According to Osho, man suffers because he lives under a collective hypnosis—deep conditioning by society, state, priests, and politicians—that keeps him spiritually asleep and exploitable. This trance implants false identities, future-oriented ambitions, and the belief that happiness lies in possessions and success. Such conditioning breeds perpetual dissatisfaction, creating a vicious circle: misery enables exploitation; exploitation multiplies misery. Awakening ends the spell and restores innate happiness.
We stay unhappy because we’re taught to chase stuff and obey sleep-making ideas, but waking up shows the happiness already inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why does man continue to live the way he lives -- in misery, in agony, in suffering?
These ambitions create misery. They never make you happy, they create misery. Once the mind becomes ambitious the seeds of misery are planted deeply in you. Now you will never be happy, because the future never comes, tomorrow never comes -- and your hope hangs in the tomorrow which never comes. You may have a big house, but you will not be happy because there will always be bigger houses than your house, and that will create misery. You may have a beautiful woman, but there are thousands, many more beautiful women in the world, and that will not make you happy. You will have money, but even that won't make you happy, because more is always possible. This is the trick: "more" has been implanted in you like an electrode -- "Have MORE, then you will be happy." Now how can you have more? Whatsoever you have, you can…
Osho, you have earlier said, “Live moment to moment, live in the present.” Now you are saying, “Return to the past.” What should we do?
So it is with the mind—there are ruts. The past means endless grooves. However much you understand, your intellect agrees, you make decisions, you resolve—at the moment of resolve you feel something is going to change. But not even an hour passes before your decision breaks. Then only self-condemnation is produced, nothing else. Your saints, your fakirs, your priests and pundits—most of the time they only succeed in producing self-condemnation in you, nothing else. Their words are logically correct. You cannot even say they are wrong; you have to admit they are right. In that admission you take a decision. But against what are you deciding? Inside are grooves carved since who knows when, deep tracks. Walking in them has become a habit. It is easy to walk in them. They will pull you again and again. The meaning of returning into the past is: these grooves must be erased.…
Beloved Osho, why don't we drop our miseries, our ignorance and unhappiness? How can a man be happy and blissful?
When you go outside in the sun your eyes become smaller, the window shrinks, because the sun is too much and there is no need to take that much light in. When you come home, slowly the eyes again open to their normal size. But when you see something beautiful, they become wider, wide open. It is not in your hands, it is not that you are doing it. Even a saint will have to do it because it is not a voluntary thing. It is non-voluntary, it happens on its own accord. It is biologically set up. You have this word in English, `respect'. People have destroyed its meaning. It does not mean `honor' -- or it means honor in a very different way than you understand. `Respect' means the desire to see again, re-spect -- spect means seeing. If it is honor, it is honor for beauty --…
Question: OSHO, WHY IS HUMANITY TODAY BECOMING MORE AND MORE MISERABLE? Even the person who commits suicide is not against life. Perhaps he is hoping the next life will be better. He is so tired of all this suffering and anguish that he thinks, "In this life there is no chance, so why not take a chance? This life is not giving you anything and is not going to give you anything -- take the chance. If you survive and enter into another life, perhaps...." That "perhaps", that lingering desire, is still in the man who is committing suicide. He may be committing suicide against anything, but he is not committing suicide against life itself.
Osho, why is the world in so much misery? Why can't we all be just as blissful as you always are?
He did not die, but I had taken a risky decision. My father stopped telling me to do things from that day. I said, "You can suggest, you cannot order. You have to learn to be polite to your own son, because as far as our beings are concerned, who is father and who is son? You don't possess me, I don't possess you; it is just an accidental meeting of two strangers. You had no idea to whom you were going to give birth. I had no idea who was going to be my father, my mother. It is just an accidental meeting on the roads. "Don't try to exploit the situation. Don't take advantage because you are powerful, you have money, and I don't have anything. And don't force me, because this is ugly. You suggest to me. You can always give me a suggestion that 'this is…