Are you sure they didn’t understand each other?

I understand them all, so it’s unfathomable for me to imagine that they didn’t understand each other. They might have disagreed with each other’s methods but that’s not the same as saying they didn’t understand each other.

For example, Osho famously said “Krishnamurti failed because he could not touch the human Heart. He could only reach the human head. The Heart needs some different approaches.”

I agree that the heart needs a very different approach, so I’m with Osho on this one. But I’m also not with Osho, because by any standards, Osho failed profoundly, too. He did not fail in amassing a huge number of followers, but he failed in delivering a significant number of fully realized beings like himself to the world.

That’s because no one can help you realize the truth but yourself. The master can only show you the way, the path is still yours to walk. Masters can argue with each other about what the most efficient method is, but they’re being childish in that - the number of people they helped realize Buddhahood is the only measure.

And by that measure, every master has failed, historically, because it’s not in the hands of the master. As Osho himself said, when the person is not ready, a thousand Buddhas will not help him.

I personally think that truth realization will remain rare for as long as it’s rare in the society. For it to become common, every second person you interact with would have to be enlightened. Then it will become very common, ubiquitous even. If every tenth one is, it will probably become relatively common. So we have to reach some sort of a tipping point, as a society, and we’re probably centuries away from that. For as long as only very few, very rare individuals are fully realized, it will remain rare.