According to Osho, to become alive you must stop borrowing thoughts and quiet the restless mind until it is empty, then simply see. In silent, thought-free seeing (darshan), truth reveals itself and becomes your living path. Discard scriptures and secondhand beliefs, remove every barrier, open inwardly - direct vision, not thinking, awakens you and transforms your life.
Stop thinking other people’s thoughts, become very quiet inside, and just look; then real life shows itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
I gather from your words that I am dead. What should I do to become alive?
My friend, if you think so only because of my words it is of no value. Forget what I have said and what others have said and then look again. You have to see it yourself. That vision itself will become a path leading you to life. Then you won't have to ask, "What should I do to become alive?" He who comes to realize that he is dead, that his existence and his personality have been dead all along, will at the same time begin to see that which is not dead. But in order for you to see this your mental restlessness must be cast off. Seeing, darshan, is only possible when the mind is quiet, empty, free of passion. At present there are only thoughts. There is no seeing, no DARSHAN Thinking what I have said to you7 is correct is also a thought in itself. This…
Question: Second question: Osho! I can’t make any sense of whether I’m alive or not! You will have to drop all the logic you have collected—borrowed and stale. You will have to rely on your own intelligence. Only your own intelligence can liberate you. No one else’s truth can set you free. Only your own intelligence can give you life. And this crowd all around—these are all dead. It is a crowd of corpses. Seeing them, don’t conclude, “After all, there are so many; they too are alive like me, so I must be alive.” That would be mere logic, empty logic, of no value. In Jesus’ life there is a mention: early one morning he came to the lake and placed his hand on a fisherman’s shoulder. The man had just cast his net.
Osho, how can I become a light unto myself?
Shraddho Yannis, THESE WERE THE LAST WORDS of Gautam the Buddha, his parting message to his disciples: "Be a light unto yourself." But when he says, "Be a light unto yourself," he does not mean become a light unto yourself. There is a great difference between being and becoming. Becoming is a process, being is a discovery. The seed only appears to become the tree, that is an appearance. The seed already had the tree within itself, it was its very being. The seed does not become the flowers. The flowers were there unmanifest, now they are manifest. It is not a question of becoming, otherwise a pebble could become a flower. But that doesn't happen. A rock cannot become a rose; that doesn't happen because the rock has no potential for being a rose. The seed simply discovers itself through dying into the soil: dropping its outer shell, it…
Beloved Osho, why such an enormous fear of allowing myself to be really alive?
The Jews have been tortured for two thousand years because they crucified Jesus, and now this is a crucifixion for all the Jews -- Israel. They have poured their money into it, they have come from faraway lands, they have been working hard, because it is a desert; and besides there is continuous harassment from the Mohammedans who are not going to accept that Israel is not theirs. On their maps they still show Palestine, not Israel. The trouble has increased more and more just now, in a way in which the Jews were not even aware would happen. There are outside enemies all around, and now there are inside enemies. Firstly, the Mohammedans who have been living for centuries in the land are still there; they function as informers to the Mohammedans, because their devotion is to Mohammedanism. And now something new, inconceivable is happening... because some Jews have…
Beloved Osho, would you talk some more on the art of how to be fully alive?
A meditator neither bothers about the past that is gone, nor bothers about the future that has not come yet. He is focused in the present, and whatever he has, he enjoys it to its full. He squeezes the juice of the present moment to its maximum. Naturally, his life is not the life of a beggar. He is never asking for more, although he is living at the maximum with totality and intensity. Otherwise, you have to be satisfied. That's what your religions teach you -- to be satisfied with little. Satisfaction and contentment have been raised to great values. They are simply opium to the people so that you can at least tolerate the suffering that surrounds you and the misery in which you are drowning continuously. A man is playing golf, and he hits his ball into the woods. He goes to retrieve it and comes upon…