Relaxation and Effort

Osho, seeing the dialectical facts of life, can one practise the path of relaxation and the path of effort simultaneously?

No, it is not possible! You cannot practise both simultaneously because both are diametrically opposite. They lead to one point, but they don't pass through the same road, through the same route, through the same realms. They are quite diametrically opposite. You cannot practise both, just like you cannot go to one place simultaneously following two roads. Two roads may be going. You are going to the station and two roads may be going to the station, but you cannot follow both the roads simultaneously. And if you do follow them, you will not reach the station. Both roads go, but then you will not reach because then you will have to go ten steps on one, then come back, follow the other, then come back, follow the first one. Then you can follow much, but you will reach nowhere. Every way is a particular way. It has its own…

I also feel on both paths, but you said that it is not possible to be on both paths.

I said it is not possible, but I have not said that if you try hard you cannot succeed a little bit. If you try hard, really hard, you may succeed a little bit. Even the impossible can become possible if you do really hard work. And I know you can do really hard work because you have made many impossible things possible. For example, to be miserable is an impossibility. Through hard effort and perseverance you have made it possible. To be happy is natural; to be unhappy is unnatural. It needs really great effort, much capacity, much ability, efficiency, to become miserable; it needs long practice. In fact, when I look at you and I see that you are miserable, I am simply surprised: it is a miracle. How are you doing it? In the first place, it should not be there, it cannot be there. But man…

Osho, you have described two kinds of methods. Earlier, in the practice you spoke about, you asked the seeker to be calm, relaxed, silent, alert, and a witness. Now, under intense breathing and the inquiry “Who am I?”, you ask the seeker to make every effort with total energy. When a seeker trained in the first kind of practice moves into the second type of experiment, after a short while the effort drops, the control slips. So which is the right approach—the former or the latter?

It is not a matter of good or bad here.

Beloved Osho, I am such a doer. How can I become more open and available to you without doing? How to find the balance between doing and non-doing, to reconcile your two statements: "you have to act without will," and, "effort is also needed"?

You will be surprised to know that when I entered the university, I was doing so much exercise -- running, swimming, jogging and other exercises -- that a few other students became interested. They started following me, to go for a run. I had never thought that there was any problem in it, but the man who owned all the restaurants and the mess at the university came to see me and said, "I will give you a totally free pass as far as food is concerned, but please don't help these people to run and jog and swim, because I am going to be bankrupt! "Before you came I had never seen people eating thirty-five chappattis at a time -- and your followers are doing that. At the most four chappattis are enough. But if everybody starts eating thirty-five chappattis at a time, seventy chappattis in a day, then…