According to Osho, dissolving in spiritual growth means abandoning the ego’s hunger for position and achievement, embracing inner emptiness, and allowing the ‘person’ to disappear. When ambition ends and the drop of ‘me’ falls into the ocean of being, the divine remains. It’s not ascent but surrender—an inner death that transforms isolation into oneness.
Stop trying to be somebody; relax into nothingness so you merge with the whole.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
When life itself is so fulfilling, overflowing, so blissful, then what is that which makes a man miserable?
So an egoist remains miserable, because to be happy one has to be happy with that which one has. You cannot be happy with that which you don't have; you can only be unhappy with that. You can be happy only with that which you have. How can you be happy with that which you don't have? And ego is always interested only in that which you don't have. You have ten thousand rupees -- ego is no more interested in it. It is interested in twenty thousand. By the time you have twenty thousand, it is no more interested in it. It is interested only in thirty thousand. And so on, so forth... it goes on. The ego only gives you goals, but whenever those goals arrive, it does not allow you to celebrate. One becomes more and more miserable! As life passes, we go on gathering misery, we…
Osho, you have earlier said, “Live moment to moment, live in the present.” Now you are saying, “Return to the past.” What should we do?
So it is with the mind—there are ruts. The past means endless grooves. However much you understand, your intellect agrees, you make decisions, you resolve—at the moment of resolve you feel something is going to change. But not even an hour passes before your decision breaks. Then only self-condemnation is produced, nothing else. Your saints, your fakirs, your priests and pundits—most of the time they only succeed in producing self-condemnation in you, nothing else. Their words are logically correct. You cannot even say they are wrong; you have to admit they are right. In that admission you take a decision. But against what are you deciding? Inside are grooves carved since who knows when, deep tracks. Walking in them has become a habit. It is easy to walk in them. They will pull you again and again. The meaning of returning into the past is: these grooves must be erased.…
Beloved Osho, the growth movement has been called the "new narcissism" by many, due to its emphasis on assertiveness and valuing one's own personal ego. How does your way differ?
There is no way. It is impossible to have a way, because you are already there. You have never left home. This whole search for the way is driving you crazy; you cannot find it because you are already there. Wherever you go, you will go against your being, farther and farther away. You have gone already too far. It is time to drop the idea of the way. Life is not a becoming, not some kind of process. It is being. You cannot ask me how my way differs from the growth movement, because I have no way. I am not teaching you a way -- really, I am taking you away from all the ways. But the question has some significance. The growth movement was egoistic. It was the assertion of the ego repressed for centuries. Just by being assertive and egoistic you don't start growing. Or worse,…
Before it comes into existence one lives moment to moment. Who cares to remember the past? So the child up to the third or fourth year remains spontaneous, wild, natural, outside society, on the fringe. It is a cultivated phenomenon, hence it can be dropped. If it were natural there would be no way to drop it. Because it is put together by society it can be easily dismantled. And that's what sannyas is all about, dismantling the ego. The process is painful because you have to become too attached to it. But once you understand that the ego is the root cause of all your misery, you are ready to go through the surgery. It is better to be finished with it in one stroke rather than to go on being miserable for your whole life.
Can you explain to us the difference between emptying oneself and effacing oneself? And what is the role of individuality in dissolution?
Divya, the process of emptying oneself and the process of effacing oneself have nothing in common. Not only are they different, they are diametrically opposite. Emptying oneself brings individuality, more and more individuality. Emptying oneself means emptying oneself of all that is implied in personality. Personality is a farce, personality is pseudo, personality is that which is given to you by the society. Personality is imposed on you from the outside; it is a mask. Individuality is your very being. Individuality is that which you bring into the world, individuality is God's gift. Personality is ugly because it is pseudo. And the more personality you have, the less is the possibility for individuality to grow. The personality starts occupying the whole of your space. It is like a cancerous growth. It goes on growing, it possesses you totally. It leaves no space for individuality to have even its own corner.…