Who is Osho ???

 
Osho was born in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, India, on December 11, 1931. Rebellious and independent from the very childhood, he insisted on experiencing the truth for himself rather than acquiring borrowed knowledge from others’ belief systems.
He attained Enlightenment at the age of twenty one and went on to complete his education. He taught philosophy at the University of Jabalpur for many years. Meanwhile, he would meet people, address large gatherings and give talks traveling all over India.
Osho revived all the ancient spiritual traditions like Vedanta, Sankhya, Yoga, Tantra, Sufi, Hasid, Tao, Baul and Zen. Not only he revived all these traditions and spoke on great saints and masters like Krishna, Jesus, Buddha, Mahaveera, Shiva he developed his unique dynamic meditation techniques that help the modern man unburden his anxieties, stress through a deep cleansing process in order to achieve a relaxed state of meditation and ultimately – Enlightenment.
Osho spoke on almost every aspect of life not through an intellectual understanding but based on his own existential experience distilling the essence of what is significant to the spiritual growth of modern man. His talks are transcribed and published in over 600 volumes and translated into many languages. The meditation centers owing allegiance to him can be found all over the world.
In early 1970′s a commune started to emerge around him in Pune where many seekers came from around the world to meditate. This beautiful Buddhafield became the spiritual capital of the world. Osho traveled to USA and many other countries finally arriving in Pune commune in 1987 where he left his body on January 19, 1990. The transcription on His Samadhi says:

Osho
Never Born – Never Died
Only visited this planet earth between
December 11, 1931 – January 19, 1990

• “Freedom” means freedom from the mind. Then you are simply in a silence, and in that silence you melt, you merge with the whole. And to melt and merge with the whole is to be holy. Not by fasting, not by torturing, but by becoming one with the whole, one becomes holy.
• Your freedom is a supreme value. Nothing is higher than that. But your freedom is possible only if you are not encaged in your habits, unconscious patterns of living. Change your gestalt from unconsciousness to consciousness

OSHO ON LORD KRISHNA

 
There are thousand statements about who Krishna is and Krishna belies all the statements. How does one understand a man with so many sides to him? No statement however severe and astute can wholly encompass Krishna's wholeness. It lies in the fact that he has no personality of his own, that he is not a person, an individual – he is existence itself.

You can say that he is like a mirror; he just mirrors everything that comes before him…and when you see yourself mirrored in him, you think Krishna is like you. But the moment you move away from him, he is empty again. That's leadership. One wants to see in Krishna what one wants to see in him. Nothing more nothing less.

OSHO

Life is a celebration, not competition ~OSHO~

Don’t invest in misery, invest in celebration”. Man is born with the capacity to celebrate but is he celebrating? Man is missing something terribly; something has gone really wrong; man has moved astray. Even birds are far more in tune with god than man. Even animals, trees and rocks, are more in harmony with existence than man. Celebration is missing, the quality in laughter is missing and even if people celebrate it is false.

Because of a thousand and one barriers created by society and the priests and a thousand reasons not to celebrate and live in misery but none towards making each moment a celebration. Life should be a sweet song but man has made it very bitter, very ugly. It has lost all the qualities of music, rhythm, harmony. It has become an ugly struggle to survive, and survival to no purpose at all, just an ugly struggle which leads nowhere, a cut-throat competition, absolutely unnecessary.

Life is meant to be a celebration, not a competition. Osho says there is no need to go on postponing celebration. “Nothing else is needed. To celebrate, life is needed and life you have. To celebrate, being is needed and being you have. To celebrate, trees and birds and stars are needed, and they are there. What else do you need?”.

Man has that innate capacity to just be a festival from the cradle to the grave, a pure celebration. Very few people have achieved it, but everybody can achieve it. It needs just a little understanding, a little search into one's own misery, a little investigation into the causes of why one goes on missing, just a little effort, just a little intelligence, and one can change the whole gestalt. One can simply get out of all kinds of miseries into a totally different world of bliss and benediction.

“It is really a question of our attitude towards what we do. And with the change of attitude, with work turning into a celebration, the whole milieu of life changes.”
OSHO

Osho – If you are in love you are naturally, spontaneously, creative

Osho – If you are in love you are naturally, spontaneously, creative; if you are not in love you are not only uncreative, you become destructive.
Millions of people live without love; hence there is so much destruction in the world, so much anger, violence, hatred. Very rarely do you come across a person who is really creative. Even people who are known as creators are not real creators. Out of one hundred poets, ninety-nine are not really creators… composers maybe, but not creators. Maybe they are clever with words, able to arrange words in rhythms, but they are not creative.
Creativity means that you become a vehicle to God. You are no more there. God functions through you. You allow him space to function — that’s what creativity is. When something starts flowing through you which comes from the above, from the beyond, which you cannot claim as your own, then you are creative. But the door to the beyond only opens in love. Then the whole sky is yours and all the stars start dancing in you.
Love deeply. It is not a question of relationship. Love is a way of life. Be loving — to the trees, to the animals, to the birds, to the rocks, to the pebble. It is not a question of to whom, it is a question of your heart throbbing with love. It has nothing to do with the object of love but with the subjectivity of love.
Then suddenly you have the Midas touch: whatsoever you touch becomes golden. Small things in your hands become extraordinarily beautiful. Your actions, ordinary actions, start having the quality of the extraordinary. Then whatsoever you say is poetry and whatsoever you live is music. Even while you are asleep your energy is in a celebration.
Love is my fundamental approach towards life. If life can be looked at through the eyes of love, life disappears and God is found. If life is looked at through the eyes of logic, even life disappears and there is only matter left. These are three possibilities: through logic the world becomes just matter; through love it becomes divine, it becomes consciousness; and between the two, it is life, a little bit of matter and a little bit of consciousness, because we are in a state of hesitation, divided.
It is because we are divided that life is divided in two: matter and mind. It is our division reflected by life, echoed by life. When we are undivided… and there are two ways to be undivided: either be undivided through logic… but then you will miss all that is beautiful, then life becomes very grey; it loses all color and all joy. It is all matter, and matter is meaningless. Matter can’t have any meaning. Meaning needs consciousness. Look through love and matter disappears and we are living in an ocean of consciousness. With that vision, oceanic joy arises in you — unbounded, infinite. Out of that joy is creativity.
Source – Osho Book “Source – Osho Book “Even Bein’ Gawd Ain’t A Bed of Roses”

