According to Osho, limits arise only when we compare expressions, not realizations. The same knowing is available to everyone, but a few—like Mahavira—articulate it so clearly that we set them at the center. Such limits reflect human valuation of communication, not the essence itself. Respect the universality of truth while acknowledging differing capacities to convey it.
Truth lives in everyone, but some people explain it better—don’t confuse better words with more truth.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, awakened ones, considering place, time, circumstance, and the era-appropriate psychology of people, have expressed the same truth in very different forms. To the point that they appear mutually quite disputatious and even contradictory. Is an absolute expression of the ultimate truths of life and existence not possible? Will the limits of the age and the condition of the people always continue to be imposed upon truth?
Expression will always be limited. Expression will always be relative. The speaker and the listener—both create the boundaries of expression. I will say only what can be said. You will understand only what can be understood. Truth is vast. If I go to see the ocean and you say to me, “On your way back, bring a little of the ocean,” I will not be able to bring the whole ocean. I may bring a little water from it. But in that water much will be missing. There will be no storm of the ocean, no waves. And that was the real ocean: that tumultuous roar and fierce thunder! Waves crashing against cliffs! Those surges rising and spreading for miles! That swell! None of that will be there. I will bring a vessel filled with a little ocean water. Still, there will be something! If you taste it, it will…
Question: Third question: Osho, isn’t expression nothing but a limitation? What I am saying to you are small, small words. What I am saying has limits. But what I want to say has no limits. Do not grasp my words too tightly, or their life will slip away. Let them descend within you; do not clench your fist, for words die very quickly. Words are delicate, fragile—handle them with great care. Do not let my words get lost in the crowd of your thoughts, or your thoughts will destroy them before they even reach you. Do not let my ideas collide with your arguments, or your logic will tear them to pieces. Give me a little space. Step a little aside. Step a little aside even from yourself, so that I may enter you directly, silently. Granted, these words are small—like tiny seeds.
Osho, but in that knowing, Maharaj-ji, can there not be sameness—that as another has known, I may know the same? And may that sameness become available to me.
If you look very closely, such sameness is possible only if I am exactly as the other was. Otherwise it can never be. See the full implications: when I am knowing, my whole personality, my total being, is knowing. Only if your whole personality is exactly as mine, could the event of our knowing be one and the same. And no two persons are ever the same. In fact, forget persons—that is a far-off matter. Pick up a stone from a Delhi street; search the whole earth and you will not find another exactly like it. Pluck a flower from a garden; comb all the forests and you will not find another just like it. Here, each and every thing has its own uniqueness. And that very uniqueness is its soul. In my view, this uniqueness is its soul. A machine has no soul, because a machine is not unique.…
Osho, the other day you spoke of “ekant” in relation to Lord Mahavira. Was Mahavira’s realization also ekant—one-sided? Was it not complete? This is my question.
What news we bring back are drishtis, thoughts. What we actually knew and lived was darshan. In that darshan, Srinagar was one. There, night-day were joined, mountain-lake were joined, good-bad were joined—everything was together. But the moment we speak, we choose; we sift; we stand somewhere and select a viewpoint. The moment anything is spoken, a drishti is formed. This has been the great danger: mistaking drishti for darshan. Hence, the Hindus have a drishti, not darshan; the Jains have a drishti, not darshan; the Muslims have a drishti, not darshan. If we speak of darshan, then Hindu, Muslim, Jain all disappear—only the One remains; there is no drishti, no ideology. Mahavira’s experience is total; expression cannot be. Whenever we try to say it, we cannot say the total. The experience of the divine is a far greater matter—even a small, simple experience cannot be expressed in its wholeness. You…
Osho, between Sage Kapila’s Sankhya philosophy, Ashtavakra’s Mahageeta, and Krishnamurti’s teaching, is the only difference one of expression according to time and place? Kindly explain!
Now syadvada is the complete truth! And if someone says it is also partial, a quarrel will begin. “All are partial truths, but what I am saying is the complete truth”—this was the very quarrel. Syadvada was devised to settle that quarrel. Now syadvada too has become one more party, another controversy, another sect. Had syadvada truly been understood, there should be no Jain sect at all—because on the basis of syadvada a sect cannot stand. Syadvada means that truth is in all, and complete truth is in none; therefore there is no place for erecting sects. A sect necessarily claims: truth is here, not there. Syadvada cut the very root of sectarianism. Yet a Jain sect stands, now defending syadvada. Between these three—Kapila, Ashtavakra, and Krishnamurti—I am not asking you to seek a synthesis. I am saying: if you go into the depths of meditation, if you attain to…