WORLD ACADEMY OF CREATIVE SCIENCE, ARTS, AND CONSCIOUSNESS
This academy cannot be only of science because science is only a part of human reality. The academy has to be comprehensive, it has to be for creativity, for art, for consciousness; hence it will have three divisions, major divisions, not separated, but just for arbitrary purposes to be denominated as separate.
The most fundamental thing will be creating methods, techniques, ways of raising human consciousness, and certainly, this consciousness cannot be against the body; this consciousness is residing in the body. They cannot be seen as inimical to each other; in every way, they are supportive. I say something to you and my hand makes a gesture without my telling the hand. There is a deep synchronicity between me and my hand.
You walk, you eat, you drink and all these things indicate that you are a body and consciousness as an organic whole. You cannot torture the body and raise your consciousness. The body has to be loved -- you have to be a great friend. It is your home, you have to clean it of all junk, and you have to remember that it is in your service continuously, day in, day out. Even when you are asleep, your body is continuously working for you digesting, changing your food into blood, taking out the dead cells from the body, bringing new oxygen, fresh oxygen into the body -- and you are fast asleep!
It is doing everything for your survival, for your life, although you are so ungrateful that you have never even thanked your body. On the contrary, your religions have been teaching you to torture it: the body is your enemy and you have to get free from the body, its attachments. I also know that you are more than the body and there is no need to have any attachment. But love is not an attachment, compassion is not an attachment. Love and compassion are absolutely needed for your body and its nourishment. And the better body you have, the more is the possibility for growing consciousness. It is an organic unity.
A totally new kind of education is needed in the world where fundamentally everybody is introduced into the silences of the heart -- in other words into meditations -- where everybody has to be prepared to be compassionate to one's own body. Because unless you are compassionate to your own body, you cannot be compassionate to any other body. It is a living organism, and it has done no harm to you. It has been continuously in service since you were conceived and will be till your death. It will do everything that you would like to do, even the impossible, and it will not be disobedient to you.
It is inconceivable to create such a mechanism which is so obedient and so wise. If you become aware of all the functions of your body, you will be surprised. You have never thought what your body has been doing. It is so miraculous, so mysterious. But you have never looked into it. You have never bothered to be acquainted with your own body and you pretend to love other people. You cannot, because those other people also appear to you as bodies.
The body is the greatest mystery in the whole of existence. This mystery needs to be loved -- its mysteries, its functionings to be intimately inquired into.
The religions have unfortunately been absolutely against the body. But it gives a clue, a definite indication that if a man learns the wisdom of the body and the mystery of the body, he will never bother about the priest or about God. He will have found the most mysterious within himself, and within the mystery of the body is the very shrine of your consciousness.
Once you have become aware of your consciousness, of your being, there is no God above you. Only such a person can be respectful for other human beings, other living beings, because they all are as mysterious as he himself is, different expressions, varieties which make life richer. And once a man has found consciousness in himself, he has found the key to the ultimate. Any education that does not teach you to love your body, does not teach you to be compassionate to your body, does not teach you how to enter into its mysteries, will not be able to teach you how to enter into your own consciousness.
The body is the door -- the body is the stepping stone. And any education that does not touch the subject of your body and consciousness is not only absolutely incomplete, it is utterly harmful because it will go on being destructive. It is only the flowering of consciousness within you that prevents you from destruction. And that gives you a tremendous urge to create -- to create more beauty in the world, to create more comfort in the world. That's why I include art as the second part of the academy. Art is a conscious effort to create beauty, to discover beauty, to make your life more joyful, to teach you to dance, to celebrate.
And the third part is a creative science. Art can create beauty, science can discover objective truth, and consciousness can discover subjective reality. These three together can make any system of education complete. All else is secondary, may be useful for mundane purposes, but it is not useful for spiritual growth, it is not useful to bring you to the sources of joy, love, peace, silence. And a man who has not experienced the inner ecstasy has lived in vain unnecessarily. He vegetated, he dragged himself from the womb to the grave but he could not dance and he could not sing and he could not contribute anything to the world.
According to me a spiritual person is one who contributes to the world some beauty, some joy, some happiness, some celebration which was not there -- something new, something fresh, some more flowers.
Man needs a better body, a healthier body.
Man needs a more conscious, alert being.
Man needs all kinds of comforts and luxuries that existence is ready to deliver. Existence is ready to give you paradise herenow, but you go on postponing it -- it is always after death. "
Osho, Om Shantih Shantih Shantih, Chapter #27
Einstein is the first mystic in the world of science
Science up to the time of Albert Einstein remained very consistent, very logical. Albert Einstein is the first mystic in the world of science; a scientific mysticism he introduced, and he disturbed the whole edifice of the old science. After Albert Einstein, science, particularly physics which was his field of work, is no more the same -- because he accepted contradictions. In fact he said that, "When I had started my work I had thought that life and logic are synonymous -- my work was to solve problems logically -- but as I went deeper I became aware that life is not synonymous with logic: it contains contradictions. And in fact because of those contradictions it is beautiful, because of those contradictions it has a certain tension; that tension gives it aliveness, it gives it possibilities to be dynamic, moving."
And at the end of his life he said, "Now I cannot say that life is a problem. To call life a problem is a logical statement, because a problem means something that can be solved through logic, if not today then tomorrow. Sooner or later logic will find a way and the problem will be dissolved."
Einstein said, just two days before he died that, "Life is no more a problem for me, it is a mystery." Osho
PYTHAGORAS IS THE FIRST EXPERIMENT IN CREATING A SYNTHESIS
Twenty-five centuries have passed since then and nobody else has tried it again. Nobody else before had done it, and nobody else has done it afterwards either. It needs a mind which is both -- scientific and mystic. It is a rare phenomenon. It happens once in a while.
