The Eternal Quest

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From the Jacket

“If life becomes love you are on the path, and if love becomes light you have reached. These three words are very meaningful to me: life, the basic energy, love, the transformation of this energy into a celebration, and light, the transformation of love, through meditation, into divine existence.”

Osho inspires millions of people worldwide in their individual search for joy, fulfillment, depth, and silence. All his talks address the question of how we can live each moment of our daily lives in awareness, relaxation and totality.

Preface

People come to me and they say, “We have been meditating for so long. When will it happen?”

I say, “Wait! Soon it will happen.”
But these are all lies. If I say that it is not going to happen, ever, you will simply drop the whole effort, you will feel hopeless. So I will go on saying that it is going to happen.

It is happening already, but it is not going to happen in such a way that the journey ends. And one day you yourself will become aware of the beauty of this non-ending process, and you will realize what an ugly question you were asking. You were asking how to end all this. The very question is ugly and absurd. You do not know, but what you are asking is against yourself - because if it ends, you will end with it. If there is no search, nothing to be revealed, nothing to be loved, nothing to be known, nothing to be entered, how can you be? If you were in such a state, you would want to commit suicide.

Bertrand Russell joked somewhere, saying, “I cannot believe in the Hindu conception of liberation, of moksha, because in moksha - the Hindu conception of liberation - you will be freed of everything. There is nothing to be done, nothing will happen. You will be sitting and sitting and sitting under bodhi trees, and nothing will happen because everything has ceased.”

Russell says, “That will be too much. It will become a burden, and the liberation will become a new type of bondage. Everyone will get fed up, and everyone will start praying: ‘Send us back to the earth - or even to hell. Even hell will be better because there will be something there to be done, there will be some news. But in moksha there will be no news, no events, no happenings!’ Just think: eternally no happenings, no movement…what type of moksha will this be?”

Really, when Hindus talk about this moksha, or Jainas talk about this moksha, or Jainas talk about this moksha, it does not mean that such a moksha exists or such a state exists. This is just to help you, because you cannot conceive of the eternal process. So they say, “Yes, don’t worry. Sooner or later everything will stop, and then you will not have to do anything.” But you do not know what type of misery this will be. This will be even more miserable than the earth is already.

Moksha is not a static thing. It is a dynamic process. And moksha is not some geographical place. It is a way of looking at things, it is an attitude.

If you can be alive moment to moment, you will never ask when all this is going to finish. The very question shows that you are not alive and you are not enjoying life as it is. If you enjoy life, you will not ask when it is going to end, you will not ask when you are going to be freed of it. Then you are already free. In the very enjoyment the freedom has come. Whether it ends or not is not a concern at all. If it ends it is good. If it doesn’t end it is also good. Then you accept it totally.

Back of the Book

Religiousness is the last luxury, says Osho. Western psychotherapy helps us adjust so we can live in “normal insanity,” but once all our material needs are fulfilled, something in us still aches for more for freedom, expansion, bliss.

The 120 questions and responses in The Eternal Quest are about this search, with all its peaks and pitfalls. Osho emphasizes how vital it is for us to ask genuine, basic questions if we want real answers, and has a mercilessly compassionate way of dealing with those who have not understood the point.

Inspiring, profound and playful, this book covers everything from the science behind OSHO Dynamic Meditation to why we suffer in love and life.

“If you can ask a foundational question from the very heart of your being, the answer will come to you even if there is no one there - the vacuum will create the answer, existence itself will give you the answer.

Try to formulate some problem which comes from you, not from the society, not from your teachers, not from your upbringing - just from you.

This is a meditation. This finding out is a meditation.”