Osho
Does God exist?

Something about right inquiry…. Before you ask something, it will be good to know what is meant by right questioning. Every question is not a right inquiry, because as far as the inner dimension is concerned you can ask many, many, questions that appear to be meaningful but are not; they are nonsense.

Metaphysical questions are meaningless as far as inner inquiry is concerned. Intellectual questions are meaningless: intellect will not lead you inward, because even if you do get the right answer it will not be of any use. Intellect is an instrument, a bridge to all that exists outside; it has no door to the inner.

So the moment you begin to ask intellectually, you can go on asking for many lives and collect many answers but still you will not be connected to the inner world.

You can know many things about yourself, but to know something about yourself is not to know you. The “about” goes round and round on the periphery and the center remains untouched. You can go on in a vicious circle of questions and answers, and every answer will create more questions, then more answers, and then more questions. You remain on the periphery, asking and being answered, gathering much knowledge about the self without knowing the self.

How to ask something which can be meaningful – not simply intellectually but existentially, not just for verbal knowing but authentic living? There are a few things which have to be remembered.

One: Whatever you ask, never ask a ready-made question, never ask a stereotyped question. Ask something that is immediately concerned with you, something that is meaningful to you, that carries some transforming message for you. Ask that question upon which your life depends.

Don’t ask bookish questions, don’t ask borrowed questions. And don’t carry any question over from the past because that will be your memory, not you. If you ask a borrowed question you can never come to an authentic answer. Even if the answer is given, it will not be caught by you and you will not be caught by it: a borrowed question is meaningless. Ask something that you want to ask. When I say you, I mean the you that you are this very moment, that is here and now, that is immediate. When you ask something that is immediate, that is here and now, it becomes existential; it is not concerned with memory but with your being.