When you share his words with real people, they can change inside—and that’s what truly changes the world.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, fifteen years ago I was a political militant, and I was trying to change the society by spreading ideas. Failure and frustration brought me to you. Now that your people cannot reach to you, can spreading your ideas and publishing your books and tapes be enough to give birth to the new man? Or is there anything else that we can do?
So when I say, "Spread the word," I mean whatever I have been telling you, go on spreading in as many ways as possible. Use all the news media, use everything that technology has provided, so that the word reaches to every nook and corner of the earth. And remember, it is far more powerful than any nuclear weapons because nuclear weapons can only bring death -- that is not power. But the word which has come from an enlightened consciousness can bring new life to you; it can give you rebirth, resurrection -- that is power. Destroying something, any idiot can do. Creating needs intelligence. I will be leaving words of immense potentiality for you. If you can simply go on whispering them, you will be surprised that they can change the whole human heart. If the word has come from the awakened consciousness, as it reaches within you…
What you talk about can mean so much to so many people. Your message has to spread, it has to bring about a spiritual explosion. That seems to be the only hope there is for us today. How do you intend to let your ideas grow and spread and blossom, flower, into something more universal, more accepted, more usual?
To be too concerned with the result is what is known as a worldly mind. Why should I be concerned with the result? I have said what I felt, I have lived what I felt. If you feel I am saying is worth trying, you can choose to do it. the choice must be yours. It must not be enforced in any way; it must not be manipulated in any way. Even you yourself should not be convinced about it. No conviction is good. You can choose. This choice will remain alive because, in choosing it, you remain yourself. It becomes part of your greater unity. It is bound to undergo a deep change in you, it will be a different flowering. If I force it upon you then it will just be an imitation. Then you will be a follower, not an authentic being. And followers are not good,…
Question: Final question: Osho, your message? Roshanlal! Spread light; that is my message. Become luminous yourself, and illumine others! Light your own lamp; share your flame with the lamps that have gone out! Spread the living— one single word is more than enough to be meaningful. That living word will not only quicken you, it will pour life around you; it will turn the withered whole environment green again. That word is “love.” Go within, deeper than your own depth; then bring up the pearl of this living word, and open the lip-sealed shell— the pearl of “love” will emerge, whose radiance is greater than the sun. No doubt your own idea of yourself as someone great becomes an obstacle to receiving and spreading this living word.
Osho, I want to carry your message from home to home, from heart to heart, but people are completely deaf and blind. What should I do? Having found what I have found, it is not possible not to share it. There is an inevitability to sharing it.
You who hurl a challenge to humanity all eight watches of the day, You who take palaces and treasures as your hereditary right— Tomorrow you will become dust-motes, kicked under people’s feet. Who here is there that has tasted the nectar of immortality? These rainbow dawns are borne on nights black with sorrow; In summer’s scorching flames there are showers of sweetness! This making and unmaking is the tread of deathless Time’s feet; These talk of joys and sorrows are like pictures of shadows here. To stop is not the law of motion—keep on walking, brother; To be extinguished is not the law of life—keep on burning, brother! Like a block of snow—pure, cool, bright—be the heir of glory; It is not the law for tears to freeze—keep on melting, brother! Keep flowing on, flowing on, flowing on, brother! Keep your head held high and bear the cold and heat,…
Osho, as I understand your teaching, you want every individual to be aware and to understand life in its totality. But today’s society is very complicated. Our environment is so complicated that it does not allow us to live a free life, to love people, or to live in the state in which we could live a very clean and smooth life.
Society is as it is; only by accepting this truth can anything be done. Society is like this—but if a person can see that apart from a simple, loving, joyous, clean life there is no life at all; if he sees that without becoming loving he will remain deprived of life’s joy; if he sees that without becoming simple there is no path to reach truth—then he will drop worrying about what society is like. For what can society give him—what is it giving? Once he sees that in another direction—which society does not offer and in fact obstructs—there lies the doorway to his life’s bliss, he will begin to move toward it. Certainly the social order will create obstacles. But for such a person they will not be obstacles; they will turn into challenges, and he will try to make steps out of them. The stones thrown onto his…