According to Osho, the here and now is emphasized because it is all that truly exists—here is the only space, now the only time; tomorrow never arrives. Therefore, don’t let this moment slip by unused: live it intensely, squeeze all its juice, and you won’t need to repent later for having missed your life.
Because only this moment is real; if you wait for later, it never comes, so live and act now.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you often say we should be aware only of the present. But along with that, would you also say that while remaining aware we should not worry about the future? Do you want to exclude it altogether—are you advocating its total banishment?
In truth, my emphasis is on living, not on thinking. And one can live only in the present; you cannot live in the future. My emphasis is on living—just as my emphasis is on eating food. Now if someone says to me, “Shall we eat tomorrow’s bread—do you object?” I would say, first of all, you cannot eat the bread of the future; you can only dream about it. And the great danger in dreaming is that today’s bread may be missed. The real danger of dreaming is this: if you are busy eating the bread of the future, who will eat the bread of the present? And the present does not stop for you even for a moment. Whether you are present or not, it keeps rushing on. You are there or you are not—still the present does not wait. It does not stop for you; it goes on.…
Osho, you say, “Live here and now.” But when we look at ourselves, living here and now doesn’t feel appealing. Instead of living in the present, it feels more pleasant to live in fantasies of the future. So what should we do?
Therefore I say, live today. But you feel the present does not feel worth living. If the present does not feel worth living, tomorrow too will come only as the present; then that too will not feel worth living. The day after tomorrow will also come as the present; that too will not feel worth living. I call this self-destruction. Then you are committing suicide, not living. There is no other way to live. Only today exists, and it is today that has to be lived. Whether it feels worth living or not makes no difference. There is no other way. Living will happen only here. Do not fall into the delusion of tomorrow. The mirages of tomorrow have drowned many. Live today. Do not let this moment pass empty. This moment is an opportunity. Do not waste it like this. Make something of it. Take some juice out of…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHERE IS THIS MOMENT? I KEEP LOSING IT. Here! You ask me, "Where is this moment?" Your question implies it must be somewhere else. You have already lost it. It is always here! Don't try to find where it is, because while you are finding where it is, you are losing it. You are missing the train continuously. Time knows no tenses: past, present, future, no -- absolutely no! Time knows only one tense, and that is now. It is always now. But your mind can carry the past and destroy the beauty of the now. Your mind can project the future, and can lose the precious moment. Please, start relaxing here and now. This is the taste of it.
Now, a blind man can become a philosopher about light. He can think much about light. He can go on making great systems of thought about light. He can imagine, and he has much more freedom to imagine than the person who has eyes, because the person who has eyes knows what light is; he cannot imagine something contrary to reality. The blind man can imagine in every direction, in every possible way. He can be very imaginative and he can be very logical; he can make a systematic, logical philosophy about light out of his blindness, but it will be about light. And beware of the word 'about'. Unless somebody sees light, all that he is saying is nonsense. The mystics have always said that philosophy is nonsense because it is thinking. It is like a thirsty man thinking about water.
Beloved Osho, is it really possible to be in the "now-here" all the time? Most of my time seems to go in planning for, or worrying about, the future.
Nitin, whether you know it or not, you cannot be anywhere else than here and now. Wherever you are it will be here and now. You are given only one moment at a time -- and you are wasting that moment in planning or worrying about the future; and the future never comes. What comes is always here, now: it is a series of `nows' -- one now, another now -- but you are always living in the now. There is no future -- so how can you worry about the future? It is because of this kind of worrying and planning for the future that a certain proverb exists in all the languages of the world: Man goes on desiring, planning, worrying about the future -- and God goes on disappointing him. There is no God to disappoint you. In your very planning, you are sowing the seeds of…