According to Osho, the law of karma is not a decree from a lawgiver but the intrinsic self-recording of life: whatever you sow, you reap. Every act either aligns with your nature or violates it; it automatically registers in the unconscious as openness, worth, and flow - or as guilt, contraction, and distance - shaping your experience, relationships, and future choices.
Karma means your actions write themselves inside you: being true to yourself opens you and connects you, while going against yourself makes you feel guilty and closed, shaping how your life goes.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is the law of karma?
It is not in fact a law, because there is nobody behind it as a lawgiver. On the contrary, it is intrinsic to existence itself. It is the very nature of life: whatsoever you sow, you reap.But it is complex, it is not so simple, it is not so obvious. To make it more clear, try to understand it in a psychological way, because the modern mind can understand only if something is explained in a psychological way. In the past, when the law of karma was talked about -- when Buddha talked about it and Mahavira talked about it -- they had used physiological, physical analogies. Man has gone far away from that, man has moved far away from that. Now man lives more in the psychological, so this will be helpful. Every crime against one's own nature, every one, without exception, records itself in our unconscious -- what…
Question: OSHO, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE LAW OF KARMA? There is a point beyond which you cannot eat, but the Master says, "Go on." He is trying to bring you to the brink of the capacity of your whole physiology, and you have never touched that. We are always in the middle. Neither are we fasting, nor are we feasting like Gurdjieff; we are always in the middle. The body is in a settled routine; hence, the mind is also settled in its way of movement. Fasting destroys that. That's why fasting became so important in all religions. It brings you to a moment after fifteen days when you simply start forgetting thoughts. Bigger gaps start appearing: for hours there is not a single thought, and after twenty-one days your mind is empty.
Osho, what is the most astonishing law in this world?
A Sufi story. A thief, at night, began to climb into a house through a window. The window frame gave way, he fell, and broke his leg. The next day he went to court and blamed the householder for his broken leg. The owner was summoned and said in his defense: The one responsible is the carpenter who made the window. The carpenter was called; he said the contractor who built the wall hadn’t made the windowed section strong enough. In his defense the contractor said: My mistake happened because of a woman who was passing by—she drew my attention away. When the woman was presented in court, she said: At that time I was wearing a very fine dress. Normally no one even looks at me. So the fault lies with the dress, which was so exquisitely sewn. The judge said: Then summon the tailor who sewed it; he…
Osho, when we are reborn, where is the accounting kept? What remains?
We are all bundles of habits. If you want to change these habits, resolve is needed. And the beginning of resolve is this: that it dawns on you that they can be changed. If you think they cannot be changed, your resolve will die completely. A German Jew, Frankl, during the last world war was imprisoned in a great camp. He has written—he has written very astonishing things—in his memoirs. Because he is a psychologist, he kept observing what was happening. December was approaching; the festival days were near. All the prisoners hoped that at least around Christmas there would be release; that around Christmas Hitler would show mercy and people would be freed. Frankl writes: until Christmas, however many tortures the prisoners were given, no one died. People remained ill, but there was a hope—Christmas is approaching. With that hope, there was strength in their life-breath. He writes: the…