No one can be perfect at everything; only the whole (God/life) covers all sides through everyone, so pick your main path—inner knowing or outer sharing—and you can learn the other later.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, has multidimensional perfection been attained by anyone?
No, it is impossible. It is simply impossible for any person to be perfect in all perfections. Some perfections are such that if you are perfect in one, you cannot be perfect in the other; they are opposing perfections. For example, suppose a virtuous person becomes perfect—then he cannot be perfect in the perfection of sin. Sin, too, has its own perfection. Yes, sin has its own perfection! And if someone becomes perfect in sin, how will he be perfect in virtue? So not only are perfections infinite; they are also mutually opposed. One cannot even think that a person could be perfect from every angle. It cannot be. The concept of God is precious in this sense. The meaning of the concept of God is that only God is perfect in all directions. Because God is not a person; through all persons he is attaining perfection in infinite directions.…
Is there anybody in the world who is perfect?
And now I would like to say something very paradoxical: if you can be totally in anger, by and by it disappears. If you can be totally in anything, there comes a great transformation; the whole energy changes because you start understanding what anger is. It is not that you drop it by conscious effort, deliberately, but simply because of understanding it is no longer relevant. Or, if sometimes it is needed, there is no hindrance either. You can be angry. I love Jesus because he could be angry. He was so human. Buddha looks inhuman -- at least eh way he is depicted is inhuman. Mahavira is utterly inhuman -- at least the way he is described in the Jaina scriptures. That's how he looks... as if he has no heart. But that is the goal of the perfectionist. Jesus is more human. Many times Jesus goes on saying…
Osho, there was a question about perfection. In the morning you said you regard emptiness as the fundamental hallmark of perfection. Then Buddha too was the ultimate void. So can he not be called complete? And along with that, is emptiness itself not multidimensional?
A few points. First, Buddha arrived at emptiness—as I was just saying, Buddha arrived at emptiness. That was his achievement; he attained it. He became empty. The emptiness that is attained becomes one-dimensional. It acquires a direction. It becomes dependent on the attainer. Understand it this way. In fact, whatever I negate within myself, whatever I cut off and set aside, will be finished, removed from within me. A certain kind of emptiness will be available. But that emptiness will come as the absence of something. There is another emptiness that we do not bring about; it is born in the very awareness of our being. We are emptiness—we do not become empty. Emptiness is our nature. That is how we are. The day emptiness is our nature—no discipline, no practice, no attainment—on that day emptiness becomes multidimensional. We have not emptied out anything to become empty; we have simply…
A friend has asked: Osho, you said about a wayward son that one should let him pass through his experiences, and he will learn on his own. But even after experiencing, he still prefers the same thing—someone is asking about his wayward son—no matter how much suffering he has to endure, even if death itself should come, still he does the same. After stumbling again and again, he repeats it. What can be done? How to reform him?
You will not be able to reform him. If life cannot reform him, if even death cannot reform him, what will you be able to do? If what you say is true—that again and again, even after suffering, he does the same thing; even if death comes, he will still do the same thing, and he does not change—then take your hands off. You will not be able to reform him. You cannot be stronger than death. And one who does not learn from suffering—what will he learn from you? Do not call him a wayward son. You have found yourself a Jadabharata. Because those whom suffering does not reform, whom even death does not reform—these are great, arrived masters; they are in the ultimate state. Do not even try to reform such a one. And why are you so eager to reform another? It is enough to reform yourself.…
The other day you talked about the guy who is afraid of touching his own navel. Osho, he is not alone here, because I suffer from the same problem.
And remember, that is the criterion. If a person can enjoy and celebrate his death, that shows he has lived rightly; there is no other criterion. Your death will prove how you have lived. The fruit proves the tree -- and death is the ultimate fruit of the tree that you are. How have you lived? Joyously? Has your life been a song and a dance? Has your life been a benediction, a blessing? Have you been grateful to God for giving you life? Then death will come as the ultimate gift -- from the same hands, from the same totality. And you will feel tremendously ecstatic. You will receive death, you will welcome death, you will embrace death. Death will be your ultimate love. But the person who has been repressing life, who has been repressing his sexuality, who has been repressing everything, who has never lived in any…