Why does a seeker experience effort and labor despite joyful awareness?

Osho, yesterday you explained that with joyful awareness (sukh-purvak surati) resolution happens on its own. Yet I find myself having to go through great effort, practice, and labor—why? How long, and why, must a seeker pass through so much effort, toil, and austerity?

If there is laziness in the mind, even little things feel like great effort. It’s a matter of your interpretation. In truth, you are not exerting at all. I tell you, those who are near me and engaged in “practice” are the people on earth who are laboring the least. You have no idea what real effort is. When a person is deeply lazy, even trivial things seem like toil. What are you actually doing? What is it you keep calling “great effort”? Which great effort are you making? You dance a little—and you call that great effort? Is dancing an effort? Dancing is joy! But your perspective is wrong. If you take joy to be effort, you have missed. Dancing is celebration, a juicy happening. Where is the effort in it? If even dancing is effort for you, then what would non-effort be? If I tell you, “Just sit…

Osho, it is frightening to think that a seeker, even after reaching close to the goal, can, due to a slight lapse, be thrown so far back that he has to begin all over again from the very start. Then has so much labor gone to waste for a tiny mistake?

Understand this well: the greater your possibility, the more you will be tested. The smaller the possibility, the sooner you will be let go. As the hour of God’s arrival approaches, the tightening increases; you are gripped more and more firmly. Because now you are approaching your ultimate possibility. Now all the examinations must be completed. You are reaching that beyond which there is no further going. You are reaching that beyond which there is no further growth. You are reaching the supreme peak, the summit of Kailash. Now every test must be passed. Now every fiber of your being must be tried. Now only pure gold must remain. Let no drowsiness remain in you; remain pure and aware. Let no trash remain in you. Now it is necessary to throw you into the final fire. Therefore, if you miss even a little at the last stage, you are thrown…

Osho, I am extremely lazy. I am frightened—how will liberation happen? Please guide me!

I saw his pictures in the newspapers. In every picture—now he is naked; no newspaper will agree to print that, and they themselves must feel shy, the devotees too must feel a little shame—so in all the photos he is sitting with a very large scripture on his knees to hide his nakedness. My dear fellow, a loincloth would have sufficed—what harm in that? A loincloth would be lighter than that huge book, simpler too! Tie a simple strap. Why sit with a massive volume—just to hide a small thing! But once we have a belief, we do not see the absurdity. In Jain homes, pictures of Mahavira hang. They paint them so that Mahavira stands in meditation and a tree branch serves as a loincloth. Why trouble the poor man! I was a guest in a house. The picture was beautiful, but that one branch spoils everything—dense leaves covering…

Question: CHITTAM MANTRAH PRAYATNAHA SADHAKASH GURUH UPAYAH SHARIRAM HAVIH GYANAMANNAM VIDYASANGHARA TADUTTHASWAPNADARSHANAM. THE MIND IS THE MANTRA, EFFORT IS THE SEEKER. THE GURU IS THE MEANS. THE BODY IS THE OFFERING. KNOWLEDGE IS FOOD. WHEN KNOWLEDGE IS DESTROYED, THE DREAM IS SEEN. THE MIND IS THE MANTRA. EFFORT IS THE SEEKER. Unless you become a seeker, you will not make an effort. You do make an effort, but it is half-hearted And half hearted effort carries no meaning. It is just as if you have gripped the wheel with one hand and let go with the other. This does not solve the problem. A lukewarm effort is meaningless. A businessman once told his wife that he was going to the Taj Mahal Hotel to entertain a very important client who was to give him a very big order. So he was gone.

Osho! I am making tireless efforts to meditate, but success eludes me. What should I do?

In just such an evening Buddha decided—the night of the full moon—“Now I drop this. No more effort. Enough.” And when he told his five disciples, who had followed him like a shadow for six years, “I am tired of this asceticism, these austerities. All this seems to be foolishness. I have done what I was told, but meditation has not happened. So now I drop it,” the five disciples thought that Gautam Siddhartha had fallen. They left him that very evening! They said to him, “Gautam, you have become corrupt! Till now we accepted you as our master because you did what we could not. If we could stand on our heads for an hour, you stood for six. If we ate once a day, you ate once in two days. We were dazzled by you.” Someone had told Buddha to reduce his food each day until he came…