According to Osho, nonduality means there is no separation between man and the Whole; thus 'freedom' versus 'dependence' are empty opposites. God is not free—God is freedom; likewise, man is not free but freedom itself. When oneness is realized, the debate about fate and free will disappears; this intrinsic liberatedness (moksha) is our very nature, not a gift or achievement.
When you stop seeing yourself as separate from everything, there’s no one left to be controlled or to break free—your very being is already free.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
A friend has asked, Osho, you say that if someone surrenders himself in every way to the divine—lets himself be absorbed, accepts it—then he attains the divine. Can worldly things also be obtained in the same way?
Don’t try that; you’ll get nothing! To get worldly things you have to employ means, you have to labor, you have to strive, you have to be restless, you have to be mad. The more mad a person is, the more successful he is in the world. A very eminent psychologist has just made a statement. He said that if the minds of the world’s great politicians were tested, they would be found deranged, because their success would be impossible if they were not utterly mad. That psychologist said that the reason for England’s great politician Winston Churchill’s success was that, in childhood, an astrologer told him—and then he got fixated on the notion—that he would not live beyond forty-five. From the day this idea took hold—“I will die at forty-five”—he plunged into competition like a madman. Others, who assumed they would live at least to seventy or eighty, were…
Please explain man's free will and its relation to being and non-doing.
There is nothing like that, like free will. It is just an ego concept, there cannot be anything like that. I am not saying the opposite, that you are dependent and slaves. Mind moves into opposites very easily. It creates dichotomies: either you are a free agent (free will), or you are a slave. Both are untrue, both are false concepts, because YOU are not, so you cannot be a slave, and you cannot be a free agent, because for both, YOU will be needed. Life is a vast interdependence. You are just an organic part of the whole, you are not separate, so how can you be free But I am not saying that you are not free, remember that, because how can you be not free, or free? You are NOT, you don't exist at all. It is a vast interdependence, and this interdependence is the totality, the…
Osho, if everything is in God’s hands—if even a leaf does not stir without His will—then a person’s freedom becomes meaningless. Please explain.
Maitreya! There is no “person” at all—what freedom? If there were a person, there could be freedom. There is the Whole. The person is a delusion. The person is like a wave in the ocean. If a wave thinks, “I am independent,” it can believe it for a little while; for a little while the illusion of being independent can arise. Because the wave rises toward the sky—a towering wave!—stretching to touch the moon and stars. It seems, “I am free, independent of the ocean; look, I am separate.” It also seems, “I am separate from the other waves—one wave is falling, one is rising, one is dying, one is young, one is growing. I am not falling because another wave is falling—so I must be separate. I am not rising because another wave is rising—so I must be separate.” But is the wave truly separate? Does the wave have…
In the realm of dharma, temples, mosques, gurudwaras, places of worship become important. The Gita, the Quran, the Bible become important. Satsang, listening to the truth, the company of the virtuous begins to taste sweet. A new veena starts humming. For the first time you sense that matter is not just matter; God is hidden in it. In every particle, you begin to get a little glimpse of him. Sometimes suddenly a window opens and you find that people are not ordinary; they are extraordinary. In everything—however ordinary—a great dignity is hidden. Everything is haloed. The world no longer feels alien; it is your home. Opposition drops, conflict fades, cooperation begins. The tone of a religious person’s life is cooperation. His language is no longer of conflict. Some cultures reach up to dharma. But the East does not stop there. It says: one step more—and that is moksha.
Freedom means: the life of the Paramatman. Where I am not, only the Whole remains. I am one with all—one-flavored. I do not have to become; I only have to know what is true. Am I separate? Am I distinct? Can one live even for a moment in separateness? Is a separate life possible at all? Lock a person into a capsule, sever every connection—will he live? Will he last even a moment? Life is interrelationship. Life is vast interconnection. Imagine a person locked in a vacuum capsule, sealed in emptiness, unrelated to the world. Could he be there even for a moment? He would not be. It cannot be. But all of us have built a capsule of ego. Inside that ego we stand apart and say: ‘I am!’ Although we are connected, still we say, ‘I am’—separate and distinct! Life is union. Ego is disjunction.