Truth cannot be taught… but it can be learned. And between these two sentences is the key of all understanding. So let me repeat: truth cannot be taught, but it can be learned — because truth is not a teaching, not a doctrine, not a theory, a philosophy, or something like that. Truth is existence. Truth is BEING. Nothing can be said about it.

If you start saying something about it you will go round and round. You will beat around the bush, but you will never reach the center of it. Once you ask a question ABOUT you are already on the path of missing it. It can be encountered directly, but not through about. There is no VIA MEDIA. Truth is here and now. Only truth is. Nothing else exists. So the moment you raise a question about it the mind has already moved away. You are somewhere else, not here and now.

Truth cannot be taught because words cannot convey it. Words are impotent. Truth is vast, tremendously vast, infinite. Words are very very narrow. You cannot force truth into words, it is impossible. And how is one going to teach without words?

Silence can be a message. It can convey, it can become the vehicle. But then the question is not of the master’s concern to teach it. The question is of the disciple’s to learn it.

If it was a question of teaching, then the master would do something.

But words are useless — nothing can be done with them. The master can remain silent and can give the message from every pore of his being — but now the disciple has to understand it. Unaided, without any help from the master, the disciple has to receive it.

That’s why in the world of religion teachers don’t exist, only masters. A teacher is one who teaches, a master is one who IS. A teacher is one who talks about the truth, a master is truth himself. You can learn, but he cannot teach.

He can be there, open, available — you have to drink him, and you have to eat him. You have to imbibe him. You have to become pregnant with him. You have to absorb.

A master is one who has become the truth and is available for all those who are ready to absorb him; hence Jesus says to his disciples: Eat me. Truth can be eaten; it cannot be taught. You can allow it to reach you, but it cannot be forced on you.

Truth is absolutely nonviolent, it will not even knock at your door — even that much will be too much aggression.

If you allow, if you are receptive, it is all there. If you are closed, if you are not receptive, for millions of lives you may search for it and you will go on missing it. And it has always been there, it has always been the case. Not even a single step was needed. Not even the opening of the eyes was needed. Not even a single movement towards it was needed. It was already there: you had to be receptive.

Truth cannot be taught, but still, you can learn it. So the whole art depends on how to become a disciple.

Humanity is divided in three parts. One part, the major part, almost ninety-nine percent, never bothers about truth. It remains oblivious. It is completely asleep. It has no inquiry. It lives a somnambulistic life. The question of, What is truth? never arises. This is the greater part of humanity.

They live in ignorance, completely unaware that they are ignorant, not only unaware that they are ignorant — they may be thinking and dreaming that they know.

In fact this is part of their sleep, that they think they know. And what is the need to learn? To DESTROY the need to learn, this is the best thing to do: to go on feeling that you already know. Then there is no question of learning, no need to become a disciple. You are satisfied, in your grave. You are dead.

This is the greater part of humanity. Even if you approach people of this fragment and tell them about truth, they will laugh. They will say you are talking nonsense. Not only that, they will deny that there is anything like truth or God or nirvana. If you give them the message of an enlightened being they will say there never existed such a being, and he cannot exist: “We are the whole of humanity.”

Somebody asked Voltaire about the origin of religion, and Voltaire is reported to have said, “Religion was born when the first charlatan met the first fool on the earth.” In the encounter of the charlatan and the fool, religion was born. This has an element of truth in it. It is true in a sense, but it is true not about religion, but about pseudo-religion.

Religion is born, not between a charlatan and a fool — pseudo-religions are born that way — religion is born between a master and a disciple. Religion is born between a being who has attained and a being who is authentically in search to attain it. Religion is born between truth and a disciple.

But the first part of humanity remains completely unaware, blissfully unaware, because when there is no inquiry, no search, they live a comfortable life of no effort. They go on falling down. They never rise high, they never reach the peaks. And they don’t know. They not only don’t know, they never dream that there are peaks of experience, heights of ecstasies.

They remain almost like animals: eating, sleeping — and confined to such things. A life of routine, moving like a wheel; they are born, they live, they give birth to others, and they die. And the wheel goes on moving: they are born again, the same thing is repeated again and again, ad nauseam.

Then there is the second part of humanity: a few, who inquire. But they don’t know how to learn. They search, but they don’t understand that this search needs an inner transformation, only then it becomes possible. An inner mutation is needed.

In this dimension, learning is not like other learnings. You can learn chemistry, physics, mathematics, without any change in your consciousness. There is no need to change your consciousness; as you are, you can learn. But religion is a learning in which a basic requirement is: First change your consciousness.

Even before the learning starts you have to be prepared for it. A long preparation is needed, otherwise learning cannot start.

The second part inquires, but is not ready, so it goes on round and round in theories, hypotheses, human mental projections, inventions of articulate people, verbalizations, philosophies, metaphysics — there are thousands of theories available for this type of person.

He can choose — the market is vast, and he can go on changing from one theory to another, because no theory can give you the right thing. Theories can’t give, so you get fed up with one theory, then you choose another; you get fed up with one teacher, then you move to another teacher — and people go on, they become wanderers.

I come across the second type of people every day. They have been to this ashram, they have been to that, they have been to this teacher and to that, and they have been moving from one to another: nothing satisfies. But they are not aware that it is not a question of the teacher, it is the basic preparation that they are lacking. They are not yet ready to be disciples, and if you are not ready to be a disciple, how can you find the master? Tradition has it that when the disciple is ready the master appears on his own accord. You need not even search for him, he will come. Whenever a disciple is ready, the master will appear immediately. You go on searching for him, and he never appears. Something is wrong within you. Something within you frustrates the whole effort. You are not ready.

You cannot meet a master on your conditions, you have to fulfill HIS conditions. And they are eternal, they have never changed, they remain the same. One has to learn how to be a disciple.

This second part of humanity becomes a wandering mass of inquirers. They never gain much. They become rolling stones, which never gather any moss. They move on… rolling.

Then there is a third part — very rare human beings, exceptions, the cream of humanity.

That third part is those who seek, who inquire; but the inquiry is not intellectual, the inquiry is total. The inquiry is not like learning any other subject; the inquiry is so total that they are ready to die for it, they are ready to change their whole being for it. They are ready to fulfill all conditions. Even if death is a condition, they are ready to die. But they want to learn what truth is, they want to be in the world of truth; they don’t want to live in the world of lies and illusions and dreams and projections.

This third type can become a disciple. And only this third type, when they have attained, can become masters.

That’s why I say truth cannot be taught but it can be learned. But then the whole thing depends on you.

— OSHO [Just Like That | Chapter 1 – The unteachable teaching ]

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