According to Osho, upheaval is deliberately invoked to crack the crust of conditioning, disturb comfortable sleep, and create a clean space where awareness, freedom, and a new order can arise. Without disruption the old, mechanical system persists; with shock and disorder, dead routines dissolve, authenticity surfaces, and transformation becomes possible. The turbulence is the midwife of renewal.
We shake things up so our stuck, sleepy habits break open and something fresh and alive can grow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, your idea of a diffused movement—it will create chaos!
Yes, that is exactly what I want. And I say to you: because up to now human society has not had the courage to create chaos, a true human society could not come into being. It takes the courage for chaos. Because out of chaos, creation is born. That is my own vision. So I want the mind of this country to become chaotic, at least once. To be chaotic means: to be thinking. To be chaotic means: to be doubting. To be chaotic means: to be questioning. And all the fixed patterns of thousands of years should loosen, a certain looseness should come. And we begin to think, and a movement arises, and a flow begins.
Osho, you are always immersed in bliss—what is the secret of it? When will I be able to attain this ecstasy?
Yogananda, I have given you the name Yogananda; the whole secret is in it. A human being can live in two ways: either cut off from existence, or in oneness with it. Whoever lives separate will live in sorrow—anxiety and anguish. That is natural, for to live apart from existence is like a tree pulling its roots out of the earth and trying to live. It will wither; the leaves will droop, flowers will cease to bloom. Spring will come and keep coming, but that tree will never become a bride, never a bridegroom. For it there will be no spring. If the roots have been torn from the soil, what remedy can even the honeyed month of spring offer? Then where is bliss, where is ecstasy! Then there is no dawn—only a dark new-moon night, a night with no morning. Such a life is called ego. And the tree…
The way seems to be towards peace and awareness. Why then is everyone and everything around you in such a chaos?
If you live in the past you are a dead thing. You are not an alive force. And there is only one way to become alive, and that is to die to the past, die to the dead. And this is not going to happen once and forever. Once you know the secret, each moment you have to die to the past, so no dust gathers on you. Then death becomes a constant reorientation, a constant rebirth. Always remember: die to the past Whatsoever has passed, has passed. It is no more; it is nowhere. It only clings in the memory. It is only in your mind. Mind is the depository of all that is dead. That's why mind is the only block for life to flow. The dead bodies accumulate around the flow; they become the block. All that I am doing here is in helping you to learn…
Beloved Osho, you said that through chaotic breathing you want to destroy our old wrong patterns -- to rebuild us in a new dimension. Please explain how this rebuilding in a new dimension happens after the old has been destroyed.
All religion is destructive in this sense. The society is constructive, religion is destructive. Society constructs the conditioning. Society makes you a Hindu or a Christian or a Jaina. Society never allows you to be yourself. It gives you a pattern, because society is an organization. The society wants you to fit into that organization according to its own rules. The society doesn't want YOU; the society only wants your efficiency. You are not the point, you are not the target. You must behave like a mechanical thing. The more mechanical you are, the more society will appreciate you because you will be less dangerous. No machine can be dangerous. It never goes out of the way: it never disobeys, it never rebels, it is not revolutionary. No machine is revolutionary; it cannot be. All machines are orthodox: they obey, they follow. Society tries to change you into a mechanical…
Osho: No, no, not at their expense. Tell them about this method. They themselves will feel it. They will certainly feel the change, the transformation. Let them practise it--just as an experiment with their disturbed mind, their doubts. Let them experiment, just as an experiment. If 'something' happens, then the practice goes by itself. There is no need to convince them. And, the anarchy that is within must be exploded. It should not be stilled or cramped down. It must be expressed in total intensity. The calmness, the serenity, the Nirvana comes not by stilling the mind but by explosion. Then the stillness comes but it is not a cultivated composure. Express what you are, totally. Of course that means madness, because we are mad. So, if you express it, the madness will come out. Even you yourself will feel strange about it, unknown to yourself.