According to Osho, there is no message to grasp: he offers no doctrine or answers, only his presence. A master is not a word but a door; participate, tune in, and let your questions dissolve in silence. Don’t try to understand—be with him. Transformation is shown, not told: your eyes, energy, and life reflect the shift beyond concepts.
He doesn’t give ideas to remember—just be with him quietly and you’ll feel a peace that answers itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is your message, Osho? I don't understand you.
When you try to understand me you will miss, because while I am imparting something to you, you are engaged and occupied in understanding it. You will miss it. Don't try to understand it, just listen! Just as I am talking to you without any motive, listen on your part without any motive -- and the meeting is bound to happen. When I am without motive and you are without motive, what can hinder, what can obstruct the meeting? Then the meeting is going to happen. And in that communion is understanding; in that communion is light, clarity, transparency. So rather than trying to understand me, celebrate me, rejoice in me -- and you will understand, and without any effort to understand. Nobody ever understands through effort. What effort do you make when you listen to music? Do you try to understand it? If you try to understand it, you…
Osho, what is the fundamental anguish of human life?
There is only one anguish: that a human being cannot become what he was born to be. There is only one anguish: that the seed remains a seed and does not bloom like a flower; that it cannot scatter its fragrance to the infinite winds; cannot converse with the moon and stars; cannot offer its colors to the sky; cannot be expressed. If the poem within the poet cannot be revealed—anguish. If the painter cannot paint—anguish. If the dancer cannot dance—if chains lie on his feet—anguish. Anguish means only this: that what we are meant to be—our innate nature and destiny—does not come to fruition, and we are forced to be something else. Then anguish is born. Then melancholy gathers over life. And all those countless people you see burdened with sorrow, living in a kind of hell—the reason is only this: each has come carrying the seed of becoming…
Osho, your essential message? Sahajanand, my message is small—and also immensely vast! My message is atomic, yet an atomic explosion can burst from it.
Youth is arriving, youth is arriving; a blazing sun is arriving. The garden breezes are at their frolic— a revolution is arriving anew. Is that the sun in the East or in the tavern? Someone is arriving with a goblet of wine. Is it a rainbow, or from the court of the sky a minstrel is arriving, lifting his rebab? Is a lotus blooming, or from the garden’s pool a rising sun is arriving? I have brought wine for you! I have brought a song for you! Drink and sing! To drown you in wine, to soak you in songs!... I have no eagerness to give you sermons. I am not a preacher—I am a madman. Join me, and you too will go mad. I want to save you from the preachers; they are the ones who have deformed you. Your stubbornness made me drink even more, sir— O Sheikh,…
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…
Osho, what is your message?
The Shankaracharya would not agree with me because he says, "God is true and everything else is false." I cannot agree with him. And Karl Marx will not agree with me because he says, "Religion is the opium of the people," that religion is something utterly false, that there is no God, no spirit, no life except matter, that what you think is your consciousness is an epiphenomenon -- just a by-product. The moment you die everything dies. I tell you you are born and you will certainly die but something in you was before your birth, and something in you is there which will remain after your death. And that something is life. Life is eternal. Twenty sannyasins walk into the World Trade Center in New York singing, "Drinking from your wine, Osho, drinking from your wine!" The front desk receptionist calls for the manager to come quickly. He…