According to Osho, saintliness descends when you stop fretting about it—trust its timing and rest. On April 1, he jokes, say “tomorrow,” because forcing holiness only feeds the ego. Drop the hurry; even if grace knocked today, few would believe it. Relax, close the door, be simple—then it comes on its own.
Don’t push to be holy; relax and let goodness come by itself when it’s ready.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: First question: Osho, I want to take sannyas; when should I take it? If you ask “when,” you will never be able to take it. Hidden inside “when” is “never.” “When” means you want to postpone, to defer. There is no tomorrow; there is only today. Whatever is to be done, do it now. And if you must postpone, postpone the bad—don’t postpone the good. If you want to be angry, then ask, “When?” If you want to love, don’t ask. If you want to be greedy, then ask, “When?” If you want to give, don’t ask. Do the auspicious instantly. About the auspicious, remember this: if even a moment passes, you may no longer be on that height of awareness where the auspicious could have happened. You are not always in the state where you can love—only sometimes. Sometimes a window opens, and then you wander off again.
Osho, how much longer should I wait? How long will it take? I am eager to meet the Lord, and I can no longer bear this separation.
Krishnananda! For God you need preparedness for infinite waiting. It’s not that you actually have to wait infinitely; if you are ready for infinite waiting, revolution can happen in a single instant. But if you are in a hurry, it will not happen even in eternity. Hurry is an obstacle. The more impatient you are, the longer it will take. Impatience keeps the mind unquiet; patience quiets it. Impatience agitates the mind, raises ripples, storms and tempests. And even if the Divine wants to enter such a mind, how can He? The mind has to be like a silent lake—with not even the slightest ripple. Even the idea of attaining God is nothing but desire. It’s desire in a new form, a new style—old desire in new clothes. Once you lusted for wealth, so you were impatient—let it come quickly, let the lottery hit! You didn’t even have the peace…
Mahesh has the greatest number of temples. It shows one thing, that the East understood very correctly the beauty of destruction. To worship the god of destruction is to accept the fundamental of revolution . (The light your eyes perceive is not real illumination, Osho tells us.) It only reveals objects. It only reveals the superficial, it does not reveal the innermost core of things; the subjectivity remains unrevealed by it. The definition of true light is that which reveals your interiority -- and it is possible only through meditation. There is no other way to reveal your inner world, to make it full of light, to see what it is. And once you have seen your inner world you have seen everybody else's inner world too, because it is the same reality. If you have seen one rose flower you have seen all rose flowers.
Question: Third question: How long to wait? Osho! How long to wait? Krishna stood on that brick. The image of Vitthoba in Pandharpur is linked to this sweet tale. Whether the tale happened or not is not important, but I know this much: this is the state of a devotee. He is so absorbed in devotion, so engrossed in service, so immersed in his act, that even if God comes and stands at the door he will say: stand there; sit for a while in the outer room. I am absorbed in prayer right now. Do not interrupt. Do not interfere. This is one state. And the other state is: you pray, and in between you keep looking back to see whether Vitthoba has come yet. The prayer is broken. You have corrupted the prayer.
Osho, I want samadhi, and quickly. This hurry is becoming a terrible tension. What should I do?
First, samadhi or sambodhi cannot be desired. What can be desired is the world. What cannot be desired—that alone is the divine, that is samadhi. Desire and samadhi have no relationship; they never meet. Desire means: what you are not. Samadhi means: what you are. What you are—how will you desire it? How could you? A woman may want to be a man, but how can a woman want to be a woman? She already is. What you are—how will you want it? What is the point of wanting? Wanting is always for what you are not. And what you are not, you can never be. Therefore desire leads into sorrow, into failure, into melancholy. Every desire breaks, gets shattered. After every desire you fall flat on your face, your mouth full of dust. Every desire brings failure; every desire brings frustration. Nothing is ever attained through desire; it cannot…