According to Osho, silence feels threatening because it is the Great Death: the ego, mind-noise, and socially borrowed identity dissolve. Without words, roles, and opinions, your familiar "you" and world vanish, exposing radical aloneness and the unknown, birthing egoless awareness. This rupture breeds insecurity and the Zen "Great Doubt." Yet through this inner "suicide," a totally new consciousness arises - neither arrogant nor humble, simply present.
Silence scares us because the noisy self we know disappears, and that empty quiet feels strange before a truer self appears.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why should silence be threatening?
In Zen they call it 'The Great Doubt'. It comes to everybody when they reach closer to satori: a great moment of doubt -- because the old is disappearing and the new you cannot even see. All that you have believed in is no more valid, and nothing is yet clear as to what is going to substitute it. You are left in limbo. In that trembling, anguish, anxiety, great doubt, you would like to go back; you would like to cling to the shore that you have left. But there is no way to go back! Once you have come to the moment of Great Doubt, there is no way to go back. You can only go ahead. Remember this basic dictum of human growth. growth of consciousness: that there is no way ever to go back. Whatsoever you have known, you have known as there is no way…
Question: OSHO, CAN SILENCE BE HEARD AND UNDERSTOOD? Only silence can be heard and understood. Words can be heard but only superficially, and can be understood -- but only intellectually. Silence is heard existentially and is understood from your innermost being. It is a total understanding. I can see why you have asked the question, because ordinarily we understand only words. We are prepared to understand only words, not silence. We are educated to understand language and all its complexities. Nobody helps us to go beyond language, to go beyond words, to reach the wordless space within us. The society is against it, because if you can hear silence you will not be a part of the crowd mind, of the collective mind. You will become an individual immediately. And an individual is a danger to the state, to the church, to the society.
Emptiness here, emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes. Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen. So too with being and non-being. Don't waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this.
ONE THING, ALL THINGS: MOVE AMONG AND INTERMINGLE, WITHOUT DISTINCTION. TO LIVE IN THIS REALIZATION IS TO BE WITHOUT ANXIETY ABOUT NON-PERFECTION. TO LIVE IN THIS FAITH IS THE ROAD TO NON-DUALITY, BECAUSE THE NON-DUAL IS ONE WITH THE TRUSTING MIND. WORDS! THE WAY IS BEYOND LANGUAGE, FOR IN IT THERE IS That's why in the world of religion you see the most egoistic people possible, because they are trying to be perfect about everything. They insist on perfection. They cannot be relaxed, they will always be tense. And always something will be wrong and they have to put it right -- and they will always remain in anxiety. Go to the madhouses, and you will find there ninety percent perfectionists. A man of understanding remains relaxed. That doesn't mean that he doesn't care. No, he cares but he knows the limitations. He cares, but he knows that he is…
Question: why it is that even silence becomes eloquent in your presence.
Words are impotent to express Truth. Truth can be expressed only in silence. The moment we enter silence, the mystery of Truth is revealed. Man's misfortune is that he has forgotten to be silent; and therefore his entire relationship with Nature has been vitiated. Nature knows only the language of silence. He who knows not that language, ipso facto, loses touch with Nature. And mankind's misery is due to man's distance from nature. Only with the dissolution of ego, we can enter silence. when ego -- alias 'I' -- is dissolved, there is possibility of communion and integration with Nature.
Osho, every time after speaking I feel I have been dishonest; only when I remain silent do I feel honest—completely honest with myself. Why is this?
At Harvard University, psychologists ran an experiment. They split a class into two groups. To one half, in a separate room, they said: “The problem on the board is very difficult. There is hardly any hope that any of you can solve it. Even students in higher classes struggle with it. Only great mathematicians can solve it. We’re giving it just to see—by chance, perhaps—there is no assurance at all—maybe one of you might head a little in the right direction. Solving it completely is impossible, still try.” They tried. Out of fifteen students, only three solved it. To the other fifteen, in another room, they said—about the same problem—“It’s very simple. So simple that if any of you fail to solve it, it would be surprising. Students in lower classes have solved it.” Amazingly, twelve solved it; only three failed. What happened? Your confidence is borrowed—others hand it to…