Osho – This feeling, that something is missing, is True because something is missing

[A sannyasin says that although everything is fine he feels he is still missing something, maybe laughter.]

Osho – That feeling of missing something continues to the very end; it goes only at the last moment. You are not missing anything really, mm? – you are growing rightly, you ate moving in the right direction. That laughter will also happen in its own time; nothing to be worried about.

This feeling, that something is missing, is also true because something is missing: the ultimate is missing. Everything is good, everything is joyful, things are as they should be; but the ecstasy, that explosion where you utterly disappear and only god remains?… for that one has to wait. It is coming, it is on the way, it may come any day; it can come any day.

So until and unless it has happened you will have this feeling that something is missing. It is fortunate that you feel this. There are millions of people who don’t feel that they are missing at all… and they don’t have anything! You have many things and they don’t have anything!

They are not enjoying their work, they are not happy with their relationship; they have no music in their life, they have no dance in their life. Somebody is accumulating dead money and thinks he is doing great things. Somebody is just rushing into political power and thinks, ’What else can life give?’… They have nothing and still they don’t feel that something is missing; they are the unfortunate people.

Those who are close to me by and by will feel this; everybody is bound to feel it one day or other. When things start settling and you are joyous and everything is as it should be, then suddenly, everything fits – but something somewhere is missing. You don’t know what it is… how can you? Unless it happens you will not be able to even know what was missing. You have never known it before so you cannot recognise what is missing.

If you come in the room and you see that the TV is not there, you know the TV is missing because it was there; you knew it. You see your chair is missing; you know it. You come into the house and your wife is not there; you know your wife is missing because you knew her.

But this is something which you have never known, so you cannot really feel what it is exactly. It will remain vague, it will just be a cloudy feeling, a misty feeling that something is missing – ’xyz’. That xyz is what god is. When we say god is missing, it feels as if we know what is missing. We don’t know; god means ’x’.

It is good that you have started feeling it; it happens only when everything is okay. Then only does one feel that ’x’ that mysterious phenomenon which people down the ages have called god, truth, satori, samadhi, enlightenment, nirvana; these are just names for that something is missing. Yes, it is missing, but you cannot do anything to have it.

You can only go on growing in the harmony in which you are already growing. Become more and more harmonious, and the more harmonious you are, the more you will feel that it is being missed, because you will become more alert that there is nothing else you need – only this something. Then the thirst becomes one-pointed.

Money is not needed, power is not needed, prestige is not needed. The thirst becomes by and by very one-pointed towards that ’something’. And that ’something’ will happen only when the thirst has become so total that you cannot say ’I am thirsty’; you can only say ’I am thirst’. Then you don ’t know who you are: you are just a thirst, a burning thirst.

It will happen, but before that everything else has to settle in a deep harmony. God is the last thing to happen: before it we have to get ready. We have to become the host; we have to prepare a thousand and one things.

When the king is to come one has to prepare a thousand and one things. When we invite the king and we have lived the life of a beggar we have to prepare many things. The house has to be prepared, flowers and incense….

The guest comes at the right moment: whenever you are ready, it is there. It has always been there, just waiting for your readiness. Whenever the time is right the fruit falls down. It will happen….

Just enjoy your work, get into it more and more, and this will remain there by the comer that something is missing. Good – there is nothing to be worried about. It is missing, and you have to go on preparing. Things are going well, subhadra, mm? Laughter is on the way; it will be coming!

Source: from Osho Book “The Further Shore”