According to Osho, mahatmas gain weight because, after renouncing the world, they become doubly anxious and joyless, secretly doubting their choice. With no work, play, or ordinary outlets left, taste becomes their last remaining pleasure, so they overeat. Their indulgent bodies betray the hypocrisy of preaching that the world and the body are illusions while clinging to the consolation of food.
They give up life’s joys, feel miserable and unsure, and end up eating for comfort—so they get fat.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
But you have asked: why then do mahatmas get fat?
There isn’t much difference between your mahatmas and your women. That’s why they fit together so well. Your mahatmas live by the support of your women. And your women have no other place to go, because everywhere else you are suspicious; only of the mahatmas you are not suspicious. A mahatma is a mahatma, after all. So you let your women go there. You won’t let them go to musicians, to dancers, to poets; you have left only one place—temples, mahatmas. Because you think the mahatma is an accomplished person, calling the world maya. So between your women and your mahatmas there is a rapport, a conspiracy. It is the women who keep your so‑called mahatmas alive and running. And your mahatmas are unhappy and your women are unhappy. And among the unhappy, sympathy is born. The unhappy rest their heads on each other’s shoulders and weep. Three friends were…
Osho, I am worn out from practicing religion—vows, fasts, yama and niyama—I’ve tried them all and found nothing. What should I do now? I have come to your refuge to ask this.
So sometimes fasting is useful. But fasting is not a way of life. Otherwise you are choosing slow suicide; you begin enjoying torturing yourself; you turn perverse and violent toward yourself. Such fasting is abuse—self-abuse—and no one can protect you from it. And your mute body already suffers so much at your hands. Do not imagine this abuse will bring you religion. Yes, the body will dry and wither—but do not fall into the delusion that the lotus of the soul blooms because the body withers. There is no necessary connection. So all that you did—yamas and niyamas, vows and fasts—each has its own value in its own place. But when you take them as synonyms for religion, Dayanand, you go astray. They are not synonyms. Religion has only one synonym—meditation. Mahavira used an exact word for it: samayik. The Jains call the soul “samay”—the timeless time. Samayik means: abiding…
Osho, once sannyas was crowned with the glory of life. Today it has become synonymous with death. How did sannyas become synonymous with death? Please explain.
Narendra! Sannyas has always been life, celebration—but the sannyas of Buddha, Krishna, Mahavira, Kabir. Followers, the crowd of the blind who trail behind, they turn everything upside down. There is a psychological reason behind that inversion; if you understand it, everything will become clear. Mahavira, for instance, fasted—he fasted a great deal. It is said that in the long twelve years of austerity he took food only three hundred and sixty-five days—meaning one year in all. On average he fasted eleven days, then ate on the twelfth: eleven days fast, one day food. Naturally people saw that by fasting and fasting and fasting, one day Mahavira attained the supreme light. People can only see the outside. Who has an eye to look into Mahavira’s within? Whoever can look into Mahavira’s within has himself become a Mahavira. He has no need then to peep into Mahavira; if he can look within…
Osho, many mahatmas, sadhus and monks steal your words and speak as if they were their own. Isn’t it necessary to stop them in time?
But in my ashram, if one is not creative, there is no place for him. And your so-called mahatmas and munis—what creativity do they have? I tell them: surely a place can be made here, but here you will have to do something. Here you cannot sit and take service. Some sannyasins make clothes, some make furniture, some make shoes, some make other things. What can you do? They say, “We can’t do anything—because we have been sannyasins for thirty or forty years; we have done nothing. We know only one thing—taking service.” What will I do with them here? They say, “We will sit, meditate, do bhajan-kirtan.” Just sitting and bhajan-kirtan will not do anything. Here you have to live life. Jain munis write, news comes that they can come, leaving everything—and not a few but in large numbers—because they are fed up, bored. But then, “Where shall we…
Osho, is it possible that by attaining your state of consciousness a person could remain perfectly, physically healthy? Or is that not possible—that such is the law of Tao? Because I have heard that all true masters have been physically unwell.
Ramakrishna said, “Sharada, you do not listen. The day you bring the plate and I turn over in bed to the other side and do not look at your plate, understand that only three days of my life remain.” Sharada thought he was joking. But that is exactly what happened. One day Sharada entered his room with the food. Ramakrishna neither rose from the bed nor took any interest; instead, he turned his face toward the wall. The plate slipped from Sharada’s hand. She remembered what Ramakrishna had said years before. Ramakrishna said, “Whether the plate falls or not, nothing will change now. I am here only three more days. And today I will tell you—because you used to ask again and again and I kept silent—today I tell you that all my bonds with the body have broken. Somehow I have been holding on to a tiny bond—the bond…