According to Osho, heaven and hell are not locations in the cosmos but psychological states. Hell is the mind in turmoil—neurotic, split, meaningless, dark—self-created chaos. Heaven are brief, cooling moments of relaxation, love, friendship, beauty, and sensitivity to existence. Religions mislabel them as places to exploit fear and hope; real transformation is inner, by changing your consciousness here and now.
Both heaven and hell happen inside your mind—fear and chaos feel like hell; calm, love, and beauty feel like heaven.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, the scientists went into space and reached different planets, but they are not yet able to locate heaven and hell. Could you tell me, where is heaven and where is hell?
They will never locate heaven and hell anywhere. They are fictions, lies told to humanity to keep it enslaved, to console it in its suffering and torture, to prevent it from any revolution that could change the whole scene on the earth. But in a certain sense, those words are significant. They are usable but only for your psychology, not for your geography. And you know perfectly well where they are. Everybody knows moments when he is in hell and moments when he is in heaven. These are states of the mind. Most of the time you are in hell. Once in a while, on the weekend, perhaps you have a little bit of heaven too. That little bit of heaven is dangerous. It keeps you in hell, hoping for that little bit of heaven: "Tomorrow it will be coming. So it is only a question of somehow passing today,…
Does hell really exist?
Praying to Christ -- and for seven days he had not slept, thinking the whole night, thinking the whole day -- he fell asleep before the statue of Christ and he had a dream. In the dream he saw a train ready to leave for heaven. He jumped in. He said, "This is perfectly right. Why shouldn't I go there and see with my own eyes? If I see Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Tamburlaine, in heaven, then the question is solved. Or if I see Socrates, who did not believe in God but was one of the most virtuous of men, if I see Gautama the Buddha, who did not believe in God but was one of the most godly persons who ever walked on the earth, then the question is solved." He rushed into the train and the train left. He reached heaven. He was a little surprised, puzzled,…
Is there really a hell?
Heaven and hell are only two sides of your mind. The religions that were born outside India have remained with these two ideas, heaven and hell. They could not rise above them. Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- all the three religions born outside India, have no idea of something transcendental. In India we have a third word MOKSHA, NIRVANA. Hell is a wrong psychology, ill, abnormal, neurotic, pathological; heaven is a right psychology, normal, healthy. But there is a beyond where you are no more a mind, when both sides of the mind have been dropped, where you are a no-mind, where you are neither negative nor positive, where you are neither dark nor light, where you are neither this nor that -- where you are just a witness to all, to misery and bliss, to all, just a witness, where you are not identified with either misery OR bliss, where…
Osho, what is hell? Is there really such a place?
If you have intelligence, awareness, even in hell you can manage to air-condition it. That's what I am doing. Can't you see the hell all around? But somehow I have got a few people banded together and we are trying to create a small heaven of our own. What to do? People have decided to live in hell, they are not ready to listen, then the only wise choice is: we can create our own heaven. And if we can create our own heaven, that will become an example, a model, that this way also one can live. When people come for the first time to our commune they are surprised. Just the other day a young priest wrote a letter to me, a Catholic priest, who now has become interested in me, and wants to get married, and wants to get rid of the Catholic church. He has written…
What is your idea of heaven?
There is no heaven and there is no hell. They are not geographical, they are part of your psychology. They are psychological. To live a life of spontaneity, truth, love and beauty is to live in heaven. To live a life of hypocrisy, lies and compromises, to live according to others, is to live in hell. To live in freedom is heaven, and to live in bondage is hell. You can decorate your prison cell beautifully, but that makes no difference, it is still a prison cell. And that's what people have been doing, they go on decorating their prison cell. They give it beautiful names, they go on painting it, putting new pictures on the walls, arranging the furniture in new ways, purchasing more and more things -- but they live in prisons. Your marriage is a prison, your church is a prison, your nationality is a prison. How…