To be Whole is to be Holy
Birthday of famous Physicist Arthur Eddington
28th December 1882 is the birthday of the famous astronomer and physicist Arthur Eddington. He predicted the processes of nuclear fusion in stars in 1920 speculating that the source of stellar energy was the fusion of hydrogen into helium according to Einstein’s equation E = mc^2. His discovery was extraordinary since at that time fusion, thermonuclear energy, and the fact that stars are largely composed of hydrogen had not yet been discovered.
The Eddington Limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, is named in his honor. There is a lunar crater and an asteroid named after him too! He is also credited with formulating the Eddington Number, which is a measure of a cyclist’s long-distance riding achievements
Osho has spoken on Eddington in His discourses. Osho says Eddington has written in his autobiography that “When I started my career as a scientist, I used to think that the world consisted of things, but as I grow old, I am becoming more and more aware that the world does not consist of things but of thoughts.” Osho says Only a mind like Eddington or Einstein can have this glimpse. Ordinary scientists can never reach to this stage. Reality is far more mysterious than you can weigh, measure, than you can experiment with. Reality is not only objective but also subjective. Reality is not only content but also consciousness. Science is coming to a great understanding out of its failure to demystify existence…This is good news!
BELOVED OSHO,
PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND ENERGY.
Prem Naren, modern physics has discovered one of the greatest things ever discovered, and that is: matter is energy. That is the greatest contribution of Albert Einstein to humanity: e is equal to mc2, matter is energy. Matter only appears… otherwise there is no such thing as matter, nothing is solid. Even the solid rock is a pulsating energy, even the solid rock is as much energy as the roaring ocean. The waves that are arising in the solid rock cannot be seen because they are very subtle, but the rock is waving, pulsating, breathing; it is alive.
Friedrich Nietzsche has declared that God is dead. God is not dead — on the contrary, what has happened is that matter is dead. Matter has been found not to exist at all. This insight into matter brings modern physics very close to mysticism, very close. For the first time the scientist and the mystic are coming very close, almost holding hands. Eddington, one of the greatest scientists of this age, has said, “We used to think that matter is a thing; now it is no more so. Matter is more like a thought than like a thing.”
Existence is energy. Science has discovered that the observed is energy, the object is energy. Down the ages, at least for five thousand years, it has been known that the other polarity — the subject, the observer, consciousness — is energy. Your body is energy, your mind is energy, your soul is energy. Then what is the difference between these three? The difference is only of a different rhythm, different wavelengths, that’s all. The body is gross — energy functioning in a gross way, in a visible way. Mind is a little more subtle, but still not too subtle, because you can close your eyes and you can see the thoughts moving; they can be seen. They are not as visible as your body; your body is visible to everybody else, it is publicly visible. Your thoughts are privately visible. Nobody else can see your thoughts; only you can see them — or people who have worked very deeply into seeing thoughts. But ordinarily they are not visible to others.
And the third, the ultimate layer inside you, is that of consciousness. It is not even visible to you. It cannot be reduced into an object, it remains subject. If all these three energies function in harmony, you are healthy and whole. If these energies don’t function in harmony and accord you are ill, unhealthy; you are no more whole. And to be whole is to be holy. The effort that we are making here is how to help you so that your body, your mind, your consciousness, can all dance in one rhythm, in a togetherness, in a deep harmony — not in conflict at all, but in cooperation. The moment your body, mind and consciousness function together, you have become the trinity, and in that experience is God.
Your question is significant, Naren. You ask, “Please say something about the relationship of consciousness and energy.” There is no relationship of consciousness and energy. Consciousness is energy, purest energy; mind is not so pure, body is still less pure. Body is much too mixed, and mind is also not totally pure. Consciousness is total pure energy. But you can know this consciousness only if you make a cosmos out of the three, and not a chaos. People are living in chaos: their bodies say one thing, their bodies want to go in one direction; their minds are completely oblivious of the body — because for centuries you have been taught that you are not the body, for centuries you have been told that the body is your enemy, that you have to fight with it, that you have to destroy it, that the body is sin. Because of all these ideas — silly and stupid they are, harmful and poisonous they are, but they have been taught for so long that they have become part of your collective mind, they are there — you don’t experience your body in a rhythmic dance with yourself.
