TALKS IN AMERICA
From Bondage to Freedom 43
FourtyThird Discourse from the series of 44 discourses - From Bondage to Freedom by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
Osho,
You said buddha is a state of no-mind. Then how can there be any psychology of the buddhas?
Please explain.
There can only be a psychology of the buddhas. The man who is in the mind cannot be objective about it. It is as if a madman were doing research on madness. Apparently – it looks logical – because he is mad he can do research on madness. But it is not so in reality. Only one who is sane can look at all the dimensions of insanity objectively. The madman is not in a position to see anything, to understand anything.
The same is the situation about the mind. One is in the mind and is trying to create a psychology: it is an impossible task. He can create only a fictitious psychology. That’s why there are so many psychologies; otherwise there can only be one psychology – just as there can be only one physics, one chemistry. There cannot be schools of psychology contradicting each other, refuting each other, arguing against each other, trying to prove themselves the real psychology.
Sigmund Freud has never known anything beyond the mind that can give him the right to study the mind. He is immersed in it, he is it. Who is going to understand it? The understanding is always from the beyond – some distance is needed. So whatever he creates is a beautiful fiction. His own disciples start creating their own fictions. Alfred Adler created another fiction. Carl Gustav Jung created still another fiction. They are all irrelevant. Nobody can prove who is right, because they are all wrong – wrong for the simple reason that living in the mind you cannot look at it from a detached space, which is the basic scientific method.
If you are studying tomatoes, one thing is absolutely necessary: that you should not be a tomato. You can be anything else. The state of the awakened person is a state beyond mind. He can see from the top of the hill into the dark valleys of the mind. The hilltop is full of sunlight. His vision is clear, he has no prejudices, he has no preconceived ideologies. He has left them far behind in the valley where everybody is a bigot, everybody is conditioned, everybody is either a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Buddhist, or a communist.
Everybody has become identified with a certain ideology. He has lost the clarity of vision, he is clouded. And he looks through those clouds, and everything becomes perverted.
Sigmund Freud turns everything into sex. It is not true; everything is not sex. Sex is one of the most significant parts of life, but everything is not sex. But the way of seeing…he has colored glasses on his eyes. Whatever he sees, immediately his mind translates it into some sex symbol.
If he sees these pillars here, they are phallic. You have been sitting by these pillars. You have never thought that these are phallic symbols, that they represent the man’s longing to have a long genitalia. But this long genitalia, the man will have to carry it on a truck ! And what will happen about women? He cannot chase women, he is stuck with his truck.
Anything! Fountain pens, pencils – everything is phallic. He has a cloud over his vision. He himself is over-sexual, too much repressed. His repression is creating a certain smoke, and it is coming out into his writings. They are hilarious! You give him anything, and within minutes it is turned into something sexual. You could not have conceived that this thing can be turned into sexuality. Every hole becomes feminine sexuality. This is not psychology, this is psychopathy.
And one of his disciples, who said that “There are things which are connected with man’s sexuality, but I cannot agree that everything is sexual” – he found another fiction: will to power. For Alfred Adler, psychology simply became synonymous with will to power. Whatever you are doing, it is nothing but will to power. You say, “I have fallen in love” – all wrong. According to him this is a strategy to be powerful over the woman. And that’s why she is trying to escape from you. She knows the real purpose.
But she also cannot escape too far, because she has also the same psychology: she wants power over you. So every husband and wife are continuously in a power struggle. Children and parents are in a power struggle. Students and teachers are in a power struggle. Everywhere the whole business of life is reduced into a power struggle – will to power.
According to Adler, sex becomes nothing but will to power. He was not aware of Eastern literature on sexology, which goes far back – five thousand years old. Vatsyayana’s maxims on sex describe eighty-four postures of lovemaking. But Adler knew only one posture – the missionary posture.
It is called the missionary posture in the East, the man on top. The East became aware for the first time of this brutality when Christian missionaries went there to spread the word of God. People simply laughed. How can a man who is loving, lie on a woman who is delicate, smaller, fragile ? The brute is on top of the beauty – and he does not allow her to move, because to move is not ladylike. That is the meaning of the word lady – a good lay. But a good lay means a dead lay. The woman has to lie down completely dead, and the brute goes on doing exercises, gymnastics, pushups, and this he calls love.
