According to Osho, we go blind to life’s mystery because thought, memory, and “scholarship” cloud open eyes; our past and future imaginings form a curtain over the present. Mystery is regained by stillness and not‑knowing: drop concepts, suspend naming, meet each moment freshly—like a child—listening, touching, and silently being with what is. Then the ordinary reveals infinite light and fragrance.
Stop letting your thoughts and old ideas get in the way, and look at what’s here now with fresh, quiet eyes—then wonder returns.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you have said that the world and life are filled with supreme mystery, and that every particle of it is miraculous. Why and how are our eyes becoming blind to that mystery and wonder? And can that sense of mystery be regained?
Your eyes are becoming blind because of overthinking. To perceive mystery, thought has to fall still, because it is in that very pause that mystery is revealed. Your eyes are open, but they are full of thoughts. That is why even open eyes cannot see. You look at a flower and know it is a rose. You have seen it many times; there are thousands of memories of roses in you. Who knows how many poems you have read about roses, how many pictures and paintings you have seen—your mind is filled with them. When you go near a rose, all your knowledge stands in between like a curtain. Layer upon layer, whatever you have known comes in the way. Your knowing itself becomes your blindness. Trim knowledge away for a little while. Be by the rose as if you were ignorant—as if you had never seen a rose before,…
Osho, you are giving us an understanding of life through countless pretexts, from countless dimensions, yet day by day it keeps becoming more and more unfathomable, mysterious, astonishing. Is this what is meant by life’s vastness, life’s infinity, life’s ever-newness? Please tell us.
Let the mystery grow. If it grows, know that you are with me. When the mystery begins to stall or get stuck, know that you have left my side—you have made doctrines, you have stopped, you have stepped off the road and pitched your tent on the wayside and settled down. With me there will be many halts, never a final destination. And every “destination” is no more than a halt, because further on the journey continues. Buddha said: chareveti, chareveti—go on, go on. There is no end anywhere. Truth has no boundary. Keep welcoming the new. Each day a new sun will rise. Day after day I will give you new flavors of feeling. Keep welcoming them. At whose welcome the sky has emptied all its pitchers, and the banyan has spread a carpet of shade— that is you, O Dawn; my eyes offer you their greeting. Islands of…
Drop this junk and become light. Instantly, when your eyes are not filled with knowledge, they will be filled with mystery. The inward journey of that mystery is called wonder; its outward journey is called astonishment. If you pour that sense of mystery onto objects, you become a scientist. If you pour that sense of mystery onto your own being, you become a great yogi. And the outcomes will be different. For astonishment is violent; wonder is non-violent. Wherever astonishment is directed, it begins to break, to analyze; for in astonishment there is a restlessness. In wonder there is a savor. Understand this difference also well. It is not written in the dictionary; it cannot be written—for the maker of the dictionary knows nothing of wonder. Astonishment is violent, aggressive. Toward that which fills you with astonishment a tension arises. That tension has to be resolved.
Osho, how to see what is?
Function from the state of not knowing, and it will bring you immense, ecstatic experiences, because the person who is without knowledge is capable of wondering. The person who is without knowledge is capable of awe. He can dance seeing a rose flower, he can sing because the sky is full of stars. He can be in tune with existence. Seeing a sunset, he can go into wild ecstasy -- because he knows nothing. Life is a mystery to him. Knowledge demystifies life. Because he knows nothing, everything, the most ordinary too, becomes absolutely extraordinary, luminous, because everything is mysterious. Everything Is mysterious! Your knowledge simply hides your ignorance and destroys your capacity to be mystified. Knowledge is destructive of mysticism. Hence all the mystics of all the ages have been saying one single thing: Drop knowledge -- all knowledge is rubbish. Be in a state of not knowing; function…
Day by day man has been losing the eye to see the mystery of life. The more civilized we became, the more that eye was lost. The more “understanding” we became, the more our knowledge grew, the more we turned our back upon life’s wonder—the unfathomable, the enigmatic for which there is no solution. We have withdrawn from it. We have forgotten that life is an insoluble riddle—forgotten within our knowledge, our information, our cleverness. Man has concluded that almost everything is known, and what is not yet known will be known. There is nothing unknowable in life; everything can be known. This is utterly contrary to truth. In life, everything is unknowable. And that which we think we know is not knowing. Nothing whatsoever can be known in life. From a tiny leaf to all that appears—everything is very, very unknown, very unknowable, very unfathomable, deeply mysterious.