According to Osho, when control slips away, life moves you through necessary tension and ‘running’ until you naturally collapse into rest and silence. The route differs for each person: a few can relax immediately; most need the friction first—Shakti sadhana itself creates that tension. There’s no good or bad; whichever path brings peace and momentum fulfills the same purpose.
When you lose control, you might tense up and run until you’re tired, and then you finally relax—either way, you end up finding rest.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what I mean is, control slips away. So the right approach is to let it be, is that so?
I understand, I understand. It’s not a question of good or bad. Care about whatever gives you more peace and momentum; because it will be different for everyone. It will be different for everyone. Some people can rest only after they have run and fallen. Some people can rest right now. But very few people—very few. To go straight into silence is difficult; it is possible for a few. For most people, first the running is necessary, the tension is necessary. In the end the meaning is the same, the purpose is the same. Shakti sadhana brings tension.
You may not be consciously controlling, but a very subtle mechanism goes on controlling. One is always on guard and holding. Holding has become so habitual that there is no need to do anything; it simply goes on happening. You will have to consciously de-control, uncontrol. Help the vibrations, and if the hand is shaking go into it and shake more. Even exaggerate it so that soon the de-control will settle in. Once the energy flows without any control, it purifies you, transmutes you. By and by it starts moving into higher places. Right now it is moving at the sex centre. That's why so much control has been taught in the world because people are afraid of sex. Left uncontrolled it may create chaos. So women have been taught not to even move while making love, but just to lie down like a corpse, to just remain passive.
People become afraid of love, because in love you are possessed. People become afraid of meditation too. They become afraid of anything that goes deeper than their control, beyond their control. Life is beyond your control. You can enjoy it but you cannot control it. You can live it, but you cannot control it. You can dance it, but you cannot control it. It controls you. Ordinarily we say that we breathe, and that's not true -- life breathes us. But we go on thinking ourselves as doers, and that creates the trouble. You just sit here. You come here Asseema. (addresses Gatha again) See how energy can be uncontrolled and wild. (addressing Asseema) Just sit and close your eyes. Raise your hands and allow your energy to go wild. [Asseema, a sannyasin who had just returned to Poona after several months away, sat in front of Osho as instructed.
Osho, a few days ago in lecture I realized that when I am relaxed the body goes into a most comfortable posture of its own accord. It must be just the same with life. Is this the beginning of trust?
YES, MUKTI GANDHA, this is the beginning of trust, the beginning of yea-saying, the beginning of a great understanding that all that is going to happen is going to happen, and you are not to do it. You have to be alert and passive, you have to be watchful and receptive. This is the whole secret of life. Small things need to be done -- if you want more money, the money is not going to come on its own; you will have to run after it. If you want political power, it is not going to come to you on its own -- you will have to fight for it, you will have to struggle for it. Small things are those which never HAPPEN, which never come from God. Man has to struggle and do them. And great things are those which if you try to do them you…
Osho, is sadhana only necessary so long as there is lust and desire?
Have you seen a tightrope walker? The whole time he sways left to right and right to left. When he leans left, a moment comes when a little more and he will fall; instantly he leans right, to correct the excess. Then on the right the same brink appears; again he leans left. In this way, by swaying, he manages to stay on the rope. But once he climbs down, will he keep swaying? He sits. Why would he lean then? He stands firmly; ground has been found. He is no longer on a rope. Moving in the world is like walking a tightrope. Every moment you must lean: now love, now hate; now sympathy, now anger—left and right. Lovers come to me and ask, “How can it happen that we never get angry with the one we love?” I say, it cannot be so—unless you climb down from the…