In the East it has been accepted that the woman should be on top. And it seems to be more natural. Man is stronger, more muscular, taller. And it is sexologically also significant that the woman should be moving, because if the man moves and woman remains unmoving, the man comes to his orgasm within seconds, and the woman has not even started yet. He is finished; gets down and goes to sleep. The woman cries, because she is simply being used, and to be used hurts more than anything else. This is not love. You have not taken any care about the woman, what happens to her.
Vatsyayana makes it clear that the man should remain less moving so his orgasm is delayed, and the woman should be moving so they both come to orgasm almost simultaneously.
But Adler saw in the West man on top, and immediately he had another instance, evidence for his psychology, that this lovemaking is nothing but will to power – being on top. The woman is not physically so strong, but she takes her revenge in being bitchy. You can be on top of her for a few seconds, but for twenty-four hours she is bitchy, a pain in the neck.
Love becomes a strange thing in the hands of Adler. It has to fit his idea of psychology. The same is true of Jung, of Assagioli, and so many others. Now there are dozens of schools, and every school pretends that they have found the real science of psychology. None of them is capable of finding real psychology because they don’t fulfill the basic requirement.
The basic requirement is to go beyond mind, because only then you can see the functions of the mind, the subtle activities of the mind, the darkest corners of the mind. From the hilltop of no-mind the whole valley is available to you, you are simply a witness, an objective witness.
Hence, I repeat it again: only buddhas can create authentic psychology. Otherwise, there will be only different schools of psychopathologies.
I can understand your question. Your question is: A man who has reached to the state of no-mind, what can he say about the mind?
You are just putting this no-mind and mind in opposition. No-mind is not opposite to mind. No-mind is beyond mind. It is a clarity, a silence, that can give you the deepest insight into mind. You can look into all the layers of mind, but this is possible only from the highest point.
And because now you are no more in the mess of the mind, you are no more confined by your mind. You have gone beyond boundaries; you cannot only see your mind, you can see mind as such. And unless mind as such is known, psychology will remain just a fictitious game.
From the sunlit peaks you can see all the layers of mind. You are at the highest point. I have called it the cosmic mind, the mind of the whole existence. You are one with it. Just below you is the collective super-conscious mind. Below that is the individual super-conscious mind. Below that is the normal conscious mind. Below that is the unconscious mind. Below that is the collective unconscious mind. And at the very bottom is the cosmic unconscious mind. This is the whole rainbow of mind energy – all the seven colors. The cosmic super-conscious mind and the cosmic unconscious mind are the two ends of the rainbow. And then there are five divisions in between.
We are at the fourth, exactly in the middle. Three are below us, three are above us. If a man goes mad, that means he slips down from the fourth to the third, sometimes even to the second; very rarely, to the first.
A meditator travels upwards: first to the super-conscious mind, then the collective super-conscious mind, and then cosmic super-conscious mind.
This whole rainbow is not available to your so-called psychologists. So whatever they are doing is very fragmentary. And remember one thing: a fragmentary truth is far more dangerous then a lie. A half-truth is worse than a lie, because the lie cannot go on pretending to be true for long; sooner or later you are going to discover it. But the half-truth is dangerous: you can go on believing that this is the whole truth forever. You can be deceived by it.
And the second thing to remember: truth cannot be divided. So the half-truth is again a very beautifully systematized lie.
Just as you cannot have a half-circle – or can you? Verbally there is no problem, but if you look at it closely, a circle can only be complete. The half-circle is not a circle, it is only an arc. Unless it is full, it cannot be called a circle. There are no other kinds of circles, there is only one kind: the full circle.
The same is the case with truth. You cannot have half-truths; they become far more dangerous, poisonous than straightforward lies. And whatever the psychologists are doing is nothing but stretching small fragments to absurdity in order to make them look like the full truth, the whole truth.
I say to you again, only the awakened one, the buddha, can give you a total vision of psychology.
Osho,
Western psychologists say that meditation is a subjective phenomenon and therefore much psychological research is not possible. Do you agree?
I do not agree, because no research is possible. You are saying, “Much psychological research is not possible.” That’s why I do not agree.
Man’s interiority, his subjectivity, cannot be trespassed. There is no way to make it an object of study. Research is absolutely impossible – even search has not been done, and you are thinking of research.
