According to Osho, death never truly happens: your essential being is eternal consciousness that only changes forms, without any discontinuity. You come alone and go alone, yet in deep aloneness you discover you are one with the whole. When consciousness turns upon itself, fear of death dissolves; life and afterlife are a seamless continuity of the same immortal presence.
Like water changing shape, you don’t end; the real you continues as the same endless awareness.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is the essence of Gorakhnath’s teaching?
Very small, concise— Laugh, play, live in color. Do not keep company with lust and anger. Laugh, play, sing songs. Keep your heart-mind steady and firm. This is my teaching too: Laugh, play, live in color. Live in color! In delight, in merriment, in joy. So much has the Divine given—dance, hum, sing! A song of gratitude should rise from your heart; that is prayer. Laugh, play, live in color. Laugh. If you cannot laugh, understand that you can never be religious. Your so‑called sadhus and saints have forgotten how to laugh. They simply cannot; to laugh is a sin, a transgression. That’s why you can’t stay long with them. You go, quickly touch their feet, bow, and leave. If you stay a full day, you’ll see the difficulty—your own laughter will be snatched away. People become grave around sadhus and saints. They stiffen up—dry, solemn, ultra‑serious! Laughter will feel…
Someone asked Osho's views on death and dying.
There is nothing as sure as death. Where there is life, there is bound to be death. He who bears not this fact in mind, wastes life, whereas he who knows this truth, obtains that which is immortal. I do not feel depressed at anybody's death, because there is no need to feel anything about it. However, it is a matter of sorrow, no doubt, if I see a life wasted. We have not to grieve after a dead body, but over a wasted life. You know, King Janak was called 'videh', i.e., without or beyond the body. Once, a young minister of his asked him, 'Your Excellency! How can you be considered without a body, when you do have a physical body? The king smiled but said nothing. After a few days, however, the king invited the minister for lunch. Such an invitation from the king himself was a…
Beloved Osho, does the being, or self, in the person die with the death of the person; or does it live beyond death in another body?
Parents teach children that there is a God -- and they know nothing of God. They tell their children that there is heaven and there is hell -- and they know nothing of heaven and hell. I have heard: it happened one day in New York, in New York's biggest church, that as the cardinal came in he found a young man, and he was puzzled whether he was a hippie or Jesus Christ. He looked like Jesus Christ, but you don't find Jesus Christ like this! He must be a hippie. The cardinal was afraid because Jesus was not his own experience -- he could not recognize him. He went close to him and asked, "Who are you?" And the young man said, "You can't recognize me? And daily you pray to me, `My Lord, Jesus Christ,' and now I have come and you have some nerve to ask…
Question: OSHO, DO YOU THINK THAT YOU WILL GO TO HEAVEN WHEN YOU DIE? There is no heaven anywhere, it is here. It is always here, it is never there. It is always now, it is never then. The very idea of heaven somewhere else -- there, then -- is a strategy of the mind to deceive you, to keep you ignorant of the heaven that surrounds you every moment. Existence knows no past, no future. The only time existence knows is now, and the meditator has to enter this 'nowness' of things. this is heaven. This very moment we are in it. You are of aware, I am aware of it. That's the only difference: you are sleep, I am awake. But we exist in the same space. There is nowhere to go!
Beloved Osho, when you talked about the ultimate death of this world, I got suddenly in touch with deep aloneness, and this voice inside me said, "remember: each single moment, remember that you are alone. "my beloved master, after our death will you still be, in some mysterious way, with our wandering consciousness?
It makes your life for the first time meaningful, significant, religious. But you will not be a Hindu, and you will not be a Christian, and you will not be a Jew; you will be simply religious. By being a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Christian, or a Jaina, or a Buddhist, you are destroying the purity of religiousness -- it needs no adjectives. Love is love -- have you ever heard about Hindu love? Mohammedan love? Consciousness is consciousness -- have you ever thought about Indian consciousness or Chinese consciousness? Enlightenment is enlightenment: whether it happens in the white body or in the black body, whether it happens in the young man or in the old man, whether it happens in a man or in a woman, it does not make any difference. It is the same experience, the same taste, the same sweetness, the same fragrance. The…