Osho on Buddha Statues – Watching a Buddha statue is watching a Yantra

Question – While in an art museum in frankfurt recently, i entered one room with nothing but statues and carvings of buddha. I put absolutely no faith in stone idols, but i was surprised to feel a very strong energy current in the room, similar to what i feel here in the lecture. Was i imagining things? And if so, how can i trust what i feel here with you?
Osho – The question is from Anand Samagra. The first thing to be understood: you will be surprised to know that the Buddha statues have nothing to do with Gautam Buddha. They are all false, they don’t resemble Buddha at all, but they have something to do with buddhahood. Not with Gautam Buddha, the person – they have something to do with buddhahood.
You can go into a Jain temple and you will see twenty-four statues of twenty-four TEERTHANKARAS, the founders of Jainism, and you will be unable to make out any difference between them; they are all alike. To make a distinction, Jains make small symbols on them to know who is who, because they are all alike. So if somebody’s symbol is a line figure, then just underneath the feet is a small line figure. Then they know whose statue this is. Somebody’s symbol is a snake – then they know whose statue this is. If those symbols were hidden, not even a Jain could make any demarcation. Whose statue is this? Mahavir’s? Parswanatha’s? Adinatha’s? And you will also be surprised to know that they are exactly like Buddha – no difference.
In the beginning, when the West became acquainted with Mahavir, they thought it was nothing but the same story of Buddha, because the statue is the same, the philosophy is the same, the understanding is the same, the teaching is the same – so it was just the same thing; it was nothing different from Buddha. They thought Mahavir was another name for Buddha. And of course both were called Buddhas – ’Buddha’ means ’the awakened one’ so Buddha was called Buddha and Mahavir was also called Buddha. And both were called Jains – ’Jain’ means the ’conqueror’, one who has conquered himself. Buddha is called ’the Jain’ and Mahavir is called ’the Jain’, so they thought that they were just the same person.
And the statues were a great proof: they look absolutely alike. They are not photographic, they don’t represent a person, they represent a certain state. You will have to understand it, then the thing will be explained. In India, three words are very important: one is TANTRA, which we are talking about, another is MANTRA, and the third is YANTRA.
TANTRA means techniques for expanding your consciousness. MANTRA means finding your inner sound, your inner rhythm, your inner vibration. Once you have found YOUR MANTRA, it is of tremendous help: just one utterance of the MANTRA and you are in a totally different world. That becomes the key, the passage, because once uttering that MANTRA, you fall into your natural vibe. And the third is YANTRA. These statues are YANTRAS. YANTRA means a certain figure which can create a certain state in you. A certain figure, if you look at it, is bound to create a certain state in you.
Have you not watched it? – looking at a Picasso painting you will start feeling a little uneasy. Concentrate on a Picasso painting for half an hour and you will feel very bizarre – something is going crazy. You cannot look at a Picasso painting for half an hour. If you keep Picasso paintings in your bedroom you will have nightmares. You will have very dangerous dreams: being haunted by ghosts, tortured by Adolf Hitler and things like that; a war victim in a concentration camp – things like that.
When you watch something, it is not only that the figure is outside – when you watch something, the figure creates a certain situation in you. Gurdjieff used to call this ’objective art’. And you know it: listening to modern pop music, something happens in you – you become more excited sexually. There is nothing but sound outside, but the sound hits inside – creates something in you. Listening to classical music, you become less sexual, less excited. In fact, with great classical music you almost forget sex, you are in a tranquility, a silence, a totally different dimension of your being. You exist on another place.
Watching a Buddha statue is watching a YANTRA. The figure of the statue, the geometry of the statue, creates a figure inside you. And that inside figure creates a certain vibe. It was not just imagination that happened to you, Samagra, in the Frankfurt museum; those Buddha statues created a certain vibe in you.
Watch the state of Buddha sitting so silently, in a certain yoga posture. If you go on watching the statue, you will find something like that is happening within you too. If you are in company where ten persons are sad, and you are the eleventh person, how long can you remain happy? Those ten persons will function like a YANTRA, a YANTRA of sadness: you will fall into sadness sooner or later. If you are unhappy and you go into company where people are joking and laughing, how long can you remain sad? Those laughing people will create laughter in you. They will change your focus, they will change your gear; you will start moving in a different direction. This happens every day – knowingly, unknowingly.
When you watch a full moon, what happens to you? Or when you listen to the birds and look at the green trees, what happens to you? When you go into a forest and look at the greenery, what happens to you? Something green inside starts happening. Green is the colour of nature, green is the colour of spontaneity, green is the colour of life – something green starts happening in you. The outer colour reflects something inside, vibrates with something inside, creates something inside. Looking at a green tree you become more alive… you become younger!
When you go to the Himalayas and you see the mountains, the snow-capped mountains – eternal. snow which has never melted, the purest snow where no man has ever walked, uncontaminated by human society and human touch – when you look at a Himalayan peak, that uncorrupted, virgin snow creates something virgin in you. A subtle peace starts happening inside. The outer is not the outer, and the inner is not just the inner; they are joined together. So beware of what you see, beware of what you listen to, beware of what you read, beware of where you go – because all that creates you.
That’s what happened in Frankfurt. The Buddha statues, the many statues all around you created a certain geometry. You will be surprised: that is the basic reason why statues were created. They are not idols, as you think. The Christian and the Mohammedan and the Judaic idea has given a very wrong notion to the world. They are not idols, they are very scientific. They are not objects to be worshipped, they are geometries to be imbibed. It is a totally different thing.
In China there is one Buddha temple which has ten thousand Buddha statues, all Buddha statues. Wherever you look – the same figure. The ceiling has the same figure, all the sides have the same figure, the walls have the same figure. Ten thousand Buddha statues! Just think, sitting cross-legged in a Buddha posture and you are also surrounded by ten thousand Buddhas! It creates a geometry. From everywhere Buddha impinges upon you. From every nook and corner he starts surrounding you. You are gone. Your ordinary geometry is no longer there. Your ordinary life is no longer there. For a few moments you are moving on higher planes, at higher altitudes.
That’s what is happening here. While listening to me something is created – by my presence, by my words, by your attitude, by so many orange people around you. It is a situation, it is a temple. A temple is a situation. It is not just that you are sitting in a lecture hall. So many people listening to me with such love, gratitude, with such silence, with such sympathy, with such rapport this place becomes holy. This place becomes a TEERTHA; it is sacred. When you come into this place you are riding on a wave, you need not make much effort. You can simply allow it to happen. You will be taken away, far away to the other shore.
A marriage broker arranged with a family to bring over a girl he thought would be a fine match for their son. After dinner, the girl left and the family began to attack the marriage broker. ’What kind of a girl did you bring? A monster! One eye in the middle of her forehead, the left ear way up here, the right ear way down there and the chin way back!’
The marriage broker interrupted. ’Look, either you like Picasso or you don’t!’
Modern painting represents the ugly in existence. The ugly has become predominant for a certain reason. This century is one of the ugliest centuries: two world wars within fifty years; millions of people killed, destroyed; such cruelty, such aggression, such violence, such madness; this century is a nightmarish century. Man has lost track of his humanity.
What man has been doing to man! Naturally this madness has erupted everywhere – in painting, in music, in sculpture, in architecture – everywhere the ugly human mind has created ugliness. Ugliness has become an aesthetic value. Now the photographer goes and looks for something ugly. Not that beauty has stopped existing, it exists as much as before, but it is neglected. The cactus has replaced the rose. Not that the cactus is something new, it has existed always, but this century has come to know that thorns seem to be more real than a rose flower. A rose flower seems to be a dream; it does not fit with us, hence the rose flower has been expelled. The cactus has entered your drawing-room. Just one hundred years ago nobody would have ever thought to bring a cactus home. Now, if you are modern, your garden will be full of cactuses. The rose looks a little bourgeois; the rose looks a little out-of-date; the rose looks Tory, orthodox, traditional. The cactus looks revolutionary. Yes, the cactus is revolutionary – like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin and Mao Tsetung and Fidel Castro. Yes, the cactus seems to be closer to this century.
The photographer looks for some ugly thing – he will go and photograph a beggar. Not that the beggar has not existed before, he HAS existed before. He is REAL, certainly real, but nobody has been making art out of him. We are feeling humble before the beggar; we are feeling apologetic before the beggar; we are feeling that something which should not be is still there; we want the beggar not to be there. But this century goes on searching for the ugly.
The sun still penetrates the pines on a certain morning. The rays penetrating the pines create such a web of beauty. It still exists, but no photographer is interested that no longer appeals. Ugliness appeals because we have become ugly. That which appeals to us shows something about us. Buddha is a rose flower: that is the highest possibility. And remember, it is not exactly a Buddha figure; nobody knows what Buddha looked like. But that is not the point. We were not interested in those days, at least not in the East, we were not interested in the real at all; we were interested in the ultimately real. We were not interested in the factual; we were interested in truth itself.
Maybe Buddha’s nose was a little longer, but if the artist thought that a nose which was a little smaller would be more in tune with meditation, then he dropped that long nose of Buddha – he made it a little smaller. Maybe Buddha had a big belly. Who knows? Japanese Buddha statues have big bellies, but Indian Buddhas don’t have big bellies – different attitudes.
In Japan they think that a meditator has to breathe from the belly, from the navel. And when you breathe from the belly, the belly of course becomes a little bigger. Then the chest is not as protruding as the belly; the chest is relaxed. So Japanese Buddhas have big bellies. That too is for a certain reason: to indicate to you that belly-breathing is the right breathing. It has nothing to do with Buddha; nobody knows whether he had a big belly or not.
Indian statues don’t have big bellies, because Indian yoga does not insist on belly-breathing: the belly has to be in. That too has a certain different reason. If you want the sexual energy to move upwards, then it is better not to belly-breathe. When the belly is pulled in, the energy is sucked upwards more easily – different techniques.
Belly-breathing is also good for a certain meditator – it is very relaxing. But then the energy cannot move in the same way as it moves when the belly is pulled in. The Indian statues of Buddha have small bellies – almost no bellies. Nobody knows exactly how Buddha looked. The statues are very feminine, very round; they don’t look masculine. Have you ever seen any statue with a moustache and beard? No, the people who painted Jesus were more realistic. The people who painted Buddha were not concerned with facticity, they were concerned with ultimate truth. They were not concerned how Buddha looked, they were concerned how Buddhas should look. The emphasis was not on Buddha but on the people who would be looking at these statues – how this statue was going to help those people.
So Buddha is not painted as old. He must have become old, he became eighty-two. He was very old – certainly, very old and ill – a physician had to follow him continuously. But no statue has painted him as old, ill, because that is not the point. We are not interested in the physical body of the Buddha, we are interested in his inner geometry. That inner quality of Buddha is always young, it is never old. And it is never ill, it is always in a state of well-being; by its very nature it cannot be ill. The body is young, the body is old, the body becomes crippled, the body dies. Buddha is not born, never dies: Buddha remains eternally young.
Looking at a young statue, something of youth will happen in you, and you will feel something fresh. Now, Indians would never have preferred Jesus to be pictured, painted, sculptured on the cross. It is ugly, it is sad. Even if it is historical, it is not worth remembering because whatsoever you think has happened, you tend to help it happen again. There is no obligation towards facts: we don’t owe anything to the past, we need not remember the past as it was. It is in our hands to choose the past – to choose the past in such a way that a better future can be created.
Yes, Jesus was crucified, but if he were crucified in India, we would not have painted that. Even on the cross we would have painted a totally different thing. The Western painting is of Jesus in anguish, in sadness – naturally, he is being killed. When you watch, when you concentrate, meditate, on Jesus, you will feel sad. It is not accidental that Christians say that Jesus never laughed. And it is not accidental that you are not allowed to dance and laugh and be gay in a church. Church is a serious affair: you have to be very serious… long faces. In fact, when Jesus is crucified just there on the altar, how can you laugh and sing?
In India you can sing and laugh and enjoy. Religion is a merriment, a celebration. The whole point is that the Western mind is historical, the Eastern mind is existential. The West pays too much attention to mundane facts, the East never pays any attention to history. You will be surprised to know that until Western people came to India, India had not known anything like history.
We have never written history, we have never bothered about it. That’s why we don’t know when exactly Buddha was born, when exactly he died – we have never paid much respect to facts. Facts are mundane! What does it matter whether he was born on Monday or Tuesday or Thursday? What does it matter? How does it matter? In fact, it does not matter at all – any day will do, and any year will do. That is not the point. The point is: WHO was born? Who was this man in his innermost core?
History thinks about the periphery, myth thinks about the innermost core. India has written mythology but not history. We have PURANAS. PURANAS are mythology, they are not histories. They are poetic, mystic visions of how things should be, not how they are. They are the vision of the ultimate. And Buddha is the vision of ultimate SAMADHI.
Those Buddha statues you saw in the Frankfurt museum are the states of inner silence. When a person is absolutely silent, he will be in that state. When everything is still and quiet and calm inside – not a thought moves, not a small breeze blows; when everything has stopped, time has stopped – then you will also feel to sit like a Buddha. Something of the same geometry will happen to you.
It is objective art – less concerned with the reality of Buddha, more concerned with those people who will be coming and will be seeking Buddhahood. The emphasis is different: what will happen to those who watch these statues, and will kneel down before these statues, and will meditate on these statues.
In India there are temples like Khajuraho where all sorts of sexual postures are sculptured. Many postures are so absurd that even a de Sade or a von Sacher-Masoch would not be able to imagine them. The most perverted person also could not imagine them. For example, the man and woman standing on their heads and making love – it does not seem that anybody is going to try or imagine it. Why did they paint these pictures? They are examples of objective art.
These temples of Khajuraho were no ordinary temples. They were a kind of therapy: they exist as a therapy. Whenever somebody was suffering from some sexual perversion he was sent to Khajuraho. He had to watch and meditate on all those abnormal, bizarre things. He had something perverted in his mind: that perversion was inside the unconscious. What does psychoanalysis do? It tries to bring things from the unconscious to the conscious, that’s all. And psychoanalysis says that once something comes from the unconscious to the conscious, it is released; you are free of it.
Now this was a great psychoanalysis this Khajuraho. An abnormal, perverted man is brought. He has repressed his perversions – sometimes they erupt, but he goes on repressing. He knows that something is there like a wound, but he has never been able to see it face to face. He is brought to Khajuraho. He moves slowly, meditating on each statue, each bizarre posture. And one day, suddenly, one posture fits with his inner perversion. Suddenly, from the unconscious, the perversion surfaces to the conscious, and it is released without any Freud or Jung or Adler there – just the temple will do. He is left in the temple. For a few weeks he can be there. For each meditator who really wanted to go into deep meditation in those days, it was good to visit a temple like Khajuraho.
On the walls of the temple are all these statues – very abnormal, very crazy, very perverted. Inside the temple there is no sexual painting, no sexual statue at all, no sexuality at all. Inside is neither Buddha’s statue. Shiva’s statue nor Krishna’s statue.
What is the meaning of it? Why sex on the wall just outside, and inside no sex? It is a technique. First you have to move on the periphery, so that you can become free of sex. When a person feels that these sexual statues don’t attract him at all – now he goes on sitting before them and nothing happens inside, he remains calm and quiet, no sexual arousal, no excitement; for weeks he waits, and no sexuality is felt then he is capable of entering the temple.
It is symbolic. Now his sexuality can go beyond. These temples were Tantra temples: one of the greatest experiments ever done. They are not obscene, they are not pornographic, they are spiritual – a great experiment in spirituality, a great experiment in transforming human energy towards higher levels.
But first the energy has to be freed from the lower level. And to free it there is only one way: to make it absolutely conscious, to bring all the fantasies of the unconscious mind to the conscious. When the unconscious is completely unburdened, you are free. Then you don’t have any blocks, then you can move inwards. Then you can go inside the temple. Then you can meditate on Buddha, on Shiva, or Krishna.
It was not imagination, Samagra, it was objective art which you stumbled upon unknowingly.
Source – Osho Book “The Tantra Vision, Vol 2″

