According to Osho, the split between selfishness and altruism is false; life is one fabric. Your happiness depends on others’ happiness, so intelligent “selfishness” includes caring for the whole. Extreme egoism is like a cancer cell—self-destructive; compulsive self-sacrifice breeds misery and control. Drop choosing sides; from awareness, act in ways that nourish both yourself and others simultaneously.
We’re all on one team: helping others helps you, grabbing only for yourself harms you, and gloomy self-sacrifice harms everyone.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What should one choose, selfishness or altruism?
One should not choose at all. Choose and you go wrong. Prefer and you have gone wrong. Non-preference, no. choice.... You ask: To be selfish or to be altruistic? Now these things are separate only in language, and that creates great anxiety. But in life they are not separate things. To be altruistic is the only way to be selfish, to be selfish is the only way to be altruistic. It sounds paradoxical, but if you meditate over it you will be surprised. And that is so about all paradoxes of life! If you want to be happy, really happy, can you be happy in an unhappy world? Can you be happy in an unhappy family, can you be happy with unhappy human beings? It is not possible. It is like you want to be healthy -- can you be healthy when everybody is ill and unhealthy? How long can…
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.
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.
I say to you that to be selfish is to be healthy. There is nothing sinful about it. In my vision, men like Mahavira, Buddha and Christ are the most selfish men on this earth. Why? -- because they live purely for themselves, seeking their self, their soul, their bliss, their freedom, their God. And, curiously enough, they happen to be the most altruistic people who walked this planet. The reason is that when a man discovers himself and finds his enlightenment and bliss, he immediately begins to share it with others. He is now on a new journey -- a journey of sharing his joy, his benediction. What else can he do? When clouds are full they rain; when bliss is full it overflows, it shares itself with others. And this too, is selfishness. The same is true with misery.
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…