Man can experience his subjectivity on his own, but he cannot invite a researcher to go into him and to find out who he is. This is, by nature, impossible. And it is very fortunate that it is impossible – that your subjectivity, at least, is always private, always your freedom. No trespass is possible.
Yes, one can study one’s own interiority, and one can make an effort to explain in words what he has found within himself. Perhaps that may give you some idea of your own subjectivity – not exactly the same, but some glimpse, or at least the possibility that there is some inner essence in you which needs to be discovered; an encouragement that if somebody else can do it, why cannot you do it? Perhaps his methods of his own inner journey may help you to find methods suitable for yourself. Maybe a little bit modified, changed, but the same methods may be applicable.
But one hundred and twelve methods of going inwards are available, have been for ten thousand years. Not a single method more can be added. The science of inner search is complete. You can just look at those one hundred and twelve methods, and it is my experience and many of my sannyasins’ experience that when you come to the method that will be suitable for you, something immediately rejoices in you – as if something in your heart has been touched, some bell starts ringing within you.
So just going through those one hundred and twelve methods – and each method is described in two lines – you just go slowly and see which method synchronizes with you. Then give it a try. Most probably that will be the method. If by chance you don’t succeed in it, then look again. Some other method may be even more striking. But for the whole of humanity all the methods are there. Symptoms can be told to you: when you come to the method that is going to be your journey, something immediately is lit up in your being. Your mind falls silent, you know – not from any outside authority, but by your own heartbeats – that “This is the method for me.”
And as you start working on the method you will see how relaxing it is, and how simple, smooth. And on each step you will feel yourself more grounded, more rooted – no more phony, no more American, no more plastic. For the first time you will feel you are real, authentic. And as you go deeper with the method, the sense of joy, sensitivity, goes on increasing.
Love, for no reason at all, unaddressed to anybody – just a lovingness surrounds you. And when you reach to the very center of your being there is an explosion of immense light, and a fragrance that you have never known.
Those who are a little receptive may even become aware that something great has happened to you, because your face will take on a certain quality which you can find in the statues of Gautam Buddha. Your eyes, for the first time, will have a magnetism; your gestures will have a grace. Your whole being will be a beauty and a benediction to you and to all. As this experience ripens, you become a blessing to the whole existence.
It is true that no objective research can be done on it, but that does not mean that this subjective world does not exist. That will be a stupid conclusion. It will be like a blind man who cannot see the light; hence he concludes that the light does not exist.
There are things which are objectively available to be studied, but they are always things – not life, not love, not consciousness. All that is great is subjective. And it is one of the greatest misfortunes of humanity that scientists go on insisting that unless you can study something objectively, it does not exist. That means that in the lab of Albert Einstein, everything exists except Albert Einstein. Then who is doing all these experiments? Who is watching and researching, and who is finding electrons and protons and neurons? They all exist because they are objective. Albert Einstein does not exist, because his consciousness is not available to objective study. This is sheer stupidity.
Your eyes cannot hear music; that does not mean that music does not exist. Your ears cannot see light, that does not mean light does not exist. It simply means you are using wrong means – ears to see, eyes to hear.
The method of objective study is for things, matter. And the inward journey – because it is not a research into matter but into consciousness – needs different methods. Those are the methods I am calling meditations.
For the objective world, observation, experiments – these are methods. For the subjective world, witnessing, experiencing – these are the methods.
And one of the fundamental rules of science is that everything exists with its polar opposite. The polar opposite is not contradictory, it is complementary. If love exists, hate exists; if beauty exists, ugliness exists. And if objective reality exists, you cannot deny subjective reality; otherwise, you will be going against the fundamental rule of science itself. Objective reality needs, as a polar opposite to it, a subjective reality. And certainly the same methods cannot be applied to both. Different methods are needed.
Meditation will not help you to find atomic energy, nuclear weapons; otherwise, the East would have discovered all this nonsense long ago. And objective methods will not allow you to discover man’s real being. And without knowing man’s real being you can have all the riches of the world, but deep inside you will remain a pauper, miserable. East and West – the objective approach and the subjective approach – both are half. My own effort is that they should become one. There is no need to divide.
