According to Osho, Mahavira was seeking truth as his own living realization—firsthand, unborrowed, unmediated by any guru, scripture, or doctrine. He refused secondhand knowledge, cultivating pure discipleship to existence itself, learning from every moment and surrendering only to the Whole. His quest was a solitary, direct inquiry so that authentic wisdom could blossom from his own being.
He wanted to discover truth by himself, learning from all of life instead of copying a teacher or a book.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, why could Mahavira not find any master or sect at whose feet he could surrender? What was Mahavira seeking?
And remember: one who bows to someone is always stiff before someone else. One who touches somebody’s feet is eager to have others touch his feet. I once went to the ashram of a great sannyasin. On a big platform the head sannyasin was seated; below him, on a smaller seat, sat another sannyasin; below that, others were sitting on the floor. The head sannyasin said to me, “Do you see who is sitting beside me?” I said, “I don’t need to know; someone is sitting, that’s enough.” He insisted, “Perhaps you don’t know—he is the Chief Justice of the High Court. Not an ordinary man! But very humble—he never sits on the platform with me, always on the smaller seat below.” I said, “That I can see. But below even that small seat some others are sitting—he is not humble towards them; he sits above them. And they are…
Osho, how could the iconoclast Mahavira accept himself as the twenty-fourth Tirthankara of the most ancient Jina tradition? Please explain!
Within this revolutionary tradition, Mahavira is the most glorious, the most brilliant. Therefore his words are worth understanding and contemplating. He must have been uniquely revolutionary; for the Jainas have two sects—Digambara and Shvetambara. The Digambaras hold that not a single word of Mahavira remains, no scripture remains. That too is part of the revolution. They say, no scripture is Mahavira’s word. The words we have are from the Shvetambara compilations. The Digambaras have no compilations. It is astonishing that the Digambaras did not preserve! But that too belongs to their deep revolt: if you preserve words, today or tomorrow they become scripture; preserve them, and soon they become Veda. Hence the Digambaras did not preserve Mahavira’s words. It is an extraordinary rebellion against scripture. They revere Mahavira, but preserved no texts—only what was passed personally from master to disciple; they did not write it down. Therefore, for the Digambaras,…
Osho, what new thing did Mahavira give us? Talk of love has been going on since the human race began.
Rabindranath wrote of an old man, a friend of his father’s, who lived next door and often came to their house. He troubled Rabindranath a great deal. Whenever Rabindranath wrote poems about God, the soul, the Supreme, the old man would laugh, grab his hand and shake it, and ask, “Have you experienced it? Have you seen God?” He would laugh so heartily that Rabindranath says he began to fear him. If he saw him on the street he would slip away, because the man would catch him there and ask, “Have you experienced God? Have you seen God?” And he did not have the courage to say yes. Truly, what experience had he had? He was writing poems. The man pestered him so much. But one day—it was the rainy season—he had gone out toward the sea. The sun had come out; it was morning. The sun’s reflection was…
Thus the thinkers of the West ponder: What is truth? The sadhakas of India ponder: What is liberation? What is moksha? What is the means to moksha? This is the difference between philosophy and religion. The philosopher thinks: what is truth? The religious seeks: what is moksha? Read the Western thinkers—you will find they do not think about moksha, they do not even consider it. In their books you will not find a discussion on moksha. Read India’s scriptures—you will find that apart from moksha we are seeking nothing at all. Buddha was passing by a village, and a man had fallen there—someone’s arrow had struck him as he moved through the forest. Buddha came near and said to the man: let us pull the arrow out. The man said: first tell me, who shot the arrow? First tell me: was the arrow poisoned or not?
Experience alone is life’s university. There words have no play. He who goes within must first drop the body—our outermost layer, like the doorway and wall one leaves entering a house. First the body is left; then, going deeper, the mind’s processes drop; deeper still, the heart’s feelings fall away. Arriving at the inmost home, only pure consciousness remains—not body, not mind, not feeling. In this purity, the first glimpses of liberation come. Mahavira says: by trigupti the experience of such a state will arrive—that alone is knowledge. Logic does not enter there, therefore no one can prove moksha exists; nor can anyone disprove it. What cannot be proved by logic cannot be disproved either. Only he who tastes it by experience will know—like the dumb tasting jaggery. He who tastes knows; even he cannot prove it to you.