Osho – Eastern mystics have defined god as satyam, shivam, sunderam

Osho – The Eastern mystics have defined god as satyam, shivam, sunderam. Satyam means the truth, shivam means the good, sunderam means the beautiful. The Christian trinity looks very poor — this is the true trinity. These are the three approaches towards god, three doors to enter into the ultimate.
Either you enter as a seeker of truth… That is the approach of the philosopher. And by philosophy I do not mean that which is taught in the universities. That is not philosophy at all. By philosophy I mean the original meaning of philosophy: love of wisdom. Lovers of wisdom enter from the door of truth. It is a different path but they reach the same peak, the peak is the same.
And the person who enters through the door called good is the person who tries to live a life of simplicity, innocence, purity — the virtuous one. And by the virtuous I don’t mean the moralist. The moralist is an egoist. He is cunning, calculative. His morality is not much, his morality is just a policy; hence he says ‘Honesty is the best policy.’ It is politics. He is playing a game. He is trying to deceive even god. He is only pretending to be good, he is not good.
To be virtuous is totally different. It is not a question of having a good character. It is a question of having more consciousness in your being, not conscience but consciousness. Conscience makes character, consciousness creates virtue. When you are alert, more alert than people ordinarily are, you have the capacity to see what is right and what is wrong. And each moment you decide; you don’t carry ready-made answers.
The man of so-called character lives out of ready-made answers; hence he is never in tune with life, never in step with life. His answers are old and life always raises new questions. But the virtuous man is spontaneous. He enters from the door of good.
And the poet and the painter and the sculptor and all those who love beauty enter from the third door. If one can enter from the third door, my preference is for the third. If it si impossible then my next preference is fo the second door, the door of spontaneous virtue. If that too is difficult, then only should one choose the path of wisdom, because that is the hardest path, the most arduous. And there is no need to be a martyr unnecessarily. When one can go easily, when one can go dancing and singing, why carry a cross?
Let that be your path — creativity. Create something beautiful, out of your being create something beautiful. And whatsoever you do be creative — that will be your religion, that will be your meditation. In the past religion has not been creative. That’s why religion has existed for thousands of years but has failed, utterly failed. It has not been able to transform human consciousness, not at all. Just a Jesus, a Buddha, a Lao Tzu, here and there — this is not success. Out of millions of people one person, Jesus… it does not prove anything. The exception simply proves the rule. And what did we do to these people? — we poisoned them, we killed them, we crucified them. We are closer to Judas than to Jesus. The whole humanity is closer to Judas than to Jesus. If Jesus comes back we will kill him again.
Religion has failed for the simple reason that it was uncreative. Anything uncreative cannot succeed. God is a creator. The only way to succeed in god’s existence — and there is no other existence — is to be creative. Create beauty, appreciate beauty, love beauty. Let beauty be your god. Worship beauty.
Source – Osho Book “Fingers Pointing to the Moon”

Osho on Intelligence and Intellect, Intelligence is certainly creative

Osho – Intellect may arrive at certain inferences, but intellect is an unconscious phenomenon. You are almost behaving sleepily. Intelligence is awakening, and unless you are fully awake, whatsoever you decide is bound to be wrong somewhere or other. It is bound to be so, it is doomed to be wrong, because it is a conclusion arrived at by an unconscious mind.
To bring intelligence into activity you don’t need more information, you need more meditation. You need to become more silent, you need to become more thoughtless. You need to become less mind and more heart. You need to become aware of the magic that surrounds you: magic that is life, magic that is God, magic that is in the green trees and the red flowers, magic that is in people’s eyes. Magic is happening everywhere! All is miraculous, but because of your intellect you remain closed inside yourself, clinging to your stupid conclusions arrived at in unconsciousness or given to you by others who are as unconscious as you are.
Savita, intelligence is certainly creative because intelligence brings your totality into functioning — not only a part, a small part, the head. Intelligence vibrates your whole being; each cell of your being, each fiber of your life starts dancing, and falls in a subtle harmony with the total. That’s what creativity is: to pulsate in absolute harmony with the total. That’s how one becomes a Buddha, Christ, Zarathustra. These are the real creative people.
Something like this is happening right now, here. If you are a disciple you will be able to feel something of it. If you are a devotee you will be able to drink out of this source that has become available to you. And then creativity will come to you, things will start happening on their own. Your heart will start pouring songs of joy, your hands will start transforming things. You will touch mud and it will become a lotus. You will be able to become an alchemist. But it is possible only through great awakening of intelligence, great awakening of the heart.
Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol 4″

Osho on Sacred Art and Creativity

[A sannyasin who is an artist is visiting. He says: I came back to get some feeling for my paintings and to try to get more vision in my inner eye.]
Osho – Many more… many more visions will be coming to you. Because paintings can either be from the mind or can be from somewhere else. When they are from somewhere else, when they are not from your mind, when you cannot really sign them as yours, then they have something of tremendous beauty. When they come from the beyond they are divine, they are sacred. That is the distinction between the sacred and the profane art.
The profane art is human. It is entertainment. It can’t soar very high; it remains within the field of gravitation. But there are a few things which have happened — for example, a Taj Mahal or the temples of Khajuraho or the Zen paintings, Zen haikus; they are not from the mind. They come from somewhere else, and because they come from somewhere else, the painter, the poet, the musician, the sculptor, are just vehicles, instrumental, mediums.
Meditation will make you a medium. Just give a little more time to meditation: just sitting silently, doing nothing, just waiting for something to arrive — not even actively searching for it but just waiting, just waiting for the guest to knock on the door. One never knows when the guest is going to come.
So go on sitting in meditation every day, whenever you can find time. Don’t make it a ritual, don’t make it formal. There is no need to make a fixed time for it — just whenever the feeling comes. In the middle of the night sit on your bed doing nothing, sitting silently, and you will be surprised: slowly slowly you start becoming a passage and many things start flooding you which are not yours. You had never thought about them, never dreamed about them. They have a different color, a different shape, a different taste, a different texture, which is not of your mind.
And then art becomes sacred. Then art is worship. Then there is no need for any other prayer. That is your prayer, and it is far more valuable than the prayers that priests go on doing in the temples, because it is creative. If God is the creator then the only way to participate in his being is to be a creator. Create something, and in a small measure you start overlapping the boundaries of God; he starts overlapping the boundaries of your being.
In the past religion became very uncreative. It even became very destructive, because it became life-negative, life-denying, world-denying — and if you are world-denying you can’t be creative. Then what is the meaning of a painting? If the whole world is illusory then your painting is just a reflection of a reflection. Then what is the meaning of poetry? — all nonsense, because the whole world is illusory! Then what is the meaning of love?
Religion became more and more world-denying, life-negative, and naturally, all creativity was lost. And whenever a religion is no more creative, it is no more a religion. It has lost its soul; it is only a dead body, a corpse. You can go on worshipping it for centuries but nothing is going to happen through it.
What I am doing here is bringing creativity back to religion. I would like painters and poets and musicians and all kinds of people who have some idea to do something. I would like my whole commune to be in a passionate, creative love affair with existence. Then whether they pray or not, whether they believe in God or not, doesn’t matter at all; they are religious, they are holy people.
Source – Osho Book “Don’t Let Yourself Be Upset by the Sutra, rather Upset the Sutra Yourself”

