In let-go you briefly drop your ‘me,’ taste deep silence, and are brought back more awake so you can help wake others.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I am seeing a certain helplessness arising in me. It is a feeling that I had feared and always tried to avoid in the past. Yet, as it begins to overwhelm me, it brings a sense of freedom I have seldom, if ever, experienced before. Beloved master, does this helplessness have something to do with what you call "let-go"?
The rabbi finished quickly -- rabbis are very efficient people -- and he came in his Cadillac, but the bishop was still in the confession booth. It has a small window, and the bishop or the pope or anybody who is representing God is on one side, and on the other side, the person who confesses. A device that the person does not feel awkward, embarrassed; he is not seen by the priest. But there was a long queue. So from the other side, the rabbi entered the cabin and said to the bishop, "It is getting late, and I don't see that you will be able to finish till Judgment Day! Because the queue is so long... and you don't seem to be very efficient. You don't know business." The bishop said, "I am doing it as quickly as possible, but these idiots are such that they don't confess…
Beloved Osho, being here with you, I find myself more and more often in moments of let-go. It seems that in these moments my mind loses all its power, and I can watch overwhelming waves of energy vibrating within my body. I suddenly become aware of the earth beneath my feet, and it feels as if I am connected with existence itself, as if I am one with existence. Beloved master, would you please talk to us again about the state of let-go and melting into existence.
"I have only been waiting for the morning so that I can see you for the last time and bless you for the last time; otherwise in the middle of the night I was evaporating. Now it is not a meaningful question to ask. So come close to me, receive my blessings; Bokoju is going, and from tomorrow this room will be empty to the ordinary eyes -- but to those who had loved me, it will be still full of my presence. And those who have loved me totally, they may even hear every morning a sound coming from nowhere, `Bokoju are you still here?' -- `Yes, sir.'" And the story is that only two disciples were able to hear it after he was dead, disposed of, but many felt his presence. Those two disciples became enlightened very soon. Even when you are becoming one with existence, it does…
Beloved Osho, recently I heard you say that transcendence of life's misery and confusion can occur by either a let-go of life or by fight -- as long as either is done with totality. Mahavira's way was fight, and yours is let-go. Could you say more about let-go and its relationship to intelligence and responsibility? I don't have this understanding, and my life seems to be an odd mixture of let-go and fight. Let-go seems more natural, and fight seems more responsible.
He was standing there just to see her for the last time. It was enough for him that she was happy and healthy -- and he would wait. If his love has any power, she will come back. There was tremendous trust in him. He had seen the love, the same flame that was burning in his heart, in the eyes of Laila too. Laila was also searching and looking all around from the camel she was riding. She knew Majnu must be waiting somewhere on the way, and then she saw him hiding under a tree in its thick foliage. For a moment, without a single word or gesture, they were one; and then the caravan passed. But for Majnu time stopped then and there. He remained standing by the side of the tree waiting and waiting. It is said years passed. Laila came, but came a little late.…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO BE IN A STATE OF LET-GO? He said, "That I know. I remember a few people had pushed me in the train. And I was absolutely reluctant, because I didn't want to go anywhere. I was going to my home! I thought perhaps the train is going towards my home. And then finally I found myself in the river. But in a way it is good, because for at least two, three months I have not taken a bath. And the cold water in the river has also made my senses come back. I am a little conscious." The drunkard will not get hurt, because he does not know he is falling, so he does not become tense. He simply falls without becoming tense. It is the tenseness that gives you fractures.
This is what I call let-go. Let-go is not an effort that you can do. It is an understanding that I am I and others are others, and that it is pointless to try to become somebody else other than who I am. That creates a tension in the mind; that creates worry. Once you drop the idea of becoming somebody, there is no tension. Suddenly all tension disappears. You are here, luminous, in this moment. And there is nothing else to do than to celebrate and enjoy. So all people who are in some way trying to improve themselves and are reading foolish people like Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie, are basically neurotic. A healthy person simply accepts. He's more like an animal, like a tree, like a mountain, than the so-called human being. He simply says, 'Here I am... this is the way I am.