What happens when I live totally in the here and now without hope?

At darshan, from the way you talked to me it seems clear my meditation is to live totally in the here and now. You made it clear I was not to live in hope. T.s. Eliot said, "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing. There is yet faith, but faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting." anything more to say Osho?

THE question is from Pradeepa. She understood perfectly what I was trying to show her. Maturity happens when you start living without hope. Hope is childish. You become mature when you don't project hope into the future. In fact, you are mature when you don't have any future; you just live in the moment -- because that is the only reality there is. In the past, religion used to talk about the hereafter. Those were the childish, immature days of religion. Now religion talks about herenow; religion has come of age. In the Vedas, in the Koran, in the Bible, hereafter is the basic goal. But now man is no longer that childish. That sort of God and that sort of religion is dead. It was a religion of hope, it was a religion of future. Now another sort of religion is asserting itself all over the world, and this…

The person who lives in hopelessness lives an empty life. He does not know what the present is, and the future has disappeared. He was only living for the future: the carrot that goes on hanging there tomorrow and which never arrives. One goes on working hard to catch the carrot; because it is never caught, one goes on running after it. Ultimately death takes you over, and you have not arrived. This is the story of millions of people: they live in hope without any fulfillment ever, and they die unfulfilled. To live without hope simply means to live herenow knowing that there is no tomorrow; it is always today. And then a totally different kind of life starts getting crystallised in you. It is so utterly joyous that one does not think of the past and one does not think of the future.

Does to be hopeless include being hopeless about you. How is growth possible without this hope?

Hope is one of the greatest barriers because through hope dreams are created, through hope future is created, through hope time exists. When I say become hopeless, I mean be here and now. If you hope, you have moved away from the herenow. You postpone life through hope: you say, "Tomorrow I will live, when everything is put right." When everything exists as you would like it to exist, when you have enough riches, power, money, prestige -- then you will live. And you hope tomorrow it is going to be there. If not tomorrow then the day after tomorrow. If not this year then next year. And if not in this life then in the next life. In the East hope has been extended to its very logical end: thousands of lives waiting for you in the future. This is a trick of the mind. Once you allow the…

This word “free of hope” must be understood very carefully. In life we are bound more by hope than even by desire. Saints tell you to drop desire—they do not tell you to drop hope. For if you drop hope, even the saints’ own support goes—hope of heaven, hope of moksha; “if not here, then in the hereafter”—the hope. Mahavira’s statement is different: hope must be known and dropped. Without freedom from hope there is no liberation. Hope is the subtlest form of desire. Hope means: what did not happen today, will happen tomorrow. What could not be done today, tomorrow we will do. We missed today; tomorrow we shall not miss. Hope is the convenience of postponing life to tomorrow. We lose every day, yet we keep the hope of tomorrow alive.

Osho, you say, “Live here and now.” But when we look at ourselves, living here and now doesn’t feel appealing. Instead of living in the present, it feels more pleasant to live in fantasies of the future. So what should we do?

Therefore I say, live today. But you feel the present does not feel worth living. If the present does not feel worth living, tomorrow too will come only as the present; then that too will not feel worth living. The day after tomorrow will also come as the present; that too will not feel worth living. I call this self-destruction. Then you are committing suicide, not living. There is no other way to live. Only today exists, and it is today that has to be lived. Whether it feels worth living or not makes no difference. There is no other way. Living will happen only here. Do not fall into the delusion of tomorrow. The mirages of tomorrow have drowned many. Live today. Do not let this moment pass empty. This moment is an opportunity. Do not waste it like this. Make something of it. Take some juice out of…