Truth is too big for words, so when a master explains it, it gets squeezed and changed a little at each step.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
If a master's teachings are perfect, why are they corrupted in time?
IT IS SOMETHING very essential to understand, because it has always happened and it is going to happen always in the future too. There is not going to be any change. Every teaching is bound to be corrupted; it is in the very nature of things. Just as every child is to become old one day and everyone who is born is going to die one day, each teaching is out of necessity bound to be corrupted. It cannot be avoided. It is not that the great Masters have not tried; they have tried their best, but you cannot go against the laws of nature. Nobody can go against the laws of nature. There are seven things to be taken note of. The first is the experience of the Master himself. When he experiences the truth there is no mind at all. It is a state of no-mind, or as…
Osho, awakened ones, considering place, time, circumstance, and the era-appropriate psychology of people, have expressed the same truth in very different forms. To the point that they appear mutually quite disputatious and even contradictory. Is an absolute expression of the ultimate truths of life and existence not possible? Will the limits of the age and the condition of the people always continue to be imposed upon truth?
Expression will always be limited. Expression will always be relative. The speaker and the listener—both create the boundaries of expression. I will say only what can be said. You will understand only what can be understood. Truth is vast. If I go to see the ocean and you say to me, “On your way back, bring a little of the ocean,” I will not be able to bring the whole ocean. I may bring a little water from it. But in that water much will be missing. There will be no storm of the ocean, no waves. And that was the real ocean: that tumultuous roar and fierce thunder! Waves crashing against cliffs! Those surges rising and spreading for miles! That swell! None of that will be there. I will bring a vessel filled with a little ocean water. Still, there will be something! If you taste it, it will…
Into a blinding darkness go they who worship action alone. Into an even greater darkness go they who worship meditation.
FOR IT IS OTHER THAN MEDITATION, IT IS OTHER THAN ACTION. THIS WE HAVE HEARD FROM THE ENLIGHTENED ONES. MEDITATION AND ACTION -- HE WHO KNOWS THESE TWO TOGETHER, THROUGH ACTION LEAVES DEATH BEHIND AND THROUGH MEDITATION GAINS IMMORTALITY. INTO A BLINDING DARKNESS GO THEY WHO IDOLIZE THE ABSOLUTE, INTO AN EVEN GREATER DARKNESS GO THEY WHO DOTE ON THE RELATIVE. FOR IT IS OTHER THAN THE RELATIVE, IT IS OTHER THAN THE ABSOLUTE. THIS WE HAVE HEARD FROM THE ENLIGHTENED ONES. AUM PURNAM ADAHA PURNAM IDAM PURNAT PURNAMUDACHYATE PURNASYA PURNAMADAYA PURNAMEVA VASHISHYATE Action means that which is external to you, meditation which is internal to you. Action is outer, meditation is inner. Action is extroversion, meditation is introversion. Action is an objective approach; science is rooted in it, hence science insists on experimentation. And because science insists on action, experiment, it destroys all that is more than the external…
When a master dies, suddenly a myth springs up around him, man makes stone or wooden idols of him, the master becomes a distant god to be worshipped and becomes unattainable to ordinary man. The thought of the master being an example of what we should and can be disappears. Why does this phenomenon happen time and time again?
Jesus must have been a very human master. It is because of his great humanity that he had to suffer, that he had to be crucified -- it is because of his great humanity. If he had lived just like a god, just like a holy saint, chanting mantras, fasting, living in a cave, the same rabbis would have worshipped him. Before Jesus they had not killed anybody else. Why Jesus? This is strange. The Jewish history has no precedent for it. What was his sin? What was his crime? His crime was that he was trying to live a very ordinary life. He wanted to show you that you can live an ordinary life and yet you can be enlightened. You can move with prostitutes and gamblers and drunkards and yet you can be absolutely holy. He wanted to show you this paradox, he wanted to become an example…
Beloved Osho, the rishi of the upanishad fears he may speak some untruth, and so he prays, "may my speech be rooted in my mind." does that mean that when he comes down to earth to speak, he comes out of his enlightened consciousness to do so, back into the ordinary mind again? If he is permanently in divine consciousness, how can nontruth come in?
These are the four ways: either I can say God is light or darkness, or I can say God is both, or I can say God is not both, but the problem remains. And these are the only ways to express. That's why Mahavira has developed saptabhangi -- sevenfold logic. You ask one question and Mahavira will answer seven answers. And if you can stay with him to listen to his seven answers, you will be more confused than when you came to him. If you ask about God, he will say God is; immediately he will say God is not; immediately he will say God is both, is and is not; immediately he will say God is both not, is and is not -- and he goes on. Sevenfold will be his answer, because he says, "I cannot be untrue. This is the whole truth." But you remain the…