According to Osho, chakras are real as lived, whirling energy fields—not as borrowed information. Conceptual “esoteric knowledge” about their numbers only confuses and hinders; each tradition emphasizes different centers. Practically, you’ll meet four key chakras: sex (life), hara (death), heart (love), and agna (third eye), whose awakening carries energy beyond humanity into divinity; sahasrar pertains to death after transcendence.
Don’t collect facts about chakras—feel them directly inside (life, death, love, and inner seeing) because real experience, not numbers, helps you grow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, full with the sweetness of your fragrance as I walk this path with you, I feel that to trust and wait is all that is needed of me.a wondering comes up in me as to whether some knowledge about esoteric subjects -- for example, chakras, collective unconsciousness, energy fields -- could be helpful along the way or not. Osho, is such knowledge useful? Or will whatever is needed come to me throughexperience, in its own time?
And each individual has differences, and differences come in such small things that you cannot conceive. For example, in the East people sit on the floor. In cold countries people cannot sit on the floor; the chair is absolutely necessary. Naturally, their backbones, their spines will have a different shape than those of the people who sit on the floor, and the experiences of their kundalini will be different. There are people who eat only one time a day. For thousands of years they have never eaten more often than that. In South Africa there are tribes which eat only one time in twenty-four hours. When they came across American missionaries, there was such laughter... "These idiots are eating five times! Breakfast -- and there is no fast at all, and they are having `break-fast.' And the whole day, something or other, and then coffee break and tea break, and…
A guru is a person whose individuality is lost. Only then can he look deeply into your individuality. If he himself is an individual, he can interpret you, but he will never be able to know you. For example, if I am here and I say something about you, it is I who am talking about you. It is not about you; rather, it is about me. I cannot help you because I cannot really know you at all. Whenever I know you, it is in a roundabout way, by knowing myself. This point of my being here must disappear. I must be just an absence. Only then can I go deep inside you without any interpretation; only then can I know you as you are, not according to me. And only then can I help. Hence, the secrecy. So it is good not to talk about kundalini and chakras.
Osho, do the chakras accompany the subtle body or not?
Chakras? Yes. If we understand closely, chakras are the fields of contact between the subtle body and this gross body. Wherever your gross body and that subtle body touch, those points are chakras. So they are the same in everyone; there is no difference— in all creatures, in everyone. Wherever the body is touched—even in a cow—there a chakra will form. And those touching sites are fixed. For example, understand that at the sex center there will be a chakra. Whether the being is of any species—a dog, a cat, a man, a woman—it makes no difference; there will be a very forceful chakra at the sex center. So that chakra will be present in all bodies; whatever their form, there will be a chakra at that place. Yes, that chakra may be smaller or larger, weaker or stronger. “Are there seven chakras?” Yes, there will be seven chakras. (Question…
Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, egoism, all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs. From this follows instantaneous cognition without the use of the body, and complete mastery over pradhana, the material world.
ONLY AFTER THE AWARENESS OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SATTVA AND PURUSHA DOES SUPREMACY AND KNOWLEDGE ARISE OVER ALL STATES OF EXISTENCE. Right now when you look at a flower, the flower is there, but have you ever felt your eyes? You see the flower, but have you felt the power of your eyes? It should be there because you are using your eyes to see the flower. And of course eyes are more beautiful than any flower because all flowers have to come through the eyes. It is through the eyes that you have become aware of the world of flowers, but have you ever felt the power of the eyes? They are almost dull, dead. They have become passive, just like windows, receptive. They don't go to their object. And power means being active. Power means your eyes going and almost touching the flowers, your ears going and almost…
Is there a counterpart to it in the body?
There are counterparts. There are counterparts in the body. The happening itself does not occur inside the body. But within the body there are those parts through which the soul’s contact becomes available to the body. Like two wires connected, both touching: there is a contact field through which the electricity of one wire passes into the other. In the same way there are certain places in our body—contact fields—where consciousness and the body are joined. These are what are called chakras. They are called chakras for this very reason—because when two energies meet, a whirl, an intense movement, is created there. Through that movement consciousness enters within. A chakra is not something static. In English the word “center” doesn’t convey it; it is misleading. A center is static—a fixed point. Chakra means: moving, dynamic; there is movement in it. Whenever two contact fields meet, a state of movement arises.…