Beloved Osho,
I don't know why I am here.
Nobody knows. There is no way to know it, and there is no need to know it. This constant
questioning - why am I here? why am I doing this? - this constant hankering for the why is a disease of the mind. No answer is going to satisfy you, because the why can be asked again. If I say something, "You are here because of this..." the why will be pushed back a little, that's all. You will again ask why. The why is nonending.
Once you understand it, you drop it. The why is ridiculous. Rather than asking, Why am I here? it is better to use the opportunity, it is better to flower, it is better to exist authentically. And this is the beauty of it, that once you start existing authentically, truly, once you stop all nonsense thinking and you start delighting in life, once you are no longer a philosopher, the why is answered. But it is not answered by anyone from the outside, it is answered by your own life energy.
The answer is possible, but it is not going to come like an answer, it is going to come like a lived experience. The answer is going to be existential, not intellectual. The question is intellectual. Drop it! Rather, be! Otherwise, you can go on asking... For centuries man has asked millions of questions; not a single question has been solved by speculation, thinking, logic, or reason. Not even a single question has been solved. On the contrary, whenever people have tried to answer a question, the answer has created a thousand and one more questions.
Who created the world? - and it has been answered: God created the world. And then immediately the question arises: Who created God? or, Why did he create the world? When did he create the world? And why did he create such a world? - so miserable, so helllike? The one who was answering you that God created the world must have been thinking that your question would drop; but out of one answer a thousand and one questions arise. Mind is a question-creating mechanism.
So the first thing to understand is: Drop why and immediately you become religious. Continue with the why, and you remain philosophical. Continue questioning, and you remain in the head. Drop questioning, and suddenly the energy moves in a new dimension: the dimension of the heart. Heart has no questions, and there hides the answer.
It will appear paradoxical, but still I would like to say to you: When your questioning stops, the answer comes. And if you go on questioning, the answer will become more and more elusive.
Why are you here? - who can answer it? And if it can be answered, you will no longer be a man, you will become a mechanism. This mike is here and there is a reason for it; the why can be answered. The car is there in the porch; the why can be answered. If your why also can be answered, you become a mechanism like a mike or a car; you become a utility, a commodity. But you are a man, not a machine.
Man means freedom. Why is there freedom? You can raise the question, but the question is foolish. The why about man cannot be answered. And if the why about man cannot be answered, how can it be answered when you put it for the ultimate, for God? Even about man the why cannot be answered. About God it is almost impossible even to raise the question in a right way.
My effort is not to answer your questions, but to make you aware that out of a hundred questions, ninetynine are simply foolish. Drop them! And once you have dropped the foolish questions - they took very philosophical - the one question remains. And that question is no longer concerned about irrelevant, nonessential things. That one question is concerned about Existence, about you, your being. Not why you are here, not about the purpose of your being here, but about your being here - who you are: Who am I?
This can be known, because for it to be known there is no need to go to anybody else; you can go inside. For it to be known, there is no need to look in the scriptures, you can took withinwards. For it to be known, you have just to close your eyes and move into inner silence. And you can feel it: who you are. You can taste the flavor of who you are; you can smell it, you can touch it. This is existential questioning. But why you are here, I don't know. And there is no need to know about it.
From 'The Search', part of chapter 2.
'Meditation means participation in the celebration of existence.
Do not just be a spectator, participate in the mystery of life.
Dance it, sing it, feel it, be it.' -Osho-
