According to Osho, upon awakening the entire dream of life dissolves; language from sleep cannot describe it. It is beyond all pairs—joy/sorrow, peace/unrest, contentment/discontent—and beyond scriptures, images of God, concepts of liberation, even the ‘you’ who seeks. It is an inexpressible, directly tasted reality—like sweetness known only by tasting—ever at hand, leaving only the regret one didn’t wake earlier.
Waking up ends the whole dream of pain and pleasure; you can’t explain it—you can only taste it yourself, right now.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you said, in suffering, live it, find its cause, and wake up. Once awake, then what?
The dream will not remain; whatever you have known up to now will not remain at all. And that is why it is difficult to say what happens when you awaken; because your language belongs to sleep. For now, whatever can be said to you and whatever you can understand will be in the language of the dream. If I say, “You will have happiness,” you will take it to mean the very happiness you have known in the dream. If I say, “There will be no suffering,” you will think of the suffering you have known in the dream—you will think, that will not be there. Therefore the enlightened ones fell silent. Whenever someone asked, “What will happen upon awakening?” they fell silent; they said—wake up and see. Because it lies beyond anything that can be understood in your language. There, neither your sorrow is, nor your joy; neither…
Beloved Osho, you said, while in misery live it thoroughly, find out its cause and wake up. What happens when one wakes up?
Waking up or awakening means that the dream is over -- whatever was known up to now remains no longer. So it is difficult to say what awakening means, because your language is of sleep. At present, whatever can be told you or whatever can be understood by you will be in the language of the dream. If I say that you will get happiness, then you will think of the happiness which you have known in the dream. If I say that you will not get misery, then you will think of the same misery which you have known in the dream. If you think, you will not attain. That is why all the buddhas have kept quiet. Whenever someone asked what will happen after the awakening they just kept quiet. They said, "Wake up and see," because this is beyond the language which you know, or this is…
Osho, life is suffering, yet man does not wake up. Despite the hell of life, how does man keep on going?
You asked, “Life is suffering...” You have not yet seen this for yourself. You have heard the buddhas say that life is suffering. It is not your own realization, not your own seeing. That won’t do. Borrowed words will prick your chest like thorns; they will not turn into flowers. Borrowed words become thorns—pricking, wounding—but from them the rain of joy does not fall. Have you known that life is suffering? Or have you merely heard the buddhas? Or have you agreed that since the buddhas say so, it must be true? Why would they be wrong? If they knew, they must be right. That is like someone believing that fire burns because others say so. Can you see the difference between others saying “fire burns” and your own knowing that fire burns? One’s own knowing creates a revolution. Then, as they say, once burned by milk, you blow even…
Osho, there is nothing but suffering; even in dreams there is no glimpse of happiness, yet still awakening does not come—there is no experience of wakefulness.
“Nothing but suffering”—is that your own experience, or have you picked it up from someone else’s words? “Not a trace of happiness”—is that your experience, or have you memorized the sayings of the enlightened? I suspect you have learned the sages’ words by heart. Because if it were truly your own experience, awakening would have to happen. It is inevitable. If a thorn is stuck in your foot, there will be pain. If suffering is in fact your lived experience, awakening will come of itself. Suffering wakes you, it scours you, refines you. That is its value. People ask me, “Why has God given the world so much suffering?” I say to them, think a little: there is so much suffering and still you don’t wake up; if there were none, there would be no hope at all. Even with all this pain you keep on sleeping! Suffering is a…
Just a little taste of it and all your past and its miseries and worries disappear, instantly, as if they had never existed before. it is just like waking up in the morning and the dreams simply disappear. Sannyas is an awakening from the dream of the ego. And the moment you are awake you are not, the whole is. In sleep you are, the whole is not; hence the whole science is very simple: if you want to be blissful, if you want to be eternal, infinite, deathless, then don't be, just learn not to be. Be a nothing, a nobody, and immediately you are all, you are the whole! This is your name: Ma Yoga Nandita. Yoga means the ultimate union. Nandita means blissfulness. Ego is misery, egolessness is blissfulness. These two sutras are enough to transform the whole life.