My whole effort here is to help you to ask the right question, the fundamental, the question of your being, of your innermost core.
And they are not many — remember. The basic question is absolutely one. That’s why the basic answer is absolutely one. You can ask a thousand and one wrong questions; you cannot ask more than one right question — because that right question will have all the questions in it. It will be the essence of all your anxiety, of all your anguish.
And that question is not going to be theological; it is going to be existential. It will not come by reading. It will not come by going to the universities. It will come if you start encountering yourself. If you start looking with your own being — it will come then. It is already there. You have brought it with you. It is YOU, a seed inside.
And when you have found the right question…. That’s what I help to find, not the right answer. That I leave to foolish people. Then you can go to the priests; they have right answers. You can go to the professors; they have right answers. I have only the right question.
Once the right question is there, you need not seek the answer because the right question itself carries its answer. They are always together. Once you can ask a true, authentic question that comes from your being and not from the mind, immediately you will be surprised. Following the question comes your answer. It has to be so.
If the question is yours, how can anybody else’s answer quench it? The thirst is yours — nobody else’s water is going to quench it. You have to go deep within yourself Find the question and you have already found the answer.
But that is very difficult and arduous because you are in a hurry and you say: ‘When you have the answer, please give it to us. When you have the answer, why force us to go and inquire for the question first?’ You would like it readymade. That’s not possible. That’s how you have been deceived and how you have been deceiving yourself. That’s how religions are born — Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism.
It is absolutely absurd. You can make that answer a part of your memory but it won’t help.
If you float with the river of life, you will come to find your question and you will come to find your answer.
But the trouble is you have already found the answer. You have maps, scriptures, advice — and many fakers who go on advising you. They feel good in advising. You are just a victim, an excuse. They want to advise. They are not concerned with your need. They don’t look at you. They have a fixed idea.
Go to a Christian; he has a fixed idea of God. Even rivers don’t move in a fixed way — how can you have a fixed idea of God? He is the river of consciousness. Maybe somewhere in the past somebody had known the river in a certain way. It is no longer in the same place. Says old Heraclitus: ‘You cannot step in the same river twice.’ The river is always floating and changing and flowing. Always moving. The river does not have a fixed route.
Life is free. Life is freedom. God is absolutely a freedom. You cannot have any fixed attitudes, fixed ideas. If you have, then you will be in trouble, and you will think that God is putting you in trouble. No — just throw your scriptures into the river. Move with the river and everything is beautiful.
Forget the answers if you want to find your question. You are so surrounded by the answers that it is almost impossible in this confusion and crowd to find the right question — and the right question is the key.
I don’t give you any answer. If you have come to me for any answer, you have come to the wrong person. I don’t give you any maps of consciousness, no. I don’t give you any concept of God. I simply give you a thirst, an intense thirst. I bring urgency to your thirst to know your authentic question. Then everything takes care of itself.
The answer follows the question. There is no doubt about it. It has always been so. That is the very nature of it. First seek the question and the answer will follow. But you try to be cunning. You say: ‘Why bother about the question? Answers are available. And cheap at that! And advisers are always there.’ So why bother about your own inquiry? But if the inquiry is not yours, the fulfillment is not going to be yours.
Answers won’t help. You need a different state of consciousness. Only a different state of consciousness can become the answer. Through questioning you start changing. Question everything and don’t become a prey to easy answers. Go on questioning, go on to the very end, so that your whole questioning quest becomes one-pointed, concentrated. It goes like an arrow into the heart, penetrates deep. It is painful, but nothing can be achieved without pain. Suffering is part of growth. You are seeking comfort. Then you borrow answers. Then don’t come to me because I will force you, throw you into the abyss of your own being.
In the beginning it will look like death, in the beginning it will look like nothingness. But if you are courageous, soon the eternal ground appears. For the first time you are at home. It is just like the pain of birth: a child has to pass through the birth trauma, has to come out of the womb. You are in the womb of the mind right now. Meditation is nothing but coming out of the womb of the mind — from thought to thoughtlessness, from unconsciousness to consciousness, from borrowed, imitative being to authenticity.
Yes, I help you to find the question. But there is no need then to find the answer; it happens simultaneously, not even a single second’s gap. The answer is not separate from the question. The question IS the answer. The very inquiry IS the realization. The very seeking IS the goal.
OSHO
From : The True Sage…ch.2
