According to Osho, when the mind feels it hasn’t grasped his words yet you sense energy, silence, and centeredness, that felt shift is real understanding. He deliberately puzzles the head so you drop intellectual effort and let the heart lead, using the mind only as a servant. Forget doctrines; trust the living resonance within.
If your head is confused but your heart feels calm and alive, that feeling is the real understanding—follow it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, recently you have said that only those people from the sharing-a-home program who were able to understand you remained. I am not sure that I have ever understood you, but I have stayed because I found something within myself -- an energy that seems to be from my very center -- and because in your presence an opening happens where I feel you deeply connected to this same energy. Is this feeling the understanding? -- because intellectually I only become confused when I try to understand you. Could you please comment?
Don't bother about anything intellectually. You are right on both the points. Your feeling of energy, silence, your feeling your own centeredness in my presence -- exactly that is understanding. And your second statement is also true -- not only about you. Because you are not literate, you are not educated, you got the point sooner: that when you start intellectually making an effort to understand me, you get puzzled. Everybody will get puzzled. That's the whole work of my talking: to puzzle your heads so much that one day you simply drop the head and start functioning from the heart. Your head is your master right now. It was not meant to be the master because it is only a mechanical thing, a bio-computer. Your heart has to be the master. And the head is dangerous when it is master; it is the worst master you can find. But…
Osho, you say the same thing in countless ways. But when I listen to you, it feels as if I am hearing it for the first time. And I feel so much joy that I don’t feel like going back home. What should I do—what can I do—so that I can just keep listening to you!
You will feel as if you have been made to rise out of season, before time—as if you were not yet to go and yet had to go. And if you go in that way, your home will become even more desolate than before. I do not want to make your home desolate; I want to make your home a temple. I want that when you go home, your home’s new form is revealed. I do not want to tear you away from home, from the world, from family life. That is the newness of my sannyas: I do not want to sever you from the world; I want to join you to the world in such a way that your connection with the world becomes a connection with the Divine. Let the world no longer be a barrier between you and the Divine; let it become a means. If…
Why do I misunderstand you, Osho, continuously?
THAT IS NATURAL. Understanding will be a surprise -- misunderstanding is not a surprise. You are bound to misunderstand me because you ARE. You will understand me only when you are not. That 'I' is the cause of all misunderstanding. [t remains between me and you. It do- i not allow me to say what I am saying -- it interprets, it colours it, it distorts, it chooses, it adds, it deletes -- it docs a thousand and one things, and only then does it allow it to go in. And by the time it reaches you it is something totally different. It is not what was said to you: it is something that your mind has made out of it. You will have to disappear if you want to understand me. Less than that won't do. Lorenzo was extolling the virtues of his newly adopted homeland. "This is-a great-a…
How can I understand that which you really want to convey?
There are three ways. One is the most usual and the most superficial -- through the words. It is very fragmentary, and there is more possibility of misunderstanding me than understanding me. Language is not adequate. There are things which go beyond it. But that is the usual. That's what we have been trained for -- we understand only words. And we know that when I use a word and you hear it, you hear the word but you don't hear my meaning. My meaning is left behind. The word goes like an empty shell and you put your meaning into it. Meaning will be yours. So that is not the right way. To begin with, okay, but to cling to it is not going to lead you anywhere very deep. The young vicar and his bride had just undressed and were ready to taste the fruits of love. But…
Osho, I have grown tired of trying to understand you. Nothing makes sense. What should I do now?
Surely, Rupchand, you’ve come here carrying some peculiar kind of “understanding”—Hindu understanding, Muslim understanding, Christian, Jain—who knows which! Who knows which books are crammed into your head! Who knows through which walls my words have to pass to reach inside you! But there will be walls. You are deaf; otherwise, to understand what I’m saying, does one need higher mathematics, science, some great art? I am saying something as simple as “two and two are four.” One night the hotel room became very cold. Chandulal was shivering under a blanket. He thought, “I should call for another blanket; otherwise, I won’t sleep the whole night.” He phoned the receptionist: “Listen, Miss, I’m feeling very cold. I’d be most obliged if you…” Before Chandulal could even finish, the reply came: “All right, all right, I’ll be at your service within two minutes. In the meantime, please take off your clothes and…