According to Osho, people don’t believe mystics because understanding follows longing, and most people long for money, sex, or forgetfulness, not truth. Their language is tuned to their desires, while mystics speak paradox and silence from a different state of remembrance. To the “asleep,” mystics seem mad; they’re tolerated or worshipped yet not heard. Real understanding needs initiation—an inner shift into the same experiential frequency.
You can’t really get what a mystic is saying unless you want what they want and taste it yourself; otherwise it sounds like nonsense.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why don't people believe in the things that all the great mystics have always been preaching?
To understand a mystic you will have to become a mystic yourself. To understand a mystic you will have to be initiated into mysticism. To understand a mystic you will have to drop your old patterns of the mind, the old ways of thinking. Logical thinking has to be dropped. You will have to become illogical. You will have to be ready to accept the irrational too -- because life is irrational and life is mysterious and you cannot put life into dogmatic forms. You cannot say 'God is', you cannot say 'God is not' -- because God is both. He is so comprehensive that 'is' and 'is not' are both implied in his being. 'Isness' is his periphery and 'is not-ness' is his very centre. At the very centre God is nothing but pure nothingness. Out of that -- ex nihilo -- everything arises. The world is just on…
Osho, what is mysticism?
Hence my insistence: drop the mind that thinks in prose; revive another kind of mind that thinks in poetry. Put aside all your expertise in syllogism; let songs be your way of life. Move from intellect to intuition, from the head to the heart, because the heart is closer to the mysteries. The head is anti-mystery; the whole effort of the head is how to demystify existence. That's why, wherever science has grown, religion has disappeared. Wherever the mind becomes trained in scientific ways of thinking and doing, religion simply dies; then the flower of religion blooms no more. In the soil of the scientific mind there is some poison that does not allow the seed of religion to grow -- it kills it. What is that poison? Science believes in demystifying existence. Religion says it cannot be demystified. The deeper your understanding goes, the more mystical it becomes, the…
Why do the mystics speak a language of their own?
Gurdjieff used to force people who were not drinkers, he would force them to drink as much as possible. Now, that was his device. When a man is utterly drunk, he becomes very very real and honest. This is a very bad state of affairs, but this is how it is. People have become so false that to see their original face you have to wait... only when they are absolutely drunk. Then their masks slip by; they cannot hold them, they are so drunk. Everything becomes shaky and they start coming up in their true colors. So each disciple had to go through that torture. It was torture for somebody who had not been drinking too much or who was against alcohol. Just think of Morarji Desai: if he had gone to Gurdjieff...! He would force people to drink so much that they would fall on the ground, start…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS THE MYSTIC CONCEPTION OF ULTIMATE REALITY? But this "much more" cannot be proved by any logician, any scientist; only the mystic is the proof. He can also not prove it by words, but only by his way of life. The way of life of the mystic is the only possibility to come in contact with the divine which is all around you. You are living in the very ocean of the divine, but the mystic becomes your first window through which you can see the non-material, the spiritual, the beyond. Shivam is the mystic in action -- his gestures, the music in his words, the poetry of his life, the light and the depths of his eyes. Whatever he does, whether he is chopping wood or carrying water from the well, you can see that there is a subtle difference.
Question: OSHO, WHAT PLACE HAS MYSTICISM IN YOUR RELIGION? The child is afraid to be alone, but he has to learn to be alone, to sleep alone. Soon he will be going to a boarding school, he has to learn to stand on his own. He cannot go on clinging to his mother's frock -- for how long? She finds a good reason for saying, "If he starts feeling the presence of Jesus or God and goes to sleep...." The child will also feel at ease, less afraid. Nothing has changed -- it is the same room, he is alone, the darkness is there -- but now there is a little comfort, that Jesus is looking after him, that God is looking after him, that God is everywhere. His own mother says so, his father says so, his teacher says so, his priest says so; everybody cannot be wrong.