According to Osho, the exact speaking time in a shastrarth isn’t rigidly fixed; it should be set by mutual agreement and fairness. He accepts whatever balanced timing the participants propose—'just as you say'—because the essence is honest inquiry, attentiveness, and equal opportunity. The form serves the spirit: clarity, presence, and respectful dialogue matter more than minutes.
There’s no fixed time; decide together on a fair limit for each speaker.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you have titled this series of talks “Sahaj Yoga.” Do “sahaj” and “yoga” not seem mutually opposed?
Anand Maitreya! They don’t just seem opposed, they are opposed. But no ultimate truth of life can manifest without contradiction. Life is made of opposites—darkness and light, day and night, woman and man, negative electricity and positive electricity, birth and death. The very structure of life is woven of opposites. Hence the opposites are not only opposed; they are complementary to each other. If you have labored hard all day, you will be able to sleep deeply. Labor and rest are opposites, yet only the one who has worked can rest deeply—and the one who has not worked cannot. So the opposites are not only opposed, they complete each other. And only the one who has rested deeply at night can rise in the morning and engage in work again. One who has not rested through the night will not be able to work in the morning. Look closely at…
Another friend has asked: Osho, what is the relationship between the method of meditation and jati-smaran (recollection of past lives)?
But the one who becomes skilled in this—who can fully awaken any day’s memory up to the age of five—will find that the memories begin to awaken completely. And you should test it. As today passes, note down some events and lock them up. After two years, try to recall today. Most of it will have been forgotten. Then remember—and after remembering, break the lock and compare whether what you recalled matches what you had written. You will be amazed—astonished—that besides what you wrote, many more details have come back which you did not even note at the time. They will all be there in memory. Buddha called this alaya-vijnana. There is a corner of the human mind he called the storehouse of consciousness. Like a junk room in the house where we keep all the odds and ends, there is a storehouse that collects memories—where everything from birth after…
Beloved Osho, you have said many times that a dialogue is not possible through debate. But shankara announced his universal victory and defeated innumerable intellectuals in a debate on the meaning of the scriptures. After the defeat they had to become shankara's disciples. Please explain what kind of debate on the scriptures this was.
Shankara agreed to debate with Bharati. But he found he could not reply to the questions asked by her, because she did not ask any question regarding Brahma or knowledge of Brahma. As he had already defeated Mandan on that topic. She had understood from the debate with Mandan that it was useless to talk to this young man about Brahma. She thought "This young-looking person is actually a very ancient being." And Mandan certainly knew more than Bharati. That is why Bharati had fallen in love with him, married him, and was looking after him. She had seen him defeated by Shankara on the subject of Brahma, so she asked Shankara questions regarding sex. Shankara was young. He was thirty years old and was unmarried. He found himself in a difficult situation. He said, "I want six months' time to reply to these questions because I am unmarried and…
Osho, you have been speaking continuously for twenty years. How is it possible to keep speaking like this? What is the secret of this art?
Rajendra! There is no secret at all. A small story will make it clear to you. A certain leader was contesting an election. As far as elections were concerned, he was rather new to the game. He didn’t really know how to give speeches. During the campaign a friend said to him, “Brother, why be so shy? You’re a leader and you’re feeling shy!” He replied, “Brother, I’m new to this field, and I don’t know the art of public speaking—how one should speak.” His friend laughed and said, “Arrey, is speaking even an art? Just keep drawing one thing out of another—that’s the secret of a speech.” After that, the speech the leader gave on stage went like this: “Brothers and sisters, I am neither a speaker nor a loudspeaker! The speaker used to be Kallan Miya from our neighborhood, and these days he is in his grave. Two…
Osho, just one small thing: what’s the significance of the forty-eight minutes in this?
It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything. Here it’s not a matter of minutes at all; just pausing for a while is enough.