According to Osho, selfishness is the shadow of the ego—a reflection of a reflection—hence unreal. Your true being is the moon; ego is its shaky image in the lake, created by lack of awareness. When you look within with alertness, the ego is not found, and with it selfishness vanishes. Then love and spontaneous, nonselfish action flower naturally, without preaching altruism.
Selfishness isn’t something real to fight; it appears when you forget your true self and disappears when you become aware.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS SELFISHNESS? Yoga Chetana, selfishness is the shadow of the idea of a separate self. It is a shadow of a shadow, a reflection of a reflection. It is as if you see the moon in the lake and then you see the moon reflected in the lake in a mirror. It is far far removed from reality. Even the reflection in the lake is not real, but the reflection of the lake in the mirror is even more unreal. The ego is a reflection in the lake of your true being. Your true being is the moon; the ego is only a reflection in the lake. The reflection in the lake can be disturbed even by a small pebble. Throw a small pebble and you will see: the moon is disturbed, distorted. Ripples arise and the moon is broken into thousands of pieces.
You have told us many times: be selfish. What is it to be selfish?
Drop the self. Because that is the most beautiful thing that can happen to you. That will be the greatest contentment that can come to you. Drop the self, if you really are selfish. If you really want to be blissful, drop the self -- because self is creating all your miseries and all your hells. Difficult, because it looks like a paradox. But have you watched? All miseries come to you because of your self, because of the ego. You are hurt again and again, you suffer so much because of the ego. It is like a wound which remains always alive, and anything, even a breeze, a cool breeze, hurts you. Somebody smiles and it hurts, somebody laughs and it hurts, somebody is going on his way, maybe lost in his own thoughts, not looking at you, then it hurts. Mulla Nasrudin was saying to his wife, 'Don't…
Is not the search for enlightenment a selfish search?
You cannot be centred and you are trying to help others, to be of service to them. The only help that you can give, the first and the very basic thing, is to be centred and rooted within yourself. Yes, enlightenment is a selfish search. This is half of the answer I would like to give you.Now the other half. Because enlightenment is a selfish search, the most selfish, incomparably selfish -- that's why you cannot attain enlightenment through search. The search will make you a beautiful person, wise, compassionate, in a thousand and one ways, but not enlightened. So, for me there exist three types of persons; one, the so called religious person, the moral, the puritan, the so-called good, who goes on trying to be unselfish and remains selfish. Second, the person who knows there is no other way to be, that to be selfish is the only…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, SHOULD WE BE SELFISH? There is no other way. Nobody can be unselfish -- except hypocrites. The word `selfish' has taken a very condemnatory association, because all the religions have condemned it. They want you to be unselfish. But why? To help others.... I am reminded: a small child was talking to his mother, and the mother said, "Remember always to help others." And the child asked, "Then what will the others do?" Naturally the mother said, "They will help others." The child said, "This seems to be a strange scheme. Why not help yourself, rather than shifting it and making things unnecessarily complex?" Selfishness is natural. Yes, there comes a moment when you are sharing by being selfish. When you are in a state of overflowing joy, then you can share.
Osho, yesterday you said that jealousy is included in respect. I have immense respect for you, but the jealousy inherent in it keeps poisoning it, and I feel guilt and pain. Does reverence transcend this poison-laced respect?
It needs a little explaining—it's a delicate point. Whenever you respect someone, you do so because you see in that person something you do not have. You respect because you glimpse in the other something you would also like to possess. A beggar respects an emperor because he, too, longs to be an emperor. So on the one hand he respects, and inside he also envies. Because he is not yet an emperor but wants to be. You have attained what he wants to attain. He respects you as skillful, successful: “I stand far back in the line; you have gone ahead to where I should have been.” So you are powerful, clever, intelligent, strong—he respects you. But inside a fire of jealousy also burns—if he gets the chance, he would like to be in your place and push you aside. And if the beggar gets that chance, he will…