Rudyard Kipling has stated, “West is West and East is East, and ne’er the twain shall meet.” He is dead, but sometimes I think to drag him out of his grave and ask him, “Where is the line which divides East from West? They are meeting everywhere.” You are, in comparison to some place, East, in comparison to another place, West. And what nonsense is this, that “ne’er the twain shall meet”? The twain are always meeting on each point, because the same point can be called West and the same point can be called East. Calcutta is East of Bombay, Bombay is West of Calcutta. But Calcutta itself is West of Rangoon, and Rangoon is East of Calcutta.
Rudyard Kipling was the poet laureate of the British empire. To me, he is simply an idiot. East and West are meeting everywhere, except in man. Things become easier; it is only a question of man’s mind. In reality there is no division; the division is only mental.
And in my sannyasins that division has dropped. My sannyasins don’t belong to East or to West. They claim the whole earth as their own.
They claim the objective reality as their own. They claim the subjective world as their own.
To represent this, I have called the new man Zorba the Buddha. Zorba represents the materialist, objective approach. Buddha represents the subjective, spiritual approach.
Divided, both are poor. Neither of them is a full circle. Joined, they become immensely rich. Joined together, they experience the greatest ecstasy that is available to humanity.
Osho,
What is it in a person that draws them to you and to what you represent? On the one hand, it seems that anyone with any intelligence and openness should be here. On the other hand, I can't claim to have found you through being either particularly intelligent or open. It seems I came to you in spite of myself, rather than because of myself.
That’s the right thing to do – coming to me in spite of yourself. Yes, there are people who come because of their openness, receptivity. There are people who come with their intelligence, with their rationality. But these are not going to be closest to me.
You are fortunate that you are here in spite of yourself. That means neither a conviction of the head has brought you here, nor an openness of the heart has brought you here, but something which can only be called a magnetic pull between two beings.
That’s why you are puzzled: it is unexplainable. It is one of the greatest mysteries. Two beings can find each other – pulled against their minds, against their logic, against everything – nothing can prevent them. Something far more powerful than openness, than intelligence has made them aflame.
Yes, there are a few people who are here just in the same way. They will be enriched more than anybody else. They are the blessed ones.
Osho,
Would you talk about Sheela and her gang?
My God! Such an old story. And you must be real lazy and late to ask such a question. I can talk about Adam and Eve – that is far more fresh. But I do not want to waste my time and your time about Sheela and her gang. It is finished.
You said buddha is a state of no-mind. Then how can there be any psychology of the buddhas?
Please explain.
There can only be a psychology of the buddhas. The man who is in the mind cannot be objective about it. It is as if a madman were doing research on madness. Apparently – it looks logical – because he is mad he can do research on madness. But it is not so in reality. Only one who is sane can look at all the dimensions of insanity objectively. The madman is not in a position to see anything, to understand anything.
The same is the situation about the mind. One is in the mind and is trying to create a psychology: it is an impossible task. He can create only a fictitious psychology. That’s why there are so many psychologies; otherwise there can only be one psychology – just as there can be only one physics, one chemistry. There cannot be schools of psychology contradicting each other, refuting each other, arguing against each other, trying to prove themselves the real psychology.
Sigmund Freud has never known anything beyond the mind that can give him the right to study the mind. He is immersed in it, he is it. Who is going to understand it? The understanding is always from the beyond – some distance is needed. So whatever he creates is a beautiful fiction. His own disciples start creating their own fictions. Alfred Adler created another fiction. Carl Gustav Jung created still another fiction. They are all irrelevant. Nobody can prove who is right, because they are all wrong – wrong for the simple reason that living in the mind you cannot look at it from a detached space, which is the basic scientific method.
If you are studying tomatoes, one thing is absolutely necessary: that you should not be a tomato. You can be anything else. The state of the awakened person is a state beyond mind. He can see from the top of the hill into the dark valleys of the mind. The hilltop is full of sunlight. His vision is clear, he has no prejudices, he has no preconceived ideologies. He has left them far behind in the valley where everybody is a bigot, everybody is conditioned, everybody is either a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Buddhist, or a communist.
Everybody has become identified with a certain ideology. He has lost the clarity of vision, he is clouded. And he looks through those clouds, and everything becomes perverted.
Sigmund Freud turns everything into sex. It is not true; everything is not sex. Sex is one of the most significant parts of life, but everything is not sex. But the way of seeing…he has colored glasses on his eyes. Whatever he sees, immediately his mind translates it into some sex symbol.
