According to Osho, both sayings are simultaneously true: you must begin with earnest seeking, but real finding happens only when the seeker and all doing are dropped. Half the path is effort; the other half is surrender. Those who never search never find; those who cling to searching perpetuate ego. When the doer dissolves, truth reveals itself.
Look seriously for truth, then stop trying and rest—when the “I am doing it” fades, what you seek shows up on its own.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, yesterday you said, “Those who search will lose.” And one of your famous books says, “Jin khoja tin paiyan” (“Those who searched, found”). Which is true? Please explain.
Later, when people asked Buddha, “How did you attain?” he would say, “It’s a troublesome question. Because what I did did not bring it. On the day I did nothing, it happened. Yet it is also true that if I had not done all that I did, the state of non-doing would not have been possible.” Understand this well. Those six years of austerity did not directly give truth. But without those six years, had Buddha sat beneath the tree, that hour of effortless rest would not have come. You can go and sit—even now the tree is there in Bodh Gaya. You may think, “Forget six years of effort; what is the point? He got it by sitting.” So you sit. Outwardly you may sit like Buddha, steady and still; but inwardly? That hammer-blow, pounded day after day for six years—“doing is futile, nothing comes from doing”—that realization would…
Beloved Osho, jesus says, "seek and you will find." does a desireless search exist?
Bernd, Jesus was in a very unfortunate situation: he had learned all the secrets in the East and he was introducing something that had never existed in the Jewish tradition before -- that was his crime. The orthodox, the traditional, the conventional mind could not understand him. Lao Tzu was far more fortunate -- he had the right people to talk to. Buddha was blessed -- he could say things in as subtle a way as possible. In that sense Jesus was hoping against hope. It was a great challenge and he took the risk -- he sacrificed his life. But he was misunderstood: it was bound to happen, it was inevitable. Whenever you introduce a new truth, you have to suffer for it, but it is a joy to suffer in the service of truth. Jesus could not even say the whole truth -- that would have been too…
Beloved Osho, I have heard you say that seeking the truth is as ecstatic as finding it. Does that not eliminate the search?
"And anyway we cannot deceive you. All that we know, we have given to you. We don't know whether it leads to truth or not, because how can we know? -- we are also in the middle of the way. Whether it leads to somewhere or not can be known only when we have reached to the end. And I know almost all the masters around. It is better you start moving alone -- on your own." Perhaps Buddha is the first person who reached to the goal without a master. But one cannot say that those masters did not help him. They did not help him to the end -- they may have helped him only in small ways -- but they certainly helped him to eliminate many things. They certainly made it clear to him that it is better to go alone, to take the risk. Perhaps that…
Go beyond your doubt, your doubting mind, and then you will really be a seeker of truth. A seeker of truth neither believes nor doubts. He is simply available, ready, open, vulnerable. He is ready to go with the universe wherever it leads. And the universe is always leading you, guiding you towards the ultimate expression of your being. If you can surrender to existence, if you can allow yourself to be overwhelmed by it, then the transformation happens so easily, without any bloodshed and without any damage. Not even scars are left in you. One changes so silently, so noiselessly, as if nothing has happened. On the outside everything remains the same and on the inside nothing is the same. One can seek truth either out of misery or out of bliss. Both people are seekers, but the first one is going to miss, he will never reach.
A friend has asked: Osho, if creation and the creator are one, and if we ourselves are God, then isn’t the very idea of attaining or seeking God incongruous?
Certainly it is incongruous. There is no greater mistake than someone setting out to search for God. You can only search for what you have lost. What you have never lost, there is no way to search for it. But the search is incongruous only when it has become clear that “I am God”; before that, it is not incongruous. Before that, you will have to search. The search will not give you God; through seeking you will only discover that what you are looking for is nowhere out there—it is where the seeker is. It is the futility of seeking that brings you to God, not the success of seeking. This may be a little difficult to understand, but try to understand it. Here the seeker is the very one who is being sought. What you are looking for is hidden within. Therefore, so long as you keep seeking,…