According to Osho, do not choose; integrate. Action, knowledge/awareness, and love/devotion are inseparable dimensions of your being, the real trinity—the three faces of God within you. Act with love and awareness; love with awareness; let awareness be creative and participatory. Choosing one cripples growth; only wholeness transforms. Let these three mix, meet, and merge into one living path.
Use your head, heart, and hands together—think wisely, love deeply, and act creatively at the same time.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What should I do? -- follow the path of action, the path of knowledge, or the path of devotion?
Follow all three. Act with love and awareness. Love with awareness, and let your love be creative. Bring awareness not against love, but full of the juice of love. And let your awareness participate in existence, let it be creative. These three are part of your being. This is the real trinity. And if you avoid one then something in you will be denied and will remain stuck. And remember that you can grow only as a total being. If you want to come to me you can come only if your whole being comes here. Your one hand cannot come, your one leg cannot come. I have heard about a villager. He went to the capital city of his country for the first time and he asked the taxi-driver to take him to a certain place. Now it was a big place. The taxi-driver asked, "Which part?" And the…
Osho, you always say that love is God. What is the relationship between love and God?
You’ve seen it: sometimes on a lotus leaf two dewdrops roll together and become one, and yet a drop remains a drop. One drop has formed in place of two; nothing vast has occurred. The boundary grows a little. You were a little half-and-half; meeting the beloved you become a little more whole. You were alone; meeting the beloved you are no longer alone. The path of love is the path of prayer. See: among Hindus, the images are made of Sita and Ram together, of Radha and Krishna, of Shiva and Parvati. These images are symbols—symbols that the love which happens between human and human is to be expanded, made so vast that it happens between man and the Infinite. On the path of meditation this is not needed. That is why Mahavira stands alone, that is why the Buddha sits alone. On the path of meditation the other…
Osho, after listening to you I experience slackness and sadness in practical life. But when you speak on love and devotion, on joy and celebration, my mind blossoms and fills with delight. Kindly show me my path.
You see—no second Mahavira, no second Krishna, no second Rama. Once one comes, he never appears again on the stage. Remember this. You too are new. Learn from everyone; accept your own. Listen to all; let the final decision come from the heart. So if talk of renunciation brings you slackness and sadness; your heart’s flower does not open but withers; the bud does not become a flower but, on the contrary, the flower closes its petals—as many flowers do at dusk when the sun sets—then understand: this is not your sun of truth. It may be someone else’s truth, because some flowers bloom only when the sun sets—night-blooming jasmine is like that. It may be hers; it is not for you. Then your path is perfectly clear. Wherever you glimpse joy, go there with courage. I am not saying you will find joy there every time. Many times you…
Beloved Osho, I took sannyas from swami shivanand of rishikesh after reading his book brahmacharya and other books of his.
AFTER SOME YEARS, I WAS ATTRACTED TO SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI AND THEREAFTER TO SRI AUROBINDO DUE TO HIS INTEGRAL APPROACH TO THE DIVINE. FROM 1959 ONWARDS I WAS DOING MEDITATION ON THE LINES INDICATED BY SRI AUROBINDO AND THE MOTHER. THEREAFTER J. KRISHNAMURTI'S APPROACH ATTRACTED ME, NOW YOURS. I ENJOY AND FEEL HAPPY WHENEVER I READ SRI AUROBINDO'S WORKS, SINCE HE EMPHASIZES LIVING A FULL LIFE AND REALIZATION OF INTEGRAL DIVINE AND GIVES MUCH EMPHASIS TO PHYSICAL TRANSFORMATION. YOU ALSO EMPHASIZE NOT TO NEGATE LIFE BUT TO LIVE FULLY, AND HAVE GIVEN A NEW MEANING TO SANNYAS. HENCE I AM HERE TO EMBRACE THIS ALSO. I WONDER WHETHER I AM ON THE RIGHT PATH OR DRIFTING? WHAT IS THIS MULTIFARIOUS ATTRACTION IN ME? COULD YOU HELP ME WITH A RIGHT PATH IF I AM DRIFTING? But the questioner seems to be too much in the head: then he became interested…
A friend has asked, Osho, is it not possible to develop intelligence and feeling together? Can a healthy person not practice meditation and devotion at the same time? A person is whole—intelligence, feeling, and action—then why should the path of practice be one-sided?
A person is indeed whole—but that person is an ideal. That is not you who are already whole. When a person’s wholeness is revealed, attained, then everything in them becomes complete. Their intelligence is as sharp as their feeling is deep. Their action, their intelligence, their heart, all come together—like a threefold confluence. But that is the final goal. You are not yet like that. You have a journey to make. So you will only be able to travel from the side toward which you lean more, the dimension for which you have greater interest and inclination. Right now you are fragmented, incomplete. One person has abundant feeling but little intelligence. Another is skilled and attached to action, with little intelligence or feeling by comparison. Another has deep intelligence but a barren heart and no bent for action. In this way we are incomplete, each in our own way. Wholeness…