Questioning

Osho, which is the real question?

SCIENTIFIC QUESTIONS ARE ALL REAL, because they are answerable. Religious questions are all unreal because they are unanswerable. Religion is the concern with the unanswerable. To ask a religious question is basically wrong -- it is wrong because religion is the search for the mystery, not the search for the answer. Religion is diving deep into that which is basically unknowable -- not only unknown but unknowable. These three words have to be understood: the known, the unknown and the unknowable. The known is that which we have accumulated in the past -- through experience, through experimentation. Whatsoever answers we have forced nature to give to us, that has become the known. That's what science is all about. And the remaining, for science, is only the unknown. The basic hypothesis is this: that life is divided into only two categories -- the known and the unknown. Sooner or later the…

You have said that any question is violent, yet we are encouraged to ask questions. Why is this?

BECAUSE YOU ARE VIOLENT and you need catharsis. You have questions to ask; you may not have the courage to ask them, that's why you are encouraged. You have questions to ask; you have to pass through that. Ask them. I'm not saying that my answers will destroy them -- no. My answers are not pointed that way. My answers have a totally different purpose. They will make you aware that all questions are useless, futile, absurd. I would like you to come to a point where the mind stops questioning, but that you cannot do because you are full of questions. Release them, don't suppress them. Be courageous. Even if you know that they are foolish, don't hide them, because if you hide them you will never be able to get rid of them. Even if they are ridiculous -- and all questions are -- ask. And I'm not…

Beloved Osho, all my life, including my years of being a sannyasin, I have never had a questioning attitude. This has not worried me up to date, but now since you have been inviting us to ask you questions, I wonder if it is okay that I am quite empty?

It is absolutely okay.

Is it a very good sign that one has no questions to ask?

If really it happens that you have no questions to ask, it is a tremendous phenomenon. It is one of the most beautiful _ states of mind; because when there are no questions, that nonquestioning consciousness is the answer to all questions. Not that you get the answers, but, simply, questions dissolve. The mind becomes nontense, because each question is a tension, is a worry; it is an anxiety. And no answer is going to solve the question. The questioning mind is the problem, not the question. Your question can be answered, but from the answer your questioning mind will create a thousand and one more questions; you will reduce every answer into many more questions. It never helps. It helps only when all questions drop, when consciousness transcends questioning, when you understand that there is nothing to be asked, nothing to be answered. Life is a mystery, not a…