According to Osho, yes—be utterly selfish: pour all your energy into becoming enlightened, not into preaching or recruiting. No one has a duty to spread his message. First realize truth; otherwise you only propagate lies. When consciousness flowers, your very presence shares it effortlessly—love radiates, others are touched, questions arise. Become the message, not a missionary; authenticity precedes altruism.
Light your own lamp first; once it shines, people will see and feel it—no need to go selling lamps.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I wonder whether as your disciple I can be utterly selfish, to find my way to enlightenment whatever I am doing, or do I have to fulfill a certain function for you to spread your vision?
It has to be understood very clearly that nobody has a duty to spread my vision, my message to the people. I hate the very word `missionary'. These are the ugliest creatures on the earth. I don't want to create missionaries. You have to be utterly selfish, concentrated on only one aim: becoming enlightened. Of course, as you become enlightened, your light will start reaching to others. My message will start vibrating through you, through your love, without any effort on your part. It has never been said: "Be utterly selfish." All the religions of the world have been teaching, "Be altruistic," and they all have failed, because their very foundation was wrong. You don't know what truth is, and you start spreading the message about truth. You are lying. I have asked Christian missionaries, "What is your experience?" They don't have any experience. What they have is degrees from…
Is not the search for enlightenment a selfish search?
You cannot be centred and you are trying to help others, to be of service to them. The only help that you can give, the first and the very basic thing, is to be centred and rooted within yourself. Yes, enlightenment is a selfish search. This is half of the answer I would like to give you.Now the other half. Because enlightenment is a selfish search, the most selfish, incomparably selfish -- that's why you cannot attain enlightenment through search. The search will make you a beautiful person, wise, compassionate, in a thousand and one ways, but not enlightened. So, for me there exist three types of persons; one, the so called religious person, the moral, the puritan, the so-called good, who goes on trying to be unselfish and remains selfish. Second, the person who knows there is no other way to be, that to be selfish is the only…
Osho, yesterday you said that jealousy is included in respect. I have immense respect for you, but the jealousy inherent in it keeps poisoning it, and I feel guilt and pain. Does reverence transcend this poison-laced respect?
It needs a little explaining—it's a delicate point. Whenever you respect someone, you do so because you see in that person something you do not have. You respect because you glimpse in the other something you would also like to possess. A beggar respects an emperor because he, too, longs to be an emperor. So on the one hand he respects, and inside he also envies. Because he is not yet an emperor but wants to be. You have attained what he wants to attain. He respects you as skillful, successful: “I stand far back in the line; you have gone ahead to where I should have been.” So you are powerful, clever, intelligent, strong—he respects you. But inside a fire of jealousy also burns—if he gets the chance, he would like to be in your place and push you aside. And if the beggar gets that chance, he will…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, SHOULD WE BE SELFISH? There is no other way. Nobody can be unselfish -- except hypocrites. The word `selfish' has taken a very condemnatory association, because all the religions have condemned it. They want you to be unselfish. But why? To help others.... I am reminded: a small child was talking to his mother, and the mother said, "Remember always to help others." And the child asked, "Then what will the others do?" Naturally the mother said, "They will help others." The child said, "This seems to be a strange scheme. Why not help yourself, rather than shifting it and making things unnecessarily complex?" Selfishness is natural. Yes, there comes a moment when you are sharing by being selfish. When you are in a state of overflowing joy, then you can share.
I say to you that to be selfish is to be healthy. There is nothing sinful about it. In my vision, men like Mahavira, Buddha and Christ are the most selfish men on this earth. Why? -- because they live purely for themselves, seeking their self, their soul, their bliss, their freedom, their God. And, curiously enough, they happen to be the most altruistic people who walked this planet. The reason is that when a man discovers himself and finds his enlightenment and bliss, he immediately begins to share it with others. He is now on a new journey -- a journey of sharing his joy, his benediction. What else can he do? When clouds are full they rain; when bliss is full it overflows, it shares itself with others. And this too, is selfishness. The same is true with misery.