What is the secret behind the freshness of answers compared to the staleness of questions?

Osho, it is a great surprise that all our questions are old and stale, while your answers are so new and fresh. What is the secret?

Because you think your questions. Whatever comes out of thinking becomes stale. Thinking can only be of the old; there is no thinking of the new. How will you think the new? That which you have not known at all, with which you have no acquaintance—how will its form arise in your mind? You search from memory. Even if you put a little paint and polish on it, your questions cannot be new; they remain old, because whatever is born of the mind is old. Mind is the name of the old. Mind means the dead. Mind means what has passed. Mind means what has already been experienced. So whatever you have experienced, heard, read, thought—this is the mind’s storehouse. From that you search out your questions; therefore they will be old and stale. When I give you an answer, it has nothing to do with the mind. I do…

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…

Then at noon a friend said, Osho, you say we should do nothing. Then what should we do? Do not accumulate knowledge, no devotion and worship, no turning the rosary and chanting mantras—then what should we do?

He had thought the king would panic. The opposite happened—the youth panicked. The king lifted his hands to the sky and said, O God, the man I was waiting for has come. How many days you pointed the way—at last he has arrived. Embracing the youth, he said, You go inside; I will go out. And these clothes too—I’ll leave them; I’ve worn them long and am tired of them. Now I would like to go naked. The youth was alarmed. Wait! Wait a moment—let me think a little more. What is this? Why are you so eager to run? Why such impatience to leave your things? The king said, Don’t ask, don’t think. Life is long—think slowly. After all, I too reached here thinking over a lifetime. How can I tell you so quickly, and how will you understand? You go in; I go out. Life is long; you…

Question: BELOVED MASTER, FROM WHERE DOES FRESHNESS COME? Your mind is boring, utterly boring. Get out of the mind. At least for a few moments every day, put the mind aside, be utterly nude of the mind. And then you will know it is welling up within you -- the freshness you are asking about. From where does it come? It comes from the deepest core of your being -- and it does not really come. Suddenly you find it has always been the case. It has always been there like an undercurrent, underground, hidden behind many many layers of memories, dreams, desires. Buddha says: Be desireless and know. Be desireless, and you will reach to the realm which is beyond birth and death, and you will enter into the unbounded. But why is man not going into his own being which is so close?

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…