According to Osho, 'personality' is only an abstract idea—the shadow—while the 'person' is the living, concrete presence. Worshiping personality is the ego’s trick to escape surrender; you can never meet an abstraction. Authentic devotion engages a real person (Buddha, guru) as a doorway: by bowing to the living presence, you transcend idolatry and return to your own source.
Don’t chase ideas about holiness; meet and bow to a real, living teacher, and in that surrender you discover yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
I am confused about the difference between surrender and following my inner light. It seems that when I want to surrender, I am afraid to be responsible for myself, and when I want to follow my inner light, I'm afraid of what you will ask of me in surrender.
You have to be absolutely clear about it: if you already have the inner light there is no need for any surrender, because surrender is only going to help you to bring the inner light. If you have it already, then forget all about surrender. But... you don't have it. Just to avoid surrender you imagine that you have it. If you have it, you have it. Then the question of surrender does not arise. You don't have it. You only have inner darkness, no inner light. So when you go in you find darkness; then you start thinking of surrender. When you start thinking of surrender then you become afraid -- because the ego comes in. It is not the inner light that is hindering you. Inner light never hinders anybody. Let me say it in this way: if you surrender, it is a help to the inner light;…
Osho, what is more important in your religion -- to be thyself or to know thyself?
Gurdjieff calls them "selves; it is the same. You can call personalities selves or egos, and you can start looking for them -- it is a tremendously charming game to look at them. In the evening, you decide that tomorrow morning you are going to get up at five. This you have been deciding for many years, and you know it -- that every evening you decide.... But this night is different! -- that too, you know. Every night you have been saying, "This night is different; tomorrow I am going to get up. There is a limit to everything!" But all these things you have been saying every night. You are not saying a single new thing, but you are not aware of it. And at five o'clock when the alarm goes, you just press the button; and you are angry at the clock. You may throw the clock,…
(God is less a personality and more a presence, a perfume, Osho reminds us.) The flower has a form, a personality. The fragrance is formless, it has no personality. It is there, it exists, but it exists not in a fixed form, it exists in a formless way. And that's what god is, a godliness. And the experience of this fragrance comes through meditation. There is no other way, there never has been, there never will be. The really religious person has only one thing to do, and that is to become meditative. And by using the very word 'meditation' there is a possibility of moving in a wrong direction -- because English has no exact word for 'dhyana'; meditation only comes close to it. English has three words: concentration, contemplation, meditation. Concentration is of the mind.
Jesus and buddha were certainly individuals. Cannot their individuality and its expression be called personality? You too, it could be said, have a personality, yet not an ego. Please clarify the concepts of personality, ego, individuality, and self.
So somebody becomes an individual only when he has become infinite. It will look paradoxical, but let me say it: somebody becomes individual only when he has become universal, when he is one with the whole. Then somebody is an individual. But then to call him an individual will be stretching the meaning of the word too far. It will be a little too outlandish. It is better to call Buddha a nobody -- neither a person nor an individual. All those things have been left far behind. He has transcended all limitations. The question is from Prem Divya. She asks, PLEASE CLARIFY THE CONCEPTS OF PERSONALITY, EGO, INDIVIDUALITY AND SELF. Personality and ego are two aspects of the same coin, just as individuality and self are two aspects of the same coin. The personality has a center -- that center is called the ego. Because personality itself is false,…
Osho, you said last night that those who have become void, valley-like, do not react but they respond, and that the responses of these different enlightened ones will be different -- that the valley will reecho in its own unique and individual way. Now a question arises whether those who become absolutely void, nothingness, still have a personality and individuality. If so, then please explain how this becomes possible.
THIS is one of the paradoxes of spiritual life: the more one dissolves into the Divine, the more unique one becomes. The dissolution is not of the individuality but of the self. The dissolution is not of the uniqueness but of the ego. The more you are an ego, the more you are like others, because everyone is an egoist. The ego is the most ordinary thing in the world. Everyone is an egoist; even a newborn child is an egoist -- a perfect egoist. So it is not anyone's achievement; it is not extraordinary. Really, it can be said that to be just ordinary is the most extraordinary thing possible because no one feels just ordinary. So to feel oneself extraordinary is just the most ordinary thing. Everyone feels like that! So ego is not something unique. If you have an ego, it is not something unique. Really, egolessness…