There is no difference. A master is simply an enlightened person who chose to actively teach. He may travel, he may write books, try and spread the word, he just likes it. In that, he acquires a lot of experience speaking to different kinds of people, gets exposed to a variety of egoic perspectives, becomes more skilled at communication. A person who doesn’t care about teaching actively is usually called a sage. There is no difference between them, not at all. The difference is only in how they live their life, whether they like teaching and enjoy it, or they don’t much care.

Osho was a master. He even went as far as to study western philosophy and psychology to speak in those terms as well, when needed. He traveled, gave interviews etc. Maharishi was a sage. He stayed in one place all his life, and his teaching was very short, very concise. He never took much effort to approach people on their own terms, like Osho did. His attitude was more like “come to me and spend time with me if you like, but I’m not gonna talk much, I already said everything”.

Regarding their state of consciousness and the level of their realization, there is no difference. They are the same. It’s just an arbitrary distinction based on how they approach helping others. A lot of enlightened people don’t help others at all, they never announce, no one knows they are enlightened and they die unknown. To a seeker, such person could still be described as a sage, but a seeker would not be able to see them for what they are, almost invariably they will be missed.

What is undeniably true is that most people talking about enlightenment are neither masters nor sages. They may be awake, but they are not enlightened yet, they still have a long way to go. They do tend to react aggressively to these terms or laugh at them. This is just a defensive reaction out of their own insecurity. A truly enlightened person has neither positive nor negative connotation to words like “master” or “sage”. It’s just words. It doesn’t mater to him how other people call him and he’s happy to call other enlightened people masters for them, if they like, it’s no problem. Being a master is a role he temporarily undertakes to help someone see, nothing more. If successful, his role has ended and he’s not a master anymore. That’s his goal.