According to Osho, an accident is the unforeseen event itself (the car skids and crashes). Misfortune is the unfortunate outcome or who it harms (the driver dies while the ministers live—bad for the country). A bad day is the lingering annoyance it creates afterward (waking to their faces in every newspaper). He uses humor to show scale: occurrence, consequence, and mood.
Accident is what happens, misfortune is how badly and to whom it turns out, and a bad day is how it spoils your mood afterward.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is the first experience of samadhi like?
You will know only when it happens. It cannot be said; at most a few hints can be given. It is as if, in the dark, a lamp is suddenly lit. Or as if a dying patient, right at the edge of death, suddenly finds a medicine that works; life’s wave, life’s thrill spreads again—so it is. As if a corpse becomes alive—such is the first experience of samadhi. It is the taste of nectar. The experience of the ultimate music. But it will be only when it happens; and only then will you understand. You will not understand by my saying it. It is as with love. How can anyone explain it? To someone who has never loved, never known love, no matter how many explanations you offer—he will hear it all and still ask, “I haven’t understood; please explain a little more.” It is like explaining light to…
Osho, in an earlier talk you said that God—meaning Existence, the Whole, Totality—is one. But in this verse, how are beings and God, or nature and God, spoken of as two distinct categories? What is the reason?
I moved the pillow farther away. When I touched it, he reacted as if someone had touched his beloved; it showed on his face. As twenty minutes approached, I picked the pillow up to lock it in a cupboard. He rushed over, and totally outside his conscious control, he snatched the pillow, kissed it, and hugged it. Everyone burst out laughing. “What are you doing?” He began to cry, “I myself don’t understand what I’m doing. But now I feel such relief. A restlessness was building so that I just couldn’t stop myself—I had to hug and kiss this pillow. I am absolutely mad!” He had no idea what had been said to him under hypnosis. Isn’t the attraction between man and woman just like this? No one has hypnotized you—you are already hypnotized by the journey of lifetimes. It is nature’s hypnosis. The old word is maya; the new…
You sometimes use the word 'accident' or 'accidental' to describe an event. Are there any accidents in life in reality?
In reality there are only accidents and accidents, and nothing else. The factual world is the world of cause and effect; the world of truth is the world of freedom. Freedom means that causes don't work at all. Freedom means that now everything is accidental, now everything is possible. Nothing is impossible in the world of reality. From the moment you become enlightened everything becomes possible. Now no cause and effect have any hold on you. But I understand your question. It comes again from the same ideology -- that how can anything be accidental? The world is confined to cause and effect. Everything can be reduced to cause and effect. Nothing happens as a miracle. That is the scientific approach. That's why men like B. F. Skinner or Pavlov and other behaviourists go on saying that the idea of freedom is just stupid. There is no freedom. Man has…
Osho, what is the reason behind so-called accidental events?
No event is accidental. In fact, we call an event “accidental” when we cannot discover its cause. There are events whose causes elude our understanding, but no event is accidental.
Osho, at least this much the incident certainly shows: there is no supreme authority.
“The second possibility: I will remain—I will go beyond death. Then also there is no reason for sorrow; whatever I went beyond was not truly me, otherwise I could not have remained. So in either case—Socrates remains, or he does not—be happy. And if there is a third possibility, we do not know it; it can only be known by dying. I am fortunate—I am dying, and I will have the chance to know. I am dying in complete awareness, in full understanding.” When the poison was being prepared outside, Socrates lay down with his friends around him and kept sending word, “See—he is taking too long grinding the poison.” The man grinding it said, “You are mad! I am delaying so you may live a little longer. You are such a good man.” Socrates replied, “Foolish fellow! If we are not ready to welcome what is coming—if we cannot…