According to Osho, the inferiority complex arises from a hidden superiority complex: we imagine ourselves Everest, the center of the world, and when life refuses to confirm it, the unproven fantasy collapses into 'I am nothing.' The painful gap between imagined grandeur and lived reality breeds inferiority. Only those nurturing superiority in the mind come to feel inferior when they cannot make their self-image true.
You feel small because you first believed you were the biggest, and when you can’t prove it, the feeling flips into “I’m nothing.”
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
A friend has asked, Osho, why should we be religious when neither the beginning nor the end is known, and there is no trace of God or soul? The enlightened ones speak of truth—if that truth is real, why can’t they make everyone experience it?
No one is telling you to be religious—at least Lao Tzu would not. The so-called religious people have created so much disturbance that it is better you do not become one of them. Lao Tzu does not say, “Be religious.” He simply says: be what you are. You may ask, why should I be what I am? Because that is the only thing you can be. There is no way to be anything else. Yes, you can try to be something else—and in that trying your life can be wasted. You may then say, why not waste life? No one can stop you. And precisely for this reason even the enlightened ones are defeated and cannot give you the knowledge of truth—because you say, why should we know the truth? What can the enlightened do? They can speak. They can try to awaken in you the thirst for the joy…
One friend asks: how is an inferiority complex created?
An inferiority complex comes about when you consider yourself to be :he greatest but fail to prove yourself. You assume that you are the centre of the world, but cannot prove this by your actions. Inferiority enters the minds of those who aspire to be the very best. This may seem contradictory, but that is how we have made our lives. If we have to state a straight and simple fact, we have to use the language of contrariness. One who sets out to assert his superiority develops the feeling of inferiority. He begins to feel that he is nothing. He believes himself to be very capable but fails to prove it in actuality. Then remorse and anguish follow.
Is there really something like an inferiority complex?
Man creates comparison because ego is possible only if nourished by comparison continuously. But then you will have two outcomes: sometimes you will feel superior, and sometimes you will feel inferior. And the possibility of feeling inferior is greater than the possibility of feeling superior, because there are millions of people: somebody is more beautiful than you, somebody is taller than you, somebody is stronger than you, somebody seems to be more intelligent than you, somebody is more learned than you, somebody is more successful, somebody is more famous, somebody is this, somebody is that. If you just go on comparing, millions of people... you will gather a great inferiority complex. But it doesn't exist, it is your creation. Those who are more mad, they suffer from a superiority complex. They are so mad that when they compare they cannot see that there are millions of people who are different…
It is necessary to remember that the whole immensity exists within man; it is necessary to remember that the Divine exists within man, so that he does not become inferior. And the interesting thing is that in order to destroy his inferiority complex, man falls into the fantasies of a superiority complex. He starts finding ways to suppress the inferiority complex. When he feels inferior inside, he starts making wealth so that having amassed the wealth he may show the world and may feel himself too that not only am I not nothing, I am quite something. The inferiority complex rushes and man starts climbing thrones so that standing on the throne he may declare, "Who says I am nothing? I am something." Inferiority itself becomes the race for superiority.
Everybody, almost everybody, suffers from an inferiority complex. And if you stop suffering from an inferiority complex, then you start suffering from a superiority complex -- which is the same! All that you are doing is standing on your head. It is the same problem in reverse order. First you were starting, from ABC, now you are starting from Z and going backwards. It is the same thing whether you start from A or from Z; it is the same line, the same logic. If you fail in your life you suffer from inferiority. If you succeed you become a president or a prime minister, you start suffering from a superiority complex. But the problem is the same. Why does it arise at all? It arises because we don't know who we are. We are oceanic: neither small nor big, just infinite with no beginning, no end.