Once, a doctor — a renowned historian and a leading scholar — was staying in a village. The old postmaster of the village grew curious about him. He wondered what sort of doctor the man might be, and so one day he asked: “What kind of doctor are you, sir?”

“A doctor of philosophy,” the man said. The old postmaster had never heard of such a thing. Puzzled, he replied: “I’ve never heard of that illness around here.”

Don’t laugh, for in a way the old postmaster was right. Philosophy is a kind of disease. Of course, doctors of philosophy are not physicians; on the contrary, they are its perfect victims.

Philosophy is not one particular disease, so you cannot think of it in terms of individual cases. It is as old as humanity, as old as the human mind, and every person is, to some degree, its victim — because thinking leads nowhere, or it leads you round in circles, in vicious circles. You travel far, and if you are an expert you travel fast, but you never arrive anywhere.

This is only human — to think about questions and to try to find answers. But philosophy finds no answers. Science may find some answers; religion may find some answers; but philosophy finds none. And every answer philosophy seems to find is only a surface: dig deeper and you find nothing but more questions. So every answer gives rise to still more questions, and it goes on and on, without end.

— Osho, “The Book of Secrets, Vol. 2”