If he sees these pillars here, they are phallic. You have been sitting by these pillars. You have never thought that these are phallic symbols, that they represent the man’s longing to have a long genitalia. But this long genitalia, the man will have to carry it on a truck ! And what will happen about women? He cannot chase women, he is stuck with his truck.
Anything! Fountain pens, pencils – everything is phallic. He has a cloud over his vision. He himself is over-sexual, too much repressed. His repression is creating a certain smoke, and it is coming out into his writings. They are hilarious! You give him anything, and within minutes it is turned into something sexual. You could not have conceived that this thing can be turned into sexuality. Every hole becomes feminine sexuality. This is not psychology, this is psychopathy.
And one of his disciples, who said that “There are things which are connected with man’s sexuality, but I cannot agree that everything is sexual” – he found another fiction: will to power. For Alfred Adler, psychology simply became synonymous with will to power. Whatever you are doing, it is nothing but will to power. You say, “I have fallen in love” – all wrong. According to him this is a strategy to be powerful over the woman. And that’s why she is trying to escape from you. She knows the real purpose.
But she also cannot escape too far, because she has also the same psychology: she wants power over you. So every husband and wife are continuously in a power struggle. Children and parents are in a power struggle. Students and teachers are in a power struggle. Everywhere the whole business of life is reduced into a power struggle – will to power.
According to Adler, sex becomes nothing but will to power. He was not aware of Eastern literature on sexology, which goes far back – five thousand years old. Vatsyayana’s maxims on sex describe eighty-four postures of lovemaking. But Adler knew only one posture – the missionary posture.
It is called the missionary posture in the East, the man on top. The East became aware for the first time of this brutality when Christian missionaries went there to spread the word of God. People simply laughed. How can a man who is loving, lie on a woman who is delicate, smaller, fragile ? The brute is on top of the beauty – and he does not allow her to move, because to move is not ladylike. That is the meaning of the word lady – a good lay. But a good lay means a dead lay. The woman has to lie down completely dead, and the brute goes on doing exercises, gymnastics, pushups, and this he calls love.
In the East it has been accepted that the woman should be on top. And it seems to be more natural. Man is stronger, more muscular, taller. And it is sexologically also significant that the woman should be moving, because if the man moves and woman remains unmoving, the man comes to his orgasm within seconds, and the woman has not even started yet. He is finished; gets down and goes to sleep. The woman cries, because she is simply being used, and to be used hurts more than anything else. This is not love. You have not taken any care about the woman, what happens to her.
Vatsyayana makes it clear that the man should remain less moving so his orgasm is delayed, and the woman should be moving so they both come to orgasm almost simultaneously.
But Adler saw in the West man on top, and immediately he had another instance, evidence for his psychology, that this lovemaking is nothing but will to power – being on top. The woman is not physically so strong, but she takes her revenge in being bitchy. You can be on top of her for a few seconds, but for twenty-four hours she is bitchy, a pain in the neck.
Love becomes a strange thing in the hands of Adler. It has to fit his idea of psychology. The same is true of Jung, of Assagioli, and so many others. Now there are dozens of schools, and every school pretends that they have found the real science of psychology. None of them is capable of finding real psychology because they don’t fulfill the basic requirement.
The basic requirement is to go beyond mind, because only then you can see the functions of the mind, the subtle activities of the mind, the darkest corners of the mind. From the hilltop of no-mind the whole valley is available to you, you are simply a witness, an objective witness.
Hence, I repeat it again: only buddhas can create authentic psychology. Otherwise, there will be only different schools of psychopathologies.
I can understand your question. Your question is: A man who has reached to the state of no-mind, what can he say about the mind?
You are just putting this no-mind and mind in opposition. No-mind is not opposite to mind. No-mind is beyond mind. It is a clarity, a silence, that can give you the deepest insight into mind. You can look into all the layers of mind, but this is possible only from the highest point.
And because now you are no more in the mess of the mind, you are no more confined by your mind. You have gone beyond boundaries; you cannot only see your mind, you can see mind as such. And unless mind as such is known, psychology will remain just a fictitious game.
