According to Osho, not all words are useless; words become powerful when they arise from direct, meditative experience. The buddhas’ words carry the 'perfume of the beyond.' Since most people can't communicate in silence, speak—yet speak less, with precision. Use only necessary, condensed language that transmits presence, not distraction.
Words matter when they come from real understanding, so use fewer words and say what truly counts.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, are all words useless?
Not all. How can all words be useless? Words are useful as far as the world is concerned, the outer; words are useless as far as you are concerned, the inner. When you start moving inwards you have to drop words. They are not needed. They are an unnecessary load on you, a disturbance, a noise. But when you go outwards and you meet people, you need language. When you are talking about things, you need language. Language is perfectly adequate for the world -- otherwise there would be great difficulty. If you go to the market and you want to purchase something, you will be in difficulty without words. And it will be an unnecessary wastage of time. Words are tremendously useful instruments. If you want to see it, one day go into the market and try to purchase things without words. Each small thing will take so much…
Question: BELOVED MASTER, ARE ALL WORDS REALLY USELESS? Dharmendra, not all words. The words of the buddhas are immensely significant. They are the same words as your words, but they come from a deeper experience. Let your words come from deep experience; then they will have significance, then they will have some perfume of the unknown, of the beyond. But leaving the buddhas aside, then too all words are not useless. Otherwise, how are you going to communicate? You cannot communicate through silence, you cannot communicate without words. To communicate without words you will have to become a total meditator. And then, too, you can communicate only with another total meditator, not with everybody else. The whole of humanity is not going to be in meditation, not at least in your life, and you will have to talk to people who are not meditators.
Osho, if silence has so much power, why does anyone speak at all? If silence has great power and silence is everything, then why are words spoken? Why does anyone speak?
Silence does have great power, but there has to be someone who can hear silence! Why does the need to speak arise? It arises because I see you heading toward a pit. I see that you will fall into it and break your arms and legs. I am standing here; I could say it to you from silence, but you don’t have ears to hear silence. So I shout, “You’ll fall into the pit!” In that, is my power lost? Is there any harm in that? No, no, no—nothing is lost. The one who has come to know power never loses anything. The one who has not known keeps losing everything. The one who has known never loses anything. In whatever form, to speak of the wordless we use words... That is exactly what I am saying: the difficulty is that if I write something like an autobiography, it will…
The thirty spokes unite the one name; but it is on the axle that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness that their use depends. The doors and windows are cut out from the walls to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space within, that its use depends. Therefore, what has a (positive) existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what has not, serves for (actual) usefulness.
Freud has discovered a priceless truth. He says: "We also hate those whom we love." This was a startling discovery even for Freud himself. It was a terrible blow for all mankind especially for lovers. Lovers cannot believe they are capable of hatred towards those whom they love. The fact is, however, that all lovers know this within themselves, though they may not admit it. Therefore, Freud was resisted for a long time. Ultimately he could not be proven wrong. Gradually, the truth was accepted. Those whom we love we also despise, for love cannot stand without hatred. If you love somebody and you analyse it honestly, you will find yourself loving and hating alternately. You hate in the morning, love in the afternoon, hate in the evening and again love at night. Your love is periodical. The one you quarrelled with in the morning and decided it was impossible…
Why bring in the past? The present is so vast -- the past is so narrow. Why look from a hole in the wall when you can come out and look at the whole sky? So try not to use words, but if you have to, then be very choosey about them because each word has a nuance of its own. Be very poetic about it. Use it with taste, love, feeling. There are feeling words and there are intellectual words. Drop intellectual words more and more. Use more and more feeling words. There are political words and there are religious words. Drop political words. There are words which immediately create conflict. The moment you utter them, argument arises. So never use logical, argumentative language. Use the language of affection, of caring, of love, so that no argument arises.