According to Osho, dishonesty turns relationships into ego-maintenance: you keep repainting a 'good' image, so every act is corrupted, manipulative, and immature. This breeds inner agony and prevents real intimacy, because doing replaces being. Don’t rush to fix it; simply stay alert to your insincerity. That naked awareness dissolves the ego and lying drops by itself—then authenticity, trust, and love arise as grace, not achievement.
Being fake makes you keep up a mask that hurts love; quietly noticing the fakery makes it fade so real closeness can grow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
But Osho, I have learned that there are four types of movement: physical movement, intellectual movement, emotional movement, and the fourth is wisdom. Perhaps, in the ultimate state of leisure, what is meaningful is that a person’s intellectual or emotional capacities be stimulated, so that he can shift from one plane and move to another?
This is exactly what I am saying: for human energies to move into higher dimensions, it is essential that one be freed from the lower. So I do not say that the old man’s answer to Confucius was right. I do not agree with the old man—though I have heard that Confucius agreed with him. Gandhi would have agreed with him; I would not. In my view, perhaps the old man saved his son from laziness, but then what? The boy would still die harnessed to the plough like an ox. And if the old man thinks that if the boy uses a tool he will become a machine, has he noticed that by yoking him like a bull he is turning him into a bull? That does not occur to him. Besides, using a machine is not possible for an animal; it is possible only for man. So rather…
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.…
[A sannyasin says: I'm wondering about my relationship. There is a lot of good feeling, but we're sort of keeping each other safe, and I feel restricted. We'll both be starting groups and I think we'll be able to branch out.] No relationship can truly grow if you go on holding back. If you remain clever and go on safeguarding and protecting yourself, only personalities meet, and the essential centres remain alone. Then just your mask is related -- not you. Whenever such a thing happens, there are four persons in the relationship, not two. Two false persons go on meeting, and the two real persons remain worlds apart. Risk is there. If you become true, nobody knows whether this relationship will be capable of understanding truth, authenticity; whether this relationship will be strong enough to stand in the storm.
Osho, why does life feel futile? When I come to you I get a small glimpse of meaning, but it keeps slipping away.
Life is neither futile nor meaningful. Life is a blank canvas. Paint upon it whatever you wish. Life is a blank book—write abuses in it if you like, or write songs. In itself, life is nothing; life is a bare opportunity. Many people live with the illusion that life already has a meaning and wonder why they cannot find it. Meaning does not exist in life; it has to be put into it. The more you pour in, the more you will receive—no more. A flute lies before you and you sit there saying, “The flute is here, but why are there no notes in it?” Notes do not dwell inside a flute; they have to be born, awakened, poured in, coaxed to surge. Put it to your lips and play, and an incomparable music will arise. There is no ready-made meaning in life, as if you could walk into…
What happens in and with the relationship between two partners if their egos drop?
Every day some couple comes to me and says 'We would like to change the partners. Enough is enough. We are tired.' But what will you do? You will do the same with the other person. It is not going to make much difference. Maybe for a few days, the fantasy, the romance, the honeymoon, and again... And they know it -- because they have done it before too. And they nod their heads in agreement. And they say 'Yes, that's true. I have been doing this to many women. But what to do? I am stuck again.' Rather than changing the partner, rather than dropping your woman or man, drop your ego. Dropping that ego, a different quality starts taking shape in your life, a different light, a different vision. And things settle in that vision. With that light coming in, all old miseries and conflicts and anguishes disappear.…