According to Osho, not finding is the turning point: your exhaustion and ‘loss’ silence the ego’s voice, end the outward hunt, and open the inner door. When even the desire to see drops, inward seeing begins; discipleship starts. Here, losing is winning—surrender lets Truth ferry you across.
When you search, fail, and finally give up, your ego quiets, you turn inward, and that’s when Truth can hold and guide you.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, Everywhere I keep sounding my own voice—where, where shall I search for you? Finding nothing, I sat down exhausted; you have won, I have lost!
Veena Bharti! On the path of love, losing is winning. On the path of love, whoever tries to win, loses—loses badly! On the path of love, the one who is willing to lose, wins. This is the paradox of love. The logic of love is very illogical. The mathematics of love is upside down! In the ordinary, outer world, the one who tries to win, wins; the one who loses, loses; the one who wins, wins. In this inner realm, this otherworld, the one who loses, wins; the one who wins, loses. The one who sets the ego aside... at first it seems: “I’ve lost.” Only when someone is defeated does he put the ego down—he gets tired. You say, “Everywhere I keep sounding my own voice,...” That voice of yours—your own—the feeling of “I,” that itself is the obstacle. So you keep sounding it again. As long as you…
Osho, I don’t know what my eyes keep searching for; in the heap of ashes there is neither flame nor spark. There is much in life, and yet by winning I gained nothing, nothing remained. The very thing I keep hoping for—why does it slip away again and again?
Mulla Nasruddin went to an eye doctor. His eyesight had begun to dim. The doctor said he would need glasses. The glasses were made; Mulla went to collect them. He asked the doctor, “Once the glasses are on my eyes, I will be able to read and write, right?” “Certainly,” said the doctor. “That is why they were made. You will read and write perfectly.” Mulla said, “That truly would be a miracle—because I don’t know how to read or write.” If you don’t know how to read and write, will spectacles make you literate? Even if the courtyard were perfectly square, every corner a neat ninety degrees, what would that do if you don’t know how to dance? You may have the most beautiful veena, and not know how to play it! Even if I were to give you Krishna’s very flute, what would you do with it? Krishna’s…
A friend has asked: Osho, if creation and the creator are one, and if we ourselves are God, then isn’t the very idea of attaining or seeking God incongruous?
Certainly it is incongruous. There is no greater mistake than someone setting out to search for God. You can only search for what you have lost. What you have never lost, there is no way to search for it. But the search is incongruous only when it has become clear that “I am God”; before that, it is not incongruous. Before that, you will have to search. The search will not give you God; through seeking you will only discover that what you are looking for is nowhere out there—it is where the seeker is. It is the futility of seeking that brings you to God, not the success of seeking. This may be a little difficult to understand, but try to understand it. Here the seeker is the very one who is being sought. What you are looking for is hidden within. Therefore, so long as you keep seeking,…
Osho, yesterday you said, “Those who search will lose.” And one of your famous books says, “Jin khoja tin paiyan” (“Those who searched, found”). Which is true? Please explain.
Later, when people asked Buddha, “How did you attain?” he would say, “It’s a troublesome question. Because what I did did not bring it. On the day I did nothing, it happened. Yet it is also true that if I had not done all that I did, the state of non-doing would not have been possible.” Understand this well. Those six years of austerity did not directly give truth. But without those six years, had Buddha sat beneath the tree, that hour of effortless rest would not have come. You can go and sit—even now the tree is there in Bodh Gaya. You may think, “Forget six years of effort; what is the point? He got it by sitting.” So you sit. Outwardly you may sit like Buddha, steady and still; but inwardly? That hammer-blow, pounded day after day for six years—“doing is futile, nothing comes from doing”—that realization would…
Question: First question: Osho, Searching for you I have wandered who knows where. Neither heaven says a word, nor does hell open its gate. I look into every eye, feeling for your picture, and I have wandered who knows where. Are these just the gaps between breaths, or only distances upon distances? You too say nothing—your lips never open. How long must I keep walking, groping about in everyone’s heart? Where are you and where am I? Searching for you I have wandered who knows where. I could not meet you on the earth, nor could I fix your address in the sky. I searched everywhere for you and yet did not find you. Now, in searching, I set out after myself—who knows where I strayed. Ah, what is this? Your address is found: your image in my eyes, like musk that dwells within the deer.