What should I do to achieve enlightenment after suffering and seeking?

I have been to see a great number of teachers and I have given up all the pleasures of life. I have fasted, been celibate, and stayed awake nights seeking enlightenment. This way I have suffered a lot and yet I have not become enlightened. What should I do?

So when you are in love and happy you tend to forget. But when there is fighting, hatred, anger, you tend to magnify it. And those cripples -- the moralists, the priests and the politicians -- they are shouting in a chorus 'Look! We told you beforehand but you didn't listen to us. Renounce love! Love brings misery. Renounce this, renounce that -- renounce life!' And if you can go on repeating such things continuously, they have an impact; people become hypnotized. You have become hypnotized. You say you have been fasting, you have been a celibate. What has fasting to do with enlightenment? What has celibacy to do with enlightenment? Irrelevant. All that you have been doing -- 'I have been awake nights seeking enlightenment...' Can't you seek enlightenment in the day? And why should you be awake in the night? Why go against nature? Enlightenment is not something…

Have I come here to enjoy myself or get enlightened? Does one need to suffer to become enlightened? I seem to fluctuate between the two. I'm very confused.

First, become joyous! And Jesus goes on saying it, but nobody listens. He says again and again: Rejoice! Rejoice! I say AGAIN rejoice! You ask: HAVE I COME HERE TO ENJOY MYSELF OR GET ENLIGHTENED; You have come here to get enlightened, as far as you are concerned. As far as I am concerned, you have come here to enjoy. But through enjoyment comes enlightenment, and through enlightenment just suffering. These are all ego trips. You find beautiful names, that's all, but they are all ego trips. Now, you want to become enlightened. Why? For what? From where did you get this idea of enlightenment? And this will create much suffering, because now you will be searching. What to do? Stand on your head to become enlightened? Fast to become enlightened? Go to the mountains to live in a cave? Become a masochist -- to torture yourself? Practise a thousand…

Question: Third question: Osho, how can one be free from suffering? Suffering has not bound you; you are bound to suffering. Suffering is not a chain someone else has put on your hands. Suffering is an ornament you have chosen to wear yourself. Understand this first point clearly. Come, let us reconsider our relationships: a little quarrel, a little love. Who knows whether we are bad or good? Like others, we too have grown in adverse conditions. Come, let us remove the controls on the mind, keep a little silence, and make a few words strike true! Why want only the “good” all the time? Why only flower-strewn paths? Why not have paths with thorns as well? Come, let us play hide-and-seek with our dreams, let a few desires be autumn, a few be spring. Why think only of each other all the time?

Osho, I cannot accept happiness. It seems sorrow appeals to me. Yet I want happiness. When happiness comes, I can’t trust it. When happiness comes it feels like a dream. Please untangle my confusion!

Keep three things in mind. First, wherever in sorrow you have tied your vested interests, recognize them. Do not derive even the slightest profit from suffering; otherwise happiness will never be yours. Do not give sorrow a place in your life—by any excuse, any pretext. Uproot the weeds of suffering from the garden of your life; only then can roses bloom. And be very alert. For centuries sorrow has been taught. Your saints and sages tell you life is suffering. Your priests say you must suffer the fruits of sins from past lives—someone has to bear them. Endless ideas are thrust upon you for one purpose only: to make your suffering seem natural, inevitable. Supports are placed under your sorrow. Remove all supports and suffering collapses. These props you’ve leaned against—kick them away. You are not suffering the karmic fruits of past births—fruits don’t take that long! They are immediate.…

Osho, when should a person celebrate joy? When is celebration appropriate?

The emperor couldn’t make sense of what to do next. Chuang Tzu had said something astounding: with whom he had seen the colors of life—joys and sorrows, ups and downs—who had been like his shadow every moment, should he not even be able to bid her farewell with a song? That would be ungrateful. This is my gratitude, my “ah!”—I am only expressing my thankfulness. If you seek occasions for joy, you will never find them. If you know how to be joyful, every occasion is an occasion; every season a season. Every moment you will discover some device. What a marvelous man Chuang Tzu must have been—at such a moment he found a reason to play the tambourine! One should be such a person. So I say to you: celebrate every moment. “When is celebration appropriate?” Every moment is appropriate. Because only when you are in celebration are you…