14^Th march is the day when a child with potential of extraordinary brain was born, and today we know him as Albert einstein. He was a German-born theoretical physicist, who developed the theory of relativity. He had also received Nobel prize in 1921 especially for his discovery of the law and photoelectric effect. His intellectual achievements and originality have made the word “Einstein” synonymous with “genius”.

Osho has praised Albert einstein in the context of scientific approach towards life.

Osho says that Only Albert Einstein, through a very different path as a scientist, brought the same message, the same philosophy of the theory of relativity which Mahavira had said 25 centuries back.

Osho also qouted that Albert Einstein in his last days used to say, “Sometimes I suspect my life has been a wastage. I inquired into the farthest of stars and forgot completely to inquire into myself — and I was the closest star.

According to Osho Albert einstein was not a mystic but got very much interested in meditation and religion in his last days of life.

You can choose between these three dimensions. If you choose one dimension you will attain a certain integrity, but because it is one-dimensional it will not be total and it will not be whole. The first dimension is the dimension of science, of the objective world, of objects, things, the other. The second dimension is of aesthetics: the world of music, poetry, painting, sculpture, the world of imagination. And the third dimension is that of religion — subjective, inner.

Science and religion are polar opposites: science is extrovert, religion is introvert. And between the two is the world of aesthetics. It is the bridge; it is both and neither. The world of aesthetics, the world of the artist, is in a way objective — only in a way. He paints, and then a painting is born as an object. It is also subjective, because before he can paint he has to create the painting in his inwardness, in his subjectivity. Before a poet can sing his song, he sings it in his innermost recesses of being. It is sung there first, only then does it move into the outer world. It is scientific in the sense that art creates objects, and it is religious in the sense that whatsoever art creates is first envisioned in one’s own inner being. It is the bridge between science and religion. Religion is absolute inwardness. It is moving into your innermost core, it is subjectivity.

These are the three dimensions.

If you become a scientist and lose contact with aesthetics and religion, you will be a one-dimensional man. You will be only one third; you will not be whole. You may attain to a certain integrity that you will see in a man like Albert Einstein — a certain individuality, a beauty, a truth, but only partial. You can choose to be an artist: you can be a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Beethoven, a Rabindranath, but then too…you will be a little better because aesthetics is the world of in-between, the world of twilight. You will have something of religion in you. Each poet has something of religion in him — he may be aware of it, he may not be aware of it, but no poet can be without some flavor of religion. It is impossible. Even the most atheistic artist is bound to have some kind of religiousness. Without it he will not be a genius. Without it he will remain only a technician, a craftsman, but not an artist. Even a man like Jean-Paul Sartre — who is determinedly an atheist, who will never concede that he is religious — even he is in some way religious. He has created great novels, and those novels and the characters of those novels have great interiority. That interiority has been lived by this man, otherwise he could not write about it. That interiority is experienced.

And the man that moves into aesthetics is bound to have some scientific qualities around him too. He will be more logical than the religious person, more object-oriented than the religious person — less object-oriented than the scientist of course, less logical than the scientist, but more logical than the religious person. He will be in a more balanced state. It is better to move in the world of art because somehow it has something of all the three dimensions — but only something, still it is not total. The religious man is again one-dimensional, just as the scientist is. Albert Einstein is one-dimensional, so is Gautama the Buddha. And because the East has become one-dimensionally religious it has suffered much. And now the West is suffering much, and the cause is one-dimensionality. The West is bankrupt as far as the inner world is concerned and the East is bankrupt as far as the outer world is concerned. The East is not accidentally poor and starving. It has chosen to be that way. It has denied science; it has even denied the world of objective reality. It says the world is illusory. If the world is illusory, how can you create a science? The very first requirement is missing…

