Why do we not see the immediate fruit of every action?

A friend has asked—Osho; and not just one, many friends, some twenty friends have asked the same question—they have asked: you said that the fruit of every action is received immediately. If the fruit of every action is received immediately, then why is one person born blind, one poor, and another rich? If the fruit is immediate, then why do differences appear across births?

Understand the reason for this difference. The fruit is indeed immediate, and yet differences appear. They appear because the accumulated sum of those immediately received fruits is what you are. That sum is not in the hands of some God; the sum is you. Whatever you do in one life, you are its result. You were angry a thousand times in one life; you cannot be the same as someone who was not angry even once. A thousand times you were angry, a thousand times you received the fruit. The one who never got angry never received that fruit even once. You carry a thousand blows from anger and from receiving its fruit. Your personality has become filled with a thousand wounds. Granted, those wounds have dried; but their marks will remain. Those marks are called samskaras. We act, and the fruit is received immediately. But the samskara remains. It…

Is the fruit his alone? No—you don’t even understand what “fruit” means! The very meaning of fruit is this—the fruit is the burning. Here, this… this… the cause was your putting your hand in; the effect was your hand getting burned. But when this incident occurred, its dry samskaras will be left behind, because the incident happened to you. And if it didn’t happen to you, your hand is not burned. There is only the news that this person put his hand in—no more than that. This I call conditioning, I call it samskara; I don’t call it the fruit. The fruit was the burning that you have already unde

So each of us carries along only the reports of having undergone our respective fruits. And those reports do affect us. They affect us in the sense that they suggest to us the path of least resistance. A man who has committed murder repeatedly over the last ten lives has a strong likelihood of committing murder in this one too. The reason is that his tendency, his feeling, his samskara of killing, cultivated over ten births, has kept growing deeper. And to him that seems the simplest: if there’s a quarrel with someone, the first thing that occurs is, “Kill him.” No other option occurs to him. This is the nearest path; a dry groove has been etched there—water catches it and flows.

Karma, past actions, bear fruits only when we have a feeling of my-ness for our bodies. It is never desirable to have a feeling of myself for the body. Thus, by giving up the feeling of my-ness for the body one gives up the fruits of past actions.

THIS FALLACY THAT THE BODY IS MYSELF IS THE CAUSE OF CREATING IN THE IMAGINATION THE IDEA OF PAST ACTIONS. BUT HOW COULD SOMETHING BE TRUE THAT IS IMPOSED OR IMAGINED ABOUT A FALLACY? FROM WHERE CAN A THING BE BORN WHICH IS NOT REAL IN THE FIRST PLACE? WHAT HAS NOT BEEN BORN, HOW CAN IT BE DESTROYED? HOW CAN A THING THAT IS UNREAL HAVE PAST ACTIONS? THE MY-NESS WITH THE BODY IS THE RESULT OF OUR IGNORANCE AND IT IS DESTROYED TOTALLY BY ENLIGHTENMENT. THEN HOW DOES THE BODY REMAIN? IT IS TO SATISFY THIS DOUBT OF THE IGNORANT THAT THE SCRIPTURES HAVE OUTWARDLY ATTRIBUTED THE CONTINUANCE OF THE BODY TO PAST ACTIONS. This is a very difficult matter. And what I was saying to you two or three days ago would have complicated the matter even more for you. I said to you that Buddha has…

Question: OSHO, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE LAW OF KARMA? Now I will have to explain to you -- it is an Oregonian story. If I am not mistaken, Senator Fatfield had gone to visit his constituency. This particular place that he was visiting was a reservation for Red Indians. He used to go there only once in five years, just when the election was coming closer. The Red Indians had become perfectly aware that he only comes once every five years, promises great things and then disappears; and those things never happen. Again he appeared after five years, and again the same game. Red Indians are simple people.... Their chief gathered them all into one place that used to serve as their common meeting place. Senator Fatfield started the same promises: "Forgive me for last time.

You have asked a question: we experience bliss for a short while, and then it disappears. How can that bliss remain for longer?

So an ordinary person is sometimes in hell, sometimes in heaven. A very bad person mostly lives in hell. The utterly bad person lives in hell all the time. A good person begins to live in heaven. A very good person lives more and more in heaven. The utterly good person lives wholly in heaven. One who is free of both good and bad begins to live in liberation. To live in liberation means: it is not a place. You will not find it in space by searching: “Here is heaven, here is hell.” These are divisions of the mental world—of the psychology of man. Thus the mental world has three divisions: hell, heaven, and liberation. Hell is what I called sorrow this morning; heaven, pleasure; and by liberation I mean: neither pleasure nor pain—that which is bliss. So do not think that someday, later, we will get the fruit—that…