There have been great mystics -- Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra. And there has been great scientists -- Newton, Edison, Einstein. But to find a man who is at home with both worlds, easily at home, is very difficult. Pythagoras is that kind of man -- a class unto himself. He cannot be categorized by anybody else.
The synthesis that he tried was needed, particularly in his days, as it is needed today -- because the world is again at the same point. The world moves in a wheel. The Sanskrit word for 'the world' is SAMSARA. SAMSARA means the wheel. The wheel is big: one circle is completed in twenty-five centuries. Twenty-five centuries before Pythagoras, Atlantis committed suicide -- out of man's own scientific growth. But without wisdom, scientific growth is dangerous. It is putting a sword in the hands of a child.
Now twenty-five centuries have passed since Pythagoras. Again the world is in a chaos. Again the wheel has come to the same point -- it always comes to the same point. It takes twenty-five centuries for this moment to happen. After each twenty-five centuries the world comes into a state of great chaos.
Man becomes uprooted, starts feeling meaningless. All the values of life disappear. A great darkness surrounds. Sense of direction is lost. One simply feels accidental. There seems to be no purpose, no significance. Life seems to be just a by-product of chance. It seems existence does not care for you. It seems there is no life after death. It seems whatsoever you do is futile, routine, mechanical. All seems to be pointless.
These times of chaos, disorder, can either be a great curse, as it happened in Atlantis, or they can prove a quantum leap in human growth. It depends on how we use them. It is only in such great times of chaos that great stars are born.
Pythagoras was not alone. In Greece, Pythagoras and Heraclitus were born. In India, Buddha and Mahavira and many others. In China, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius, Mencius, Lieh Tzu, and many more. In Iran, Zarathustra. In the brahmin tradition, many great Upanishadic seers. In the world of Judaism, Moses.... All these people, these great Masters were born at a certain stage in human history -- twenty-five centuries ago.
Now we are again in a great chaos, and man's fate will depend on what we do. Either we will destroy ourselves like the civilization that destroyed itself in Atlantis -- the whole world will become a Hiroshima; we will be drowned in our own knowledge; in our own science we will commit suicide, a collective suicide. A few, a Noah and a few of his followers, may be saved, or may not be.... Or, there is a possibility that we can take a quantum leap.
Either man can commit suicide, or man can be reborn. Both doors are open.
If such times can create people like Heraclitus and Lao Tzu and Zarathustra and Pythagoras and Buddha and Confucius, why can they not create a great humanity? They can. But we go on missing the opportunity.
The ordinary masses live in such unconsciousness that they can't see even a few steps ahead. They are blind. And they are the majority! The coming twenty-five years, the last part of this century, is going to be of IMMENSE value. If we can create a great momentum in the world for meditation, for the inward journey, for tranquillity, for stillness, for love, for God... if we can create a space in these coming twenty-five years for God to happen to many many people, humanity will have a new birth, a resurrection. A new man will be born.
And once you miss THESE times, then for twenty-five centuries again you will remain the same. A few people will achieve enlightenment, but it will remain only for a few people. Here and there, once in a while, a person will become alert and aware and divine. But the greater part of humanity goes on lagging behind -- in darkness, in utter darkness, in absolute misery. The greater part of humanity goes on living in hell.
But these moments when chaos spreads and man loses his roots in the past, becomes unhinged from the past, are great moments. If we can learn something from the past history, if we can learn something from Pythagoras.... People could not use Pythagoras and his understanding, they could not use his great synthesis, they could not use the doors that he had made available. A single individual had done something immense, something impossible, but it was not used.
I am trying to do exactly the same again; I feel a very deep spiritual affinity with Pythagoras. I am also bringing you a synthesis of East and West, of science and religion, of intellect and intuition, of the male mind and the female mind, of the head and the heart, of the right and the left. I am also trying in every possible way to create a great harmony, because only that harmony can save. Only that harmony can give you a new birth.
But there is every possibility that what was done to Pythagoras will be done to me. And there is every possibility what was done to Pythagoras' followers will be done to my sannyasins. But still, even knowing that possibility, the effort has to be made again. Because this is a valuable time. It comes only once in twenty-five centuries when the wheel can move in a new way, can take a new direction.
You all have to risk, and you have to risk all that you have. And risk it with great joy! because what can be more joyous than to give birth to a new man, to become vehicles for a new man, for a new humanity?
It is going to be painful as every birth is painful. But the pain can be welcomed if you understand what is going to happen through it. If you can see the child coming out of it, then the pain is no more pain -- just as the mother can accept the pain of the child's birth. The pain is irrelevant: her heart is dancing with joy -- she is going to give birth to life, she is being creative. She is making this world more alive; a new child is being born through her. God has used her as a vehicle; her womb has proved fertile. She is happy, in great joy. She rejoices, although the pain is there on the periphery. But when this great joy is there, the pain simply functions as a background and makes the joy even more loud. Remember...
My sannyasins can become an energy womb, an energy field. A great synthesis is happening here. East and West ARE meeting here. And if we can make this impossible thing happen, man will live in a totally different way in the future. He will not need to live in the same old hell. Man can live in love, in peace. Man can live in great friendliness. Man can live a life which is nothing but a celebration. Man can make this earth divine.
Yes: this very earth can become the paradise and this very body the Buddha.
Osho, Philosophia Perennis, Vol I #1 ,
The Greatest Luxury
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