Osho on Doubt

 

 

“The very first step to be taught in the search for truth is right doubt. A good beginning of religious education should be that. The real foundation of religion is doubt, not trust.

 

Doubt is the beginning, trust is the end.

Doubt is the search, trust is the achievement.

 

So whosoever begins with doubt, sometime or other does reach trust. But one who begins from trust reaches nowhere. There is no question of his reaching, because he has attached the bullocks behind the cart. Beginning is possible only with that which is the beginning. How can an end be the beginning? Where there is no doubt, there is no thinking. Where there is no thinking, there is no intelligence. Where there is no intelligence, there is no truth.

 

Religions have taught belief - neither doubt nor search.

 

Religion will teach one to doubt, to think and to search. Only whatsoever is obtained by one's own search is self-transforming, and is the truth.“

 

- Osho, "Revolution in Education, #4"

 

⯎

 

“Doubt – because doubt is not a sin, it is the sign of your intelligence. Doubt and go on enquiring until you find. One thing I can say: whosoever enquires, finds. It is absolutely certain; it has never been otherwise. Nobody has come empty-handed from an authentic enquiry.”  

 

- Osho, "From Ignorance to Innocence, #11"

 

⯎

 

“Science begins with doubt; meditation also begins with doubt. The method of science is observation of objects, the objective world; and the method of meditation is to observe the inside world. Science experiments with objects; meditation is the experience of your interiority, your subjectivity.  

 

In fact science has two wings: one, moving into the outside universe; the other, moving into the inside consciousness.  

 

Meditation should be absolutely necessary in every educational system, because meditation is not Hindu, not Christian, not Buddhist. Meditation has nothing to do with any religion. It has nothing to do with any belief. Meditation does not require you to believe in God first, heaven and hell, Jesus Christ as the only begotten son. It needs no belief of any kind.  

 

Meditation is an inquiry, a search, a pilgrimage towards your own center. And the person who knows himself cannot do anything wrong. That is an impossibility. The person who realizes himself needs no morality. Morality is needed by blind people.“  

 

- Osho, "From Death to Deathlessness, #28"

 

⯎

 

“Accumulation of others' thoughts brings idiocy. By accumulation of thoughts, thinking and intelligence are not born. Too much emphasis on mechanical memory in the birth of thinking and intelligence, is fatal. Enough opportunities for thinking and use of intelligence should be made available if they are to grow. Doubt instead of belief is to be taught if thinking and intelligence are to grow.  

 

Belief and trust bind you, whereas doubt liberates. But by doubt I do not mean distrust. Distrust is only the negative form of trust or belief. Neither trust nor distrust but doubt is required. Trust and distrust are both the death of doubt. And where there is no liberating intensity of doubt, there is neither any search for the truth nor its attainment.  

 

The intensity of doubt becomes the search. Doubt is thirst, doubt is longing. It is in the fire of doubt that the life force is stirred and thinking is born. The pain of doubt is the birth pain of thinking. One who escapes that pain is deprived of the birth of thinking.  

 

Do we doubt? Do we doubt the fundamental meanings and values of life? If not, then certainly our education has been wrong somewhere. There can be no other base for right education except right doubt. If there is no doubt, how can there be any search? If there is no doubt, how will there be any discontentment? If there is no doubt, how will your being long for knowing and attaining the truth? That is why we have all become shallow puddles of contentment, and our souls have not remained rivers constantly running in search of the ocean.“  

 

- Osho, "Revolution in Education, #2"