From the sunlit peaks you can see all the layers of mind. You are at the highest point. I have called it the cosmic mind, the mind of the whole existence. You are one with it. Just below you is the collective super-conscious mind. Below that is the individual super-conscious mind. Below that is the normal conscious mind. Below that is the unconscious mind. Below that is the collective unconscious mind. And at the very bottom is the cosmic unconscious mind. This is the whole rainbow of mind energy – all the seven colors. The cosmic super-conscious mind and the cosmic unconscious mind are the two ends of the rainbow. And then there are five divisions in between.
We are at the fourth, exactly in the middle. Three are below us, three are above us. If a man goes mad, that means he slips down from the fourth to the third, sometimes even to the second; very rarely, to the first.
A meditator travels upwards: first to the super-conscious mind, then the collective super-conscious mind, and then cosmic super-conscious mind.
This whole rainbow is not available to your so-called psychologists. So whatever they are doing is very fragmentary. And remember one thing: a fragmentary truth is far more dangerous then a lie. A half-truth is worse than a lie, because the lie cannot go on pretending to be true for long; sooner or later you are going to discover it. But the half-truth is dangerous: you can go on believing that this is the whole truth forever. You can be deceived by it.
And the second thing to remember: truth cannot be divided. So the half-truth is again a very beautifully systematized lie.
Just as you cannot have a half-circle – or can you? Verbally there is no problem, but if you look at it closely, a circle can only be complete. The half-circle is not a circle, it is only an arc. Unless it is full, it cannot be called a circle. There are no other kinds of circles, there is only one kind: the full circle.
The same is the case with truth. You cannot have half-truths; they become far more dangerous, poisonous than straightforward lies. And whatever the psychologists are doing is nothing but stretching small fragments to absurdity in order to make them look like the full truth, the whole truth.
I say to you again, only the awakened one, the buddha, can give you a total vision of psychology.
Osho,
Western psychologists say that meditation is a subjective phenomenon and therefore much psychological research is not possible. Do you agree?
I do not agree, because no research is possible. You are saying, “Much psychological research is not possible.” That’s why I do not agree.
Man’s interiority, his subjectivity, cannot be trespassed. There is no way to make it an object of study. Research is absolutely impossible – even search has not been done, and you are thinking of research.
Man can experience his subjectivity on his own, but he cannot invite a researcher to go into him and to find out who he is. This is, by nature, impossible. And it is very fortunate that it is impossible – that your subjectivity, at least, is always private, always your freedom. No trespass is possible.
Yes, one can study one’s own interiority, and one can make an effort to explain in words what he has found within himself. Perhaps that may give you some idea of your own subjectivity – not exactly the same, but some glimpse, or at least the possibility that there is some inner essence in you which needs to be discovered; an encouragement that if somebody else can do it, why cannot you do it? Perhaps his methods of his own inner journey may help you to find methods suitable for yourself. Maybe a little bit modified, changed, but the same methods may be applicable.
But one hundred and twelve methods of going inwards are available, have been for ten thousand years. Not a single method more can be added. The science of inner search is complete. You can just look at those one hundred and twelve methods, and it is my experience and many of my sannyasins’ experience that when you come to the method that will be suitable for you, something immediately rejoices in you – as if something in your heart has been touched, some bell starts ringing within you.
So just going through those one hundred and twelve methods – and each method is described in two lines – you just go slowly and see which method synchronizes with you. Then give it a try. Most probably that will be the method. If by chance you don’t succeed in it, then look again. Some other method may be even more striking. But for the whole of humanity all the methods are there. Symptoms can be told to you: when you come to the method that is going to be your journey, something immediately is lit up in your being. Your mind falls silent, you know – not from any outside authority, but by your own heartbeats – that “This is the method for me.”
And as you start working on the method you will see how relaxing it is, and how simple, smooth. And on each step you will feel yourself more grounded, more rooted – no more phony, no more American, no more plastic. For the first time you will feel you are real, authentic. And as you go deeper with the method, the sense of joy, sensitivity, goes on increasing.
Love, for no reason at all, unaddressed to anybody – just a lovingness surrounds you. And when you reach to the very center of your being there is an explosion of immense light, and a fragrance that you have never known.
Those who are a little receptive may even become aware that something great has happened to you, because your face will take on a certain quality which you can find in the statues of Gautam Buddha. Your eyes, for the first time, will have a magnetism; your gestures will have a grace. Your whole being will be a beauty and a benediction to you and to all. As this experience ripens, you become a blessing to the whole existence.