Osho – A tree is more alive than any temple, than any church

Osho – God is not the creator, not a separate entity. God is the very creativity, the very life. So if you are against life, you are against God. Gurdjieff is reported to have said somewhere a very paradoxical but very true statement. He has said that the so-called religions are all against God because they are against life. But authentic religiousness is always for life, never against it.
If you move deeper in the dance, you will reach the dancer. The dance is just the form. If you move deeper in the dance you will reach to the very heart of the dancer. And if you move deeply into life, you will reach to the life-originating principle: God.
God is creativity. Or, if you allow me to say it, I would like to say that God is the very existence itself. God is life Jesus has said, “God is love.”
That was one of the reasons he was crucified — because he called God ‘love. Love is condemned, it is a sin, and he called God ‘love’. He must have looked very rebellious, he must have seemed to be too much in favor of the life on earth. The old Jewish mind, the old religious mind, couldn’t tolerate it. This is sacrilege! Jesus talking about God in terms of love? God is beyond life and love! You must leave everything: life, love, everything. Only then can you find him. And this man Jesus — he brings God down to earth and he talks in terms of love.
Really, God is life, God is love. God is this very world. Don’t create a division, don’t create a dualism. Only then can you revere life. Whenever you see life anywhere — a seed sprouting, a tree flowering, stars moving, a river flowing, a child laughing — remember God is near you. When a child laughs, look at the laughter. Enter into it. You have entered the very temple. When the river flows, watch lovingly. Be one with its flow; be in a deep reverence.
Hindus have called all rivers goddesses; they have called all hills deities. They have made the earth holy. It is one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened in human consciousness.
Hindus call the Ganges: Mother. This is reverence for life. Hills they call gods. This is reverence for life. They worship trees. Those who have become intellectually sophisticated think they are stupid, superstitious people, but they are not. The tree is not the thing. When they are worshipping a tree or a river, they are worshipping life.
A tree is more alive than any temple, than any church; a river is more alive than any mosque. The stone idols in your temples are dead; a tree is more alive. You may be superstitious, but the person who is worshipping a tree is not. He may not be aware of what he is doing, but a deep reverence for life in all its forms is there, a deep respect.
And, celebrate. Wherever you feel that life is growing, celebrate it, love it, welcome it, and a great transformation will happen to you If life is revered in all its forms, you become more alive. You become more receptive to life, and life begins to flow abundantly in you; it overflows in you. That is what bliss is: life over flowing.
But you are more interested in death and less interested in life. More interested in destruction, in hate; more interested in wars than in love, in life. It makes you dead and dull. Before you are really dead, you are dead. When death really occurs to you, you are already dead. Whatsoever you revere you will become. If you revere life, you will become life and more life. If you revere death, you will become death and more death.
Source – Osho Book “The New Alchemy: To Turn You On”

Osho – Meditative awareness does not kill your experience of juice, rasa, it deepens it

Question – Beloved Osho, I am a Rasa addict, and I can see how this dependency leads to misery. the coolness of meditation scares me though. Can Zorba survive the Buddha, or can the Buddha really remain juicy?
Osho – It has not been possible in the past, or only with very few individuals. With the majority of humanity it has not been possible — the coexistence of Zorba and Buddha in one being. But the difficulty is not in Zorba and Buddha, in being a materialist and a spiritualist simultaneously: the difficulty is in our idea of what is spiritual and what is material.
We go with the division from the very beginning — we start with the split. Then the problem arises: Can Zorba survive Buddha? Can Buddha survive Zorba or remain juicy? We begin with the split.
If you begin with the split and you accept the idea of division, certainly it will be very difficult for Buddha to be juicy, because he will fall from your respectability. You will not accept him as a Buddha. It will be difficult for Zorba to be with Buddha, because your idea of Buddha is too serious — and Zorba is not serious. You start with a certain idea, and then there is difficulty. It is created by you. Start living both together. In fact you are living both together without being aware of it. You are a spiritual being, and you have a material body; and both are functioning in deep synchronicity, without any conflict.
Do you see there is any conflict between your body and your soul? You can’t even see where the body ends and the soul begins. They are one whole. Your awareness, your meditation, your physical health, your physical well-being — what is the conflict between them?
Your meditation and your enjoying music — why should it be a problem? Your meditation will make you capable of enjoying music more than an ordinary man who has no idea of meditation. And your experience of music and its depth will help to make your meditation more juicy, more musical, not so dry, not so dead — more alive.
Where is the contradiction? Why should there be any contradiction? Your love and your spiritual growth are the same process. It is just like you cannot walk with one leg alone; you need two legs to walk. There is no conflict. Both legs function in a deep synchronicity. And that twoness is all over you. Both my hands are making one gesture. They are not making two gestures, they are making one gesture. Although the hands are two, the gesture is one — and there is no conflict. And both of your hands are connected with the two sides of your brain, and while both hands are making one gesture, both sides of the brain are speaking; it is not just one side.
Man should be aware that many musical instruments can play together, and they will create one music; it will be an orchestra. So there will be no question that Zorba cannot survive Buddha. It is Zorba who is becoming Buddha. The Buddha is not somebody else; it is Zorba, finding not only joy in small things of life, but also joy in his own being. That’s all that a Buddha is. And there is no contradiction.
If I enjoy being silent, I enjoy speaking too, because whatever happens in silence needs to be given and shared in words — however difficult it may be. But my silence and my words are just two wings. If a man is dumb and deaf, do you think he will be in silence? Logically it would seem he will be in silence — that’s why I say logic is not relevant to life. The man who is dumb and deaf will not be in silence, because he has not known sound. Without knowing sound you cannot know silence. That is the basic complementary which looks contradictory in logic.
When silence becomes sound, it is expression. When sound becomes silent, it is the gathering of the juice. When silence becomes sound, it is sharing. But they are both together, in a different way.
People think that blind people must be living in darkness. That is logically right, existentially wrong. The man who has not seen light cannot see darkness. It is impossible. And if a man can see darkness, he is not blind. How can he see darkness? Seeing needs eyes.
So the blind man does not have any idea of darkness because he cannot see light. When you close your eyes you certainly see darkness because you are aware of light. But the blind man has never opened his eyes and has never seen light; so he lives in a third space which cannot be named because there is no word for him. Seeing is nonexistential to him: he simply does not see, neither light nor darkness.
What I am indicating is that where you see a duality between body and soul, between Zorba and Buddha, your question is: Can Zorba survive Buddha? Can Buddha remain juicy? In fact only a Zorba can be a Buddha, and only a Buddha can be a Zorba. Zorba alone, without being a Buddha, is very superficial. Buddha alone, without being a Zorba, has depth, but no life. Together there will be depth, and there will be playfulness — and life and love and celebration.
So you need not be afraid of meditation; it will not kill your experience of rasa, it will enhance it. And your experience of rasa, juice, will enhance your meditativeness. Never be afraid of opposites. Don’t choose one; that’s where man has got into trouble. Choose both together and you will remain whole. Perhaps people will not see Buddha in you — so what? Who cares whether people recognize the Buddha or not? Certainly a Buddha cannot care; he is not worried about recognition.
Perhaps it will be difficult for people because they have always accepted a Buddha who has killed his Zorba, who is almost a murderer of half his being. They have accepted, they have respected him. They cannot accept and they cannot respect… at least for the time being, till it becomes a universal phenomenon. It will not fit with their old categories.
But you need not be worried. The worry is also coming from the old categories; somehow they are hanging in the mind: “If I become a meditator, perhaps it will destroy my rasa. All my juice will be finished; then I cannot love, then I cannot paint, then I cannot play music, then I cannot enjoy a joke.” This is sheer stupidity: the Buddha becomes more and more sensitive.
Meditative awareness does not kill your experience of juice, rasa, it deepens it — although it is going to be difficult for the world to accept. But there is no need for any recognition. If you are fulfilled and whole, that’s what is needed. And if both are there — the Zorba and Buddha, the experience of rasa and the experience of meditation together — they will be just like darkness and light.
Don’t choose between darkness and light, because choosing one is dangerous. If you choose light, you cannot close your eyes; your eyes cannot have a rest. You will drive yourself mad because your eyes continuously need to open and close. That is a moment of rest, cleansing. Any dust coming onto your eyes is wiped away. Your eyelids are functioning like wipers, always bringing liquid to the eyes and cleaning them, continuously keeping them clean so you can see with clarity.
If your eyelids are taken away, soon you will be blind because your eyes will get dry, they will shrink. They will be covered with dust, they will lose all juice and life. And they are the most delicate part of your body. So your body is very protective. If you choose darkness, then you cannot open your eyes; then you are choosing blindness. And that’s how it has always been. People have been choosing. I teach choicelessness. And choicelessness means both together, both the opposites together; we are not going to choose one.
In the UPANISHADS there is a prayer, the most famous prayer, but absolutely wrong. The prayer is: “Lead me from darkness to light.” That means, “Lead me from Zorba to Buddha, lead me from death to life, lead me from untruth to truth.” It looks very innocent — it is not so.
If you have understood what I am saying, it is a very dangerous prayer. It is choice: choosing between darkness and light, it chooses light. But you need both. Light alone will drive you insane. You need the silence of darkness, the rest of darkness too.
Light is a tension, it is tiring. Darkness is nourishment, it is rejuvenating. You cannot choose. Whoever wrote that prayer — which is the most famous prayer in Hinduism — is utterly wrong because he is making choices. He is choosing life against death. That is not possible.
Life and death are in a dynamic relationship. Death is a rest and a renewal; life alone will become really boredom. Death is something closer to sleep, a deeper sleep which one needs between two lives, so the old life is completely erased, and you are clean again to be reborn, renewed, fresh. If you choose only life you will be only getting older and older and older — and bored. And if there is no death, it will be terrible.
You would like to die at a certain point because you have experienced everything that life can give. Now how long can you go on repeating the same thing? — a hundred years, two hundred years, three hundred years, a thousand years… but a day is bound to come when you will wish, “Give me death! I don’t want life anymore because I want to rest.”
And untruth and truth — they are not to be chosen. Untruth and truth, both are needed together, because the untruth makes you aware of the truth. The untruth also has a function to fulfill: without knowing the false, you will never know the true. You have to be capable of knowing both — and the man of awareness knows both.
He knows what is untrue and what is true. It is not that he knows only the truth — awareness simply makes him aware of the distinction between the untruth and the truth. But he knows both, and he knows the essential relationship between the two — that they are as related as life and death, as light and darkness, and they cannot be separated.
Don’t ask for one thing — remain choiceless. And choicelessness will bring the Zorba to Buddhahood, without destroying the Zorba and without taking the juice out of Buddha. And the world will be immensely enriched by people who have the depth of a Buddha and also the playfulness of a Zorba.
Source – Osho Book “Light on the Path”

