According to Osho, when all effort is spent and you drop the struggle—saying ‘to hell with trying’ and simply resting—the very thing you sought (like sleep) arrives on its own. Exhaustion of effort ushers in a natural surrender; only then does the state happen. The second step is non-doing: allow, don’t force—otherwise it doesn’t occur.
Stop trying so hard and relax; then what you want (like sleep) comes by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Will the exhaustion of effort bring sleep?
Yes, the exhaustion of effort will bring sleep. When effort fails and one day you say, “To hell with this sleep, and to hell with this trying”—and you just lie there—then sleep will come. So now you have to take the second step. When even trying seems futile—otherwise, it doesn’t happen.
Beloved Osho, are there really discrete stages on the way to the ultimate happening, as this upanishad seems to suggest, or does this happening occur suddenly and unexpectedly? Is it a matter of long conscious effort, or of a sudden total surrender to existence?
So this Upanishad is dividing, not because divisions are there, but because you will not be able to understand the whole. The whole will be too much, too complex. The whole will be incomprehensible, and understanding will not be possible. That's why the division into seven stages, and that's why there are so many divisions. You can divide in fourteen, you can divide in seventeen -- you can divide into as many as you like. And theologicians go on fighting about these divisions. They are workable, utilitarian -- not existential. Just feel your body, close your eyes and feel. Where are the divisions? It is one. But if your eyes are not functioning well you will go to the eye specialist. And you know that eyes are not separate, they are one with the body, so then why go to the eye specialist? You can go to any doctor. The…
Your activity must be exhausted. Whatever you can do, you must be allowed to do. Whatsoever you can do you must be pushed to do it to the very point where you, yourself, cry, "Now I cannot do anything; everything has been done. Now nothing is possible; no effort is possible. I am exhausted." Then I say, "Now, just drop!" This dropping can be communicated. You are on the verge, you are ready to drop; now you can understand the language of passivity. Before this, you could not understand. You were too full of activity. You have never been to the extreme point of activity. Things can be dropped only from the extreme, never from the middle. You cannot drop it. You can drop sex - if you have been totally in it, you can just drop it; otherwise not.
Buddha did all this and then gave it up...
He sat leaning under the tree. A village girl came, bringing kheer as an offering to the tree. The tree was a peepal, a tree considered divine. Evening had fallen, the sun had set, and the full moon had risen. And there, in that light, sat this emaciated, utterly exhausted, ultimately frustrated man—sitting like a statue. Even the wish to move his hands and feet was gone. When nothing can be done, the whole issue is finished. The ego too is finished. Sitting statue-like—thin, pale. In the moonlight she felt as if the deity of the peepal had appeared! She had come to offer kheer to the deity of the peepal. On any other day he would have said, “I won’t take it,” because he had rules—how much to take, at what times to take. Today there were no rules. Now night is day as well, and day is night.…
Beloved Osho, to break our habitual ways of acting, feeling and thinking, and to start witnessing instead, some effort seems to be required. But ultimately all effort, including the effort towards enlightenment, has to be dropped. Can you please speak on effort and non-effort, and how they relate to witnessing?
Don't be bothered about the future. You have not started making an effort, and you are worried that ultimately you will have to drop making an effort also. Just start -- make every effort. I can only say one thing to you: when you have made every effort -- and all the efforts will fail, as far as the ultimate experience of enlightenment is concerned -- when all the efforts fail, you are not required to make no-effort. When all the efforts fail, there is no-effort. You have done everything that was possible, humanly possible, and everything has failed. And everything fails as far as enlightenment is concerned. It is not your doing. But when everything fails, and you have not been miserly in making efforts, you were total -- what remains? A great silence. That is the no-effort. You don't have to do it. If you do it, it…