Hence my insistence on dancing and music, because it is only in dance that you will feel that your body, your mind and you are functioning together. And the joy is infinite when all these function together; the richness is great. Consciousness is the highest form of energy. And when all these three energies function together, the fourth arrives. The fourth is always present when these three function together. When these three function in an organic unity, the fourth is always there; the fourth is nothing but that organic unity. In the East, we have called that fourth simply “the fourth” — turiya; we have not given it any name. The three have names, the fourth is nameless. To know the fourth is to know God. Let us say it in this way: God is when you are an organic orgasmic unity. God is not when you are a chaos, a disunity, a conflict. When you are a house divided against yourself there is no God.
When you are tremendously happy with yourself, happy as you are, blissful as you are, grateful as you are, and all your energies are dancing together, when you are an orchestra of all your energies, God is. That feeling of total unity is what God is. God is not a person somewhere, God is the experience of the three falling in such unity that the fourth arises. And the fourth is more than the sum total of the parts. If you dissect a painting, you will find the canvas and the colors, but the painting is not simply the sum total of the canvas and the colors; it is something more. That “something more” is expressed through the painting, color, canvas, the artist, but that “something more” is the beauty. Dissect the roseflower, and you will find all the chemicals and things it is constituted of, but the beauty will disappear. It was not just the sum total of the parts, it was more.
The whole is more than the sum total of the parts; it expresses through the parts, but it is more. To understand that it is more is to understand God. God is that more, that plus. It is not a question of theology, it cannot be decided by logical argumentation. You have to feel beauty, you have to feel music, you have to feel dance. And ultimately you have to feel the dance in your body, mind, soul. You have to learn how to play on these three energies so that they all become an orchestra. Then God is — not that you see God, there is nothing to be seen; God is the ultimate seer, it is witnessing. Learn to melt your body, mind, soul; find out ways when you can function as a unity.
It happens many times that runners…. You will not think of running as a meditation, but runners sometimes have felt a tremendous experience of meditation. They were surprised, because they were not looking for it — who thinks that a runner is going to experience God? — but it has happened, and now running is becoming more and more a new kind of meditation. It can happen in running. If you have ever been a runner, if you have enjoyed running in the early morning when the air is fresh and young and the whole world is coming back out of sleep, awakening, and you were running and your body was functioning beautifully, and the fresh air, and the new world again born out of the darkness of the night, and everything singing all around, and you were feeling so alive…. A moment comes when the runner disappears, there is only running. The body, mind and soul start functioning together; suddenly an inner orgasm is released.
Runners have sometimes come accidentally on the experience of the fourth, turiya, although they will miss it because they will think it was just because of running that they enjoyed the moment; that it was a beautiful day, that the body was healthy and the world was beautiful, and it was just a certain mood. They will not take note of it. But if they take note of it, my own observation is that a runner can more easily come close to meditation than anybody else. Jogging can be of immense help, swimming can be of immense help. All these things have to be transformed into meditations.
Drop old ideas of meditations, that just sitting underneath a tree with a yoga posture is meditation. That is only one of the ways, and may be suitable for a few people but is not suitable for all. For a small child it is not meditation, it is torture. For a young man who is alive, vibrant, it is repression, it is not meditation.
Source:
Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.
Discourse name: The Book of Wisdom Chapter #23
Chapter title: Behind the Master’s Hands
5 March 1979 am in Buddha Hall
References:
Osho has spoken on scientists like Aristotle, Chamberlain, Copernicus, Darwin, Descartes, Eddington, Edison, Einstein, Euclid, Galileo, Leibnitz, Kepler, Newton, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Ramanujan, Rutherford and many others in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- What Is, Is, What Ain’t, Ain’t
- One Seed Makes the Whole Earth Green
- Sufis: People on the Path Vol.1-2
- The Sun Rises in the Evening
- The Empty Boat
- Dang Dang Doko Dang
- Beyond Psychology
- Zarathustra, the laughing prophet
- From Personality to Individuality
- From Ignorance to Innocence
- Beyond Enlightenment
- The Golden Future
- Philosophia Perennis, Vol 1, 2
