According to Osho, the present moment is not a place to reach but the ever-present 'now' that is always here. Time truly has only one tense—now. Searching for it, or dragging past and projecting future, makes you miss it. Simply relax here and now; drop mental stories and taste the immediacy of being.
It’s the ‘now’ right where you are—stop thinking about before or later, relax, and feel what’s happening.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHERE IS THIS MOMENT? I KEEP LOSING IT. Here! You ask me, "Where is this moment?" Your question implies it must be somewhere else. You have already lost it. It is always here! Don't try to find where it is, because while you are finding where it is, you are losing it. You are missing the train continuously. Time knows no tenses: past, present, future, no -- absolutely no! Time knows only one tense, and that is now. It is always now. But your mind can carry the past and destroy the beauty of the now. Your mind can project the future, and can lose the precious moment. Please, start relaxing here and now. This is the taste of it.
Osho, you often say we should be aware only of the present. But along with that, would you also say that while remaining aware we should not worry about the future? Do you want to exclude it altogether—are you advocating its total banishment?
In truth, my emphasis is on living, not on thinking. And one can live only in the present; you cannot live in the future. My emphasis is on living—just as my emphasis is on eating food. Now if someone says to me, “Shall we eat tomorrow’s bread—do you object?” I would say, first of all, you cannot eat the bread of the future; you can only dream about it. And the great danger in dreaming is that today’s bread may be missed. The real danger of dreaming is this: if you are busy eating the bread of the future, who will eat the bread of the present? And the present does not stop for you even for a moment. Whether you are present or not, it keeps rushing on. You are there or you are not—still the present does not wait. It does not stop for you; it goes on.…
Prem means love, vatayana means now, the present moment -- love now. And my whole emphasis is on this moment, because this moment contains all. Now is the only reality -- all else is either memory or imagination. And even for the past to exist as memory, now is needed. It doesn't exist as the past; it exists as a thought in the present. And so is the case with the future: the future does not exist as the future; it exists as imagination in the present moment. All that exists, exists in the now. Now is the only time there is, and to become more and more alert about now is to become aware of the presence of god. We are very unalert. We think much of the past and we also think much of the future and our whole life is wasted in that thinking.
Question: WHAT IS HERENOW? DOES 'THOUGHT' FORM PART OF IT? IF SO, THEN ALL-TIME AND ALL-THINGS ARE NOW. OR... IS HERENOW ONLY IN NO-MIND? Man started looking for the same experience without becoming dependent on the other. Then, if it depends only on sexual experience, it cannot last forever. You can have sex once in a while -- and what about the other times? All other times you will remain dull and dead. Is it possible to have that joy continuously, as a continuum, like a river flowing always? These were the speculations of man, but they came from sleep and love. In love sometimes it happens, and that is the moment which is called orgasm. If time stops, if thinking stops, and you are UTTERLY herenow, it is orgasmic. This orgasmic experience will give you the taste.
Beloved Osho, is there any difference between the state of no-mind and being present?
Just leave the mind aside ... But we are against the body, we are very condemnatory of the body, not knowing at all that this condemnation of the body is breaking the bridge to your being. A man of authentic spirituality is deeply in love with his body, because he knows body shares many things with being. Mind shares nothing, either with body or with being. It is an absolute stranger that has been forcibly put into you by the culture, the religion, the society. They are using the mind to enslave you. And because you are in the mind you continuously go on asking about things of which you have no experience. You don't know what no-mind is, except a word. You don't know what presence of being is, except that you have heard about it. Just words won't do. Move away from the mind ... And when I…