Osho on Women Creativity, Women are in many ways superior to men

Question – Beloved Osho, As women, our natural Creativity is expressed through the bearing and raising of children. What happens to that energy now that that area of expression is no longer viable?
Osho – Energy is always neutral. It has no program in it. It can save or it can mar, it can make or it can destroy. It is a great opportunity that is becoming available to women, now that they are freed from biological bondage. Of course, man has always praised them for their great creativity in having children. But what kind of children have you produced? Just look around the world: these are your children — what creativity!
All the animals are doing it, perhaps better than you. I have been in many jungles and mountains in India. I have never seen any deer which is too fat or too thin; they are all alike. They are not like man: one person is thin and one is so fat and ugly. I have watched all kinds of animals in the wild: nobody teaches them how to produce children.
They don’t have any schools, no maternity homes, no guidance from anybody. So don’t take much pride in the fact that you can produce children. Yes, man has been giving woman much juice about it: “You are a great creator because you give birth to a child.” It was really very tricky of man; it meant that the woman should continue to create children.
And in poor countries it is still happening — to have a dozen children is not rare. Some women have more than one dozen. I saw one woman who had twenty children. Now her whole life is wasted. Either she is pregnant or she is raising the children. And when the child is not even six months old, she is pregnant again. She is doing a double job.
I know about a man who had uniforms for his children. I asked him, “What nonsense this is! Why do you create uniforms for your children?”
He said, “Do you know how many children I have? Fifteen. Without their wearing uniforms I cannot recognize which my child is. So the uniform helps me in two ways. I have to take the children to the school and bring them back home. It helps me to recognize my children and sort them out. It also helps me to know if somebody else’s child has not entered into my fold and my child has gone with somebody else.”
I said, “Now it is time you should stop; fifteen is too much.”
He said, “It is God and his grace. I cannot go against God.” He was a very religious Hindu. “If God wants to give birth to more children, then who am I to prevent it?”
All the religions of the world are against birth control methods, the pill. They are against abortion. It means the woman remains biologically in bondage, and her energies continue to create only mediocre people, crowds to serve in the armies, navies, airforce, to be killed or to kill-at the most to be clerks, nurses, porters. What do you mean by creativity? You have created a porter. Do you feel proud? How much pride can it give to you?
Every parent should feel ashamed. You are creating like animals. Science has given you a chance today to get out of the bondage of biology-a great freedom so that sex becomes, for the first time, not a biological reproductive method; it becomes sheer play, joy.
You are asking me, if women’s energies are not poured into creating children, then what will happen to those energies? Why can’t you start…. There are thousands of ways to make this world more beautiful. Anything that makes the world more beautiful is creative. Landscape the garden around your house. Crossbreed plants; create new flowers that have never existed before. And of course, they will give new fragrances which the earth has never experienced.
And compete with men in every field. Prove to him that you are equal — not by the women’s liberation movement; prove by your actions that you are equal, perhaps superior. The women’s liberation movement is just idiotic. A few women will gather and just create anger and hatred against men, and they will all smoke continuously, and drink.
And they will all become lesbians because they hate men; they cannot love men, they can only love women. It is such a perversion, a woman loving another woman. I cannot conceive the idea of a man loving another man — and not just ordinary people: one of the popes before this pope was a homosexual. He was a bishop in Milan before he became pope.
The whole of Milan knew it, because he was always hanging around with his boyfriend. And when he became pope and went to the Vatican, the boyfriend went there as his secretary. And you know secretaries are just an escape from your wife, a refuge from your wife. If the pope is homosexual — and popes are infallible — it creates great suspicion, because Jesus was also hanging out with twelve boys. It may be something coming down from Jesus himself.
Monks are well-known homosexuals, and nuns are lesbians; but this is out of necessity. The monks have to live together in a monastery; the nuns have to live in a nunnery, separate — they cannot meet. Naturally, their sexuality starts taking some other forms. And I think it is intelligent, it is not unintelligent: if you cannot get the food you like, then you have to like the food you get. This is simple intelligence. In jungles animals are never homosexuals, never. But in zoos they become homosexuals. When I came to know about this, I started being really concerned about humanity: is it a zoo?
This women’s liberation movement has only turned women into lesbians. It has created hate towards men, but this is not going to give you equality. Equality has to be earned, it has to be deserved. So since the pill has released you from the bondage of biology, now you are free to use your energy.
And a woman has a more delicate body, a more flexible body. She can become a better dancer than any man can ever manage. The man, howsoever trained, is stiff. It is not his fault, his physiology is stiff. Women can become the best dancers in the world. A woman has a great imagination, but her imagination has remained confined to the home. The reason was children — children kept her in the home, and for millions of years, so it became almost second nature. Otherwise, I don’t see that there is any natural necessity for woman to confine her imagination within the walls of her home.
The stars belong to her as much as to any man. The sunrise and sunset — they are also her possessions. She has to spread her wings, her consciousness. She has to widen her vision, imagination, dreaming, beyond children. Right now, the woman goes on thinking about the child, “He should become a doctor, he should become an engineer, he should become this and that.”
Now the woman has to become what she used to project through the child. Become a doctor, become an engineer, become a pilot. What you imagined through the child… Why not directly encounter reality, and be yourself what you wanted your child to b
e? I don’t see that there is any problem.
Women are in many ways superior to men, and their superiority can be used for new dimensions of creativity. An experienced mother knows whether there is a boy or a girl in her womb. How does she come to know? Because the boy starts kicking, and the girl never does that. The girl remains more centered, the boy is already freaking out.
And you can see in children — girls will be sitting with their dolls in a corner silently enjoying their game, and boys will be creating all kinds of nuisance all over the neighborhood. What man has created is nothing if the woman comes into the field with her centeredness, with her roundedness, with her contentment, with her love. So move in any direction that feels fulfilling to you.
The day women start creating all kinds of things that men have been creating up to now…. I say to you, there is no need to ask for equality, because women are the superior sex — naturally, because nature has made the woman to create children. Man’s function in creating children is negligible. Any syringe can do what he is doing, just a plastic syringe, use it and throw it out.
Women are more resistant to diseases. From the very beginning, nature has an immense balancing power. If one hundred girls are born, then one hundred and fifteen boys are born, because by the time they reach marriageable age, fifteen boys will have disappeared. They are weaker — any sickness, any disease…. But those hundred girls will be there, so by the marriageable age the balance is equal; those fifteen extras are gone.
If nature were producing exactly the same number of girls and boys, there would be great difficulty. Soon the population of women would have gone far beyond the population of men. But nature has its own ways of balancing. Knowing that man has a much weaker body, in the sense that it cannot resist and fight with sickness, it creates fifteen extras.
The woman lives longer than the man — five years longer — in every country, in every race. And the woman suffers much, but still she survives. Man cannot survive as much suffering as woman manages to. So don’t be worried about your energies. You have more energy than men.
Man started suppressing women only because he felt inferior. His inferiority complex was the cause of his forcing women to become inferior, so he could cover up his wound and feel superior. It is stupid. And now because biology no longer has power over women, don’t waste your energy in being a lesbian. This is the time for you to be creative in every field, and you will be able to have your Picassos, your Mozarts, your Van Goghs, your Shakespeares.
There is no reason why not. Perhaps a little better, a little softer, and your sculpture is certainly going to be more alive. There is only one thing in which you will not find yourself equal to men — and please remember, don’t try to be equal in that area — that is muscles. Let men be superior as far as muscles are concerned, because if women start going to gymnasiums and creating muscular bodies, that will be the worst day in the history of humanity.
Just closing my eyes… if I see thousands of muscular women sitting here I am not going to come again! And there is a tendency to imitate. You know that man has imitated you; otherwise, what is the need to shave his beard and his mustache? It seems as though he wants to look as beautiful as a woman, but he forgets completely that to a woman, a man looks more beautiful with a beautiful beard and mustache. He is thinking from a man’s side, that a woman looks beautiful. Just think of it the other way: if a woman grows a beard and a mustache — do you think she is going to find a man to chase her?
But that’s what man has done, imitate. A simple argument, but without understanding. He feels that the woman is beautiful, and as it is so easy to remove the mustache and the beard, why not be as beautiful as the woman? He forgets the fact that for the woman you are losing much attraction.
Just look at my beard! I don’t think any of my sannyasins would like my beard to be shaved. Perhaps many of my women sannyasins are here just because of my gray beard. And anyway, whether I am saved spiritually or not, I am not going to shave my beard!

Osho on money – Richness is condemned. Money is condemned

Question - Beloved Osho, Can you talk about money? What are all these feelings which are around money? What makes it so powerful that people sacrifice their lives for it?
Osho This is a very significant question. All the religions have been against wealth because wealth can give you all that can be purchased in life. And almost everything can be purchased except those spiritual values — love, compassion, enlightenment, freedom. But these few things are exceptions, and exceptions always prove the rule.

Everything else you can purchase with money. Because all the religions have been against life, they were bound to be against money. That is a natural corollary. Life needs money because life needs comforts, life needs good food, life needs good clothes, good houses. Life needs beautiful literature, music, art, poetry. Life is vast!

And a man who cannot understand classical music is poor. He is deaf. He may hear — his eyes, his ears, his nose, all his senses will be perfectly right medically — but metaphysically…. Can you see the beauty of great literature, like THE BOOK OF MIRDAD? If you cannot see it, you are blind.

I have come across people who have not even heard the name of THE BOOK OF MIRDAD. If I am to make a list of the great books, that will be the first. But to see the beauty of it you will need a tremendous discipline.

To understand classical music is possible only if you learn — and it is a long learning. It is not like jazz music, for which no learning is needed. Even monkeys can understand jazz — in fact, only monkeys understand it. It is not music, just a few crackpots making all kinds of noises, and you think it is music.

