According to Osho, being unique is your inherent, incomparable nature—there is no other you, so comparison drops and you simply are. Being special is a comparative claim of superiority or inferiority; it breeds ego, ambition, jealousy, and violence, creating misery. Uniqueness is religious, nonviolent presence; specialness is political struggle. Live an uncompared life—neti-neti, just yourself—and inner freedom, peace, and purity arise.
Unique means being yourself without comparing; special means trying to be better than others, which causes trouble.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is the difference between waiting for godot and waiting for god?
It is as if the sun has risen in the morning and you are sitting in your room with closed doors and windows, in darkness. Open the doors, you become available to the sun. The sun was already available -- just the meeting happens. You cannot wait for God. All waiting is for Godot. Godot means the one who never comes, who CANNOT come, whose arrival is impossible. And the only impossible thing is that which has already happened -- how can it happen again? You are alive, and you are waiting for life, Now, this is ridiculous. The real man of religion does not think in terms of God. He thinks in terms of life or, even better, of living -- because life can again become an abstract idea. Living, moment-to-moment living. In that very living, one knows what God is, because one knows who one is. Your idea…
How can I stop wanting to be special?
Because you ARE special, and there is no need to be special. You ARE special, you ARE unique -- God never creates anything less than that. Everyone is unique, utterly unique. There has been no person like you before, and there will NEVER be a person like you again. God has taken this form for the first time and the last time, so there is no need to try to become special, you already are. If you are trying to be special you will become ordinary. Your very effort is rooted in misunderstanding. It will create confusion, because when you try to become special you have taken one thing tor granted -- that you are not special. You have become ordinary already. You have missed the point. Now, once you have taken it for granted that you are ordinary, how can you become special? You will try this way and…
How can I be nothing and unique?
You can be unique only when you are nothing. If you are something, you are comparable. If you are somebody you can be compared with others, and that which can be compared cannot be unique. Unique means incomparable. Unique means you are alone, there is nobody like you. So if you are somebody.... If you are a man there are millions of men; you are comparable. If you are rich, then there are millions of rich people; you are comparable. If you are good you are comparable. If you are bad you are comparable. If you are a painter you are comparable. If you are a singer you are comparable. If you are somebody you are comparable, and by being comparable you cease to be unique. The moment you attain to a nothingness, when the "I" disappears.... The "I" is comparable; the "no-I" is incomparable. That's why I say if…
Question: BELOVED MASTER, HOW CAN I BE MYSELF? Drop comparison. You are unique. Nobody else is like you, nobody else has ever been like you, and nobody else is ever going to be like you. You are simply unique -- and when I am saying you are unique, I am not saying you are better than others, remember. I am simply saying they are also unique. To be unique is an ordinary quality of every being. To be unique is not a comparison, to be unique is as natural as breathing. Everybody is breathing and everybody is unique. While you are alive, you are unique. Only corpses are all alike; alive persons are unique. They are never similar -- they cannot be. Life never follows any repetitive course. God never repeats: he goes on singing a new song every day, he paints something new every day.
Deva means divine and suraj means order: divine order. To be in that state one has to be possessed by god. One has to lose oneself more and more, one's ideas, one's mind, one's manipulations, one's control. There can be two orders in a human being. Either man orders himself -- he is his own government -- or god becomes his government and he simply follows. Misery comes when you try to control life. Misery is just an indicatyion that you are trying to control life which cannot be controlled, hence misery. You are pushing the river: it is doomed to fail. Man is a part and the whole is really so big; we cannot push the whole. The very effort creates a conflict. In that conflict man can never win. And it is good that he can never win. God always wins.