According to Osho, your lifelong hurry is conditioning: society tells you life is short, desires are many, and doing is supreme—especially in Judaic‑Christian cultures that believe in only one life. This belief compresses time, fuels anxiety, and keeps you running even in sleep. The East’s many-lives view removes hurry but breeds passivity. Seeing this conditioning lets you relax into being rather than compulsive doing.
You rush because you were taught there’s only one short life to do everything, so you keep hurrying.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, why have I always been in such a hurry? Today I saw so clearly that it was my way of keeping the divine at a distance, and I felt incredibly sad, and saw the absurdity of this pattern.
Silverstein, the inveterate joiner, came rushing home, proudly holding a membership card to his newest organization. "Look," said Silverstein to his son, "I just joined the Prostitute Club!" "What?" said the boy. "Let me see that card." After reading it, he announced, "Pa, that's the Parachute Club!" "All I know is," said Silverstein, "they guaranteed me three hundred and sixty-five jumps a year." There are these people who are constantly joining this club and that, and this organization and that. They are simply afraid of being themselves, simply afraid of being left alone. There are people who are constantly rushing -- don't ask where, they themselves don't know. But in the rush they are occupied, and the occupation keeps them away from themselves, away from looking into their own inner hollowness. This constant hurry is nothing but an escape from your inner self. And there is a truth in it…
Why is there so much hurry in the west while the east seems to be so relaxed?
Different time orientation. The East thinks in terms of eternity, in terms of many many lives, incarnation after incarnation, one after another. The time span is very big, so there is no hurry. In the West the time span is very small, so there is hurry -- only one life. Only one life? -- and life is slipping by, it is going down the drain. If you live sixty years, twenty years will be lost in sleep; twenty years will be lost in some stupid job; fifteen years will be lost eating, defecating and things like that -- what is left? And whatsoever is left will be lost sitting before a TV -- finished! Fear arises, one becomes very much frightened. Something has to be done before it disappears... great, hectic hurry! The East thinks in a very very infinite span -- one life after another, the wheel of life…
Osho, I feel that we need to hurry, that there is not much time left. The cocoon of slumber I am existing in seems to suffocate me, and I am afraid I will never make it. You say the goose is out already. Why does it feel so impossible to grasp?
Just the other day Sheela brought a cutting from an English newspaper. A bishop -- who else? -- had been sentenced to twelve years' jail for raping many women. That was his only work -- he was doing it religiously. But this is not an exception; the bishop's only fault was that he was caught, otherwise all bishops are bound to do it. They are ordained to do it, disciplined to do it! Their whole structure of life is such that it has to be phony, pseudo, double. He was living a double life, and all the rapes that he committed were committed after his beautiful, spiritual sermons. First he would sermonize about the great things of life -- and celibacy must have been one of those great things of life -- and then, because of his beautiful sermons, his learned scholarship and his mask of a religious holy man,…
Meditation is going to give you the whole eternity; hence it cannot be achieved in a hurry; One has to be really patient. And this is one of the qualities modern humanity has completely lost track of, it is one of the contributions of the western mind to the whole world; this hurry, this constant rush. There is a basic reason for it. The Judaic religion and it offshoots -- Christianity and Islam -- these three religions are the root cause of it, because they have been talking about only one life. If this is the only life than naturally one is in a rush. Just seventy years, if you are fortunate, and if you calculate you will find that that is not much; one-third of it will be lost in sleep.
You ask: “Osho, when will morning come?”
The council met—yet not inside the church; they gathered under a tree, at a safe distance. There was much opposition: “The ancient church, our forefathers’ heritage, centuries of experience and love—how can we pull it down?” But if no worshippers come, what is a church for? It must be done. So they passed some resolutions. First: with great sorrow, out of compulsion, O Lord forgive us—we resolve to demolish the old church. But instantly, struck by guilt, they passed a second: we will build a new church exactly like the old one, a perfect replica. Still the guilt hurt, so a third: we will build the new church using the old church’s bricks, doors, windows, glass—nothing new will be used. But the guilt was very deep; they passed a fourth: until the new is built, the old will not be pulled down. Our attachment to words, doctrines, scriptures, temples and…