What happens when one becomes disenchanted with indulgence?

Osho, while listening to yesterday’s discourse I felt as if in you both Charvaka—“live happily”—and Ashtavakra—“move happily”—were speaking together. And for some reason I found that likable. But if, to become disenchanted with indulgence—that is, to be liberated—it is necessary to pass through indulgence completely, wouldn’t it be better to give Charvaka’s philosophy full scope in place of the huge hocus‑pocus of religious practice?

You eat; hunger had been there, there was torment—you ate, there was satiety. In that moment of satiety there is the flavor of fasting. For that short while, no memory of food remains. And the meaning of fasting is precisely this: that food does not preoccupy you. When the body is utterly healthy, when it is vibrant, then for a little while a glimpse of the bodiless arises. Ask athletes, runners, swimmers. Sometimes while swimming—in the sunlight, with the waves—there comes a moment when the body begins to throb with such aliveness, such a sense of well‑being showers in the body, that the body is forgotten—you become bodiless. That joy is of the bodiless. Sometimes while running, there comes a moment when the inner climate and the outer weather become harmonious; you are running, drenched in sweat, but the mind becomes silent, thoughts have stopped. Standing beneath a tree in…

Osho, religions call worldly pleasures unstable and fleeting and thereby try to create dispassion in us. But isn’t it precisely their fleetingness that is also the reason for their attraction?

Certainly, it is so; transience itself is the cause of attraction. And religions do not create dispassion by merely declaring life transient. Religion says: wherever there is transience, suffering will follow like a shadow. Transience is not the cause of dispassion; the suffering that comes in its wake is. Transience attracts, it beckons. The faster life runs away, the more the mind says—Enjoy, quickly! Now it’s here, now it’s gone. Who knows when the curtain will fall? So enjoy as much as you can; live with the utmost urgency. Let not even a single moment go idle—suck it dry. Exhaust the full possibility of each moment. Transience is attraction. Death is approaching; that is precisely why we cling to life. If death did not come, who would cling to life? If pleasures came and never left, who would worry? The cause of attraction is transience. The faster a thing dissolves,…

Gurdjieff wrote: as a child he loved a certain fruit in the Caucasus; delicious, but it caused stomach pain. Yet the taste—irresistible. Children are children, and old people too. Doctors forbid ice‑cream—but you eat; this they forbid—but how to leave! Then you suffer. His father forbade him many times; he wouldn’t listen, ate in secret. One day his father brought a whole basket of the fruit, sat him down with a stick in hand and said, “Eat.” Gurdjieff didn’t understand. First he was delighted—what happened to father! Always forbidding; and now a basket! But the father sat with a stick—so he had to eat. At first he relished—two, four, eight, ten; then the pain began; but father, stick in hand, said, “You must finish the basket.” Tears flowed; vomiting began; still the father said, “If you refuse I will break your limbs. Empty the basket!” He made him finish it.

Osho, according to the saints, only when dispassion (vairagya) arises does the journey toward the Divine become possible. And you say that spiritual practice is possible while living in the world. Kindly speak on this apparent contradiction.

Anand Maitreya! There is not the slightest contradiction. There is no opposition at all, not even the appearance of it. It may seem so because centuries of conditioning do not allow you to see clearly; they put sand in the eyes. The saints are right: without the arising of dispassion one cannot journey toward the Divine. And when I say, “Only by living in the world is spiritual practice possible,” I am not saying anything contrary to the saints. Without being in the world, how will dispassion even arise? The world itself is the opportunity for dispassion. In the world dispassion becomes dense. One who runs away from the world will have an unripe dispassion. And if dispassion is unripe, attachment will sprout again—new shoots and fresh leaves will appear. Understand this seemingly upside-down point well. The worldly person often thinks of renunciation! There is so much sorrow, pain, and…

The distances, the differences, are secondary; the fundamental is present in every man. And as the nature of one man behaves, so do all men behave. The differences in them are in the details, in the extensions—some river’s water a little blue, some a bit muddy, some a little green, some a little clear—differences in the details. These make no difference to water boiling at a hundred degrees. One woman’s nose is a little long, another’s a little short; one woman a little fair, another a little dark—it makes no difference. One woman is born in a Hindu home, another in a Muslim home—that too makes no difference. Her fundamental condition—womanliness—is just as it is for all the water of the world. One drop gives the news; but we, after lifetimes of many drops, still do not arrive at the conclusion—because all the world’s water keeps remaining.