Keep your needs small and real, not endless wants, so you feel rich and have energy for better living and inner growth.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you say that a man’s needs are very few. But if man produces only as much as is needed, the building of civilization and prosperity will become impossible. And you also say that only in prosperity does religion arise. Then what should man do?
Consider the old paintings: Ajanta, Ellora, the Taj Mahal—they were born from a different state of mind. If you look at the Taj Mahal, even in agitation, after a while you will find the inside turning calm. Then there is modern painting—Picasso. If you look at such a painting for a while, you will feel you are going mad. You cannot gaze at it long; if you fix your eyes on it, you are in trouble—because the painting is only restlessness, derangement, tension, turmoil. When civilization is diseased, culture too becomes diseased—because culture is fragrance. When the flower is sick, its scent is no longer a perfume; it becomes a stench. Civilization is the flower; culture is its fragrance. But when the flower itself is rotten, where can fragrance be? Therefore in every direction culture has also fallen ill. No, culture will arise only when people are so fulfilled that…
A friend has asked: Osho, how will the development of material civilization harmonize with a life aligned to Tao’s spontaneous nature? Won’t human society have to return to a primitive state?
What is there to fear? Even if we had to return, what is there to fear? What harm would there be? What have we attained anyway? We have only lost; we have not gained anything. So first, there is no need to be afraid of the so‑called primitive. Because what we call civilization today—what is it except a great disease? Still, I do not believe that we will have to go back. In existence, there is no going back. But even if we did—no harm. Because you have nothing that could be lost. You have nothing. Your situation is like a naked man taking a bath and wondering, “Where will I wring my clothes? Where will I dry them?” What is there to wring, what is there to dry? What could be lost? What have you gained? There is noise, uproar all around—so it looks as if something is being…
Some say the prosperity of mankind is increasing by leaps and bounds. God save us from this kind of prosperity! This is not prosperity, it is just a cover-up for our poverty for our weaknesses. Prosperity and power are ways to escape from one's self. It fills my heart with sorrow and pain when I see the inner poverty and anguish that lies beneath the mantle of this so-called prosperity. Anyone who gives this the slightest thought will easily realize that material affluence is only a way to conceal inner poverty. Those who suffer from a sense of inferiority are the ones who hanker after position and wealth. To escape from his inner being, form what he really is, a man tries to project another being, another personality on the outside. What a man pretends to be outwardly is generally the opposite of what he is really like.
A friend has asked: Osho, if a person feels he is adequately meeting his needs, does he also need to be discontent?
In this regard, two or three things must be understood. First, a person who thinks his needs are being met stops the process of growth—his own and others’. One who believes that what he has is sufficient stops moving forward. It may be that he himself does not suffer much from this, but the society of which he is a part certainly does. And he himself will also be harmed. Ordinarily we have been taught to arrest our needs at some point and to assume they are fulfilled. We have gone on defining the religious person as one who reduces his needs and becomes content. The truth is quite the opposite. In my view, the religious person is of a different kind altogether. I call religious the person whose needs begin to touch the sky beyond the earth. I call religious the one whose needs rise above the body and…
Osho, you often say that material prosperity is the foundation of spiritual growth; but in your last discourse on non-possession you said that the fewer things one has, the less enslaved one is, and the more things one has, the more enslaved one becomes. Please clarify this fundamental paradox between prosperity and non-possession, and also explain how more things make a person more enslaved. And how does the possessor become possessed?
Material prosperity is the foundation of spiritual life, but a building is not raised by the foundation alone. It can happen that the foundation is there and the house is never built. A house never exists without a foundation, but a foundation can exist without a house. One may lay the footings and leave them filled in—then there will be a foundation, not a building. But wherever there is a building, it cannot be without a foundation. Prosperity is the base of detachment. Without becoming prosperous, no one ever really discovers that prosperity is futile. Without having wealth, no one ever realizes that nothing essential is gained by wealth. The greatest gift of wealth is not wealth—it is the breaking of the illusion about wealth; it is disillusionment. If wealth is never attained, its futility is never known. The poor, the needy, the destitute find it very hard to be…