According to Osho, if something in your heart has no words, it isn’t a question at all but an answer arising from beyond mind. Questions are solved; answers are lived. Do nothing, don’t force expression. Trust and rejoice—your silence, eyes, gestures, creativity, love, or dance will naturally carry it. Such secrets ripen themselves and find their own path, like rivers to the ocean.
When you can’t say it, don’t push—be quiet and kind, and the feeling will show itself through your life, like a seed growing into a flower.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, what to do with the question when there are no words for it? And what to do with the secrets in our hearts when there is no way to express them?
Krishna Priya, there is some misunderstanding. There is no question in the world which cannot be asked. Yes, there are answers which cannot be answered. A question always comes from the mind; hence the mind always finds appropriate words for it. But the answer comes from your very being, from your depths of silence where no words have ever entered. The territory of the words and language is the mind, and that is also the territory of the questions. Every question can be brought into words -- only when you start feeling the answers, then the problem arises. I have been watching you for almost ten years. You have gone through such a transformation that what you are thinking is a question, is not a question. You have come very close to the answer -- that's why you cannot find words. But this is something that happens very rarely to…
Osho, what question could I ask, and what answer could you give! You are the question and the answer too. In love, should there be a question, or an answer, or silence?
Life’s ultimate peaks are peaks of paradox. Words are noise, a spectacle; in the ocean of feeling they are sugar-candy that melts. Do not speak the heart’s secret with your lips; silence alone is the language of feeling. Weep—your tears will speak. Dance—your gestures will tell. Hum. Yesterday evening it so happened. Vani, a sannyasin, has come from Germany. I asked her, “Is there something you want to say?” And I felt she had so much to say; her heart was full. She had come from so far, and could stay only for a day or two. She cannot remain long. Every two or three months she rushes here. Even if time allows only two or three days, sometimes only a single day—she comes from Germany to Poona even for a single day! Once she stayed only five hours. So she comes to say something, to make some offering. I…
Beloved Osho, most of my questions are never completed in my mind. They surface like the bubbles of a lava pool, then sink back into the mud. The only questions that are undeniably authentic, like thirsts that need quenching, are those to do with the mystery of your presence. Should I be putting more energy into crystallizing my incomplete questions, or should I just be allowing myself to go more and more deeply into the silence of this mystery?
Questions and answers are just intellectual. You need a real encounter with existence. Only that can help you to blossom, to be liberated, to be enlightened. Silence is perfectly the right path. If your heart has heard and felt something of silence and is entering into the mystery of existence, then forget all about your questions and forget all about answers. Just be silent. And as you become more and more silent, the mystery will go on opening its doors to you. Door upon door, peak upon peak ... there is no end. Life is such an eternal miracle, and it opens its doors only to the magic of silence. Whoever has understood silence has known the science, the magic, the art, the knack of entering into reality as if it is your own home. In fact it is. Questions and answers will keep you outside the temple and will…
Osho, I have always wanted to ask a question, but no question ever takes shape. And the ones that do don’t seem worth asking. What should I do now?
You are fortunate that such a question is arising in you and refuses to be formed. It clearly means the hour to go within has arrived. You have asked a lot of questions outside and gotten many answers outside—now don’t create more wounds. Inquiry is good, as against mere curiosity—remember—but it is nothing compared to mumuksha. Understand these three words well. Curiosity asks anything and everything; it is like small children. A child is walking and he asks, “Why is this bush big? Why the dog’s tail? Why the sun in the sky?” He keeps on asking anything. If you don’t answer, it’s no big deal to him—he keeps asking anyway. He isn’t even much concerned whether you answered or not. Even while you are answering, he has another question ready. He doesn’t even hear your answer. You answer and you find he has no taste for it; his joy…
Beloved Osho, for ages I have wanted to ask: please, tell me, what should I ask? Accept my pranam, my bowing salutation.
Dulari has asked. It is absolutely true: I have known her for years, and she has never asked anything. Very few people have never asked. This is the first time, and still she doesn't ask anything: "For ages I have wanted to ask: please, you tell me, what should I ask? The real question of life is such that it cannot be asked. A question you can ask is not worth asking. What you cannot ask -- that is worth asking. The real question of life cannot be put into words. Life questions can only be said with eyes thirsting for rain, eyes filled with the longing to know. I know Dulari. She has never asked, but I have heard her question. And her question is not hers, because what you are able to ask is yours. What you are unable to ask is everyone's. The same question is inside…