According to Osho, fantasies during meditation are not a problem unless you get involved in them. Let them arise and pass without suppression or pursuit; simply witness. If you follow them, meditation becomes dreaming. If you watch, their energy evaporates, silence deepens, and spontaneous joy may arise—no need to analyze, just remain alert, relaxed, and non‑attached.
When daydreams show up while meditating, just see them and let them go, like clouds passing in the sky.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Any time. There is no need to make a fixed time. Use whatsoever time is available. In the bathroom when you have ten minutes, just sit under the shower and meditate. In the morning, in the afternoon, just four or five times, for small intervals -- just five minutes -- meditate, and you will see that it becomes a constant nourishment. There is no need to do it for twenty-four hours. Just a cup of meditation will do. (laughter) No need to drink the whole river. Just a cup of tea will do. And make it as easy as possible. Easy is right. Make it as natural as possible. And don't be after it -- just do it whenever you find time. Don't make a habit of it, because all habits are of the mind, and a real person in fact has no habits.
Osho said that there was no need to try to still the mind, to stop the thoughts. He said that just as the traffic goes by and one remains on the sidewalk, unaffected, just a watcher, so one should simply witness the thoughts as they went by. We are not our thoughts, and recognising that we are the witness is enough. The very acceptance of the thoughts makes one more relaxed. The relaxation helps to create a distance, to separate oneself. To evaluate a thought as good or bad means that you are attached to your thoughts -- so one should not put labels on them.] ... put yourself aside, sit under a tree, and just watch the traffic. Soon, one day, the traffic disappears and the road is empty. Suddenly there is an interval and in that interval is meditation. But that interval cannot be created or cultivated.
Beloved Osho, for me the most beautiful meditation is to sit in a corner and watch the children playing around the ashram. But I'm in trouble: is this a meditation at all?
Sometimes, for no reason at all, just swimming in the river, or running around in the hot sun, or just relaxing on the beach and listening to the wild roar of the ocean, something started happening inside you, some inner alchemical change, as if your body was creating LSD. Something inside... and you were moving in a totally unknown dimension -- as if you had wings and you could fly. You became afraid, you started clinging to the earth. It has happened many times when people come to be initiated into sannyas. Sometimes, if I see very perceptive people, very receptive, and I touch their head, immediately they become scared. Just a few days ago the daughter of Ashok Kumar, one of the very famous film actors, took sannyas. The moment I touched her head she started crying, "Stop, Osho! Stop! Stop!" And her whole body was shaking. She started…
It is possible that these things will happen when you are not feeling any energy, because when you are feeling energy, you are engaged in your ordinary everyday affairs. When you are no more feeling energy and you are not engaged in your routine, your mental work, there is a possibility for the unconscious to open a door. Because you were trying hard to listen and you were not feeling energetic, you had no energy to move in the ordinary way of the mind. That created the situation -- hence this experience came. So whenever you feel low energy, repeat it. Just sit, and try to be alert, and it will appear again. Ten minutes is too long a period. If the figure remained there continuously, it has some message for you, it has something to reveal to you.
Beloved Osho, I sometimes fail to watch my mind with detachment. Indeed, I sometimes revel in adding juicy tidbits to my otherwise unguided fantasies just for the fun of it. This does help me to shed more light on my desires, but I sometimes wonder if I didn't get lost in the movie somewhere along the line. And still haven't found my way back out. That is, if I was ever outside in the first place. Beloved Osho, could you please speak on the foibles of finding the workings of one's own mind a form of entertainment?
Jews have beautiful jokes. And the reason is not that they are very happy -- just the opposite. The reason is that they have lived in such tragic times. Since the times of Moses -- almost four thousand years -- they have suffered and suffered. And there seems to be no end to their suffering -- they are still suffering in Israel. But you will be surprised: in this whole long history of suffering, they have somehow managed themselves, they have not gone mad. Their jokes have saved them; but their jokes have not solved their problems. I will tell you two Jewish jokes. A rabbi finds himself sharing a railway compartment with a Roman Catholic priest. After some time, the priest leans forward, "Excuse me, rabbi, but is it true that men of your faith may not eat pork?" "Yes, Father, you are right," replies the rabbi. "And tell…