When you truly relax, you wake up inside and feel peaceful and clear in the present, not scared of yesterday or tomorrow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
The song continues:
DO NOUGHT WITH THE BODY BUT RELAX; SHUT FIRM THE MOUTH AND SILENT REMAIN; EMPTY YOUR MIND AND THINK OF NOUGHT. LIKE A HOLLOW BAMBOO REST AT EASE WITH YOUR BODY. GIVING NOT NOR TAKING, PUT YOUR MIND AT REST. MAHAMUDRA IS LIKE A MIND THAT CLINGS TO NOUGHT. THUS PRACTICING, IN TIME YOU WILL REACH BUDDHAHOOD. A lunatic is a person whose whole world is confined in himself. He is the talker and he is the listener; he is the actor and he is the spectator -- he is all, his whole world is confined in himself. He has divided himself in many parts and everything has become fragmentary. That's why people are afraid of silence -- they know they may crack up. And if you are afraid of silence that means you have an obsessive, feverish, diseased mind inside, which is continuously asking to be active. Activity is…
Beloved master, you say that enlightenment can happen any moment. To me it feels like a very slow process of learning and becoming aware of the unconscious parts of my being. Do you have something to say about this?
Enlightenment is not something like an achievement; one cannot achieve it. One has to disappear for it to happen. It is a happening and it happens only in the absence of the ego. And whenever you are doing something the ego becomes more and more strengthened. The ego is a doer, and enlightenment happens in a state of nondoing. It is simply the realization of who you are; it is not a question of achievement. You are already it! Just an awakening, just a turning in! Seeing the point, Buddha relaxed; he dropped all his methods. That is the only use of methods: you get tired of them, you feel utterly bored with them. One day out of sheer boredom you drop all the methods. That evening he dropped his whole spiritual search. He had dropped all worldly search six years before, but it is the same search whether you…
Beloved master, will you say something more about relaxation? I am aware of a tension deep at the core of me and suspect that I have probably never been totally relaxed. When you said the other day that to relax is one of the most complex phenomena possible, I glimpsed a rich tapestry in which the threads of relaxation and let-go were deeply interwoven with trust, and then love came into it, and acceptance, going with the flow, union and ecstasy....
Anurag, total relaxation is the ultimate. That's the moment when one becomes a buddha. That is the moment of realization, enlightenment, christ-consciousness. You cannot be totally relaxed right now. At the innermost core a tension will persist. But start relaxing. Start from the circumference -- that's where we are, and we can start only from where we are. Relax the circumference of your being -- relax your body, relax your behavior, relax your acts. Walk in a relaxed way, eat in a relaxed way, talk, listen in a relaxed way. Slow down every process. Don't be in a hurry and don't be in haste. Move as if all eternity is available to you -- in fact, it is available to you. We are here from the beginning and we are going to be here to the very end, if there is a beginning and there is an end. In fact,…
Beloved Osho, is it possible to become enlightened in a really easy and relaxed way, with not too much effort and lots of naps?
Gayano, you are asking me, a man who has never done anything. Just through relaxation ... without any effort and lots of naps! Mostly I am asleep. I just get up to talk to you in the morning, then I go back to sleep; then I get up again in the evening to talk to you and go back to sleep. My total hours of sleep must be eighteen. Six hours I am awake, two hours with you, one hour for my bath, for my food and the remainder I am in absolute samadhi. And I don't even dream -- so lazy! And you are asking me the question. This is my whole philosophy, that you should not make any effort, that you should relax and enlightenment comes. It comes when it finds you are really relaxed, no tension, no effort and immediately it showers on you like thousands of…
Beloved Osho, I recall you saying that when we relax the body, the mind, the heart, and the being, we will be home. It sounds easy, but when I succeed in getting the body relaxed, I promptly fall asleep. How to relax and stay awake?
Don't be worried. You are already one-third enlightened!