According to Osho, asking questions is a catharsis for the mind—an honest release of its restless nature—so nothing is suppressed. I invite questions not to end doubt (answers only spawn more) but to reveal their limits. By exhausting inquiry, you turn from head to heart; the real answer comes through meditation and direct inner experience, not secondhand words.
Questions let your busy mind empty out until you realize outside answers won’t satisfy, so you turn inward to meditate and know for yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, after all, what can we ask? Yet you have made us ask questions!
In Japan there is a tradition: whenever someone comes to a Zen master, he brings his sitting mat with him. He unrolls the mat, sits on it, and asks his question. Then he has to leave his mat there, and each day, whenever he has a question to ask, he comes and sits on his mat and asks the question. This sometimes continues for years together. Then a day comes when he becomes tired of this asking and being answered, and he realizes that all this is just nonsense. He rolls up his mat, puts it under his arm, and leaves. The day he rolls up his mat, the master says, "Have you rolled up your mat? Good! My blessings to you!" Rolling up the mat is symbolic of getting tired of asking questions and getting answers to them, of asking and listening. Now he stops both, and from that…
Osho, what is there that we can even ask? Still, you have had us ask questions—why?
You may feel you cannot ask, that asking seems difficult—but the mind you have can hold nothing except questions. This is your catharsis. I say to you: ask, so that your catharsis can happen. The mind anyway goes on asking. You may not gather the courage to voice a question; you may hesitate, feel afraid—but the mind goes on asking continually. In the mind, only questions stick; answers never do. The mind is a process that produces questions. The mind raises questions about everything. So it may happen that out of modesty or etiquette you do not ask me, or out of fear of what people will say: that the question is too small, not worth asking; that it is absurd, irrelevant, unbecoming; that asking it will make you look so ignorant that even this has not been resolved in you. Because of such fears, you don’t ask. But you…
Osho, the questions we ask you all arise out of unconsciousness. And your replies come from total awareness. How can the two ever meet? And if they cannot meet, then asking itself seems wrong. Then what do you mean when you tell us to ask?
What is the difference between resonance and string? The string is gross, the resonance is subtle. The string can be grasped; the resonance cannot be grasped. Catch hold of the string and you remain on the surface. Catch the string and you will be bound—the string becomes a chain. Resonance enters your very life-breath. And resonance sets aquiver the resonance already asleep within you. Resonance is liberation. Do not take my strings, my words. Do not be concerned with what I say; be absorbed in what I am. Take the aura, not the form! If you take the form, you are bound. Take a form and you enter a prison. Take the aura! The halo that surrounds a lamp cannot be clutched in a fist, cannot be locked in a safe. But if you look at it with full eyes, your eyes will begin to shine. If you drink in…
Osho, why do you answer our questions?
The moment, the very moment we ask, “Why do you answer our questions?”—there could be many reasons for answering your questions. My reason is this: so that I can raise more questions. That is my reason. I am, in fact, not giving you any answer. I do not even want to give you an answer—because who am I to give one? And my answer can never become your answer. So my whole effort—even though I may appear to be answering—is only this: that the question within you becomes deeper, becomes formidable, throws you into difficulty; that instead of one question being resolved, ten arise, a thousand arise, and within you there is nothing but questions. Because it seems to me that the more the question grows within us, the more our soul grows. And as the soul grows...
Osho, questions arise—and for many of them the answers also come. What is all this?
Girls want people to tell them they are beautiful. A handful of fools to say it—that’s all it takes—and you’ll always find such fools loitering on the seafront; no matter what she looks like—even if she resembles Kali of Calcutta, motherly and forbidding—some fool will still exclaim, “Ah, what beauty!” It feels good when someone says, “You are intelligent!” You gather your self-image from others’ borrowed opinions. You ask their questions and paste on their answers. You call this your knowledge. All of it stale and borrowed... No—no one else can give you knowledge. No one else can answer your questions. The one who truly wishes you well, who truly wants you to become a flame of life, will tell you: the answer to every one of your questions is within you. Therefore the way is to sit silently and go inward. And a moment comes, as you keep finding…