He jokes that his only plan is to stay at his friend’s house, reminding us not to overthink the future.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, this is my final question, and I expect a specific answer: after coming to India, what is your plan now? Where will you stay, and what will your way of working be?
You should ask this question to Suraj Prakash, in whose house I am staying. I’m a rather stubborn kind of man. Once I make up my mind, I won’t leave this house at all. Let Suraj Prakash find himself a new house.
Beloved Osho, what do you feel the next phase of your work will be, once you have found a stable residence, and what do you see your sannyasins doing?
That's really a problem -- an unanswerable one too, because I never think of tomorrow, and I don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. I leave it up to tomorrow! I don't burden myself too much. Today is enough unto itself. Tomorrow I will be there, the problems will be there, the challenges will be there; and I will be available to those challenges, to those problems. My whole life I have lived this way -- without any predecision, without any commitment for the future, without any promise to myself or to anybody else for the next moment. And that has given me the most precious gift of life. I have become attuned with existence; knowing not where I am going, I am going joyously. One thing I know: existence has no goal, and as part of existence I cannot have any goal. The moment you have a goal,…
Osho, you say: stay where you are; do what you are doing. Then why do you keep running here and there?
The question is important. Yes, I do say: stay where you are; do what you are doing. But I am nowhere, and I have nothing to do. So I go on running here and there. Because if I sit idle you will be annoyed: “What are you doing, Maharaj!” I have no house, no land, not even an inch of space to stand on. So I keep moving about. For a little while I persuade myself, “This is my home.” In this way, across the whole earth, many homes are mine. In this way, across the whole earth, many countries are mine. What do you intend—that I should drive the sunlight out altogether? No, I will soon be off here and there again. After all, others too have their work to do. And you also have your work to do. If I stay here for long it won’t be right;…
Osho, accept my tears! I am leaving your city. How I am leaving—only you can know. My life was nothing but sorrow. I cannot imagine when and how it happened that fountains of joy are bursting forth within and without! You have filled my begging bowl with your happiness. Yet there is a deep sadness in my heart, and at the thought of leaving my breath seems to stop. You are present every moment in every fiber of my being. Give me strength that, until your call comes, I may live away from you.
You said, “You are present in every pore of my being. Give me strength that until your call comes, I may remain away from you.” But the call has already been given. There is no need now to remain far. Even distance will not feel like distance. There is one kind of nearness of the body—and it can be that you sit close to someone, bodies touching, and yet you are thousands of miles apart. And it can also be that there are thousands of miles between you and yet there is no gap at all. Life is such a mystery; it is not solved by straight arithmetic. Lovers are close even across thousands of miles; and those with bodies pressed together, if they are not in love, remain far. Love is nearness. And the love has been born in you. So how far can you be? Nearness will remain.…
Beloved Osho, what did you do in those years immediately after your enlightenment?
It is a difficult question. The first thing was that a great silence, almost unbreakable, followed the experience, as if the mind had stopped functioning. There was nothing to do about it -- except to watch. It was difficult for my family, my friends. Obviously, they thought I had gone mad. My family has always been worried about me, concerned that I'm not following the well-trodden path and I am moving into dangerous experiments; the danger of going mad was easily conceivable. And when I stopped speaking -- it would be better to say that the speaking stopped itself, I was not a partner to it -- people would ask questions and I would not even be able to give answers to simple things. For almost two years, inside it was a tremendous rejoicing. Outside, it became a trouble. The people who thought they were trying to help me were…