According to Osho, you should not take anyone's advice—including advice not to take advice. Advice is another's experience and can enslave you, diverting you from your unique path. Instead, ask questions and listen without prejudice so understanding ripens within you. Let insights be tested in your own being; then they become yours and you remain responsible, free.
Don't follow others' advice; listen, try, and learn so the truth becomes your own.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, SHOULD WE TAKE YOUR ADVICE NOT TO TAKE ANYONE'S ADVICE? Advice is the only thing in the world which everybody gives and nobody takes. You can ask me a question, but you cannot ask for advice; I am not that foolish. I will never give you any advice, because who am I to give you advice? You are unique, every individual is unique. My advice will be my experience. That may distract you from your own life, that may take you away from your own being. I have never advised anyone. Yes, you can ask a question. The answer that I give only has to be understood, it has not to be accepted on my authority. You have to be just a listener to it, without any prejudice.
Osho, should one not listen to and follow the wise advice of one's parents, teachers and well-wishers?
LISTEN, but don't follow. Listen well, but follow your own insight, don't follow others' advice. Listen certainly, very meditatively, try to understand what they are wanting to convey to you. They may REALLY be well-wishers, but if you start following blindly you will never attain to your own intelligence. You will remain dependent on crutches, you will always look up to others to tell you what to do, what not to do. You will always need leaders -- which is a very unhealthy state, to need leaders. Listen, because people have great experiences, and if they are sharing, willing to share, it will be foolish on your part not to listen. Sharing their experience may give you great insight -- it will help you to become more aware -- but don't follow. People follow literally and then they become just blind. When others are giving you all that you need,…
Osho, you said... then you will find that the devotee is God. The question arises: if one devotee prefers to be God and another wants to remain only a devotee, then which of the two is superior?
The one who wants to be God will not be able to be. And the one who wants to remain a devotee will become God. The question of superior or inferior does not arise, because only one of the two will happen. The one who does not want to be will be. The one who wants to be will be deprived. That very wanting is of the ego. But the matter is a little delicate. Sometimes humility too belongs to the ego. Beware that your humility may not be of the ego. Perhaps you are saying, “No, I don’t want to be,” because you know that those who refuse are the ones who attain. Then you are clever. Then your humility is adulterous. Your humility is not pure, not sacred, not virginal—it is like a prostitute. The one who wants to be God, whose ego says, “I must become God,”…
Osho, I am very skilled at giving advice to others, although my own understanding never seems to help me. Why is it so easy to advise others?
When I turned twenty-one, I went back. I said, “I still experience nothing of what you describe. I am twenty-one now—what’s your plan? Will you now say, ‘become forty-two’?” If I become forty-two, then you’ll push it further. Don’t stall! If it has happened to you, say so. If not, say it hasn’t. That day, I don’t know in what mood he was—no one else was there; otherwise his devotees would be sitting and it would be harder. That day he closed his eyes; two tears fell. That day reverence arose in me for him. He said, “Forgive me. I had been lying. It hasn’t happened to me either. It was only to put you off. Even then you were small, but you recognized it, because I could see in your eyes there was no reverence for me. You understood I was deferring it to ‘when you grow up.’ I…
Someone comes to you for counsel—have you ever said: I cannot advise; I know nothing? No. You are so generous with advice that if you merely hear someone needs it, you go to his house. Even if he wants to avoid you—he cannot; you advise anyway. Here in the camp I see people going to each other’s rooms—advising, counseling, giving wisdom—waking each other up, granting peace! They cannot sit silently themselves, nor let the other sit silently. Who needs your advice? Do you have any? There is great pleasure in being a guru—and no one is eager to be a disciple. Being a guru gratifies the ego. Look at the advisors’ condition: today they advise you; tomorrow when the same event befalls them, you will advise them—and they will be in the same pathetic state as you.