Religion is the passion for the impossible

I’ve always spent my life seeking out challenges – dealing with them, usually mastering them, and going on to something else, another challenge. I’m hearing two things from you. One is, that perhaps I’m just feeding my ego. On the other hand, in the past week you’ve been talking about life as a challenge, as a difficult challenge, and that we must really go into it. I do want to continue to seek out challenges. Can you help me to understand this?

Both are the possibilities. One can just go on seeking challenges because it enhances the ego. Then the motive is wrong. What you are doing is right, but the reason you are doing it is wrong. If you simply love challenges and it is not in any way an effort to enhance the ego, then it is tremendously beautiful. Then whatsoever you are doing is right, and the motive is also right. Then you are one thousand percent right. So just watch that – that’s what I am saying.

Don’t gather the ego. Go on finding new challenges, enjoy, but there is no need to collect the ego, to feed an ego, because if you are feeding an ego, then in fact you will not be able to enjoy the challenges; they become secondary. The purity is lost then; you are always hankering for the ego. You are not interested in challenges – you are interested in the ego. If the ego can be purchased at a cheaper cost, you would like to purchase it. If the ego is possible without the challenges, you will drop the challenges and you will choose the ego. Because it is impossible to become egoistic without challenges, you have to go into the challenges, but you are not enjoying them. Then you are missing the whole point of it. Otherwise it is tremendously beautiful.

Every moment there are new challenges. If we seek we will find them. And it is thrilling to live continuously from challenge to challenge, from one peak to another. The higher you rise, the higher the peaks that become available, and you don’t carry any burden of the ego. Then even if you fail in a challenge, you are not miserable. You are still happy that you accepted it. You are still happy that the opportunity was there. You are still happy that you went into it. If you succeed, there is no ego in it. You are simply thrilled, and you are ready to move ahead.

For a real lover of challenges, success and failure mean nothing. The whole value is in the challenge and the response, and the thrill that comes between crucial moments when on this side is death and on that side is life. The bridge is so narrow, just like a razor’s edge. One false step and you fall into an infinite abyss. Then one lives at the peak of consciousness.

That’s the beauty in mountaineering. Nothing is going to be achieved but the very thrill. That is the enjoyment in surfing; nothing is going to be achieved but the very thrill. That is the enjoyment when you go on driving your car faster and faster and faster. A moment comes when each moment is a risk… as if time stops, thinking stops. You are just going one hundred miles per hour. A slight this way and that [Osho makes a movement with his hand, of a car veering to one side] and you are gone. Then you cannot afford to be sleepy. You are fully awake every fibre of the body fully awake, all the nerves of the mind fully awake. That’s why one feels so beautiful in speed. But it has nothing to do with the ego. So enjoy.

The whole life is an adventure – it should be an adventure. But there is no need to gather the ego, because that becomes the burden. It won’t allow you to go to very high peaks, because for the high peaks you have to leave all the burden behind, below you. You have to go almost naked, without clothes. The higher the peak, the greater is the requirement to leave everything down below. You cannot carry much load – and the ego is the greatest load one can carry, and for no reason at all. It is as if you are carrying a mountain on your head. That crushes you. Life never crushes anybody – only the ego. And then when you succeed, you don’t enjoy.

If an egoist succeeds he never enjoys. If he fails he fails very miserably, because the ego always goes on goading. It says ‘What is this? You have to achieve more. You have to show more to the world. This is nothing.’ The ego never allows you rest. It says ‘It’s okay, but go ahead, do something bigger.’ So when you achieve, it is not happy. If you fail, it is terribly unhappy. And an egoless person, when he succeeds, he’s happy, he dances. When he fails, still he dances – because it is not a question of achievement or failure. It is a question of trying, it is a question of living in critical moments, in dangerous moments. It is the thrill that is valuable.

So there is nothing to be worried about. Just go on accepting challenges. And I am nothing but a challenge to you. I am creating something in you which will become your very life’s challenge. And this mountain is such that you cannot exhaust it. By the time you reach the peak, you are no more, because the only way to reach this peak is to disappear. That’s why I call religion the passion for the impossible. It is a passion for the impossible. The impossible happens – that too is true – but it happens only when you have disappeared.

So go into the world. Try whatsoever has happened to you. It will be deepened. Because this is my observation – that if something has really happened, then it goes on deepening by all life experiences. If it has not happened, then only it disappears. Good.

Osho, The Passion for the Impossible, Ch 4 (darshan diary)