You will find better music in a waterfall, or when the wind blows through the pine trees, or simply when you walk in the forest in autumn on dry leaves, and sounds are created. But to understand that, you will need to be free from hunger, free from poverty, free from all kinds of prejudices.

For example, Mohammedans have prohibited music; now they have deprived man of a tremendous experience. It happened in New Delhi… one of the most powerful Mohammedan emperors, Aurangzeb, was on the throne. And he was not only powerful, he was really terrible.

Up to his time Mohammedan emperors were saying only that music was against Islam, but that was all; Delhi was full of musicians. But Aurangzeb was not a gentleman, he was really a Mohammedan. He declared that if any music was heard in Delhi, the musician would be immediately beheaded. And Delhi was the center, naturally, because it was the capital for thousands of years. So it was the place where all kinds of geniuses were living.

When this declaration was made, all the musicians gathered together, and they said, “Something has to be done, this is too much! They used to say it is against Islam — that was okay. But this man is dangerous, he will start killing.” So as a protest, all the musicians — of which there were thousands — went to Aurangzeb’s palace.

He came on the balcony and asked the people, “Who has died?” — because what they had done… they were carrying a corpse the way it is carried in India. There was no corpse inside, just pillows, but they had managed to make it look like a corpse. Aurangzeb asked, “Who has died?”

And they answered, “Music. And you are the murderer of it.” Aurangzeb said, “Good that it has died. Now please be kind enough to me — dig as deep a grave as possible, so that it can never come out from the grave again.” Those thousands of musicians and their tears had no effect on Aurangzeb: he was doing something `sacred’.

Music is denied by Mohammedans. Why? — because music was basically played in the East by beautiful women. In the East and in the West the meaning of the word `prostitute’ differs. In the West the prostitute is selling her body. In the East, in the past, the prostitute was not selling her body; she was selling her genius, her dance, her music, her art.

You will be surprised that every Indian king used to send his sons who were going to become his successors to live with great prostitutes for a few years, to learn etiquette, to learn gentleness, to learn music, to learn the delicacies of dance — because a king should be really rich about everything. He should understand beauty, he should understand logic, he should understand manners. That has been the old Indian tradition.

Mohammedans disrupted it. Music was against their religion. Why? — because to learn music you had to enter a prostitute’s house. Mohammedans are very much against any rejoicing, and the house of the prostitute was full of laughter, songs, music, dance. They simply prohibited it: no Mohammedan can enter a place of music; to hear music is a sin.

And the same has been done by different religions — for different reasons, but they have all been cutting man’s richness. And the most basic teaching is that you should renounce money. You can see the logic. If you don’t have money, you can’t have anything else. Rather than cutting branches, they were cutting the very roots.

A man without money is hungry, is a beggar, has no clothes. You cannot expect him to understand Dostoevsky, Nijinsky, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, no; that is impossible. All the religions together have made man as poor as possible. They have condemned money so much, and praised poverty so much that as far as I am concerned, they are the greatest criminals the world has known.

Look what Jesus says: A camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of heaven. Do you think this man is sane? He is ready to allow a camel to pass through the eye of a needle — which is absolutely impossible, but even that impossibility he accepts may be made possible. But a rich man entering into paradise? That is a far bigger impossibility; there is no way to make it possible.

Wealth is condemned. Richness is condemned. Money is condemned. The world is left in two camps. Ninety-eight percent of the people live in poverty, but with a great consolation, that where rich people will not be able to enter, they will be received with angels playing on their harps, “Alleluia… Welcome!” And the two percent who are rich are living with tremendous guilt that they are rich.

They cannot enjoy their richness because of the guilt. And they are deep down afraid: perhaps they may not be allowed to enter into paradise. So they are in a dilemma. Riches are creating guilt in them — they will not be consoled because they are not mourning: they will not be allowed in paradise because they are having so many things on the earth. They will be thrown into hell.

Because of this situation, the rich man lives in a very fearful state. Even if he enjoys, or tries to enjoy things, his guilt poisons it. He may be making love to a beautiful woman, but it is only the body that is making love. He is thinking of paradise where camels are entering, and he is standing outside and there is no way to go in. Now can this man make love? He may be eating the best food possible, but he cannot enjoy it. He knows this life is short, and after that is just darkness and hellfire. He lives in a paranoia.

The poor man is already living in hell, but he lives with a consolation. You will be surprised to know that in poor countries people are more contented than in rich countries. I have seen the poorest people in India with no dissatisfaction at all. And Americans are going around the world to find some spiritual guidance — naturally, because they don’t want to be defeated by camels; they want to enter into the gates of heaven.

They want to find some way, some yoga, some exercises, as a compensation. This whole world has been turned against itself. Perhaps I am the first person who is respectful of money, of wealth, because it can make you multi-dimensionally rich.

A poor man cannot understand Mozart. A hungry man cannot understand Michelangelo. A beggar will not even look at the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. And these people who are suffering from hunger don’t have enough energy to make them intelligent. Intelligence comes only when you have superfluous energy in you. They are exhausted just in earning bread and butter. They don’t have intelligence. They cannot understand THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, they can only listen to some stupid priest in a church.

Neither the priest understands what he is talking about, nor the audience. Most of them are fast asleep, tired after six days of work. And the priest finds it more comfortable that everybody is asleep, so he need not prepare a new sermon. He can go on using the old sermon. Everybody is asleep, nobody will figure out that he is just cheating them.

Wealth is as significant as beautiful music, as great literature, as masterpieces of art. There are people who have a born capacity to be a musician. Mozart started playing beautiful music at the age of eight. When he was eight, other great masters of music were not anywhere near him. Now, this man is born with that creativity.

Vincent van Gogh was born of a poor father who worked in a coal mine. He never got educated, he never knew any art school, but he became one of the greatest painters of the world. But in his whole life he could not sell a single painting. Now each painting… There are only two hundred of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings available; he painted thousands but he gave them away just for a packet of cigarettes, or a meal, or a cup of tea. Now each of his paintings is worth a million dollars or more.

What happened? Why couldn’t people understand his paintings? His paintings need tremendous intelligence to be understood. Just a few days ago I saw a picture of one of his paintings. For that painting he was laughed at by all painters, what to say about others? — because he had painted stars in a way nobody had seen stars: like nebulae, every star in movement, like a wheel turning continuously. Who had seen stars like that?

Even other painters said, “You are going mad — these are not stars!” And moreover, the trees that he painted underneath the stars are going higher than the stars. Stars are left far behind, trees have reached far ahead. Now who has seen such trees? This is just madness!

But a few days ago I saw a picture of this type. Physicists have now discovered that van Gogh is right: stars are not as they look, they are exactly the way van Gogh has painted them. Poor van Gogh! What eyes that man must have had, to see what physicists took one hundred years to find out, with all their big labs and big technology.

And Vincent van Gogh, strangely enough, just with bare eyes figured out the exact shape of the stars. They are whirling, they are whirling dervishes; they are not static the way you see them. And when he was asked about his trees, that “Where have you found these trees which go above the stars?” he said, “These are the trees I have found, sitting by their side listening to their ambitions. I have heard the trees say to me that they are the ambitions of the earth to reach to the stars.”

Perhaps a few more centuries may be needed for scientists to discover that certainly the trees are the ambitions of the earth. One thing is certain, that trees are moving against gravitation. The earth is allowing them to move against gravitation — supporting, helping them. Perhaps the earth wants some communication with the stars. The earth is alive, and life always wants to go higher and higher and higher. There is no limit to its aspirations.

How are the poor people going to understand? They don’t have the intelligence. Just as there are born poets, born painters, I would like you to remember there are born wealth-creators. They have never been appreciated. Everybody is not a Henry Ford, and cannot be.

Henry Ford was born poor, and became the richest man in the world. He must have had some talent, some genius for creating money, for creating wealth. And that is far more difficult than to create a painting, or music, or poetry. To create wealth is not an easy job. Henry Ford should be praised just as any master musician, novelist, poet. In fact, he should be praised more, because with his money all the poetry and all the music and all the sculptures of the world can be purchased.

