The first question:

Osho,
I know that you love contradictions. A lot of it I can accept now as two sides of one coin. But today after lecture some questions still arose.
On the one side you say the good and the bad are two sides of the same coin and both have to be and the one can’t be without the other. On the other side you want to create a better world with your sannyasins.
On the one side you tell us not to think in terms of the future. On the other side you are talking about the coming third world war.
On the one side you tell us not to wish anything. On the other side it seems you want to avoid the third world war.
On the one side you say things are okay as they are, there is no goal, nothing to achieve, to change. On the other side: what are you doing here? What are we doing here?
I can feel there is an answer, but I can’t point it out. Can you?

It is not that I love contradictions – life is contradictory. Existence itself is possible only through contradictions. It is the mind that has been trained in Aristotelian logic that becomes disturbed because of contradictions. The Aristotelian logic gives you a linear mind, a one-dimensional mind. It says: A can only be A and can never be B, and B can only be B and can never be A, and for two thousand years our minds have been conditioned by this logic.

This logic never had any sway over the mystics, and now even scientists are escaping from the Aristotelian prison. If you want to be true to life you cannot be a follower of Aristotle; to be true to life you will have to say things as they are. If you want to be true to Aristotle then you will have to repress a few things of life, deny, at least avoid, not look at them, choose only what fits with your logic.

The whole world has existed up to now according to one-dimensional logic – and existence is multidimensional, it is rooted in contradictions. In fact, to call it a contradiction is again to use a word from Aristotle.

The mystics use the word paradox, not contradiction. In the very word contradiction there is condemnation; something is wrong, something has to be put right. But a paradox is a totally different phenomenon; nothing has to be put right. A paradox is a mystery, elusive, inexplicable.