Questions can start the process, but real understanding appears when you quiet down inside and truly listen.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, by our asking questions day after day, will a dialogue someday happen? And will that dialogue someday become understanding?
I am giving a few toys to your mind so that the mind gets occupied there and your consciousness becomes still. As we do with small children: they are making a fuss, creating a racket, we hand them a toy. For a little while they sit in a corner absorbed in the toy, and the household gets a little respite. If what I am saying were answers, you could memorize them and the matter would be finished. But they are not answers. No one has ever given answers. The enlightened ones only erase your questions; they do not give answers. They cleanse your questions so that the mind becomes empty. The questions are within you; if now you also start hoarding my answers, the crowd will only grow. You were already quite troubled—harassed by questions; now you will be harassed by answers. Your trouble will continue. No—listen. And when I…
Osho, questions arise—and for many of them the answers also come. What is all this?
Girls want people to tell them they are beautiful. A handful of fools to say it—that’s all it takes—and you’ll always find such fools loitering on the seafront; no matter what she looks like—even if she resembles Kali of Calcutta, motherly and forbidding—some fool will still exclaim, “Ah, what beauty!” It feels good when someone says, “You are intelligent!” You gather your self-image from others’ borrowed opinions. You ask their questions and paste on their answers. You call this your knowledge. All of it stale and borrowed... No—no one else can give you knowledge. No one else can answer your questions. The one who truly wishes you well, who truly wants you to become a flame of life, will tell you: the answer to every one of your questions is within you. Therefore the way is to sit silently and go inward. And a moment comes, as you keep finding…
Osho, you say the same thing in countless ways. But when I listen to you, it feels as if I am hearing it for the first time. And I feel so much joy that I don’t feel like going back home. What should I do—what can I do—so that I can just keep listening to you!
You will feel as if you have been made to rise out of season, before time—as if you were not yet to go and yet had to go. And if you go in that way, your home will become even more desolate than before. I do not want to make your home desolate; I want to make your home a temple. I want that when you go home, your home’s new form is revealed. I do not want to tear you away from home, from the world, from family life. That is the newness of my sannyas: I do not want to sever you from the world; I want to join you to the world in such a way that your connection with the world becomes a connection with the Divine. Let the world no longer be a barrier between you and the Divine; let it become a means. If…
Beloved Osho, On what day will the chariot set out? When will you, striking me with light, take me across? On what day will you come bearing flaming arrows, draw a line upon my heart and pass on? On what day shall I take your fire upon my head and throw open my very life before your arrows? Asked by Anand Maitreya!
When the Divine comes, it feels—He came unasked. And when He goes, it feels—everything is looted. All is looted! You become poorer than before. Because earlier you had no experience, so you did not know—you could not compare—what treasure is. Once light has entered the eye and then darkness grows dense again, the darkness will seem deeper than before. You will weep much, writhe much. All is looted. The robbers have taken everything. So there is one kind of separation that a man feels before knowing God. It is not very deep. It cannot be very deep. If you have not seen the Beloved, have not known His beauty, not even had a glimpse, you can weep, but how deep can that weeping be? With no experience, what will you weep for? For whom are you weeping? Are you even sure He is? That He ever was? Or is it…
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…