According to Osho, when you listen without the mind’s interference, real listening happens: a direct communion in which words become vehicles for silence and the inexpressible is actually heard. Understanding arises from your being, not your old ideas; you are transformed in the very act of hearing. You won’t seek techniques or ‘how-tos’—you’ve already tasted the truth, heart-to-heart, beyond rational filtering.
If you stop thinking and just listen, you feel the message directly in your heart—like tasting it, not just hearing words.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, when I sit in front of you and listen to you speak, I feel as if a process of osmosis is happening. I find I don't intellectually listen. Is this the right way or am I missing something?
This is the right way. If you listen to me intellectually you miss, not something, but all. Intellectual listening is a kind of deafness. When I say something, you can listen to the word. You have a mind, a library in the mind of all your prejudices, philosophies, ideologies. The word has to go through all those preconceived patterns, and by the time it reaches to you it is no longer the same. It has changed so many times, passing through the whole process of intellectual listening, that when it comes out it is absolutely something else. And yet it appears to be rationally the right thing; it fits with your mind. The process of listening has managed to cut it here and there, change it here and there; to color it here and there, to make it what you want it to be, not what it is. And you…
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…
Osho, what is the first experience of samadhi like?
You will know only when it happens. It cannot be said; at most a few hints can be given. It is as if, in the dark, a lamp is suddenly lit. Or as if a dying patient, right at the edge of death, suddenly finds a medicine that works; life’s wave, life’s thrill spreads again—so it is. As if a corpse becomes alive—such is the first experience of samadhi. It is the taste of nectar. The experience of the ultimate music. But it will be only when it happens; and only then will you understand. You will not understand by my saying it. It is as with love. How can anyone explain it? To someone who has never loved, never known love, no matter how many explanations you offer—he will hear it all and still ask, “I haven’t understood; please explain a little more.” It is like explaining light to…
Beloved Osho, I feel I can relax more and more deeply into myself. Yet, at the periphery, there is an unassertiveness, a trembling that can cloud the blissfulness of life. Beloved master, does my ego need nourishment?
My God! Prem Rajya, I wonder whether you have been listening to me. Every day, morning and evening, I'm telling you to drop the ego and you are asking me a great question: "Beloved master, does my ego need nourishment?" And you are also saying, "I feel I can relax more and more deeply into myself. Yet, at the periphery, there is an unassertiveness, a trembling that can cloud the blissfulness of life. Does my ego need nourishment?" That will destroy whatever relaxation you have, and that will stop your growth going inwards. It will make your trembling more strong and the cloud that is covering the blissfulness of your life will become darker. Nourishment of the ego is against your authentic being; it cannot help you in any way. It can only destroy you -- destroy you as you are destined to be by your nature. Ego is a…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY CAN'T I HEAR YOU? AM I DEAF? Mind has no eyes; it simply lives in a dark hole -- groping, inventing, believing, but never coming to know anything. The heart has a totally different approach: it simply knows. Its knowing is intuitive, not intellectual. It cannot give arguments, it cannot give proofs. But when it knows, it knows absolutely; it can give for its knowledge its own life. No logician will be ready to be crucified for his logical knowledge. Have you ever heard of any logician being crucified? Have you ever heard of any philosopher being poisoned? He will change his philosophy, he will say, "Don't bother, I am ready to change my philosophy. It does not matter whether this philosophy is right or that philosophy is right.