The East has suffered much because of one-dimensionality. And now the West is suffering again for the same reason: one-dimensionality. The West has chosen to be scientific at the cost of being religious. Now God is denied, the soul is denied. Man is reduced first to an animal and now to a machine. Man loses all glory, all grandeur. Man loses all hope, all future. The moment man loses his interiority he loses depth, he becomes superficial. The Western man is rich as far as things are concerned, but is very poor as far as soul is concerned — inwardly poor, outwardly rich. This is the state of affairs right now. And between these two a few artists exist who have something of both the dimensions. But even the artist is not satisfied, because he is something of both but he is neither a scientist nor a religious person — just having a few glimpses of both the worlds. He remains in a kind of limbo; he never settles, he remains a vagabond. He moves like a shuttle between these two worlds. He does not contribute much: because he is not a scientist he cannot contribute scientifically and he is not religious so he cannot contribute religiously. At the most his art remains decorative; at the most it can make life a little more beautiful, a little more comfortable, convenient. But that is not much.

I propose the fourth way. The true man will be all three simultaneously: he will be a scientist, an artist, and religious. And I call the fourth man the spiritual man.

That’s where I differ from Albert Einstein and Gautam Buddha and Picasso — from them all. You must remember my differences. Buddha is one-dimensional — tremendously beautiful! As far as his own inner world is concerned he is the greatest master, the master of the inner, unsurpassable, but he remains one-dimensional. He attains to immense peace, silence, bliss, but does not contribute to the world in any objective way. Albert Einstein contributes to the world in a very objective way, but cannot contribute anything of the inner — hence his contribution becomes a curse. He suffered his whole life because he was the man who proposed that atom bombs should be made. He had written a letter to the American president: “Now it is time — unless atom bombs are made the war can go on for years and years and will be very destructive. Just making the atom bombs, the very threat of it, will stop the war.” But once the power — any kind of power — reaches into the hands of the politicians, you cannot control them, you cannot prevent them from using it. The politician is the most stupid kind of person — monkeyish, power-mad.

Once the atom bomb was in the hands of the American politicians it had to be dropped somewhere. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, were bound to happen. And when they happened it was a wound, a great wound, for Albert Einstein. He repented his whole life. In the last moments, when somebody asked him, “Would you like to become a scientist again if God gives you an opportunity to be born in the world again?” He said, “No, certainly no, absolutely no! I would like rather to be a plumber than to be a physicist, a scientist. Enough is enough! I have not been a blessing to the world, I have been a curse.” He enriched the outer world certainly, but without inner growth, the outer growth creates a lopsidedness. You possess many things, but you don’t possess yourself. You have all that can make you happy but you are not happy, because happiness cannot be derived from your possessions. Happiness is an inner welling-up; it is an awakening of your own energies. It is an awakening of your soul.

Buddha contributed tremendously to the subjective dimension. He is a master par excellence. Whatsoever he says is absolutely true, but it is one-dimensional — never forget it.

My effort here is to create the fourth way: a man who joins all these three dimensions of life into himself, who becomes a trinity, a trimurti, who has all these three faces of God to him. Who has as much of a logical mind as is needed by science and who is also as poetic as is needed by aesthetics, and who is also as meditative and watchful as is proposed by the buddhas. The fourth man is the hope of the world. The fourth way is the only possibility if man is to survive. If man is still to exist on this earth, we have to find a great synthesis between these three dimensions.

And if all these three dimensions are meeting, merging, melting into one, of course that synthesis is the fourth. I am speaking on Buddha, on Mahavira, on Jesus, on Patanjali, on Lao Tzu, and many more. But always remember that all these people are one-dimensional. I want to enrich your life through their teachings, but I don’t end with them. I would like you to go a little deeper into other dimensions too.

Hence the new commune is going to be a meeting place of East and West, of the subjective and the objective. In the new commune we are going to have scientists, artists, poets, painters, singers, musicians, meditators, yogis, mystics — all kinds of people pouring their energies into one great river. And that’s how I would like the whole world to be.

Buddha is to be incorporated in it, that’s why I am speaking on him. And, of course, the third dimension, the religious, is one of the most important, the most important dimension. Without it everything is soulless.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.

Discourse name:

The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 1

Chapter title: By watching.…
Chapter #7
27 June 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