According to Osho, bondage is unconscious identification with the changing mind—its doubts, dreams and pseudo‑methods (avidya)—which closes you and keeps you a slave, circling in birth and death. Freedom is awakening to the fourth (turiya), your unborn, ever‑present being, beyond waking, dream and sleep. It unfolds through prayerful receptivity, faithful doubt, and true methodology (vidya), not mere knowledge.
Being stuck means clinging to your shifting thoughts and tricks; being free means resting as the quiet you that watches everything, found by open-hearted asking and right guidance.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Questioner: krishna says a man of wisdom, who gives up attachment to the fruit of action, is released from the bondage of birth and death and becomes one with the ultimate. How is it that krishna believes that life is a bondage? You don't believe so, you say this very life is freedom, this very world the nirvana. Please explain.
Mohammed answers, "Looking at your face tonight I can see you are not calm and peaceful as you always are. For sure there is some money in the house. Those who are worried become acquisitive and acquisitive people become worried. It is a vicious circle, So take out what you have saved and distribute it so that I can die in peace. Remember, this is my last night. I don't want to spoil it and appear before God with a guilty conscience." His wife hurriedly takes out the five dinars from under her pillow, and says to Mohammed, "But there is no one out there to receive this money, it is midnight." Mohammed says, "Just call out and someone will come." And someone, a beggar really appears at the door. Mohammed says to his wife, "Just see, if someone comes to take in the dead of night, someone else can…
What is bondage? What is freedom? What is vidya (right learning) and avidya (false one)?
WHAT ARE THESE FOUR STATES: WAKING, DREAMING, SLEEPING AND TURIYA (THE FOURTH)? WHAT ARE THESE FIVE KOSHAS (BODIES): SHEATHS OF FOOD, BREATH, MIND, KNOWING AND BLISS? WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE DOER, LIVING BEING, PANCHVARGA (FIVE GROUPS), KSHETRAGYA (KNOWER OF THE FIELD), SAKSHI (WITNESS), KUTASTHA (THE SUPREME) AND ANTARYAMI (THE IMMINENT)? THE SAME WAY WHAT ARE THESE THREE: SELF, SUPREME SELF AND MAYA (THE WORLD OF APPEARANCES)? These three are states.... When you are awake, this is a state, a mode, a form, a shape of your being. This is not your being. This is a state -- it can change. In the night you will be dreaming. Dreaming is still a state, because it can change. Then you will be deep in sleep, dreamless sleep -- that too is a state. By "state" is meant something which you can take and change. The fourth, the turiya, is not…
I. 107. calat mansa acal kinhi
I HAVE STILLED MY RESTLESS MIND, AND MY HEART IS RADIANT: FOR IN THATNESS I HAVE SEEN BEYOND THATNESS, IN COMPANY I HAVE SEEN THE COMRADE HIMSELF. LIVING IN BONDAGE, I HAVE SET MYSELF FREE: I HAVE BROKEN AWAY FROM THE CLUTCH OF ALL NARROWNESS. KABIR SAYS: I HAVE ATTAINED THE UNATTAINABLE, AND MY HEART IS COLORED WITH THE COLOR OF LOVE. I. 105. jo disai so to hai nahin THAT WHICH YOU SEE IS NOT: AND FOR THAT WHICH IS, YOU HAVE NO WORDS. UNLESS YOU SEE, YOU BELIEVE NOT: WHAT IS TOLD YOU, YOU CANNOT ACCEPT. HE WHO IS DISCERNING KNOWS BY THE WORD; AND THE IGNORANT STANDS GAPING. SOME CONTEMPLATE THE FORMLESS, AND OTHERS MEDITATE ON FORM; BUT THE WISE MAN KNOWS THAT BRAHMA IS BEYOND BOTH. THAT BEAUTY OF HIS IS NOT SEEN OF THE EYE, THAT METER OF HIS IS NOT HEARD OF THE EAR.…
The guest asked, “Even more curious—why do you never tie them? Why do they never wander off or get lost?” He said, “I have told them also this: You are absolutely free; you are not bound at all. For one runs away only from bondage; when one is utterly free, the idea of escape does not arise. If there is bondage, the thought of running away arises—run away! But if there is no bondage, if one is absolutely free—no need to run.” Gurdjieff used to say that man is in almost the same condition; he takes his prison to be a palace. Then the question of escape does not arise; rather, if someone comes to free him, he will arrange his defenses—You are our enemy; you want to take us away from our palace! Man takes his chains to be ornaments; they are his adornment.
The self or soul is both god and living being. But the body, which is not the soul, gets infected with a sense of ego, and that is what is called living being's bondage. The cessation of this ego is what is called freedom.
THAT WHICH GIVES RISE TO THE EGO IS CALLED AVIDYA (FALSE LEARNING). AND THAT WHICH LEADS TO THE CESSATION OF THE EGO IS CALLED VIDYA (RIGHT LEARNING). One, is to analyze a thing, to divide it into its parts, but parts are not the whole. They constitute the whole, but they are not equivalent to the whole. The whole cannot be created without the parts. But still the whole is something plus, something more than all the parts combined. That something plus is the mystery. Science divides, and the knowledge achieved is through analysis. Religion is quite the opposite dimension. Religion believes, not in division, but in synthesis. Religion goes on adding, totaling. And when everything is totaled -- nothing remains outside, everything is included; and this whole, taken as a whole, is looked at -- the divine appears. That's why science can never say that there is a god…