Why do significant questions about enlightenment and meditation elude me when I try to articulate them?

Beloved Osho, why is it that whenever I come to ask a question, questions of great significance, that I knew were there before, elude me. I would like to ask about enlightenment and meditation, but when I get down to writing them, the questions lose all reality for me. The significance and depth of things always frightens me. Could it be that I am avoiding the deep treasures of my being?

Premdipa, the questions about enlightenment and about meditation are not yet your deep search. You are not avoiding anything through them. On the contrary, when you try to write the question about enlightenment or meditation it loses all reality to you because it has no reality for you -- it is a borrowed question. You hear so much about enlightenment here, about meditation; naturally you become curious. But curiosity is not inquiry, and unless a search becomes so authentic that it becomes a question of life and death, the question cannot have reality. You can ask it, but it will remain phony -- to you and to me. I can see through your questions, because my basic effort is not to answer the question but to answer the questioner. And in an effort to answer the questioner, I have to destroy the question. All my answers are an effort to…

Beloved Osho, inside of me there seem to be so many questions, but when I try to ask you one of them, they all seem to be gone, and I don't know even if I really wanted to ask you something. But still the feeling of question remains. Please, can you explain where this feeling comes from?

It is very simple. You don't have a question; you have a quest. And you are not aware of the distinction. Your quest is not clear to you, it is clouded. You think perhaps there is some question -- so you make many questions and they disappear but you are left with a vague feeling that something similar to a question is still there. What is it? All questions are like leaves. The quest is like the roots. You are fortunate, because at first people have to ask thousands of questions; then, by and by, one by one, the leaves disappear. Then branches come, then the trunk, and then finally they realize that the real thing is the quest. You are fortunate that you have only roots. But with roots the difficulty is that they are always underground, so you don't see where they are. You try somehow to make…

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, 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…

Osho, no real question forms. I don’t even know whether I want to ask anything or not. But I want to hear something from you—for me. Please don’t mention my name.

What you appear to be on the surface, you are not. Your body is no more than clothing; your mind too is only the inner garment. Body and mind are not separate: the mind is the inner aspect of the body, the body the outer aspect of the mind. You are neither. You are the letter that never takes birth and never dies. You are part of that great epic which some call God, some Liberation, some Nirvana. You are a drop of the Lord’s eye—an immortal tear. You are a limb of the Divine; not separate. What name could you have? Thus the rishis of the Upanishads proclaim their Brahman-being—not their personal being, but Brahman’s being. Thus Al-Hallaj Mansur cries “Ana’l-Haqq!”—I am the Truth! Not “I am,” but Truth is. Our name separates us. Remember your namelessness, so this separateness dissolves. Our form, color, caste, class—these divide us. And…