According to Osho, your 'hell' is self-made and renewed each moment by unconscious patterns—anger, greed, craving—that you refuse to own. Stop blaming God, fate, society, or the past; take total responsibility. Begin to watch, step by step, how you create suffering. Through clear, continuous watchfulness, the poisons dissolve, tolerance gives way to transformation, and you move beyond misery into freedom.
You keep making your own hell without noticing—start watching how you do it, stop blaming others, and it will fade away.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: OSHO, WHY AM I ALWAYS LIVING IN A KIND OF HELL? IT IS ALWAYS your own creation. Whether you live in heaven or hell, you live in your own creation. Nobody else is responsible. Don't throw the responsibility onto God, fate, KISMET, society, economic structure. Don't throw the responsibility on your past lives, on others. Take the whole responsibility on yourself, because that is the only way to move, to change, to go beyond. The only cause of hell, the only cause of misery is you and nothing else. Except you, nobody can cause it. And it is not the past; you are creating it each moment. A construction worker is sitting astride a beam on the twenty-fifth story of a New York skyscraper which is being built. The lunch hour bell rings and he takes out a box of sandwiches from his lunch pack.
The other day I felt 'hell is myself'. I am in hell. Hell! Do I have to accept hell before I can find bliss? I don 't understand how.
All younger cultures accept the body; old cultures deny body. Old cultures reflect the old minds, old man's mind; younger cultures reflect the young man's mind. For example in India -- it is one of the ancient-most cultures -- body is denied. Your so-called monks, munis, saints, sadhus -- they are anti-body, they are enemies to the body. They have the old man's attitude towards the body. In America -- it is a very young country -- the body is accepted, enjoyed. When a country is young, the body is enjoyed, when the country is old, the body becomes the enemy. It simply shows the old man's attitude. If you understand this simple phenomenon -- that headache makes you aware of the head, illness makes you aware of the body -- then it must be something like illness in your soul which makes you aware of the self. Otherwise a…
Be quick to do good. If you are slow, the mind, delighting in mischief, will catch you.
TURN AWAY FROM MISCHIEF. AGAIN AND AGAIN, TURN AWAY, BEFORE SORROW BEFALLS YOU. SET YOUR HEART ON DOING GOOD. DO IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN, AND YOU WILL BE FILLED WITH JOY. A FOOL IS HAPPY UNTIL HIS MISCHIEF TURNS AGAINST HIM. AND A GOOD MAN MAY SUFFER UNTIL HIS GOODNESS FLOWERS. DO NOT MAKE LIGHT OF YOUR FAILINGS, SAYING, "WHAT ARE THEY TO ME?" A JUG FILLS DROP BY DROP. SO THE FOOL BECOMES BRIMFUL OF FOLLY. DO NOT BELITTLE YOUR VIRTUES, SAYING, "THEY ARE NOTHING." A JUG FILLS DROP BY DROP. SO THE WISE MAN BECOMES BRIMFUL OF VIRTUE. This is half of the story. If you can postpone the bad for tomorrow you will be able to do the good immediately. And you will never repent -- because if you do bad immediately, you will repent tomorrow; if you do good today you will never repent, there…
Mischief is yours. Sorrow is yours. But virtue also is yours. And purity.
YOU ARE THE SOURCE OF ALL PURITY AND ALL IMPURITY. NO ONE PURIFIES ANOTHER. NEVER NEGLECT YOUR WORK FOR ANOTHER'S, HOWEVER GREAT HIS NEED. YOUR WORK IS TO DISCOVER YOUR WORK AND THEN WITH ALL YOUR HEART TO GIVE YOURSELF TO IT. MISCHIEF IS YOURS. SORROW IS YOURS. BUT VIRTUE ALSO IS YOURS. AND PURITY. And what does he mean by purity? Is not virtue purity? No; hence he has to mention it separately. Purity means a state which is beyond both good and bad, misery and bliss -- beyond both. There is a transcendent state; it is peace. Buddha calls it nirvana: cessation of all states, good and bad both, day and night both. One simply IS: that is purity. No experience, nothing is happening, no content, a pure subjectivity, an eternal silence: that is purity. MISCHIEF IS YOURS. SORROW IS YOURS. Virtue is yours, bliss is yours, and…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, IS IT TRUE THAT ONE HAS TO GO THROUGH HELL? This neurotic society exists because individuals are neurotic. This world is ugly because you are ugly! You contribute your ugliness to this world. And everybody goes on pooling ugliness, neuroses, and the world becomes more and more a hell. You need not go anywhere else; this is the only hell there is. But you can come out of it. By understanding how your mind is helping to create this hell, you can withdraw. And a single person withdrawing himself from creating this hell, noncooperating, rebellious, becomes a great source of bringing heaven on the earth, becomes a gateway. You need not go to hell, you are already there. You need to go to heaven now.