It’s easy, but our ego hates simple letting go because it feels like dying; if you’re willing to drop your “me” for a moment, it happens right away.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, why is the ultimate experience hard to attain? It seems to me that it is part of nature's intention to make it very difficult and to require man to go through ages of development before he reaches it. Isn't there a divine purpose why it takes him so long to reach?
A person who loves will not love money because a person who loves will not be afraid of death. And if a person is not afraid of death, there cannot be any clinging, attachment, mad obsession with money. It is impossible. If you can love, then you will accept death very easily. It will be a deep relaxation, a long sleep, a beautiful dissolution into the existence. And if you can be receptive to death, then meditation can be as easy as anything. The problem arises because love is not there. When death has become a fear, then meditation will be difficult because it is both love plus death. It is death as far as your ego is concerned; it is love as far as the divine existence is concerned. I define meditation in a mathematical formula: meditation is equal to love plus death -- love to the existence, to…
At the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety, above a chasm, flying in battle, in extreme curiosity, at the beginning of hunger, at the end of hunger, be uninterruptedly aware.
THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US. IN REALITY, KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE. Because these techniques are so simple, they will not have any appeal to your mind. Remember, that which appeals to the ego cannot help your spiritual growth. Only that which has no appeal to your ego can be a help towards transformation. But this is what happens: if some teacher says that this or that is very difficult, very arduous, that only after lives and lives and lives will you have any possibility for any glimpse, your ego will feel good. These techniques are so simple that right now, here and now, the thing is possible. But then there is no contact with your ego. If I say that right now, here, this very moment you can achieve all that is possible to man, that you can become a Buddha or a…
You make it all sound so easy. But is it? Is it really? It seems to me that the whole thing is out of our hands. We have no more choice to surrender than to be in the ego. I live my life and some days I'm happy and some days I'm sad, but I'm not enlightened. There must be some trick, some alchemy. Please enlighten me.
You don't want to believe in it. You don't want to believe in its easiness. See the point! You WANT it to be difficult, then you will be very happy. If I say, "It is very difficult, Dharmen," you will relax, you will be relieved. If I say, "It is almost impossible," a burden is removed from your head. Then you will say, "Then it is okay. Then I can travel. Then there is challenge. Then my ego can do many things -- it is difficult and I am going to do it." The more impossible it looks, the more appealing it is to the ego. Hence, I cannot say it is difficult, because I don't want to support your ego in ANY way. It is easy -- it is absolutely easy. But the moment I say 'easy' you become uneasy. You start feeling, "Then? Then there is nothing left…
Osho, this ego of mine from lifetimes is perhaps the greatest obstacle between you and me. This very ego does not let me bow at your feet, does not let me be effaced. Lord, have compassion on me and erase me; in this very life, absorb me into yourself and make me one.
Put your whole effort into meditation. I am standing with you! And the divine stands with you. The whole existence is with you. Whenever one sets out toward meditation, the whole existence, in bliss, extends help—for someone lost is coming home; someone far away is returning; a seed is sprouting, shooting, leafing. The sky gives it shade, the sun warmth, the clouds water. The earth gives it life. The whole existence becomes a helper. Yes—if you move against existence, then you are alone. The journey of ego is a solitary journey. In the journey of meditation, the whole existence is your ally. But do not leave it all to existence; you must labor. Existence will support. And what you have done so far is auspicious, in the right direction. Your steps are falling in the right direction. Look back and remember your face of five or seven years ago, saint!…
Beloved Osho, it has always been the observation of seekers that the realization of godliness is a very arduous phenomenon. But enlightened ones like you always emphasize that it can happen right here, right now. Is saying this again and again a provocation? And a method or device to arouse thirst in us?
Don't laugh, because most people are just like Chinmaya. Don't think that your laughing proves that you are different than Chinmaya. Chinmaya at least got up the courage to ask -- you didn't even ask. This is the only difference. You are just like him. If you haven't become God by the time the Ashtavakra Gita discourses are over, then know: there is no difference, you are just like him. But if while listening you wake up and become God, then just the shadow of the whip has worked. "It has always been the observation of seekers that the realization of God is a very arduous phenomenon." The seeker is off track from the very beginning. The very meaning of seeker assumes that God has to be sought, that he has lost God somewhere. The seeker accepts that he has lost the divine somewhere. What a strange idea. He has…