According to Osho, being misunderstood is inevitable for those who speak truth. Enlightened ones speak from a different, inexpressible experience; words lose their intended meaning and are translated by the masses through their own darkness, conditioning, and investment in illusion. The gap is unbridgeable until one becomes conscious; hence rumors arise and only rare, disciplined disciples slowly understand through awakening, not argument.
It’s like trying to explain light to people in a dark cave—they’ll guess from darkness until they open their own eyes.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, why are you being continuously misunderstood and misinterpreted by people?
Rajesh, it is absolutely inevitable, it is unavoidable. It has to be so. It is part of the destiny of those who speak the truth. They are bound to be misunderstood, misinterpreted. If they were not misunderstood, not misinterpreted, that would be a miracle. It has not happened up to now and there is no hope that it is ever going to happen. Buddhas have always been misunderstood for the simple reason that they speak from a totally different vision which is not available to the masses. They speak from a totally different experience. Their experience is such that it cannot be expressed through words, yet they try to express it through words -- they try to do the impossible. Saying it through words creates trouble. They use words in their own way, they give the words their own color, but when those words reach YOU they have lost all…
Why is there so much misunderstanding in the world?
Now the same sentence takes a new meaning, just the contrary to the first. The meaning is that man is free. That man can be whatsoever he chooses to be. That man is a kind of god. That nobody decides for man, man has to decide for himself. That man's decision has to come from his own soul. What he is going to write on the tabula rasa is his own writing, there will be his own signature. Man has individuality. No mango tree has any individuality. No peacock has any individuality -- all peacocks are alike, and all mango trees. But man has uniqueness, individuality. There is great hope. Now see? The meaning has turned just to the opposite polarity. I have come across a third interpretation too. For others it means: Everything is permissible to man. And with that they abandon all restraint, they become licentious. They say,…
Osho, you say one thing, and people understand something else. How will this stop?
A very meaningful story—the story of man. When Socrates was sentenced, the judges of Athens decided: either accept death, or stop saying what you say. Choose one of the two. If you stop speaking as you do, you may live. If you continue, there is no way but death. What was Socrates saying? He was speaking of the sea—to the people of the well. And the well-dwellers are angered by talk of the sea. Socrates seemed dangerous. The court declared his crime to be this: “You corrupt people.” Socrates corrupts people! Such pure expression of truth has seldom happened as in Socrates. “You corrupt people”—that was the court’s verdict. And that court was made of Athens’ most intelligent men, its most gifted. Unanimously they judged: “You corrupt people—especially the young; the old won’t fall for your talk, they are too experienced for you to deceive.” “Old”—those who have been in…
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHY ARE YOU SO WIDELY MISUNDERSTOOD? It is the way of human progress. Whenever there is someone who says something against the tradition, against the establishment -- political or religious -- he is bound to be misunderstood. But that is not something new. You can look as far back as possible and you will always find a few people being misunderstood. But those are the few people who have brought you to civilization, to culture; you owe all your consciousness and growth to that small group of people. Socrates was misunderstood. We do not know the people who misunderstood him. We do not know the judges who pronounced his death sentence; they have all been forgotten. But Socrates' name will remain till the last human being remains on the earth, for the simple reason he stood against the whole mob, the whole old traditional, superstitious mind, single-handed.
Osho, is it absolutely inevitable that a buddha will always be misunderstood?
YES, IT IS ABSOLUTELY INEVITABLE. It can't be otherwise. A Buddha is bound to be misunderstood. If a Buddha is not misunderstood then he is not a Buddha at all. Why is it so? -- because the Buddha lives in a state which is beyond mind, and we live IN minds. To translate something from the beyond to the mind is the most impossible thing in the world. It can t be done, although every Buddha has tried to do it. That too is inevitable; no Buddha can avoid it. The Buddha HAS to say the unsayable, he has to express the inexpressible, he has to define the indefinable. He has to do this absurd act, because the moment he reaches beyond the mind great compassion arises. He can see people stumbling in the dark, he can see people suffering unnecessarily -- creating their own nightmares, creating their own hell…