According to Osho, divine qualities are not rarer than demonic ones; existence is precisely balanced. The apparent scarcity of the divine reflects our own inner state: we project our ‘demonic endowment’ and fail to recognize devas unless a spark of divinity awakens within. As awareness matures into witnessing, perception clears and one sees good and evil as equal, complementary forces sustaining life.
They only seem rare because we project our inside onto the world—brighten within, and you’ll notice more goodness, then the balance of both sides.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, in this chapter of the Gita the qualities of the divine and the demonic are described. The earth seems packed with asuras, while a deva appears only once in millions. Why is this so?
There is an indispensable balance in life. As much evil as there is here, there is that much good. As much darkness, that much light. As much life, that much death. Neither can be more or less. Both are needed in equal measure, only then does life move. They are the two wheels of the cart. The world is moving, has moved, will go on moving—because its two wheels are equal. Yet the question is meaningful. Ordinarily it does look as if the earth is full of demons; where are the devas? Try to understand. We see only what we are. If the earth appears full of asuras, that is a vision of our own demonic tendency. We cannot even recognize a deva. He may appear, he may be present, yet we will not recognize him. Unless a little glimpse of divinity has been kindled within us, no relationship is…
Osho, in the Gita the signs or qualities of one who has attained the divine wealth are described. By cultivating them one by one, does divinity become available? Or, when divinity is attained, do these qualities come of themselves like flowers?
The first is easy to see as wrong. The second deceives because it is “right,” yet still wrong. What does it matter whether you are beautiful or not? What matters is that you think yourself beautiful. If an intelligent man struts that he is intelligent, it is as sinful as a fool strutting that he is intelligent. The real issue is the strutting—the stiffening of the ego. There is another danger: he who is not intelligent but thinks he is may one day awaken; but the truly intelligent who thinks he is intelligent is hard to awaken—you cannot even prove him wrong. The real danger is to take oneself to be somebody and stiffen in it. The demonic mind always considers itself somebody—whether it is or not. Ravana’s ego was not empty vanity; it was pride—there was substance to him, a great scholar. His stiffening was not baseless; thus it…
In the beginning it is very difficult to understand that darkness can also be divine. But it has to be because only God exists, so whatsoever is, is divine. Light is divine, so is darkness; white is divine, so is blackness; life is divine, so is death. It is difficult to accept because for centuries we have been taught this dichotomy: that light is good and dark is bad, white has some nobility about it and black is evil. But that is sheer stupidity. You can't divide life in that way -- it is all one. The day turns into night, the night turns into day; the young person becomes old, the child becomes a young man; life turns into death and death opens the door for a new birth. Things are not separate; all divisions are utilitarian, artificial, arbitrary. Life is an undivided whole.
Osho, you said... then you will find that the devotee is God. The question arises: if one devotee prefers to be God and another wants to remain only a devotee, then which of the two is superior?
The one who wants to be God will not be able to be. And the one who wants to remain a devotee will become God. The question of superior or inferior does not arise, because only one of the two will happen. The one who does not want to be will be. The one who wants to be will be deprived. That very wanting is of the ego. But the matter is a little delicate. Sometimes humility too belongs to the ego. Beware that your humility may not be of the ego. Perhaps you are saying, “No, I don’t want to be,” because you know that those who refuse are the ones who attain. Then you are clever. Then your humility is adulterous. Your humility is not pure, not sacred, not virginal—it is like a prostitute. The one who wants to be God, whose ego says, “I must become God,”…
I am not saying that the mind has to be destroyed; it has only to be put aside so when you need to you can use it. It is like your car parked in the garage: when you want to use it you can take it out of the garage, then you are the master. But ordinarily the situation has become just the reverse: the car insists on not going into the garage. The car says "I am not going to stop," the car says "You have to run with me," and it goes on running twenty-four hours a day. Even while you are asleep the mind goes on and on. Ordinarily once it starts in childhood it never stops before death, unless somebody starts moving into meditation. Those are the very fortunate few people who enter into meditation.