I respect money. Money is one of the greatest inventions of man. It is just a means. Only idiots have been condemning it; perhaps they were jealous that others have money and they don’t. Their jealousy became their condemnation.
Money is nothing but a scientific way of exchanging things. Before there was money, people were in real difficulty. All over the world there was a barter system. You have a cow and you want to purchase a horse. Now it is going to be your whole lifelong task…. You have to find a man who wants to sell a horse and wants to purchase a cow. It is so difficult a job! You may find people who have horses but they are not interested in buying cows. You may find people who are interested in buying cows but they don’t have horses.
That was the situation before money came into existence. Naturally, people were bound to be poor: they could not sell things, they could not buy things. It was such a difficult job. Money made it so simple. The man who wants to sell the cow need not search for the man who wants to sell his horse. He can simply sell the cow, take the money and find the man who wants to sell the horse, but is not interested in a cow.
Money became the medium of exchange; the barter system disappeared from the world. Money did a great service to humanity. And because people became capable of purchasing, selling, naturally they became more and more rich.
This has to be understood. The more money moves, the more money you have. For example, if I have one dollar with me…. It is just for example, I don’t have one; I don’t have even a cent with me. I don’t even have pockets! Sometimes I get worried that if I get a dollar, where am I going to keep it?
For example, if I have a dollar and I go on keeping it to myself, then in this mandir there is only one dollar. But if I purchase something and the dollar moves to somebody else, I get the worth of the dollar — which I will enjoy. You cannot eat the dollar. How can you enjoy it just by keeping it? You can enjoy it only by spending it. I enjoy; the dollar reaches to somebody else, Now if he keeps it, then there are only two dollars — one I have enjoyed already, and one is with that miser who is keeping it.
But if nobody is a clinger, and everybody is moving the dollar as fast as possible — if there are three thousand people, three thousand dollars have been used, enjoyed. That is one single round. Just give more rounds and there will be more dollars. Nothing is coming in; there is, in fact, only one dollar, but by movement it goes on multiplying itself.
That’s why money is called currency. It should be a current. That’s my meaning. I don’t know about others’ meanings. One should not keep it. The moment you get it, spend it. Don’t waste time, because that much time you are preventing the dollar from growing, from becoming more and more.
Money is a tremendous invention. It makes people richer, it makes people capable of having things that they don’t have. But all the religions have been against it. They don’t want humanity to be rich, and they don’t want humanity to be intelligent, because if people are intelligent, who is going to read the Bible?
Just the other day, I received the information that one atheist group in America has published a Bible with pictures. That Bible will be condemned by all the Christians, by the government, because it is pornographic. It is more pornographic than anything else, because in the Bible there is so much pornography….
Just by reading it you are not aware. Now, when I was talking to you about Sodom… in this new Bible they have made pictures of men making love to animals, women making love to animals. There is adultery, there is homosexuality, there is sodomy, there is rape. You name it and it is in the Bible!
I have said that we should immediately order it. My people should start reading the real Bible! And order it immediately, because there is every possibility it will be prohibited. Never in the world has any book been so pornographic as this Bible.
And they are not doing anything which is not in the Bible — they are just making pictures of it. You can understand pictures better. Just reading the word `rape’ is nothing, but when you see a series of rapes pictured, then you become suddenly aware — this is a holy Bible.
Religions never wanted man to be intelligent, never wanted man to be rich, never wanted man to rejoice, because people who are in suffering, poor, unintelligent — they are the clients of churches, synagogues, temples, mosques.
I have never gone to any religious place. Why should I go? If the religious place wants to have some taste of religion it should come to me. I am not going to Mecca, Mecca has to come to me! Otherwise I don’t care. I am not going to Jerusalem, I am not mad — just a little bit crazy, but not mad. And when we can create a place of joy and laughter and love here, what is there in Israel? We have created the new Israel.
Drop all ideas that have been imposed upon you about money. Be respectful to it. Create wealth, because only after creating wealth do many other dimensions open for you. For the poor man all doors are closed.
I want my sannyasins to be as rich as possible, as comfortable as possible. This is the first commune in the whole history of man where every house is centrally air-conditioned. Never before has any commune happened with air-conditioning.
This is the only commune where, while I am talking to you, you can laugh, you can enjoy, you can dance, you can do anything — because your laughter connects you to me more than your sitting there sad, with a long face.
You cannot laugh in a church the way you are doing here. Just looking at Jesus Christ hanging on the cross all laughter will die. In fact, for the first time we are giving religion its true color, its music, its dance, its love, its laughter.

Osho – All creative people are crazy people — they live in a frenzy

Question – [A sannyasin says: Whenever I do any kind of creative work, like writing or preparing a class, a tremendous tension builds up and I get all this nervous energy that I can't apply to my writing. So I start straightening the room or doing anything to kill time. If somebody walks by I start talking to them and I just go into a kind of a frenzy so that I can't work, or my work is very tense.]
Osho – I understand. In fact it is not only your problem; it is the problem of all creative people as such. Deep down it is a question of creativity itself. Ordinarily one can create only in a frenzy. So all creative people are crazy people — they live in a frenzy. There are bouts of energy when they become very creative, then gaps of laziness when they simply rest; they cannot do anything. And all creative people are a little imbalanced. If a person is really absolutely normal, he cannot be creative.
So normal people have not created anything in the world. A Van Gogh or a Picasso — they are bound to be a little neurotic. So if you drop your creativity, you can drop your frenzy. But then you will settle on a very normal level and it will not be satisfying because you will feel that something is missing. Something that you could have done, you have not done. Something that was your destiny, you have been avoiding. No one can feel at ease if he avoids his destiny.
The other way is that you be in a frenzy and create, but then too you will be in trouble. Now you will feel happy that you are doing something but you will never have a moment of peace. You will be fulfilling your destiny but it will be like an obsession. You will be almost possessed. All creative people know well that they are almost possessed when they create something. They cannot say that they are doing it — they are being forced to do it. They even sometimes resist and in spite of themselves they have to do it.
My suggestion is, don’t settle against creativity. Move into creativity. But I am not saying that there is no possibility to transcend that obsessive turmoil, that frenzy. There is no need to fall down and settle below; there is a way to go beyond. And if you want to settle, then settle beyond. The way is that you accept this frenzy very delightfully. It is part of the deal. If the going is rough, the going is rough; it is part of the game. If you continuously hanker to be at ease, it is a problem. If you can enjoy that feverishness, that frenzy, there is no problem.
When a river falls into a waterfall there is a frenzy, but the river goes on singing and dancing. When there is a cyclone there is a frenzy, but that too is needed — it is welcome. When the ocean waves are in a wild roar that too is part of being the ocean — and it is beautiful. The problem arises if you start hankering for the opposite.
So for one month do one thing. Simply accept this frenzy; welcome it and go with it. Don’t create any conflict with it. When you feel like talking, talk; nothing is wrong in it. When you feel like writing something, write. Even in the middle of the night, write; nothing is wrong in it. Just go with it — don’t be dragged by it, otherwise you will feel troubled. Just go with it — and when I say go with it, I mean go so happily that sometimes you are going ahead of it and the frenzy is coming just following you, dragging behind. Don’t drag behind. For one month enjoy it, and then tell me how it is.
I would like you to settle, but not against creativity. I would like you to settle beyond it so that you can remain creative and yet you can remain happy and peaceful. So I will not suggest that you drop your creative activity. All creative activity is like a demon — it possesses you, it drives you crazy. It crushes you into new modes of being. It destroys you, renews you. Because somethiny new is going to be born out of you, you are to suffer the birth pangs. Just go with it, and happily. For one month drop all resistance and then tell me. Good.
Source – Osho Book “God is Not for Sale”

