According to Osho, taking inspiration isn’t subtle theft—it’s an inner challenge sparked by another’s light to awaken your own. Go to the wise, but don’t believe; investigate. Let others be catalysts, not foundations: turn their example into inquiry, not imitation. When you copy, you grow blind; when you let the encounter ignite your seed, inspiration becomes sadhana—your singular flowering.
Let others inspire you to light your own candle, not to trace their shape.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you have said that stealing faces, trying to become like another, becoming a disciple and a follower is subtle theft. Then is taking inspiration from others, learning practices, going to the experienced and awakened—are all these also thefts? If these are thefts, then what would right education look like? Please explain.
Go to those who know, but do not take what they know on faith! Investigate it. Do not turn what they know into belief; turn it into inquiry. Do not clench your fists around it blindly; open your eyes to it, probe it. Inspiration does not mean accepting the other. Inspiration means accepting the other’s challenge. If you go to Mahavira, inspiration does not mean you set about becoming like Mahavira. Going to Mahavira, the meaning of inspiration is: if this light could blossom within Mahavira, why can it not blossom within me? That is the challenge! In English there is the word “inspiration.” It is a very precious word. One must pay attention to the “in” in inspiration. But we always take inspiration from the other; then the word is quite wrong. Inspiration means inner-spiration. The other can serve as a catalyst, but not as a foundation. The other…
Instead of only worshipping Mahavira and Buddha, if we contemplated upon their great achievement we would perhaps be able to stop distorting their true images. But are busy performing pujas. Pujas cause distortions. We not only kill what we worship but we cover it up with our own images and ideas, weave our own stories around them. The original thing slowly turns into ashes and loses all its individuality. This is all very unfortunate and we are helpless with our long established habits. Almost everybody in the world has got 'Moses' flute' with him, but no tune is corning out of it. Buddha used to tell the people, 'Don't worship me.' Mahavira says 'You yourself are God'. The man who is telling others, 'You yourself are God,' is emphasising the fact 'Don't worship me.' That man says 'you yourself are that whom you worship.
Osho, today the questions are on “achourya” (non-stealing). To understand achourya, I would like to understand “theft” very closely. So for now let us talk only about theft. You have said that at the level of body, feeling, or mind, imitation or following another is theft. But life is a web of inter-relationships; everything here is interconnected. Then how can a person distinguish his purest originality from the subtle waves coming from outside—their influence or imposition? How does one avoid that?
Religion is concerned with the theft of influences, the theft of personalities, the theft of faces. And we are all living as the stolen. We are all living as if we were someone else. We are not ourselves. I am not I; I am living like someone else. In this sense I have said that “achourya” is the path to the attainment of individuality in the human soul, and “theft” is the method of losing the soul. This can happen at the level of feeling, at the level of thought, or at the level of the body. We do not even walk in our own way; we even learn our walk from others! We do not think in our own way; we learn thoughts from others! We do not feel in our own way; we learn feelings from others! A man reads the newspaper in the morning and then all…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, YOU ARE MY INSPIRATION. I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY YOU NEVER HAD A MASTER; BUT WAS THERE ANY SOURCE OF INSPIRATION FOR YOU WHEN YOU BEGAN YOUR JOURNEY? Life itself is enough. Seeing people all around -- walking corpses -- is inspiration enough not to move with them, not to go their way, but to find a small footpath of your own if you want to be alive. I have never had a master, and I am fortunate that I never had a master. I have been, in my past lives, with a few living masters. They were beautiful people, lovable, but one thing has been clear all along to me -- that nobody can be a source of inspiration for me, because that word `inspiration' is dangerous.
So whoever has even a little itch to be cultured, he is painting something or other. In Hindustan, whoever feels, Let me be a good man, he begins to turn into a sannyasi. A person’s private inspiration is the real thing. Be saved even from the inspiration of others. Although others enjoy immensely giving you inspiration. They enjoy it very much. Because, in my understanding, the pleasure in giving inspiration to another is a kind of pleasure in violence—violence of a subtle sort. When we start trying to make a man into something—We will make him like this—then we begin to play a game of toys with him. We have bound him in our fist. We do not see this. A father says, I will certainly make my son good. Then he will fashion a mold.