Don’t worry if the lesson lasts; use it to wake up now.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, you have just been saying that the words of the master become mere words after the master is gone. What will happen after you are gone?
For a simple reason I have been able to contact millions of people around the world: I am not confined to any tradition. I am not burdened by the past, I am completely weightless. So anybody who is burdened -- and who is not burdened? -- becomes interested in me, particularly the young people who are fed up with all the nonsense that is being taught in the churches and the synagogues, in the temples, in the mosques. All these people, these churches, synagogues and mosques, are trying to bridge the gap. You have heard the phrase "generation gap." Between you and the church, between you and the synagogue, there is not just a generation gap, there is a gap of hundreds of generations. And in trying to bridge it, they are proving themselves buffoons, because truth never compromises. It cannot -- with whom will it compromise? Compromising truth means…
Osho, I frequently hear a question being asked about the ashram.... There is so much vitality here now and so much creativity with all these shows and music and fashions and crafts, as well as events happening abroad, that people are wondering what will happen when you are gone. When you leave your body will the ashram become a dead institution, and will you just become deified and forgotten?
These people who are wondering what will happen, are the same people who will create a dead institution. My people cannot create a dead institution -- it is impossible. Those who have been in communion with me will have learnt one thing absolutely, categorically: that life cannot be confined into institutions; the moment you try to confine it into institutions you destroy it. So while I am alive they will celebrate. When I am gone they will still celebrate. They will celebrate my life, they will celebrate my death, and they will remain alive. Remember, religions are created by guilty people, and I am not creating any guilt here. There are certain mechanisms.... If Jesus had not been crucified, there would have been no Christianity at all. The real founder of Christianity was not Jesus Christ but the high priest of Jerusalem, the rabbi, and Pontius Pilate. These two persons,…
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…
Beloved master, will you please give some message to the people of nepal and india? Also, you say that you are not teaching a doctrine and that knowledge can merely be a vehicle to express the experience one has had. Is it not true that the experience itself will communicate itself?
The experience of truth happens in the absolute silence of your being, where there is no ripple of thought, where no word can enter, where there is absolute silence and nothing else. The problem is that you can experience the truth in silence, but you cannot express it in silence. Expression will need words, and the moment you use words something of the truth is lost. Some beauty of it, some fragrance of it, is destroyed. The experience of truth is vast, and the words are very small. One father was teaching his son, "There is nothing impossible, my son, in the world." The son said, "Wait." He ran into the bathroom. The father said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I am going to prove that there is something which is impossible." The father followed him. The son squeezed out some toothpaste and said to his father, "Please put…
Question: OUR BELOVED MASTER, WHEN THE NOVICE MONK, GAO, FIRST CALLED ON YAKUSAN, YAKUSAN ASKED HIM, "WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?" GAO SAID, "FROM NANYUE." YAKUSAN ASKED, "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" GAO REPLIED, "TO JIANGLING TO RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS." YAKUSAN THEN ASKED, "WHAT IS THE AIM OF RECEIVING PRECEPTS?" GAO ANSWERED, "TO ESCAPE BIRTH AND DEATH." YAKUSAN SAID, "THERE IS SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS AND HAS NO BIRTH AND DEATH TO ESCAPE -- DO YOU KNOW?" GAO ASKED, "THEN WHAT IS THE USE OF THE BUDDHA'S PRECEPTS?" YAKUSAN SAID, "THIS NOVICE STILL HAS LIPS AND TEETH." AT THIS, THE NOVICE BOWED AND WITHDREW. DOGO THEN CAME FORWARD AND STOOD BY YAKUSAN, WHO SAID TO HIM, "THAT LIMPING NOVICE WHO JUST CAME, AFTER ALL HAS SOME LIFE IN HIM." DOGO SAID, "HE'S NOT TO BE ENTIRELY BELIEVED YET -- YOU SHOULD TEST HIM AGAIN FIRST.