Tell the truth even if it feels hard at first—you may not fit in, but you’ll soon feel freer, happier, and more alive than by pleasing a lying crowd.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
How can I be authentic? How can I speak and act the truth when the society and the world on which I have to depend for my worldly needs are based upon lies and untruth
Then be untrue. Then don't create any misery for yourself. But the life for which you are going to be untrue will be taken away from you sooner or later. Death is certain. So if you want to live in an untrue society, comfortably -- then live comfortably. But that comfort is not leading you anywhere except death. Whatsoever you call a comfortable and convenient life, I call only a comfortable way to die. It is slow suicide. But the choice is yours. I am not forcing any goal, any structure on you. I am simply stating bare facts: that if you want to be comfortably, conveniently dying, compromise with the lies that surround you. But you will never feel comfortable deep down. An unease will remain inside your heart. And I know well that if you become authentic and true, it is going to be arduous. Otherwise, why should…
Osho, I feel I can lovingly understand you, and I can even make others understand. Then why does that very understanding fail to bring authenticity into life—whose absence keeps a constant disintegration going inside and out? Where is the mistake being made? Kindly shed your light.
But how does authenticity arise? If you tie it to “how,” you will be stuck—because authenticity is not something you can produce. Whatever you produce will be inauthentic. Keep this well in your heart: whatever you manufacture will be false. How can what you put on be authentic? The authentic has already been created by the divine. You ask, “How do I wear my original face?” The original face is not worn; it is. Only masks are worn. Anything you can put on will be false. Don’t say, “Fine, I won’t wear the false; I will wear the true.” Can the true be worn? The true is that which is on you without your putting it on—which even if you tried, you could not remove. That which you never miss, never lose, from which you are never separate—that is authentic. So what to do? Only see the false as false.…
Beloved Osho, I see that people go on saying that they want the truth -- nothing but the truth -- and freedom; they want to live in freedom. But when it actually comes down to it, nobody wants to hear the truth or live in freedom. They want to continue to live in lies and possess what they think they have. I see that in myself, and it is becoming less and less as I am walking the path with you. Why do we want to hold on to the ugly lies of life so much that we give up our trueness and our nature?
The court of the king was full. For the first time everybody was present; the queen was present, the princesses were present. The man said to the court and to the king, "I have brought the clothes. And for these clothes, the two, three million rupees that you have given are nothing. When you see the clothes you will see they are a thousandfold more costly. In fact you cannot appraise their cost on the earth; they are something that belongs to heaven. They are not found on the earth." The king was in a hurry. He said, "Open your box!" The man said, "The way it must be done has been explained to me. You give me your cap. First I will put your cap into the box, then I will take out the cap of God and put it on your head. Just one condition has to be…
30. Self-restraint, the first step of yoga, is comprised of the following five vows: nonviolence, truthfulness, honesty, sexual continence, and nonpossessiveness.
31. THESE FIVE VOWS, WHICH CONSTITUTE THE GREAT VOW, EXTEND TO ALL THE SEVEN STAGES OF ENLIGHTENMENT REGARDLESS OF CLASS, PLACE, TIME, OR CIRCUMSTANCE. Brahmacharya means: trying to understand sex energy, trying to understand how it moves in your being, trying to understand why it gives you pleasure, trying to understand from where pleasure really comes -- whether it comes from sexual congress, sex release, or it comes from somewhere else. If you are an observer, soon you will realize and discover it is coming from somewhere else. When you are in a sexual intercourse a deep shock happens to the whole body. It is a shock, because so much energy is released; the whole body trembles in a shock. In that shock thoughts stop. It is just like an electric shock. A man goes mad; you go to the psychiatrist and he gives him an electric shock. For what?…
A man who lives through lies has to be continuously on guard, tense; he has to be very cunning so that he is not caught. You can fool a few people for the time being, but you cannot fool all the people, all the time, so you are afraid of being caught sooner or later. The untruthful man cannot live the life of freedom. He lives in fear, he lives in guilt; he lives continuously afraid of being persecuted, afraid of being found, of being caught. And the more he is afraid of being caught, the more lies he goes on spinning and weaving around himself. That is how a man becomes more and more burdened by his own falsities. To be a sannyasin means getting out of it, jumping out of it, and starting calling a spade a spade That's what sannyas is all about: being utterly truthful...