According to Osho, the answer is inherent in the right question. The real obstacle is not lack of answers but asking borrowed, imitative questions. When you uncover your own existential, heart-born question—the single, fundamental inquiry of your being—the answer arrives with it, inseparable, like thirst with its water. His work is to help you find that authentic question; ready‑made answers only deceive.
Yes—find the one true question inside you, and its answer comes along; copying others’ questions won’t work.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
If you help me to find the question, will it help me to find the answer?
Seeing much confusion in scriptures, he started meeting people. Maybe somebody is alive who had gone down the river. Many people pretended because it feels so good to advise. To become a guru is such a deep desire in everybody and it feels good to the ego. Everybody becomes a wiseman whenever it is a question to advise somebody else. In his whole life he may have proved a fool, but whenever somebody else is in difficulty he becomes a wiseman with plenty of advice. Of course, nobody takes it and it is good that nobody takes anybody's advice. So, many advisers and pretenders were in the town. He visited them. He was even more confused because everybody had his own idea. He gathered much material. He planned a map. On paper everything looked perfectly beautiful; on paper it is always so. That's how every scripture is beautiful -- Gita,…
Is it not true that answers are usually given without anyone asking for them?
It is both correct and incorrect in a way. Questions have been raised, otherwise answers would not be possible. It may be that you yourself have not raised the question but someone else has raised it. The first time the question was raised, it was raised from ignorance. And the first time it was answered, the answer was given by a person who knew. But then everything becomes formulated. The question becomes formulated and the answer becomes formulated. Then we have ready-made questions and ready-made answers. Every child is going to ask the same questions really -- because existence is the same, the problems are the same. To pass through existence is to pass through the same suffering and the same inquiry. So just as a safety measure, parents and teachers give answers before the question is raised. Neither the question has been raised nor does the one who is…
Beloved Osho, are we really looking for the answer to our numerous questions? It occurs to me there must be, for each of us present here, one question that characterizes us, and which, if we could just pinpoint it, would act like a beacon. Then that question would be enough in itself and without the need for an answer.
In fact there is no question which will be an answer to you. The reality is unquestionably here. All your questions are not really in search of answers -- but they can put you in great trouble. If the man you are asking the question to is a scholar, a pedagogue, then he can give you an answer which will create thousands of questions. You had come only with one question; he has given one answer. Now that answer creates thousands of questions -- and that's how it has been going on in philosophy, in theology. Each question leads to an answer, and that answer leads to many questions. And this goes on growing. In fact, if the man you are asking knows, then he is not answering your question; he is destroying it. He is trying that you get rid of it. He is not putting an answer in…
A friend has asked: Osho, if we come to know, accept, and recognize that this knowledge is not ours, what will happen within us? What will change? Will there be a revolution?
The minister too stood astonished. “What happened?” The youth said, The very thought that I have been called back and am heir to the throne—and everything changed in that moment. I became another man. The beggar who had been within me for five years—where has he vanished? I cannot find him though I search. My whole consciousness has become different. A small remembrance: for five years he held the notion “I am a beggar,” so he was abject; his eyes were abject; his face dull. In a moment a recognition, a remembrance, an awakening occurred: “I am an emperor”—and everything changed. That abjectness dissolved from his eyes; eyes once dull filled with brilliance; life-energy that had grown sluggish became vibrant; breaths that seemed dead inhaled the air of life again. What happened to that youth? The day you realize that what you have so far taken as knowledge is worth…
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…