According to Osho, the only person worth meeting is your own self. He says he longed to meet someone and did: himself, decades ago; afterward, the urge to meet anyone else vanished. Self-encounter ends seeking and dependency, bringing contentment and inner sufficiency, because the source of fulfillment is within, not in external personalities.
When you truly meet and know yourself, you stop needing special others to feel complete.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, is there a person you would like to meet that you have never met? Can you name a personality?
There was a person I wanted to meet. I met him thirty-five years ago: myself. Since then I have not had any desire to meet anybody.
Beloved Osho, I am haunted by a feeling of missing. It's as if I am searching for somebody that I won't recognize -- and he's just nearby, leaping and waving and calling me, but I'm just too dim and unaware to notice him. However, having been back here with you for a few days, I get the feeling that I might bump into him at any moment. Could it be me?
Sharna, you have guessed well; it is you. So don't be afraid, bump into yourself. And you may think that you are just too dim and unaware to notice him -- but you have noticed him; otherwise, from where does this question come? You say, "I am haunted by a feeling of missing." It is a good beginning. Everybody is missing himself, but is not aware -- not even dimly aware. "It is as if I am searching for somebody that I won't recognize." That too is true. You don't know yourself, so how are you going to recognize yourself? Somebody has to introduce you to yourself. I'm here just to introduce you to yourself. You are working in England where people don't talk with each other without introduction. I have heard... a man came out of the train very dizzy, feeling sick and nauseous. His wife had come to…
Osho, if another man who has already realized his own self comes to you, can you recognize him simply by looking at him? I would like to meet you if you permit me.
It is a very paradoxical phenomenon. To realize who you are is to realize that you are not! If you want to be, never try to realize, because in the very process of realization the ego disappears. And the self is only another name for the ego. There is nothing like self-realization. Yes, there is realization, but the realization always makes you absolutely clear that the self had never existed in the first place and it is not there; it has never been there. And for whom are you looking for recognition? As I see it, to me everybody is a no-self, whether he knows it or not. Yes, if he knows that there is no self I will immediately see that he knows. His humbleness, his simplicity, his spontaneity, his no-nonsense will be enough. His eyes will be absolutely empty because only in emptiness is there clarity. He will…
Question: First question: Osho, Searching for you I have wandered who knows where. Neither heaven says a word, nor does hell open its gate. I look into every eye, feeling for your picture, and I have wandered who knows where. Are these just the gaps between breaths, or only distances upon distances? You too say nothing—your lips never open. How long must I keep walking, groping about in everyone’s heart? Where are you and where am I? Searching for you I have wandered who knows where. I could not meet you on the earth, nor could I fix your address in the sky. I searched everywhere for you and yet did not find you. Now, in searching, I set out after myself—who knows where I strayed. Ah, what is this? Your address is found: your image in my eyes, like musk that dwells within the deer.
Osho, “If there is awareness, the other is always beneficial.” Is this what you mean by a buddha, an awakened one?
If there is awareness, the other is neither beneficial nor harmful; if there is awareness, you draw your well-being from everywhere. Without awareness, you draw your ill-being from everywhere. If there is awakening, wherever you are, heaven begins to be created—because of your awakening. If there is no awakening, wherever you are, the stench of hell begins to rise—because of you. Understand it this way: to live in stupor builds hell; to live awake builds heaven. No one has ever suffered while awake. No one has ever known happiness while asleep. In sleep, at most you can hope for happiness; happiness never arrives. In the hope of happiness you can bear a great deal of suffering, but happiness never arrives. What comes with wakefulness—that alone is happiness. There is no relation to the other at all. If you understand rightly, there is no other; it is you. Your idea about…