According to Osho, the only 'help' is to be utterly yourself—authentic, sincere, and transformed from your own experience. He rejects missionary zeal and preaching; secondhand truths poison. Let your being, not your words, radiate the vision so others sense a fullness in you that they lack. Presence communicates; then giving costs you nothing and inspires genuine awakening.
Don’t try to spread his message—just be truly yourself, and your life will quietly show it to others.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, more than anything else I want your vision to happen. When I am not with you, and I am out in the world, alone, what part can I play in helping your vision to happen?
Just be yourself, utterly yourself. And never think in terms of how you can help my vision to happen in the world, because that's what makes a missionary -- and I am against missionaries. They are the poisoners. Their intention is good, they want to spread something which they feel is immensely valuable, but a missionary does not know that what he is trying to spread is not his own experience. So I would like to make it clear that you just be yourself, and that will be the way of spreading my message to people, because that's my message -- to be yourself authentically, sincerely. It is not a question of saying something to somebody; it is a question of being somebody in a way that the vision radiates from you... that the people feel that something has happened to you that has not happened to them... that there…
Osho, I want to bring light to the world. And you have also said this is your message. How should I begin this great work?
Jagdish! Have you found the light? Have you become illumined? If you had become illumined, you wouldn’t ask this question. Because one who is illumined doesn’t have to ask how to show light. Light begins to pour from him. When a lamp is lit, the lamp does not ask, “Now how should I light up the room?” The lamp is lit—there is light. The lamp is lit—light begins to fall on people’s paths. The lamp is lit—and even those wandering in distant darkness begin to see. Someone lost in a far-off forest can also see the lamp in someone’s hut. Once the lamp is lit, light flows of its own nature. You simply do not ask. Your lamp has not yet been lit. Yes, you want the pleasure of showing light! And such a delusion arises because your so‑called sadhus and saints keep telling you: Serve! Work for people’s welfare!…
Beloved Osho, I wonder whether as your disciple I can be utterly selfish, to find my way to enlightenment whatever I am doing, or do I have to fulfill a certain function for you to spread your vision?
It has to be understood very clearly that nobody has a duty to spread my vision, my message to the people. I hate the very word `missionary'. These are the ugliest creatures on the earth. I don't want to create missionaries. You have to be utterly selfish, concentrated on only one aim: becoming enlightened. Of course, as you become enlightened, your light will start reaching to others. My message will start vibrating through you, through your love, without any effort on your part. It has never been said: "Be utterly selfish." All the religions of the world have been teaching, "Be altruistic," and they all have failed, because their very foundation was wrong. You don't know what truth is, and you start spreading the message about truth. You are lying. I have asked Christian missionaries, "What is your experience?" They don't have any experience. What they have is degrees from…
Osho, whatever you say appears so wholly true and fruitful that an intense urge arises to tell it all to others, to the whole world. As a result the mind inevitably starts gathering your words; it keeps thinking about how to convey them to others. At the same time, I also feel: until I myself have attained something, how can I say anything to others? So what should we do?
Rightly so. This is exactly what I was saying: let meditation and compassion grow together. If meditation is completed and you attain, but in the meantime you have not laid the foundation of compassion, you will be lost. The day your boat is ready, you will simply leave. So do not wait, thinking, “When I am complete, then I will speak.” Because then you will not be able to speak at all. While you are not yet complete, begin to sow the seeds of compassion. This continuous urge rising in you to tell others—this is the feeling of compassion. Because there is nothing to take from others, only to give. You want others to receive what is coming to you—this is a tender, love-soaked state. Do not take it as something wrong. Remember: only if you keep practicing speaking now, will you be able to utter a few words even…
Question: A PEBBLE FALLING INTO WATER RIPPLES THE FAR SHORE. A SPARK FANNED BY THE BREEZE STARTS A FOREST FIRE. A MASTER'S PRESENCE SPREADS AWARENESS TO THE FAR CORNERS OF THE EARTH. OSHO, WHAT IS YOUR WORK? That's what I said yesterday to you about Yoka: that R.H. Blyth is wrong if he says that Yoka has nothing much to say and still he goes on saying. He misunderstood the whole thing. The basic weakness of the Western approach towards life... And it is not that he is against Yoka, he loves him; he has translated Yoka's words with great care, with great love, but still the argument is there. And it is not a question of more or less -- 'Why does Yoka go on speaking when he has nothing more to say?' -- it is not even a question of more or less.