So the question is meaningful from some outsider – but then I will not answer it. The question is meaningless from an insider – and only then can I answer it. If you are an insider, you know that there is a beginning to this play but no end to it. You have entered into something which is going to last forever.

“Osho please explain.” A game has to be played, not to be explained. If you explain it, it loses all charm. Come, be a partner. Get involved in it.

There are a few things which cannot be explained – in the very explanation they die. For example a joke cannot be explained. That’s the beauty of a joke: either you understand it or you don’t understand it. If you ask, “Please explain,” it cannot be explained. If somebody explains it and it becomes completely clear to you, no laughter will come out of it, because it is when the joke suddenly dawns on your being that there is laughter; when there is a jump, a quantum leap, then there is laughter. You were going along on one plane, the story was moving along on one plane, then suddenly an unexpected turn which you could not have imagined, happened. That very turn – which you could not have imagined happening – gives it beauty. That very turn shocks you. That very turn releases the tension that was building up. You were going along in suspense – “What is going to happen? What is going to happen?” – and everything was just ordinary and then, suddenly, there is an extraordinary turn to the story. The punch line has to be a sudden turn. Then the built-up tension relaxes and you start laughing. The tension is released, explodes. But if somebody explains to you, dissects the joke logically, explains everything to you and then you understand it – then the joke disappears. The joke has to be enjoyed, not understood.

This whole world is a cosmic joke. If you try to understand it you will miss…that is how philosophers have always been missing. They have been trying to solve it, they have been trying to look for clues. It has no clues. It is a sheer mystery. It has no keys and no locks. It is available if you are available. But a mind which wants to understand it becomes tense and becomes unavailable.

Don’t try to understand life. Live it! Don’t try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know – and that knowing will come out of your experiencing. That knowing will never destroy the mystery: the more you know, the more you know that much remains to be known. Life is not a problem. To look at it as a problem is to take a wrong step. It is a mystery to be lived, loved, experienced.

In fact the mind which is always after explanations is an afraid mind. Because of great fear he wants everything to be explained. He cannot go into anything before it is explained to him. With explanation he feels that now the territory is familiar, now he knows the geography, now he can move with the map and the guidebook and the timetable. He is never ready to move in an unknown territory, uncharted, without a map, without a guide. But life is like that. And no map is possible, because life goes on changing. Every moment it is new. I say to you there is nothing old under the sun. Everything is new. It is a tremendous dynamism, an absolute movement. Only change is permanent, only change never changes – everything else goes on changing.