According to Osho, honesty is simple, unpretentious being: remaining where you are inwardly and outwardly, not scrambling for higher seats, praise, or advantage. The childish mind reacts to trivialities (a lizard, status), but honesty stays unmoved, doing what harms no one and serves truth. It refuses ego-pleasure or comparison, exposing their foolishness by quietly standing (or sitting) in natural authenticity.
Being honest means just being yourself without showing off or panicking—stay calm, do no harm, and don’t chase higher spots to feel important.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, AN OLD TIBETAN IS QUOTED AS SAYING: "LIKE A LION, I HAVE NO FEAR. LIKE AN ELEPHANT, I HAVE NO ANXIETY. LIKE A MADMAN, I HAVE NO HOPE. I TELL YOU THE HONEST TRUTH." OSHO, WHAT IS SO WONDROUS AND PRECIOUS ABOUT THE HONEST TRUTH? In fact, to use these two words together shows a deep misunderstanding. "Honest truth" implies that there can be dishonest truth. Truth is enough. Honesty is a very ordinary quality that comes as a shadow of truth, with many other qualities. There is something immensely important about truth. But remember, never use the words honest truth. That means you have a suspicion: deep down you yourself are not convinced of the truthfulness of truth. To substitute, to compensate, you add honesty to it. Nothing can be added to truth. Truth is always pure, nude, alone.
You will find the plant of honesty beginning to grow. Dishonesty drops away. What you hide, survives. You hide sin; therefore sin survives. Jesus called this process confession—acceptance. Accept yourself as you are. But we search for arguments, devices, escape routes; we rationalize: “I am a good man, but the situation forced me to act badly. Had I not acted so, others would have been harmed.” You are an angry man; you beat your child, yet you explain to yourself: “I am a father and I love him. I beat him for his own good. If I don’t, he will be spoiled.” All history shows that not a single father has ever saved a child by beating him. But you are blind—to history... You repeat the same argument every father has given! And fathers have spoiled their sons. Has anyone ever changed through anger?
Osho, you always praise a simple, innocent consciousness. What is this simplicity, this innocence?
The man said, “Then send me to the Indian one; I don’t want the German.” That difference was enough. The Germans refined it further—they read your scriptures and perfected them. German intellect knows how to refine things, arrange them, run everything by the clock. Even in the ashram I have given the electricity work to Haridas—a German sannyasin. However many times Pune’s electricity fails, the ashram’s does not. Let Pune fail, but not the ashram. Haridas takes great care; he has arranged everything—automatic generators: the moment the power fails, they kick in; you can’t even tell there was a failure. Where has this been learned? This much evil in the world—your saints had already arranged for it in the scriptures. Hell for others, heaven for themselves. These are not marks of simple-hearted people. A simple person—why would he think of hell and heaven? He has no such notions, no such…
Osho, I truly speak the truth and truly listen to the truth. Because of this habit of truthfulness, all my relatives and friends have left me. Being a worldly man, loneliness troubles me greatly. Doing my work honestly and living honestly does bring peace, but to earn honest money for the children I work day and night and cannot do spiritual practice. Please show the way.
Now, Roshan, you think of building temples, earning merit, going to Haridwar, attending the Kumbh, getting a chance to go to Kashi to “turn over” and die there and straight to heaven—though such things were not going to happen. You feel it unjust: “I live truthfully and honestly; yet I cannot go to Haridwar, cannot do the Kumbh, cannot lie down in Kashi for a blessed death and straight to heaven.” If such cravings arise, they show you too wanted to live as the liars live; your taste is for that; only out of simplicity you have donned the cloak of truth. You have created an inner conflict. Do you know the difference? Was it that sin could not happen—or that you couldn’t manage to sin? Understand the distinction: “Sin could not be,” or, “I could not pull it off.” Is it that you simply couldn’t lie—or that the possibility…
Osho, are the siddha Saraha’s Sahaj-yoga and Zen’s awareness of the moment different or essentially one? And isn’t Sahaj-yoga simply another name for surrender?
Sahaj-yoga means: do not make life complicated. Do not become false. The more false you are, the more miserable you will be. Falsehood brings suffering, because through it your connection with truth loosens and breaks. Existence is truth. If you become truthful with it, your music will harmonize, your notes will fall into place. Then your rhythm coincides with the whole; there will be dance and celebration. Becoming true with the whole, you merge with it—and in that merging is samadhi. If you remain false, you remain isolated. Existence can have no union with falsehood, because falsehood has no being. What is not cannot unite with what is. Only what is can meet what is; what is not can only meet what is not. That is why one lie forces a thousand more. To protect one lie, you must tell another, because only lies can shield lies. Then to cover…