According to Osho, no one is one hundred percent good or bad. The mind functions in dualities: whatever appears as wholly good hides its opposite in the unconscious, like two sides of one coin. Goodness needs badness as a background. Only by going beyond mind’s opposites does the labeling drop; then a person is seen as neither good nor bad, beyond judgment.
Nobody is perfectly good or perfectly bad; our minds hide the other side, and real wisdom is to look beyond labels.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you said... then you will find that the devotee is God. The question arises: if one devotee prefers to be God and another wants to remain only a devotee, then which of the two is superior?
The one who wants to be God will not be able to be. And the one who wants to remain a devotee will become God. The question of superior or inferior does not arise, because only one of the two will happen. The one who does not want to be will be. The one who wants to be will be deprived. That very wanting is of the ego. But the matter is a little delicate. Sometimes humility too belongs to the ego. Beware that your humility may not be of the ego. Perhaps you are saying, “No, I don’t want to be,” because you know that those who refuse are the ones who attain. Then you are clever. Then your humility is adulterous. Your humility is not pure, not sacred, not virginal—it is like a prostitute. The one who wants to be God, whose ego says, “I must become God,”…
Beloved Osho, what is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?
Whether you are for it or against it doesn't matter -- your concern shows where your ego is hanging. And I will include the capitalist in it also: his whole concern is how to gather money, hoard money -- because money has power over matter. You can purchase any material thing through money. You cannot purchase anything spiritual, you cannot purchase anything that has any intrinsic value; you can purchase only things. If you want to purchase love, you cannot purchase; but you can purchase sex. Sex is the material part of love. Through money, matter can be purchased, possessed. Now you will be surprised: I include the communist and the capitalist both in the same category, and they are enemies, just as I include Charvaka and Mahatma Gandhi in the same category, and they are enemies. They are enemies, but their concern is the same. The capitalist is trying…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, YOU ARE GOOD WHEN YOU ARE FULLY AWAKE IN YOUR SPEECH. YET YOU ARE NOT EVIL WHEN YOU SLEEP WHILE YOUR TONGUE STAGGERS WITHOUT PURPOSE. AND EVEN STUMBLING SPEECH MAY STRENGTHEN A WEAK TONGUE. YOU ARE GOOD WHEN YOU WALK TO YOUR GOAL FIRMLY AND WITH BOLD STEPS. YET YOU ARE NOT EVIL WHEN YOU GO THITHER LIMPING. EVEN THOSE WHO LIMP GO NOT BACKWARD. BUT YOU WHO ARE STRONG AND SWIFT, SEE THAT YOU DO NOT LIMP BEFORE THE LAME, DEEMING IT KINDNESS. YOU ARE GOOD IN COUNTLESS WAYS, AND YOU ARE NOT EVIL WHEN YOU ARE NOT GOOD, YOU ARE ONLY LOITERING AND SLUGGARD. PITY THAT THE STAGS CANNOT TEACH SWIFTNESS TO THE TURTLES. IN YOUR LONGING FOR YOUR GIANT SELF LIES YOUR GOODNESS: AND THAT LONGING IS IN ALL OF YOU.
Beloved Osho, you said every child is born a god, yet my two children were very different right from birth. One is very serene and god-like, but the other seemed disturbed before she was influenced by any conditioning. How should we deal with the difficult one?
Give the child a wholeness. Make him infectious to your awareness. Love him, tell him what your experience is, but don't try to make him follow your experience. Don't force. If he follows of his own accord, it is good; if he doesn't follow, wait -- there is no hurry. It is difficult to be a father or to be a mother, the MOST difficult thing in the world. And people think it is the easiest. I have heard: One woman was coming in a taxi to her home from the market, and the taxi-driver was just crazy. He was going zigzag; any moment there would be an accident. And he was going so fast...the woman was very, very nervous, sitting on the edge of the seat, and many times she said: Don't go so fast, I'm scared. But he wouldn't listen. Then she said: Listen! Twelve children are waiting…
You are often saying that this is good or bad, or this is right or wrong. Is this a language just for us as we are not able to realize the oneness of everything, or is there such a thing as good and bad?
But if you ask me, ultimately there is nothing good, nothing bad, nothing right, nothing wrong. And if you can understand this right now, then start living in a way where nothing is wrong and nothing is right -- and this is for you as far as you are concerned with others, and for others as far as they are concerned with you. Jesus says, "Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you." This is the basic principle of `one standard' and this is the whole of the teaching of all those who want to help you to come to yourself -- there is one standard where nothing is good and nothing is bad, not only for you but for everyone. It is easy to say that to steal is not bad if you are stealing, but if someone else is stealing something from you then…