Question – You said that the real morality is the shadow of enlightenment. But then how is one to live before becoming enlightened?
Osho – THE moment you ask ’how’ you are asking again for a discipline. The moment you ask ’how’ you ask for methods, techniques. Why can’t you simply live? Are not animals living? Are not trees living and birds living without asking any ’how’? Why do you carry on continuously about everything with this ’how’? How to love? How to pray? How to be friendly? How to be compassionate? How to be silent? How to live?
Drop the ’how’ and let life take its own course. It will. It is not waiting for any ’how’. That’s what Tao calls spontaneity, TATHATA, suchness. Let life take its own course. Who are you to interfere continuously? Can’t you simply eat? Why do you ask how to eat and how to taste? Can’t you simply taste? Just eat, chew well, and enjoy.
Let life move, don’t try to manage it. By trying to manage, you have mismanaged enough. By trying to improve you have destroyed all its beauty. With all your goals and ideologies you have poisoned your being. Be natural.
But that is very difficult for the ego. The difficulty comes from the ego, not from life. Life can be lived without any ’how’ but the difficulty comes from the ego. The ego says that then you will be like an animal. So what! Be an animal. What is wrong in that? Man is an animal. There’s nothing wrong in being an animal. No animal is as ugly as man. No animal has done so much violence on earth as man. No animal has destroyed nature as man has. What is wrong with animals? Have you ever heard of any animal becoming Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Mao Tse Tung? They have not killed. They have not murdered and butchered. They have not created wars. It is man who brings ugliness into the world.
But the ego says you have to be higher than the animals. In trying to be higher than the animals you fall lower than the animals. Be natural, don’t try to improve, and you will find a great transformation happening. Through nature God comes – not through improvement, not through any effort of the ego, but through effortlessness, through deep trust and surrender.
Can’t you trust God, who has given you birth? You did not ask the same question when you were in a womb – ’How to live for nine months?’ You lived well, you did well, perfectly well – otherwise you would not have been here. And there was no yoga teacher to teach you to be in a certain posture, to teach you how to breathe, how to do PRANAYAMA and PRATYAHAR, and which ASANA will be the best. You didn’t ask anybody. There was nobody to ask. You lived in the womb naturally and you grew. God was taking care, the whole was taking care, everything was provided.
Then you were born and then you became a child – you did not ask how to breathe, how to walk, how to talk. Everything came by and by. Can’t you trust life? One day you became a young man, youth came, and love started arising in your being. One day you will become old, life will start disappearing, and then one day death will come and the circle will be complete.
Why are you always trying to interfere? Tao says you should be in WU-WEI, non-interference. Let the whole do things. This is a very radical attitude, this is the greatest revolutionary attitude ever. ’How?’ is very childish. Yoga is for children, Tao is for grown-ups.
So don’t ask: BUT THEN HOW IS ONE TO LIVE BEFORE BECOMING ENLIGHTENED? Just live. And just living, I tell you, is fantastic. It is far out!
Source – Osho Book “Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 2″