According to Osho, the properties of taste and smell cannot truly be described; they are immediate, qualitative experiences known only in direct awareness. Words and analysis reduce them to abstractions, missing their living presence. Instead of theorizing, enter the moment: tasting, smelling, sensing with total attention. In such choiceless observation, understanding arises beyond description, and the knower and the known meet.
You can’t explain tastes and smells with words—you have to experience them by paying full attention.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, another fear arises: if we remove the mind’s interference, might our whole life end in a single sight, a single word, a single fragrance!
Let it happen. There is no harm in it. Because what you call life will end anyway. There is no way to save it. Whoever tries to save it only gets into trouble. It cannot be saved; it is already passing. And if the mind’s interference drops and your life dissolves into the One, that is the very search. If you are utterly immersed in fragrance, then fragrance is your God. Then through fragrance itself you will have known the divine. Then within the sense of smell all your other senses will be absorbed. You will become a doorway of fragrance. Then you will smell with every pore of your being. Then, on every side, the divine will become fragrance for you. For this reason, in different religions different senses became important. Islam gives great value to fragrance. Surely Muhammad knew the divine as fragrance. The mind’s interference fell away…
Osho, why can the Supreme Beloved not be defined? If something can be experienced, why can it not be expressed?
We could conduct this experiment with a child: the child is born and we remove all the fibers that sense sweetness—plastic surgery, excise them, peel the tongue. Then tell him, “The sugar drop is sweet.” He will say, “Say something more; this doesn’t help. What do you mean by sweet? What does ‘sweet’ mean?” You too would be baffled: what is there to explain about “sweet”? “Sweet is sweet!” He will say, “That solves nothing—that’s mere repetition. ‘Sweet is sweet’—what did that clarify? Please explain.” How will you explain? No; there are experiences, and yet they cannot be defined. And those experiences that can be defined only mean this much: they are common experiences—everyone shares them. But the experience of the divine is supremely uncommon. It happens, once in a great while, to a rare individual. Understand the plight of that rare one. He has known—now how to tell you?…
Master your senses, what you taste and smell, what you see, what you hear.
IN ALL THINGS BE A MASTER OF WHAT YOU DO AND WHAT YOU SAY AND THINK. BE FREE. YOU ARE A SEEKER. DELIGHT IN THE MASTERY OF YOUR HANDS AND YOUR FEET, OF YOUR WORDS AND YOUR THOUGHTS. DELIGHT IN MEDITATION AND IN SOLITUDE. COMPOSE YOURSELF, BE HAPPY. Eat, but eat meditatively, silently. When you are eating you are talking. Don't talk, because if you are talking you will miss the joy of absorbing God into yourself. You will miss the joy of eating, and when you miss the joy of eating, your hunger for taste goes on asking for more, so you go on stuffing. And that seems to be nonending. People are stuffing the whole day and still it seems they are not satisfied. Eating twice may be enough or at the most thrice, but people are eating the whole day -- particularly Americans! If they are not…
Osho, in meditation the sounds one hears, the fragrance that arises, or the light that appears—don’t these become obstacles?
If you mistake all this for spiritual attainment, it will become a hindrance. If you think, “I have found it—fragrance is coming, the inner sound resounds, light is appearing—now everything is achieved,” you miss. The stone that could have become a step now becomes a wall. You get stuck badly. You were safer with the gross, because there the risk of confusing it with the spiritual was small; here the risk is great. Out there it was collective. Others would say, “What spirituality? That’s just a house. That’s the sound of a sitar. That’s electric light. That’s the scent of a flower.” You had critics. Now you are utterly alone. There is no one else there, so it is easy to trust yourself—and easy to deceive yourself. There is no critic now. Only you hear that sound; no one else hears it. Only you see that light; no one else…
Osho, Charandasji says—as perhaps all the wise say—that the Divine is of one taste. There is neither dusk nor dawn there; neither death nor birth; neither pleasure nor pain. Then what is there? What is this one-taste?
Life is dual. Everywhere in life there is duality. If there is love, there is hate. If there is sin, there is virtue. If there is day, there is night. If there is birth, there is death. Everywhere in life there is duality. Life runs on duality; life is dialectical. Here, life cannot be without death; how could there be evening—without morning? How could there be morning—without evening? How would there be success if there were no failure? And if there were no sorrow, how would there be happiness? Here everything is tied to its opposite. Therefore, however happy one tries to be here, one never quite is, because sorrow follows right behind; it comes along with it. Sorrow and happiness are twin brothers. And not merely twins—they are conjoined. They share the same body. Perhaps there are two faces, but the body is one. Here, if you gain fame,…