Osho on Pythagoras vision – Pythagoras has contributed much to human thought

OSHO – PYTHAGORAS ALSO INTRODUCED THE WORD ‘COSMOS’. ‘Cosmos’ means order, rhythm, harmony. Existence is not a chaos but a cosmos. Pythagoras has contributed much to human thought, to human evolution. His vision of a cosmos became the very foundation of scientific investigation.
Science can exist only if existence is a cosmos. If it is a chaos, there is no possibility of any science. If laws change every day, every moment — one day the water evaporates at one hundred degrees, another day at five hundred degrees — if water functions in a whimsical way and follows no order, how can there be a science?
Science presupposes that existence functions in a consistent way, in a rational way, that existence is not mad, that if we search deep into existence, we are bound to find laws — and those laws are the keys to all the mysteries. Just as it is true for science so it is true for religion too — because religion is nothing but the science of the inner. The outer science is called science; the inner science is called religion — but both can exist only in a cosmos.
There are laws of the inner world. Those laws have been discovered just as much as scientific laws have been discovered. Neither have scientific laws been invented, nor have religious laws; been invented. Truth is — you need not invent it And whatsoever you invent will be untrue — all inventions are lies.
Truth has to be discovered, not invented. Einstein discovers a certain law; Patanjali also discovers a certain law; Newton discovers gravitation, Krishna discovers grace — both are laws. One belongs to the earth, the other belongs to the sky; one belongs to the world of necessity, the other belongs to the world of power. One belongs to the visible and the other belongs to the invisible.
It is in the vision of a cosmos that Pythagoras became the originator of a scientific concept of the world. He was the first scientist because he provided the very foundation. His idea of cosmos has to be understood, because without understanding it you will not be able to understand what he is talking about.
The inner world, the world of the spirit, follows certain laws, and those laws are unchangeable, they are perennial. Hence I have called this series PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS — the perennial philosophy. Those laws are not time-bound, they are beyond time. Time itself functions within those laws. If you want to do something in the outside world, you will need to know how the outer existence functions, because unless you know how it functions you are bound to fail.
Nature has no obligation to adjust to you — you will have to adjust to nature. You can win nature only by adjusting yourself to nature. You can become a conqueror too, but not against nature — with nature, in tune with nature. You can become a master of the inner kingdom too — not against the laws but in tune with those laws.
It is because of this mystic vision — that the world is not accidental, not anarchic, but an absolutely harmonious, cosmic, orderly world — that Pythagoras was able to discover many things for the seekers. One thing that he discovered was that music can become the milieu for meditation. He4 was the first to introduce that idea too to the West. In the East we have known it for centuries, that music is the best aid to meditation. Why? because music creates harmony around you, and the harmony around you can provoke harmony within you. If the outside is harmonious, the inside also starts falling in line with it — and that you have watched many times.
In the marketplace, you feel a great disturbance inside you — with the crowd you never feel at home. In the market-place the whole atmosphere is anti-music; there is no harmony, it is a chaos. And the outer chaos provokes inside chaos.
Go into a madhouse and be with mad people for a few hours and you will see: you start feeling something going crazy inside you. Go to the hospital and just be with the ill patients there for a few hours, and you start feeling a sickening is entering into you, a kind of sick feeling. You are NOT sick; you were not sick when you entered the hospital. What has happened? The sick vibe all around you starts synchronizing inside you, because the outer and the inner are not divided; they are part of one whole. The inner is the inner of the outer, and the outer is the outer of the inner. They cannot be separated. So each affects the other.
If you know meditation deeply, you can sit in the market-place and nothing will be disturbed because you have a powerful music going on inside you. It is so powerful that the market-place and its noise cannot affect it; on the contrary, people who are around you may start feeling a certain soothing effect, a calmness coming. If a real Buddha sits in the marketplace, he creates there too a Buddhafield, and whosoever enters into the Buddhafield is affected immediately — he starts falling into harmony. Something starts settling inside him; something starts getting together inside him. He becomes more centered, together.
That’s the secret of SATSANG — being with a Buddha. The whole secret is this: to be with the Master means just to allow his vibe to provoke your inner harmony which is fast asleep and you are unaware of it. But ordinarily if you go to the market-place, you come home a little lost, exhausted, tired, something is missing. You need rest; only after a good night’s rest will you be able to go to the marketplace again.
Music is a harmony — it is harmony between sound and silence. Sound belongs to the earth, silence belongs to the beyond. Music is, as Pythagoras believed and called it, numinous. The word ‘numinous’ comes from a Latin root NUMEN. It is a tremendously significant word, very pregnant with meaning. NUMEN means a nod from the above, a yes from the beyond.
Music creates such a harmony that even God starts nodding at you, saying yes to you. Music is numinous… suddenly the sky starts touching you; you are overwhelmed by the beyond. And when the beyond is closer to you, when the footsteps of the beyond are heard, something inside you gets the challenge, becomes silent, quieter, calmer, cool, collected.
In the Pythagorean mystery school, music was one of the greatest things — and that’s my effort here too. We have to create great music so that great meditative states become possible. Music is outer meditation: meditation is inner music. They go together, hand in hand, embracing each other. It is one of the greatest experiences of life when music is there surrounding you, overwhelming you, flooding you, and meditation starts growing in you — when meditation and music meet, world and God meet, matter and consciousness meet. That is UNIO MYSTICA — the mystic union.
In the East we have called it ‘yoga’. Yoga simply means union. The best definition of yoga, and the shortest, is by the great seer Vyasa. He says yoga is samadhi, yoga is ENSTASIS. Ordinarily samadhi is translated as ecstasy — that is not right, because ecstasy literally means to stand out. Samadhi is to stand in! It should be translated as ENSTASIS not as ECSTASIS. Yoga is ENSTASIS — standing in, doing nothing, just being. That state is meditation.
And anything that can help from the outside will have some music in it, only then can it help. The sound of running water in the hills can help, because it has its own music. The roaring waves of the ocean can help, because they have their own music. The singing of the birds in the morning can help, or the sound of insects in the silent night, or the rain falling on the rooftop — anything that creates music can also create meditation.
The Pythagorean school was a school of music, of song and dance. of great celebration. You are again living in that kind of school. People have forgotten that music can take you downwards, and can also take you upwards. The modern music takes you downwards; it is concerned with the lowest center of your being, with the sex center. It gives you sexuality; it is pornographic. It has lost all heights. It is ugly — it is really noise and nothing else, noise that drowns you — jazz or other pop music. It is simply a kind of intoxicant. It is so deafening that you feel lost and you think something is happening. All that is happening is that you are pulled more and more towards the earth, more and more towards the animal in you.
The ancient music, the classical music, has a totally different effect: it pulls you upwards, it takes you beyond gravitation. It is part of levitation; you start floating upwards and upwards. It has a more meditative quality in it. It reaches to your higher centers. The real music worth calling music will have something to do with SAHASRAR — your seventh center, but very rarely a genius reaches there to create such music. But if even your heart center is moved, it is more than enough. If your heart center starts dancing and revolving, you are very close to meditation.
JUST AS MUSIC is the meeting of silence and sound, for J Pythagoras philosophy is a meeting of religion and science. His concept of philosophy is that of a great synthesis. He is one of the greatest synthesizers ever — he always brings polar opposites together and makes them complementary. He is a great artist in destroying opposition. Wherever he finds opposition he starts searching for something which must be bridging the opposition, and that bridge is important.
Religion and science have been in conflict for centuries because they have not listened to Pythagoras. Otherwise, this division would never have happened. And this division has proved one of the most fatal calamities. Religion and science have been fighting as enemies; for centuries the church did not allow science to develop and grow. People like Galileo and Kepler and others were punished.
Religion was afraid of science. This is stupid, because science can only help religion, science can only prepare the ground for the inner science. The church people and the popes who were against science were simply behaving in a very stupid way — without knowing what they were doing. Truth cannot be crushed; nobody can crucify truth.
Slowly slowly, science gained ground, became powerful — it was good that it became powerful. But it started behaving in the same stupid way by destroying religion. It became a revenge. For three hundred years, the mainstream of scientific thinkers has been trying to destroy religion as hard as possible. They have declared God is dead. They have declared there is no soul. They have declared there is no afterlife. They have declared there is NO inner being in man. They have reduced man to a machine.
Man has lost all grandeur. Man cannot feel meaningful any more. It is because of this stupid approach of science, this revengeful approach of science, that all meaning has disappeared from the world. People are simply dragging themselves. There is no poetry — there is no possibility of poetry, because without a God the world cannot be a cosmos. Then it is only a mechanical phenomenon; there is no consciousness behind it. Without God, the world cannot be caring; it cannot be your mother — it is bound to be neutral. Whether you live or die, nature is not concerned at all.
Science has created the idea of a nature indifferent to man. This is dangerous, because man is so small and nature is so vast. And if this vast existence is absolutely indifferent towards you, how can you feel significant, meaningful? You will feel a stranger, an outsider, something accidental.
And science became so prominent that even philosophers started following the scientific way of thinking, which is a very lopsided way. Even philosophers lost hold of that great vision of unity, of oneness, of existence being a home.
The modern philosopher has no beauty compared to Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Buddha, Socrates, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra. The modern philosopher is very ordinary; he is nothing but a professor of philosophy. His philosophy is not a delight in his being, it is not a song, it is not a music. All that he goes on doing is linguistic analysis. The modern philosopher is an ugly phenomenon. Modern philosophy has NO philosophy of life in it. At the most, it is a constant effort to go on sharpening logic — but for what? The whole effort seems to be useless. And modern philosophy has become just a shadow of science. It has lost its glory. It is no more the science of sciences; it is no more the queen.
With Pythagoras, philosophy was the highest peak of understanding, the highest flight towards truth. One wing has to be science, another wing has to be religion. Those were the days of great philosophers; the world came to know REALLY great philosophers.
In China, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Mencius, Lieh Tzu — all close contemporaries of Zarathustra. In India, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Prakuddha Katyayana, Sanjay Vilethiputta, Makkhli Goshal, Poorna Kashyapa, and many more. In Greece, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle…. And the chain continues. In kan, the great Zarathustra. Twenty-five centuries ago, the world knew the highest flights of philosophy. Now, instead of a philosopher, what you find is just a poor specimen: a professor of philosophy.
I have heard a story: The King of the Cannibals decided to open his country up to tourism. A world-famous philosopher, who had a special interest in the primitive, was extremely eager to add this backward people to his studies. On his arrival in Cannibal-land, the philosopher demanded a private tour and a personal audience with the Cannibal King. Not only was this granted, but the Cannibal King himself conducted the visiting dignitary to all points of interest, while the philosopher busily jotted down notes on his yellow pad. Towards the end of the day, the King was moved to suggest a visit to his people’s most special and sacred structure. This, he announced, was the Cannibal Super-Market. There, in a shiny modern building, was housed the most complete and varied selection of human anatomical parts available anywhere in the world.
The philosopher enthusiastically agreed to see it, and they soon arrived at the building and went in. Here, lit by fluorescent lights, were row upon row of gleaming chrome-and-glass display cases. Inside, packaged neatly in clear plastic, with prices prominently displayed, were hundreds of items: legs, arms, hands, ears, etcetera. The philosopher eagerly scribbled notes while they toured the market.
At last they arrived at what the Cannibal King said was their most prized department human brains. As they walked slowly down the aisle, the philosopher noted the following signs: “Explorers’ brains — ten cents-a-pound”…”missionaries’ brains — twenty cents-a-pound”…”businessmen’s brains — one dollar-a-pound”…”commanding generals’ brains — ten dollars-a-pound”. The very last item had a display case of its own and its sign was especially large: “philosophers’ brains”, it read, “fifty dollars-a-pound!”
The philosopher could scarcely contain his delight. Unable to restrain himself, he turned to the Cannibal King and smugly inquired as to how it was, that of all the items in the super-market, philosophers’ brains were by far the most expensive.
“Come, come, my good man,” said the Cannibal King, “do you know how many philosophers we have to kill just to get one pound of brains?”
Modern philosophy and the modern philosopher is just worthless. It has lost it’s peaks: it no more moves into the beyond. It is neither science nor religion. It is just a very confused affair today.
For Pythagoras, science is a search for truth in the objective world and religion is a search for truth in the subjective world — and philosophy is a search for the truth. So science and religion are like two hands or two wings. They are not opposites but complementaries. And the world would be better if we were reminded of it again.
The church, the temple and the lab need not be enemies. They should exist in a kind of friendship. Man will be far richer then. Now, if he chooses science he becomes rich outside and goes on becoming poorer and poorer inside. If he chooses religion, he becomes rich inside, but goes on becoming poorer and poorer on the outside. And both are ugly scenes.
The West has chosen science; it has all the riches of the world, but the man is completely lost, feeling meaningless, suicidal. The man, when he looks inside, finds nothing but hollowness, emptiness. The inner world has become very poor in the West.
In the East, just the opposite has happened: people have chosen religion against science. Their inner world is calmer, quieter, richer; but on the outside they are starving, dying — no food, no medicine, no facilities to live a human life, living almost like animals or even worse.
This is the consequence of not listening to Pythagoras. The whole history of humanity would have been totally different if Pythagoras had been listened to, understood. There is no need for the East to be East and the West to be West. There is no need for anybody to be just a materialist or just a spiritualist. If body and soul can exist together — they ARE existing together in you, in everybody — then why can’t materialism and spiritualism exist together? They SHOULD!
A man must be materialist and spiritualist. To choose is fatal. There is no need to choose; you can have both the worlds — you SHOULD have both the worlds; that is your birthright.
I teach you this synthesis: you have to be a materialist, as materialistic as any materialist, and a spiritualist, as much a spiritualist as any spiritualist. And remember: both will be angry at you, because the spiritualist will not be able to forgive you for your materialism, and the materialist will not be able to forgive you for your spiritualism.
That’s why people are against me — all kinds of people! The religious people are against me because they cannot accept my materialist approach; and the materialists are against me because they cannot accept my spiritualist approach. I would like to remind you that you have to be both together. This will bring a new man and a new humanity on the earth — and it is utterly needed, absolutely needed: a new man, a new humanity, a new concept.
There is no need to choose. God has given you a body — that means you have to be a materialist; and God has given you a soul — that means you have to be a spiritualist. You have to be a meeting of the two: you have to be a yogi, a union. And if your body and soul ARE balanced, and your spiritualism and your materialism are balanced, in a rhythm, you will attain to the greatest music possible. And that music is meditation, that music is samadhi.
Source – Osho Book “Philosophia Perennis, Vol1″