According to Osho, the urge to understand never violates life’s mystery—nothing can—because existence has no final solution for mind to grasp. Intellectual gymnastics change nothing; the mystery remains. Instead, turn inward: become a silent witness, melt the false personality, and meet your buddha-nature at the center, where you’re already connected with the whole.
No—asking and exploring won’t break the mystery; just relax, look within, and quietly watch to feel you’re part of everything.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: Maneesha has asked: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS THE URGE TO UNDERSTAND? Maneesha, the urge to understand comes from your very nature. The mystery of existence wants you to become a shareholder. The mystery of existence does not want you to stand outside, but to come inside the temple. It is too hot outside, it is perfectly cool inside. The urge to understand is absolutely a part of intelligence. Intelligence wants to know, who is there within me; from where comes my love, my tears, my laughter? One does not want to remain ignorant of his own house. The urge to understand is the only hope for man. If there is no urge to understand, there will not be any mysticism, and there will not be any poetry; there will not be any music, there will not be any dance.
Beloved Osho, I can sense some mysteries which you never speak of. Is it that we must come in the night and take them? Or are some mysteries simply revealed once we are drowned in them? Beloved, beloved Osho, what does understanding mean?
Devageet, it is true, there are mysteries which I never speak of. Not that I don't want to speak about them, but their very nature is -- they cannot be spoken of. You will have to listen to them while I am silent. You will have to listen them between the gaps of my words. Words cannot indicate towards them, but silence continuously shouts about them. You just need the right way of listening -- just as you understand a language because you have learned it. Silence is also a language, the language of existence. Trees use it, and the stars use it, and the mountains use it, and the mystics use it. I am saying that which can be said; I am also saying, through my silence, that which cannot be said. Now it is up to you whether you can get a silent whisper, and allow it into…
Beloved Osho, the more I try to understand you, the more you baffle me. Every day you are becoming more and more mysterious. What is this unending mystery?
Anand Maitreya, you say, "The more I try to understand You, the more You baffle me." Stop trying to understand me. Just be with me. Trying to understand is creating the problem. Just be here now -- no need to understand. I am not a problem, neither am I a hypothesis. I am a living presence. Don't try to understand me. Otherwise, if you love me you will feel baffled; if you don't love me you will become my enemy. Those are the two possibilities of trying. If the friend and the enemy both can just be silent with me, understanding will arise on its own. It is a by-product of a silent communion. You don't become knowledgeable, but you are so full of understanding. But this is a totally different kind of understanding. You have not made any effort; it has showered on you. Any understanding that comes through…
Question: Last question: Osho, is life a question or a riddle? It is certainly not a question, because life has no answer. That which has no answer cannot really be a question. It is indeed a riddle—but a riddle with no solution. Life is not a riddle that can be solved. That is why the wise have called it a mystery. Mystery means: a riddle for which no solution is possible. You can live it, but you can never know it. You can never turn it into knowledge. It can become experience, but it will never become knowledge. You will never be able to imprison it in your fist. Understand it like this: you can enter the ocean, but you cannot hold the ocean in your fist. The ocean is vast, infinite; your fist is small.
Question: Maneesha has asked: OUR BELOVED MASTER, DOES THE URGE TO UNDERSTAND EVER BECOME A VIOLATION OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE? Maneesha, nothing can be a violation of the mystery of life, for the simple reason that there is no solution. So you can do as much gymnastics, what people call mind-fucking, as you like, but the mystery remains the same. It is a good time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. George is watching a TV show, when it is interrupted by a special bulletin. "Good evening," the announcer says. "The directors of the National Institute of Health have announced that, as of today, they will no longer be using rats in their experiments. Instead they will use lawyers. The chief director gave three reasons for the change: First -- there are more lawyers than rats.