According to Osho, when people keep living in the old rut, misery becomes synonymous with life: they get habituated, fear change, and cling to familiar pains as an identity. Even offered freedom, they hesitate, preferring the known to the unknown emptiness. They rationalize suffering (karma, fate, God) and stay in a vicious circle, never discovering that bliss flowers only in inner emptiness.
Like getting used to a long headache, people stick with familiar pain, make excuses for it, and miss the happiness that comes from bravely letting go into inner emptiness.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why do men go on living in the same old rut of misery?
THEY DON T KNOW that there is any possibility of being blissful. They have lived so long in misery that misery is equivalent to life -- they have become accustomed to it. Do you know? -- poor people never rebel, because they become accustomed to poverty. Of course, rich people CANNOT rebel, because all rebellion will go against them. Then who rebels? It is always the middle-class people who rebel. Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, V.I. Lenin, Mao Zedong: all these people belong to the middle classes. All revolutionaries are born in the middle classes -- why? They talk about the revolution of the proletariat, but no proletarian seems to be interested in the revolution. The proletarian has become accustomed, the poor man thinks this is all there is to life -- he has relaxed into it. He has lived in it, he has no other taste. How can he imagine…
OSHO (TO PIETER): Misery makes you more and more impotent, hollow, it is a kind of negative emptiness. One simply feels useless, meaningless; one does not live, but only vegetates. But that is the story of millions of people: they all live in misery, and to live in misery is to live in hell. Hell is not somewhere else -- it depends on you. You can live in it right now or you can transcend it. It is our choice; but the choice is such that you cannot make it once for ever, you have to make it every moment. You cannot make it once and then go to sleep. You have to be alert, watchful, because each moment these two alternatives are present: to be miserable or to be blissful. And you become whatsoever you choose. Choosing blissfulness brings strength, rootedness, centeredness, gives you an inner plentitude, a fullness.
Why can I not live without misery?
You are miserable because you have decided to be miserable -- maybe the decision is unconscious. And you have to be conscious about the decision, only then can it be dropped. Because nothing can be dropped from the unconscious. The unconscious is a great preserver, it preserves everything. Once you make anything unconscious it will be preserved for ever and ever unless you make it conscious again and throw it. Your unconscious is a basement where you never go, and you always go on throwing things in the basement. Whenever you are miserable you repress it. Your eyes may be full of tears but you try to smile -- you throw those tears into the unconscious. You may be boiling with anger but you go on repressing the anger, the sexuality, the greed. You go on throwing all this into the basement, and there all these things are creating a…
Osho, you say with such ease and simplicity that you are miserable because of yourself; if you wish, you can be free of misery; that you are caught in the nets you yourself have woven, and if you choose you can step out. For you it seems a very small matter; but even after hearing this small thing again and again from you, why do we still not understand? Please tell us.
And you cannot even say that my words are wrong, because your own experience tells you my words are right. This is your obstruction: your experience says that what I say is true—that there is nothing here. Your experience says so. But your hope and your experience never match—never. Hope always goes opposite to experience. Experience says one thing; hope says another. Hope speaks against experience. It says, “It is true that until yesterday there was sorrow; but what certainty is there that tomorrow there will be sorrow too? Tomorrow there could be happiness—try a little more.” The day my words truly, exactly penetrate you—and by “exactly” I mean the day you are ready to stake your all—on that day you will understand: How can sighs find rest even in union, When the thought of separation is already knotted? Then you will not find rest even in happiness. Leave aside…
Why is every human being full of problems and unhappy?
Put all your energy into being happy, and don't bother about others. Your happiness is your destiny; nobody is entitled to interfere with it. But the society goes on interfering; it is a vicious circle. You were born, and of course you were born into a society already there, a given society of neurotic people, of people who are all miserable and unhappy. Your parents, your family, your society, your country, are already there waiting for you. And a small child is born; the whole society jumps on the child, starts culturing him, cultivating him. It is as if a child is born in a madhouse, and all the mad people start cultivating. Of course, they have to help -- the child is so small and does not know anything about the world. They will teach whatsoever they know. They will enforce whatsoever has been enforced on them by their…