What happens to the world when enlightened people choose not to be born again?

Beloved Osho, how can the world ever become a paradise when all enlightened people always choose not to be born again?

Life has many components. They can all live together like a crowd -- noisy, conflicting with each other, fighting to dominate -- that's how we create a hell. Hell is your inability to bring the crowd within you to a peaceful, loving existence. It is the inability to create an orchestra out of your being. The man who can create an orchestra out of his being -- whose mind, heart, being, are all in tune -- has created paradise for himself, and an energy field around himself, which will affect others also. It is everybody's task; in fact it is the only task, the only challenge life gives to you -- whether you turn it into a hell or into a heaven. The man who turns his life into a heaven is the greatest artist in the world. Musicians and painters and dancers and poets -- all are left far…

Why don’t the enlightened ones take birth again after enlightenment?

There is no need anymore. Birth is not without cause; birth is schooling. Life is an examination, a school. You come here because something is needed. We send a child to school to read and write, to understand; once he has passed all the exams, we don’t send him again. He has come home. There is no more need to send him. The Divine is home—call it Truth, Nirvana, Moksha—this world is the school. We are sent here so that we may test and assay ourselves on the touchstone, in the heat of pleasure and pain; so that we may pass through all kinds of bitter and sweet experiences and attain dispassion. To lose everything, to wander everywhere, to slip into far-off darknesses, into dark ravines—go as far from Truth as possible—and then return through awakening. A child is quiet, innocent; a saint too is quiet, innocent. But the saint’s…

Osho, another question in the same vein. Can people like Buddha, Mahavira, and Christ bring about conception even after enlightenment? And why don’t they have intercourse again to give birth to a superior soul? And is conception only a possibility between two unenlightened persons?

But who inside that prison will understand? The inmates will say, “You’ve gone mad—come back home.” Home meaning your cell. And however much he speaks of moon, sun, flowers—they will understand nothing, for they have seen nothing but darkness and chains. It may be that, just as we are asking here today, those people also ask, “Can someone, after sitting on the prison wall, come back once to have a child? Or is it only those who have never climbed the wall who have children?” Our question is exactly like that. The world, the life, the Great Life that Buddha and Mahavira are seeing—we know nothing of it. We are shut inside this small prison of the body, carrying it around all our lives. We think this is the great life. So we think, “Bring more souls here—bring better souls.” Buddha and Mahavira are busy sending even the “bad” souls…

Beloved Osho, enlightenment seems to me always to be an end, a death, a kind of suicide where a comeback is never possible -- no more adventures, no lovers, no sunsets, no dramas, no candlelight dinners. What can be more beautiful than the senseless dramas and joys of all my searchings? How is it after death for an enlightened man? Is it not boring for the next ten thousand years? I feel simply a death-fear.

Enlightenment can be a very scary thing. It can create a great paranoia in you. And your question is significant, because millions of people in the world never think about enlightenment, and the reason may be this deep-rooted fear. They have known a certain kind of life and they think this is the only life possible -- that's where they go wrong. This is the lowest form of life that we are living. In fact, to call it life is not right, it is only birth. It is only a possibility. You can make a life out of it -- life has to be created. And the misunderstanding is so old ... and people don't want to drop it because it is so consoling to think that you are alive and you are enjoying everything and it is a beautiful drama. But you have been through this drama many times.…

A friend has asked, Osho, one can die with awareness, but how can one be born with awareness?

Most fasters spend twenty-four hours repeating, “I am hungry; I have not eaten,” with their minds absorbed in planning tomorrow’s menu. Then the fast is wasted; it is merely a hunger-strike. That is the difference: a hunger-strike means not eating; upavasa means “dwelling nearer and nearer.” Nearer to whom? To oneself. Away from the body, closer to the self. Even the word upavasa carries no implication of starving; it means nearer-dwelling. Thus one could be in upavasa even while eating—if one knows the eating is at a distance and “I am elsewhere.” And one could not be in upavasa even while not eating—if one keeps thinking, “I am hungry; I’m dying of hunger.” Upavasa is a psychological knowing of one’s separateness from hunger. Other sufferings too can be invited voluntarily. A man can even lie on thorns, simply to see that the thorns do not pierce me; they pierce elsewhere,…