It is true that no objective research can be done on it, but that does not mean that this subjective world does not exist. That will be a stupid conclusion. It will be like a blind man who cannot see the light; hence he concludes that the light does not exist.
There are things which are objectively available to be studied, but they are always things – not life, not love, not consciousness. All that is great is subjective. And it is one of the greatest misfortunes of humanity that scientists go on insisting that unless you can study something objectively, it does not exist. That means that in the lab of Albert Einstein, everything exists except Albert Einstein. Then who is doing all these experiments? Who is watching and researching, and who is finding electrons and protons and neurons? They all exist because they are objective. Albert Einstein does not exist, because his consciousness is not available to objective study. This is sheer stupidity.
Your eyes cannot hear music; that does not mean that music does not exist. Your ears cannot see light, that does not mean light does not exist. It simply means you are using wrong means – ears to see, eyes to hear.
The method of objective study is for things, matter. And the inward journey – because it is not a research into matter but into consciousness – needs different methods. Those are the methods I am calling meditations.
For the objective world, observation, experiments – these are methods. For the subjective world, witnessing, experiencing – these are the methods.
And one of the fundamental rules of science is that everything exists with its polar opposite. The polar opposite is not contradictory, it is complementary. If love exists, hate exists; if beauty exists, ugliness exists. And if objective reality exists, you cannot deny subjective reality; otherwise, you will be going against the fundamental rule of science itself. Objective reality needs, as a polar opposite to it, a subjective reality. And certainly the same methods cannot be applied to both. Different methods are needed.
Meditation will not help you to find atomic energy, nuclear weapons; otherwise, the East would have discovered all this nonsense long ago. And objective methods will not allow you to discover man’s real being. And without knowing man’s real being you can have all the riches of the world, but deep inside you will remain a pauper, miserable. East and West – the objective approach and the subjective approach – both are half. My own effort is that they should become one. There is no need to divide.
Rudyard Kipling has stated, “West is West and East is East, and ne’er the twain shall meet.” He is dead, but sometimes I think to drag him out of his grave and ask him, “Where is the line which divides East from West? They are meeting everywhere.” You are, in comparison to some place, East, in comparison to another place, West. And what nonsense is this, that “ne’er the twain shall meet”? The twain are always meeting on each point, because the same point can be called West and the same point can be called East. Calcutta is East of Bombay, Bombay is West of Calcutta. But Calcutta itself is West of Rangoon, and Rangoon is East of Calcutta.
Rudyard Kipling was the poet laureate of the British empire. To me, he is simply an idiot. East and West are meeting everywhere, except in man. Things become easier; it is only a question of man’s mind. In reality there is no division; the division is only mental.
And in my sannyasins that division has dropped. My sannyasins don’t belong to East or to West. They claim the whole earth as their own.
They claim the objective reality as their own. They claim the subjective world as their own.
To represent this, I have called the new man Zorba the Buddha. Zorba represents the materialist, objective approach. Buddha represents the subjective, spiritual approach.
Divided, both are poor. Neither of them is a full circle. Joined, they become immensely rich. Joined together, they experience the greatest ecstasy that is available to humanity.
Osho,
What is it in a person that draws them to you and to what you represent? On the one hand, it seems that anyone with any intelligence and openness should be here. On the other hand, I can't claim to have found you through being either particularly intelligent or open. It seems I came to you in spite of myself, rather than because of myself.
That’s the right thing to do – coming to me in spite of yourself. Yes, there are people who come because of their openness, receptivity. There are people who come with their intelligence, with their rationality. But these are not going to be closest to me.
You are fortunate that you are here in spite of yourself. That means neither a conviction of the head has brought you here, nor an openness of the heart has brought you here, but something which can only be called a magnetic pull between two beings.
That’s why you are puzzled: it is unexplainable. It is one of the greatest mysteries. Two beings can find each other – pulled against their minds, against their logic, against everything – nothing can prevent them. Something far more powerful than openness, than intelligence has made them aflame.
Yes, there are a few people who are here just in the same way. They will be enriched more than anybody else. They are the blessed ones.
Osho,
Would you talk about Sheela and her gang?
My God! Such an old story. And you must be real lazy and late to ask such a question. I can talk about Adam and Eve – that is far more fresh. But I do not want to waste my time and your time about Sheela and her gang. It is finished.