According to Osho, turning inwards is not a movement or effort but the simple cessation of chasing desires. When the futility of seeking and dreaming is clearly seen, striving drops, the outward journey ends, and you discover you are already here. In this uncluttered, desireless awareness, reality, God, suchness, Yatha Bhutam, is revealed as ever-present. Nothing comes or goes; you simply recognize what is.
Stop chasing and, when the chasing ends, you notice you were already home.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is turning inwards?
TURNING INWARDS is not a turning at all. Going inwards is not a going at all. Turning inwards simply means that you have been running after this desire and that, and you have been running and running and you have been coming again and again to frustration. That each desire brings misery, that there is no fulfillment through desire. That you never reach anywhere, that contentment is impossible. Seeing this truth, that running after desires takes you nowhere, you stop. Not that you make any effort to stop. If you make any effort to stop it is again running, in a subtle way. You are still desiring -- maybe now it is desirelessness that you desire. If you are making an effort to go in, you are still going out. Any effort can only take you out, outwards. All journeys are outward journeys, there is no inward journey. How can…
[A sannyasin asks what to do to help herself in the west. She likes the kundalini meditation most.] Then continue Kundalini, but make it regular; never miss it even for a single day. If you are traveling and it is not possible, then too for one hour just sit silently and do it inside in fantasy, and the same will be the result. Because as far as the result is concerned, whether you do it physically or just mentally, it is the same. [A sannyasin says: When you gave me the mala you told me, "From this moment you are in the service of God." I want to know what that means -- to be in the service of God.] That simply means to live a life of love. Let love become the source of all your acts.
Osho, yesterday you said that when anger is watched consciously, it dissolves. But why is it that when sexual desire arises, even in awareness its intensity persists? Why is it so?
There is no entanglement in the breath. If you try to practice on anger… Anger is not happening every moment; it happens sometimes. And when it happens, it happens with such intensity that you are already going deep into it; so much is at stake in those moments that you may think, “We will look into awareness later; first let’s settle this now.” Lust is very deep, because existence has made it so deep; life depends on it. If lust were so easy that you decided and were freed, perhaps you would not even have been born—because many before you would have become free, and the possibility of your being would have been almost nil. But your parents, and their parents, did not become free; therefore you are. You too will not get free so easily, because your children are also to be—they are waiting: “Do not run away midway.”…
A second delightful point — which does not occur to us — is this: if, at some moment, a person is not seeking anything and is not doing anything, still he will be somewhere. He will be — even if he neither seeks nor does nor thinks. Where will he be? All doors to be other than oneself are closed. He is not doing anything in which to get entangled, he is not thinking anything in which to get trapped, he is not seeking anything by which he might be carried away. Not seeking, not thinking, not doing — non-doing, non-seeking, non-thinking. Where will he be? Where can he go? He will not be annihilated. He will still be. Then he will be exactly where he is. There is no way left for him — the outer-going doors are gone. All these doors lead outward.
It is asked, “You say desire is outward-going.”
All desires are outward-going; desire as such moves outward. There is no desire that takes you within. Desire always carries you out. So naturally the question arises: then how are we to go within? Because if there is no desire to go within, why would we even attempt it? A very significant question: “Then what is it that leads one on the inner journey?” The failure of craving, the collapse of desire, the defeat of the world. There is no craving to go within; when all cravings are defeated, you suddenly begin to slip inward. When all cravings fail, you stop going out; going out has become futile. And then, suddenly, you are pulled within. Understand this distinction: no one “goes” within. You go outward; you can go outward. Within, you are drawn. Therefore reaching within is grace. Just do not be filled with the outside, and you will be…