How is being in a state of awe and childlike innocence related to being in a state of love?

Beloved master, you talk so often of wonder and of love. How is being in a state of awe and childlike innocence related to being in a state of love?

Anand Nur, wonder and awe are the greatest spiritual qualities. Wonder means you function from a state of not knowing. The knowledgeable person never feels wonder; he is incapable of feeling wonder because he thinks he already knows. He knows all the stupid answers, he may know the whole ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA; hence every question is already answered in his mind. When a question is such that there is no answer to it, that it is unanswerable; not only today, but forever; not that it is unknown, but it is unknowable -- when one encounters the unknowable, unanswerable, one experiences wonder. One is in a state of awe, as if the heart stops beating, as if you don't breathe for a moment. The experience of wonder is such that everything stops. The whole world stops; time stops, mind stops, the ego stops. For a moment you are again a child, wondering…

Beloved Osho, what is innocence, what is beauty?

In the moment of innocence, not knowing, the difference between the observer and the observed evaporates. You are no more separate from that which you are seeing, you are no more separate from that which you are hearing. Listening to me, right now, you can function in two ways. One is the way of knowledge: chattering inside yourself, judging, evaluating, constantly thinking whether what I am saying is right or wrong, whether it fits with your theories or not, whether it is logical or illogical, scientific or unscientific, Christian or Hindu, whether you can go with it or not, whether you can swallow it or not, a thousand and one thoughts clamoring inside your mind, the inner talk, the inner traffic -- this is one way of listening. But then you are listening from so far away that I will not be able to reach you. I go on trying…

As I watch my thoughts and feelings I am left with a sense of wonder: I wonder where they come from and where they go.

If you are not on good terms with the term 'God', forget about it, mystery will do. Because God is not a person, God is a mystery that cannot be solved, it is something which you can be in. You can know it in a certain sense, in a sense totally diametrically opposite to ordinary knowledge. Your heart can know it, you can love it, and through love you can know it, but not through questioning. You live in it and you allow it to live in you -- then everything is mysterious, even the leaves of grass are mysterious, everywhere is the signature of mystery, you cannot move without coming across God. Then you don't ask where God is, then you don't ask what God is -- you know. Remain with the sense of wonder. It is difficult, almost impossible, because your mind has been trained to enquire, to…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, COULD YOU PLEASE SPEAK OF THE MYSTERIES OF THE HEART? In this silence you can have a taste, you can enter into the mystery of the heart, but slip down from the head. Don't ask for any explanation. Just be a little child who does not ask anything, who accepts everything. Do you remember your childhood? It will help. Mostly we forget all about our real childhood. Do you remember the time when you were only two years old? You don't. People start remembering only from nearabout four years old. That is the end of childhood. You have become part of the society. You have started learning its alphabet, its manners. And parents feel very happy when a child starts being mannerly, starts talking with people the way grown-ups should talk. Parents feel immensely happy but they don't know what they have destroyed.

Beloved Osho, sitting close to you these last few mornings and looking into your eyes, I felt so much like a small child, full of innocence and excitement. Many times I wanted to wave my hand in the air wildly and shout: hello, hello, hello, my most beloved. Beloved master, can you talk about this blissful innocence that I am feeling and how it relates to meditation?

It is good to start with innocence, but remember there are two kinds of innocence: one is of the child and another is of the meditator. The meditator also becomes a child, but that is on such a different level, at such a great height -- as if the child is in the valley and the enlightened man who has again become a child is on the sunlit peak. The distance is tremendous. But there is a certain similarity, a thread running from the child to the heart of the sage. The child cannot understand the sage, but the sage can understand the child. Always remember it as a fundamental rule: the lower cannot understand the higher, but the higher can always understand the lower. And in your life, if anything can be compared with that high peak, it is your childhood. Try to rediscover it. Don't cover it with…