING, AND I HAVE NO REASON TO HOPE THAT IT WILL EVER HAPPEN AS A CONTINUOUS STATE. SINCE IT SEEMS TO BE THE CONDITION FOR THE THINGS THAT ARE PROMISED HERE IS THERE STILL ANY HOPE FOR ME? TOTALITY IS NOT A GOAL. Totality is not perfectionism.
Osho, you have said that if any action is total, energy is not lost. Please explain what you mean by total action. And also, in the process of sexual intercourse, what does it mean to be total or complete? Does it mean there is no loss of energy?
And here is the delightful paradox: if one becomes total in action, anger gradually becomes impossible—because total anger burns you up, it scorches you. Hatred becomes difficult—because complete hatred becomes poison; blisters rise in every pore. Enmity becomes difficult—because enmity then appears as self-destruction, as driving a dagger into one’s own chest. We can be angry only so long as we act incompletely. We can be enemies only so long as our acts are not total. The day our acts are complete, that day only the flower of love can bloom in our life. The day our act is complete, prayer becomes the very longing of our being. The day each act of our life becomes whole, that day God alone remains the one truth for us. When oneness arises within, oneness is seen without. As long as there are two within, there are two without. Not even two—there are…
The art of being total
My effort here is to help you to get out of that conditioning. I want to declare that life is god, that life and god are synonymous. Life is god's manifestation. Renouncing life means renouncing god. If you renounce his visible form you are automatically renouncing his invisible reality. The invisible can be found only through the visible; the visible is the entrance. Life is the door to god. Rejoice in it -- it is a blessing. Make it a dance, a song, a celebration. Love life, worship life, let your life be as sincere, as authentic and true as possible, and let it be as total and whole as possible. When life is whole one is holy. For me, that's the only way to become a sage, a true sage. <q>BECOME A CELEBRATION</q> Man ordinarily lives a life which is a drag. (laughter) He lives in such a boring…