According to Osho, destination is a fixed, mind-made goal projected into the future, chosen from the past and thus dead; direction is a living, intuitive sense arising in the present, felt in the heart and earned by fully inhabiting this moment. Instead of manipulating life toward outcomes, the inward traveler trusts spontaneity; by dancing this moment totally, the next step naturally reveals itself.
Don’t chase a fixed end; feel your next right step now and let the path appear as you live it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Yesterday you said that an inward traveller has only direction and not destination. Will you please further clarify the distinction between the two?
The mediocre mind demands clear-cut goals because he is so insecure -- he cannot trust his own awareness, and he cannot trust life. The mediocre mind is very afraid of discovery, and discovery is the greatest secret in life. To be ready to be surprised, to be always ready to be surprised means that one is innocent, trying to discover. And life is such that you can go on discovering. The more you discover it, the more you come to know that much more is still left. It is a non-ending process. Direction is a non-ending process. Remember, it is a process, movement; destination is a dead thing. Destination belongs to the ego; direction belongs to life, to being. To move in the world of direction one needs tremendous trust, because one is moving in insecurity, one is moving in darkness. But the darkness has a thrill in it: without…
Paravritti means turning in, moving towards oneself. [The new sannyasin says she has been travelling through many countries and experiencing things.] It is good. There is a time to experience many things. When one is young, one has to experience many things -- both good and bad, the dark and the light. But the real travelling starts when you start turning in. We can go on moving outside from one country to another, from one place to another, but finally one gets tired. One comes to know that everything is almost the same everywhere. And this constant travelling is not going to lead anywhere. It is good, it has something to give -- a certain enrichment -- and everybody needs it, but one should not be stuck there, mm? But soon you become aware that changing places outside is not going to help.
Osho, in the final stage of active meditation a quietness comes, yet a kind of sadness surrounds me. You say to celebrate—how can one celebrate in this sadness, and how to dance?
The day a society forgets how to dance, that day the society becomes sick. The indigenous people in the forests dance—and their health is of another order! They dance late into the night, under the stars, beneath the open sky. They dance like the stars themselves. They fall asleep tired—but in that tiredness there is no heaviness; there is a lightness in it. Then in the morning, when such a person wakes, his awakening is different from yours. You hardly sleep at all. Even in sleep you go on dreaming; even in sleep you keep the whole business of waking life going. You continue the same nightmares you saw while awake—same market, same friends, same enemies, the same hocus-pocus. You keep tossing and turning; even your sleep is not a peaceful event. Ask the forest-dwellers, “Did you dream?” You will rarely find one who says, “Yes, once in my life…
Osho, I have not had any experience of the supreme life and supreme bliss you speak of again and again, but even walking on this path brings joy. So can there be joy in the journey even before reaching the destination?
Even if the destination were to be given to you, first, you would not recognize it. Your eyes are very small and the destination very vast; your eyes would not be able to see it. Even if it were right in front of you—as it is—you would not recognize it, because to recognize it the eyes require training. And if, unfortunately, you did get it and recognized it, it would not prove a blessing but a curse, because you would not be able to contain so much bliss; that bliss would be devastating. So sadhana is the name of many preparations. We have to reach the destination. To be able to see it, the eyes must be trained. To be able to experience it, each wave of joy has to be slowly assimilated. To be able to contain it—so that when that great bliss descends you do not go mad,…
It is not a difficult process because the process of looking is the same, just the object changes: you start turning your consciousness upon yourself. You may have seen many pictures of snakes swallowing their own tails. Those pictures are very ancient symbols of mystery schools; they represent this inner transformation. When your consciousness starts turning upon itself you become a circle, and the moment you are a circle you are no more the same old person. Your life starts having a new grace, a new beauty, a new beatitude. You become golden, you become precious. For the first time you have a contact with god, and that contact is a magical transformation. It is sheer magic and a miracle. Enjoy the trip, don't be too fixated on the target, Osho said in conclusion. Bliss is not a pond, it is a river. It is not static.