According to Osho, thoughts are never original - they are borrowed, secondhand, and ultimately stale; at best they are containers of old language. Only direct seeing - vision, lived experience, realization of truth - is fresh and original. Words can only hint and kindle thirst; they cannot transmit truth. Seek firsthand knowing rather than accumulating ideas.
Thoughts are hand-me-downs; only seeing truth for yourself is truly new.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, it is all right when you say everything is auspicious and beautiful; but what will happen to us—those of us who are attached to your physical body?
Yog Vidya! Attachment is not inauspicious. Attachment is not ugly. Attachment is like freshly mined gold—yet impure. It will pass through fire, be refined, become pure. Attachment is love in its impure form. Attachment needs to be transformed, refined. I am not against attachment. I am not against anything. But every phenomenon has higher possibilities—more auspicious, more beautiful forms. The seers of the Upanishads prayed: O Lord, lead us from darkness to light. Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya! If I were to say it, I would say: O Lord, lead us from light to more light. Because darkness too is only a form of light. Light is hidden even in darkness. Morning is born out of the night; the sun rises from it. In the womb of night the sun is nurtured and grows. The whole beauty of the dawn is impossible without the night. The Upanishadic seers say: O Lord,…
Is it possible to have an original thought?
But it is not part of mind. Mind is a mechanism. It cannot be original; it is not even alive -- how can it be original? It is social. Hence the insistence of all the awakened ones that unless you drop the mind you will not be able to know the truth, because truth is always original. Mind: always borrowed; truth: always original. Mind and truth cannot meet. Meditation is to attain to a no-mindness, to a state of no-thought. In that opening of no-thought, in that kind of space, suddenly you become pure, innocent, uncorrupted. You have never been like that before nobody has ever been like that before nobody is going to be like that again. Unique. And to know that is to realize one's self. To know that is to know all. If you have not known that, whatsoever else you know is just rubbish, garbage. If…
Question: Fourth question: Osho, I am very impressed by your original ideas. So thoughts are not original; they cannot be. There is no way for them to be original, because the very logic of thought is borrowed. The words, the language—those too are borrowed. Thoughts cannot be original. Then what can be original? The experience of emptiness. That alone is original. But do not take “original” to mean “never happened before.” Give “original” another meaning—of the root, of the source. Original as from the origin, from the roots. Do not take original to mean new. Take it to mean that what happens to you in shunyata, in samadhi, is the experience of the root, the origin, the source. Not that it has never happened to anyone before. Many buddhas have been, many will be, many have kept happening; all reach that same root.
A friend has asked: You say that truth cannot be expressed in words?
It cannot be said. That which is known by rising beyond the mind has no way of being told, because to tell it one needs the mind. What is not known through the mind cannot be said through the mind either.
The eyes cannot approach it, neither can speech nor mind. We do not, therefore, know it, nor do we know how to teach it. It is different from what is known and it is different from what is unknown. Thus we have heard from our predecessors who instructed us about it. What speech cannot reveal but what reveals speech -- know thou that alone as brahman and not this -- anything objective -- that people worship here. What mind does not comprehend but what comprehends the mind -- know thou that alone as brahman and not this that people worship here.
God is not indubitable. Remember this: God is not indubitable. He can be doubted -- not only doubted, he can be disproved. And really, when someone doubts God you cannot prove his existence. You can only convince those who are already convinced, but you cannot convert a new man; that is impossible. Not a single atheist can be converted because he needs proof and you cannot prove God. God is not indubitable. He can be doubted, rejected. The whole hypothesis can be said to be false. There is no proof that can help. So Descartes goes on discussing, inquiring, and he says that unless he comes to a point, to something in existence that is indubitable.... Not that it can be proved -- no. Rather, it cannot be doubted. And ultimately he comes to the self and says that the self is a greater reality than God. It is, because…