According to Osho, worry is a learned mechanism—years of craving and anxiety condition the brain and nerves into restlessness. Money or outer success is neutral; it can create outer order but cannot dissolve an inner habit of worry. Peace arises when outer order meets inner order, cultivated through awareness. Without simultaneous inner cultivation, restlessness persists and we mistakenly blame wealth rather than our conditioned, unbalanced mind.
Your mind gets used to worrying; unless you grow peace inside while organizing life outside, you’ll stay restless no matter what you gain.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
About worrying? About worrying, about being restless. All the ruts have become those of worry. Like when a bullock cart moves, a track gets formed. Now the cart’s wheels have to run caught in that track. They may wander here and there for a little while, but they will slip back into it. A groove has formed.
For twenty years a man worries and frets; he doesn’t sleep—money, money, how to earn, how to earn—and slowly, slowly, slowly his mind becomes a mechanism of worry; the nerves, the brain, all become habituated to worrying. Now he has managed to earn money. For this he worried for twenty years! And having earned it he finds there is neither happiness nor peace. It is not that money cannot give you any peace—money can give you order, arrangement—but in those twenty years your brain has been thrown out of balance. So the man begins to say, “Ah, money—there is no happiness or peace in it! I’ve earned it and I’ve become even more restless and miserable! So there is no substance in money. It should be dropped.” Here the man is making a mistake. He is not able to understand that money is only a convenience, a means. If you…
First, I have asked one question. And I have also asked one or two related questions. It is asked: Osho, the mind is restless. Without effort and without renunciation, how can it become steady?
No. I will say to you: it is not an effort. If I am clenching my fist and ask you, “How do I open this fist?” what will you say? You will say: “To open it, you need do nothing. Please stop doing what you are doing to clench it; the fist will open by itself.” Opening is not an effort; the moment you cease the effort that clenches, opening happens. Or if I pull down a branch and hold it, and ask how to return it to its place—what will you say? “Do nothing to return it. Just stop doing what holds it down; it will return by itself.” What are we doing continuously with the mind? We are doing something. If we stop that, the mind will quiet by itself. It will quiet by itself. As I said this morning, we are constantly engaged in resistance—twenty-four hours resisting.…
A friend has asked, Osho, I am very restless, and so much energy gets used up in this restlessness. How can I make use of it, and what is its cause?
But the anger remains there; it will not change by your turning away. It will change by your standing your ground and seeing it. If you turn your back, anger will make deeper wounds within and lay down roots. Fix both your eyes on anger. This is the moment to consciously see anger. When lust seizes the mind, do not run. Do not panic. Do not chant Ram-Ram. Look lust straight in the face. A direct encounter with the passions is necessary. But man has been taught to run. He has been told, wherever something bad appears—run away. But where will you run? The bad is within you; it will go with you. There is no way to run away from yourself. If evil were outside somewhere, we could run. It stands within—we will have to change it. We will have to use this manure. And using it is not…
Understand the mechanism of mind. The mind is restless; you say it should be quiet. The mind was restless; you have added a new restlessness—that now it should be quiet. Understand the restlessness of mind. You have ten thousand rupees; you wanted a million; therefore the mind is restless. You were not content with what is. You demanded what is not. Restlessness arises from the demand for the ‘no’. Restlessness comes from lack. From what is, restlessness never arises; from asking for what is not, it arises. The wife you have—you want one more beautiful. The husband you have—you want one more renowned. The son you have—you want one more intelligent. The house you have—you want one bigger. The prestige you have—you want it deeper. The position you hold—you want one higher. Restlessness comes from wanting what you do not have.
Another friend has asked, Osho, if the soul leaves the body, can it also enter another dead body?
It can. But there is no meaning or purpose in entering another dead body. Because that body died precisely because the soul living in it had become incapable of remaining there. That body had become useless; that’s why it was left. There is no purpose in entering such a body. Still, the possibility of entering another body does exist. But it is not a valuable question to ask how to enter someone else’s body when we don’t even know how we are sitting in our own. What benefit can we gain by pondering the futile idea of entering another’s body? We do not know how we ourselves entered this very body. We don’t know how we live in our own body. We have no experience of separating from our own body and seeing ourselves. There is no purpose in entering another’s body. Yet, scientifically one can say it is possible…