According to Osho, values are not objective facts to be believed but subjective facts realized through personal experience. A value becomes true only when tested in your own awareness and it yields well-being; otherwise it's borrowed and bogus. Suspend belief, experiment with techniques, and let direct inner illumination convert guidance into authentic, lived truth.
Values are real only when you test them yourself and feel they make you inwardly right, not because someone else says so.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, it is said that some values are based on time and place, and some values are eternal. Would you kindly shed some light on this?
This is not the prayer of the mosque’s sacred courtyard; This is the salat of love’s alley. No awareness of petition in prostration, no conditions of etiquette in prayer. Those who are standing, are standing in the realm of awe; Those who have bowed, remain bowed in prayer. This is not the prayer of the mosque’s sacred courtyard. The value of the supreme life I speak of is not the namaz recited in the mosque, not the worship performed in the temple. This is the salat of love’s alley— the prayer of the lane of love. There is a namaz recited in the mosque: it has its manners, its method, order, rules and regulations. And there is a namaz recited in love’s alley: it has no scripture. It is free. It is spontaneous. No awareness of petition in prostration, no condition of etiquette in prayer— that formula of prayer offered…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS NO PEOPLE COULD LIVE WITHOUT EVALUATING; BUT IF IT WISHES TO MAINTAIN ITSELF IT MUST NOT EVALUATE AS ITS NEIGHBOR EVALUATES. MUCH THAT SEEMED GOOD TO ONE PEOPLE SEEMED SHAME AND DISGRACE TO ANOTHER: THUS I FOUND. I FOUND MUCH THAT WAS CALLED EVIL IN ONE PLACE WAS IN ANOTHER DECKED WITH PURPLE HONOURS.... A TABLE OF VALUES HANGS OVER EVERY PEOPLE. BEHOLD, IT IS THE TABLE OF ITS OVERCOMINGS; BEHOLD, IT IS THE VOICE OF ITS WILL TO POWER. WHAT IT ACCOUNTS HARD IT CALLS PRAISEWORTHY; WHAT IT ACCOUNTS INDISPENSABLE AND HARD IT CALLS GOOD; AND THAT WHICH RELIEVES THE GREATEST NEED, THE RARE, THE HARDEST OF ALL -- IT GLORIFIES AS HOLY.
It may be.
Then opinion is not truth. Truth is not some political affair to be settled by votes—that you have taken votes, that so many people say it is true, twenty-five people say so. And then the great joke is, the great joke is that whenever someone goes to ask somebody... My whole point is: stop asking, start living. From the experience of living it will begin to be seen to you—and that will be the truth. By asking you will get only words. And you will collect words. And you will juggle and patch them together. And you will make a philosophy. That philosophy is utterly bogus, false. It has no value.
Osho, do values like love, religiousness, authenticity, happiness, change as human consciousness grows upwards?
There is no possibility of exchange; but at the instinctive level, everything is an exchange. You give something, you take something -- and there is every effort to take more than you give. That's the whole difficulty of all the couples around the world. The wife goes on saying, "I love you, but you don't love me." The husband says, "How to prove it? I love you." But nobody can convince the other. It is not a question of convincing. But why does the question arise that "You love me less," or "I love you more"? At the instinctive level, love is a quantity. You can measure it -- how many kilos you give and how many kilos you get in return, in exchange. And you can see who is a loser. It is a business deal. And people are continually quarreling, and trying to manage to snatch as much…
A friend has asked, Osho, what should one do so that faith does not turn into blind belief?
I have heard: Saint Francis was a supremely faithful man and would trust anyone. His disciple was Leo. They were traveling. Whoever came along, Francis would take him along. Often someone would stay for a night and then steal their belongings and go. He would stay one night, and by morning their bedding, their bag—the few things they had—would be gone. Leo, his disciple, was very troubled. He said that at least some checking should be done. You take anyone along and then suffer. Give up this trust in people. So many have deceived you, and still your trust in people does not leave you. Saint Francis said, they are all testing my faith. There are two ways. A man stays the night and leaves stealing. One way is: the things are gone anyway—which are of little value—and along with them let faith also go, which is of great value.…