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Osho on What is absolute truth?

What is absolute truth?

Absolute truth is not a concept to be defined; it is the silence that arises when the mind ceases its chatter and the ego dissolves.

— Osho
According to Osho, absolute truth cannot be conceived or defined because every conception is relative. It is realized only when thinking, philosophizing, and ego cease—where the mind ends, it begins. One can live or be in it, but never reduce it to ideas; beyondness itself is the absolute.

You can’t think your way to absolute truth; become silent, drop thoughts and the sense of ‘me,’ and you directly experience it.

In His Own Words

From the Discourses

Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.

What is your conception of absolute truth?

No conception about absolute truth is possible because every conception is bound to be relative. The absolute transcends every conceptualization; you cannot conceive it. You can live it, you can be in it, but no intellectual conception is possible about the absolute. All conceptions are bound to be erroneous because conception, as such, is relative. So I can not say what my conception of the absolute is. I am only say that no conception is possible. The moment you go beyond conceptions, you know the absolute. But even when you have known it, you cannot transform it into a conception. The so-called religious mind is always conceptualizing, but the really religious man is one who has come to know the boundaries of intelligence, the boundaries of intellect, the boundary of conceptions. The absolute is beyond. Or you can say the beyondness is the absolute. I am not a philosopher; I…
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The Heart Sutra · Discourse 2
1977-10-12 · Buddha Hall · English

Beloved Osho,sometimes while just sitting, the question comes up in the mind: what is truth? But by the time I come here I realize that I am not capable to ask. But may I ask what happens in those moments when the question arises so strongly that had you been nearby I would have asked it. Or if you had not replied, I would have caught hold of your beard or collar and asked, "what is truth, Osho?"

When you fall in love with a woman there is some truth -- if you have fallen absolutely unaware, if you have not 'done' it in any way, if you have not acted, managed, if you have not even thought about it. Suddenly you see a woman, you look into her eyes, she looks into your eyes, and something clicks. You are not the doer of it, you are simply possessed by it, you simply fall into it. It has nothing to do with you. Your ego is not involved, at least not in the very, very beginning, when love is virgin. In that moment there is truth, but there is no interpretation. That's why love remains indefinable. Soon the mind comes in, starts managing things, takes possession of you. You start thinking about the girl as your girlfriend, you start thinking of how to get married, you start thinking…
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Beloved Osho, you spoke the other night about honest truth. Mystics have often spoken of the "ultimate truth." can the truth be anything other than ultimate?

Mahavira says that truth itself is relative: he has no ultimate truth. Buddha has no ultimate truth. Again the difficulty is that Mahavira and Buddha can be misunderstood when they say that there is no ultimate truth but that every truth is relative: it can be one thing in one situation, it can be another thing in another situation, and because it is related to situations it cannot have any ultimacy. This goes against all the great mystics. Only Mahavira and Buddha, two people... But I know both, and I understand both better than their own followers, because none of their followers have been able to make any sense out of it: either all the mystics are wrong, or Buddha and Mahavira are wrong! I say nobody is wrong. What Mahavira says is that truth has seven aspects, and Buddha says that truth has four aspects. They are really referring…
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Es Dhammo Sanantano · Discourse 91
1977-05-31 · Pune · Hindi · English translation

Osho, what is the definition of God?

Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…
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That Art Thou · Discourse 11
1972-01-13 · Matheran Meditation Camp, India · English

When the self as consciousness, which is truth, knowledge, infinity, and bliss, devoid of all its attributes, shines like pure gold freed from all its forms such as a bangle and a crown, it is called twam or thou.the brahman is truth, infinity and knowledge. That which is indestructible is truth. And that which does not perish even after the destruction of space, time, et cetera, is called the avinashi, the imperishable.

There is a dialogue, a deep dialogue between my existence and existence itself, a constant dialogue, a continuity every moment: the incoming breath, the outgoing breath. I am constantly linked with the universe, with existence. If we take two points, between these two points the dialogue continues. One point is "I," and the other point -- the total -- is "thou." A non-religious mind, a material mind, will say that the dialogue is not between "I" and "thou," the dialogue is between "I" and "that," because the world is just a thing; it is not a person. And really, if the world is just a thing and it is not a person, then there can be no dialogue, there can be no intimacy. But if the whole world is just a thing, then myself -- I myself cannot be a person; this "I" is also a thing. This is what…
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