According to Osho, total revolution is the inner, spiritual uprising born of meditation: a consuming fire that burns beliefs, identities, past conditioning—and finally the ego—so only pure consciousness remains. Such awakening makes every act auspicious and spreads naturally, flame to flame, from one individual to many. It cannot be imposed from above; it begins within.
It means meditating so deeply that all labels and your sense of ‘me’ burn away, leaving clear awareness that naturally inspires others.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
And you have asked: what is the meaning of total revolution? In my vision, total revolution means that a person is left with no fixed notions and no prejudices. The person’s consciousness becomes like a pure mirror. Total revolution means samadhi.
Whatever a person established in samadhi does is a benediction, it is auspicious. Whatever a meditative person does will bring the auspicious, not the inauspicious. Because the energy of meditation makes you full of awareness. Your awareness saturates your actions. A person without meditation, whatever he does, will do it wrongly. So I know only one revolution: how meditation can be joined to your life. If you receive the wealth of meditation, you have attained the supreme wealth. And if meditation happens to you, the possibility arises that you can also kindle the light in your neighbors. Let one flame kindle another. And if from one to one the flame keeps spreading, I can fill the whole world with fire. That is why these ochre robes have been chosen. This is the color of fire; they are symbols of the flame. In them you are to be consumed. In them…
So be a noble ruler, but the only way to be a noble ruler is to go in. Possess yourself, be absolutely rooted, centred, integrated, so that you can move according to your light, so no unconscious instinct forces you to move in a certain direction, so you need not go into something into which you never wanted to go. But this is really the situation. That's why in all the languages phrases like 'in spite of myself' exist. It simply means you are not the master. You become angry and then later on you apologize and you say 'I never wanted to be, but I became angry in spite of myself.' What does it mean? What are you confessing? You are confessing that there are forces inside you over which you don't have any mastery. They can do things which you don't want to do.
Question: Second question: Osho, are you against social revolution? And this inner change does not happen through changing ideas. It happens by leaping from thought to meditation. There is only one revolution in the world: to go from thought to no-thought; from a mind full of choices to a choiceless consciousness. The day the thinking mind dissolves into the emptiness of no-mind, that day doors open within you— the doors of the seven heavens open. That day indeed your chains become anklets. That day no prison can contain you, because for the first time you taste freedom—you experience moksha within. You know, “Even if handcuffs are put on the body, I am free—because I am not the body.” If such an event happens to innumerable people on this earth, perhaps there will be a radiance spread from horizon to horizon. It has not happened yet.
The flower of consciousness opens up only when all the garbage that one has accumulated over many many lives is thrown out, otherwise there is no space for the one-thousand petalled lotus to open. It needs a space and we are so full of junk, useless junk, full of memories which are of no use any more. We go on piling up files and files of memories, not only of this life, of many many lives. They are all there, now absolutely useless, but the functioning of our mind is like the functioning of any bureaucracy. I have heard that in the White House the president was very worried because so many files had accumulated. He told his secretary to destroy all those files which were useless and to only keep those which had any use. The secretary immediately started working.
Question: Osho, to me the present state of world affairs appears illusory. Eminent scholars from different walks of life offer various themes for the transformation of life. For instance, religious leaders affirm that God or religion alone is omnipotent and can transform life and provide heaven. Sociologists, politicians, educationists and moralists believe that only better forms can create a better society. Naturalists say that understanding nature will bring transformation. Whereas psychologists and psychopathologists believe that psychoanalysis, tranquilizers, sedatives or brainwashing agents can transform life, etc., etc. But to me, sir, all this appears to be merely a partial transformation. Would you suggest what total and spontaneous transformation is? As you say: clothes are fine, houses are fine, roads are fine; all kinds of instruments have been developed by which man’s senses have become a hundred million times more mobile.