A few weeks ago, I wrote about my experience at an Adyashanti satsang. Aside from the talk itself, the most interesting part of the evening was the questions asked by a few attendees.

I wrote, “And so it went. Question after question from attendees who desired an answer to their search. They practically dripped with craving; they were intoxicated with the possibilty of insight. They were like addicts to the truth.”

I wondered where this urge to “know” comes from. It wasn’t until I read a passage from Osho, in his book Courage: The Joy Of Living Dangerously, that I found a brilliant articulation of the issue:

The mind has some difficulty in accepting the idea that there is something that is not explainable. Mind has a very mad urge for everything to be explained. Anything that remains a puzzle, a paradox, goes on troubling your mind.

The whole of history of philosophy, religion, science, mathematics, has the same root, the same mind – the same itch.

You may scratch yourself one way, somebody else may do it differently, but the itch has to be understood. The itch is the belief that existence is not a mystery.

Mind can feel at home only if somehow existence is demystified.

Ideas are substitutes for where life is mysterious and you find gaps that cannot be filled with reality. You fill those gaps with ideas; and at least you start feeling satisfied that life is understood.

But is is not possible. Whatever you do, life is a mystery and is going to remain a mystery.