Why do I feel that I have failed?

Beloved Osho, why do I feel that I have failed? Is it because I still hanker to be perfect, superhuman, special? Osho, please don't spare me anything!

Surabhi, the answer that I gave to Suraj Prakash is also the answer for you. Only people who want to be somewhere, somebody, have to suffer the sadness of failure. But a person who never wants to be anybody, never wants to be anywhere else, cannot suffer the sadness of failure -- he is always successful, just like me. From my very childhood, my parents, my well-wishers, my neighbors, my teachers, everybody was saying that, "You are going to be utterly worthless, a good-for-nothing." I said, "If that is my destiny, I am perfectly happy. Why should I try to be somebody else? Utterly useless? -- perfectly good! Good for nothing? I don't see anything wrong in it." And they would say, "Can't you ever talk reasonably?" I said, "It is just a question of reason. Whatever is going to happen, I am going to be successful.... Because I have…

Beloved Osho, why is it so hard to accept being a failure? I would rather sacrifice my well-being than admit that I have failed.

I said, "Make it fun. Don't be worried." I had once seen a wrestler ... the village where I lived was famous throughout the area for wrestlers. There were so many gymnasiums in that small village and wrestlers from outside used to come to fight with the wrestlers of the village. Once I had watched a wrestler and had become very friendly with him. His style was very new. First he would dance around. The other wrestler is standing in the center, looking embarrassed, and he would dance. And he had a very beautiful body. He would dance all over the place. And his dance made the other man feel embarrassed and a little afraid also: "If this man is dancing with such joy, there must be some strategy that will defeat me." And then he would suddenly jump to the ground. He was not a very strong man, but…

Osho, this “total surrender” you speak of—the worldly people are never going to accept it. Otherwise a man seems like a sadhu, even a madman, not civilized... If he works with discernment, with a little intelligence, it’s fine; otherwise he’ll be a failure everywhere.

Our trouble is this: we are proceeding on the assumption that success will happen—therefore we fear failure. What I am saying is that we are taking it for granted that success must be. And we never ask how success could exist without failure. Success and failure are the two legs of the same mind. The person who succeeds will also fail—daily. Today he’ll win an election; tomorrow he’ll lose. Today people will praise; tomorrow they’ll condemn. Today he’ll be up; tomorrow down. Lao Tzu used to say: never climb to a place from which you will have to fall. But our desire is to climb precisely to the place from which all have fallen and we alone will not; to climb where no one has ever managed to climb. Our desire is to reach the very place where whoever climbed fell—and there I should not fall: that is what we…

Question: Fourth question: Osho, why is failure inevitable in the world? Everyone thinks others are erring, others are at fault; I am not. And the greatest fault is precisely this. The greatest fault is: “I am the exception.” Here no one is an exception. Here all loves are false, all attachments are false. I say this without exception—all. Don’t think I am saying it to others and not to you; that you are of a different order. No one is of a different order. In this world, whatever we construct is false. What he—the divine—has made is true; what we have made is false. Connect with what he has made and the world bids farewell. Connect with him and failure comes to an end—then there is only success. With him there is never a defeat. Alone, there is nothing but defeat.

Osho, what does a successful life mean? First of all, if there is life, it is successful. If there is no life, it is a failure. And there is no life. We are alive, but there is no life. To be merely alive is one thing—breath goes on, we eat, we sleep, we get up—so we are alive, not dead. But mere aliveness is not enough for life. Life means: all the energies of being alive are dedicated to a direction from where music arises, from where love arises, from where bliss arises, from where peace arises.

When he would not agree, they said, “Ask for something that benefits others.” He said, “I won’t ask even that, because the idea that others are benefitted by me can bring ego. I will not ask that. But if you insist, do something such that, even if something happens through me, I never come to know that it has happened through me.” They asked, “What should we do?” He said, “Arrange it so that wherever I pass, my shadow that falls behind me—if it can benefit someone, let it do so. If my shadow falls on a sick person, let him be healed; if it falls on a withered plant, let it turn green. But let me never know that it happened through me. Because I want nothing through me; I want everything through God.” So the story says Augustine’s shadow received the boon. Wherever Augustine’s shadow fell, flowers blossomed.…