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Sobre el Libro From Unconsciousness to Consciousness
Osho’s first words spoken after a period of three years of silence herald a completely new dimension to his work. It is as if he has drawn a sword and slices through the deceit of history. Man, his politics and so-called religion are all totally exposed. Responding to questions solely from his disciples, Osho talks on the psychology of a creed based on following; the question of belief in God; whether Osho is a messiah or not; the attitude of traditional holy men towards women; his understanding of the political mind-set; how he feels about Communism, why his sannyasins lead such a rich life, why their happiness is attributed to their being brainwashed or hypnotized, and many more.
Reseñas
"You just don’t read Osho, you undefine yourself."
The Book Reader, USA
Del LibroFrom Unconsciousness to Consciousness
Meditation -- the Science of Awareness
Osho, From Unconsciousness to Consciousness, Chapter 19
Osho,
What is the difference between science, art and religion?
Science discovers, art invents, religion does both. The true religion discovers; the pseudo-religion invents.
And down the ages it is the pseudo-religion that has prevailed over the human mind. It is nothing but fiction. It is closer to art, and absolutely against science. That’s why there has never been a conflict between art and religion. They were, deep down, doing the same thing.
Art was inventing objectively, and the so-called religion was inventing subjectively. They could join together very easily because their game was the same. And they joined hands all over the world. Art served the so-called religion for centuries. The beautiful churches, synagogues, temples -- for thousands of years art was doing nothing but serving religion.
If you see the temples of Khajuraho in India.
Once there were one thousand temples in that place; now only ruins are there, but twenty or thirty temples are still intact, have survived. Just to see one temple you will need the whole day. It is so full of art, every nook and corner. It must have taken hundreds of years for thousands of sculptors to make one temple.
You cannot find a single inch of space in the whole temple which has not been artistically created. One temple has thousands of statues on the outside of the temple, and that is the same about the remaining other thirty, and the same must have been true about the ruins of one thousand temples. Even in the ruins you can find treasures of art. I don’t think there has ever been such beauty created out of stone anywhere else in the world.
The structure of every temple is almost the same. On the outer side of the temple, the outer wall, there are what are called "mithun statues" -- men and women naked, loving, making love, in all the possible postures one can imagine or dream of. The only posture that is missing is known in India as the missionary posture -- man on top of woman: only that is missing -- that was brought by Christian missionaries. Otherwise the whole idea, to the Indian mind, looked ugly -- that the man should be on top of the woman. Seems to be unfair. The woman is more fragile, and this beast is on top of the beauty. No, Indians have never thought of that posture as human. In India it is known as the missionary posture because the first time they saw it, it was Christian missionaries in that posture; otherwise they had no idea that this could be done.
But, except that, you will find all kinds of postures, because in India sexology has existed at least for five thousand years. The oldest sexual scripture is five thousand years old -- Vatsyayana’s Kamasutras. And in the time of Vatsyayana, writing sutras on sex -- kama means sex -- maxims for sex, guidelines for sex, was not thought to be a bad act; Vatsyayana is respected as one of the great seers of India, and it is said that only a seer like Vatsyayana could have given those beautiful sutras. They reveal the intricacies and the mysteries of the energy of sex, and how it can be transformed.
These temples in Khajuraho have, on the outer side, beautiful women, beautiful men, and all in love postures. Inside there are no love postures. Inside you will find the temple empty, not even a statue of God. The idea is that unless you pass through your sexuality with full awareness, in all its phases, in all its dimensions -- unless you come to a point when sex has no meaning for you only then you enter the temple. Otherwise you are outside the temple, your interest is there.
So that was a symbol that if you are still interested in sex, then the temple is not for you. But the message is not against sex; it is the outer wall of the temple, the temple is made of it, and you have to pass through the door and go beyond. And the beyond is nothing but utter emptiness.
How many artists, craftsmen, sculptors, were employed to create one thousand temples, a whole city of temples, how many years it took! -- and this is not only one place: there is Ajanta, a group of caves which Buddhists created. The whole mountain for miles they have carved caves inside the mountain. And inside the caves you will find tremendous work of art, everything is beautiful. Buddha’s whole life in stone. The first cave you enter, you find the birth of Buddha. And those are not small caves; each cave is at least four times bigger than this room. They have been carved in solid stone.
The whole life of Buddha slowly unfolds in each cave, and in the last cave Buddha is sleeping. The statue must be as long as this room. It is the last moment of his life, when he asked his disciples, "If you have to ask any questions, ask me; otherwise I am going into eternal sleep -- forever." He has not even a pillow, just his hand used as a pillow. But such a huge statue, and so beautiful!
There are the Ellora caves, again carved into the mountains. There are Hindu temples in Jagganath Puri, in Konarak. You cannot imagine for centuries what art has been doing. The beautiful cathedrals of Europe, and all the great artists Michelangelo.
What were these people doing? They were serving religion.
There was never a conflict anywhere in the world between religion and art.
To me that signifies that the religion was pseudo; both were fictitious. There was no intrinsic opposition, they were moving in the same line of invention. Of course the artist was doing a far more authentic job, far more sincere than the priest, because what he was inventing was absolute fiction. There was no ground for it. His God was fiction, his heaven and hell were fiction. And these fictions have to be according to different people, where the religion existed.
For example, in Tibet you can’t have the same kind of heaven as in India, obviously. India is a hot country, so hot that the heaven has to be air-conditioned. Of course the word was not available at the time, but the description is absolutely of air-conditioning. It says, "Twenty-four hours a day cool air, fresh, fragrant, like spring. It is never summer, it is never the rainy season. It is never cold winter; just a cool -- not cold, but cool -- atmosphere all the year round. And it is always spring." But the Tibetan priest cannot accept it. They are so tortured by cold, their heaven is warm, heated -- it is never cold. They don’t even mention cool, because to the people of Tibet even cool is not acceptable. It has to be warm.
In Tibetan scriptures it says, "You must take at least one bath per year." When the Dalai Lama and his people started escaping from Tibet to India, many of them came to see me. Habits die hard: they were not taking baths or showers, even in India, and they were using the same kind of clothes that they were using in Tibet. I had to tell them, "I am very allergic to smells, so you sit in the other corner of the room, unless you learn how to clean your body and change your clothes every day." They said, "Every day! But the religious scriptures say once a year is enough!"
It is going to be a different fiction in different countries. In Mohammedan countries, homosexuality was very prevalent -- is still prevalent. Strange, but it shows a significant fact about the human mind. The greatest punishment also is for a homosexual act if you are found out. You just have to be beheaded; there is no lesser punishment for it. Still it is the most prevalent thing, so prevalent that in the Koran the provision is made in heaven for the great religious sages: beautiful women are available, beautiful boys are also available. These are all fictions suiting the particular mind, climate, country, having no foundation in reality.
Reality has not to be invented, it has to be discovered. It is already there.
Hence science discovers, and true religion also discovers.
But up to now, the religions that have been in existence in the world -- Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism -- they never felt any conflict with art, but they all felt tremendous antagonism towards science. Nobody has noted the fact. Why are they not against art, and why are they against science? -- because with art they can find some similarity. They can use art but they cannot use science, and they don’t find the basic similarity. In fact they find science is doing just the opposite. They are inventing, they are creating something imaginary; science’s whole work is to uncover the true, the real, that which is.
Now, if science goes on succeeding, then the pseudo-religion becomes afraid, because the fiction will not be able to stand in front of truth. There will be no possibility of its winning -- even standing before truth is impossible.
I have loved this story very much.
One day darkness approached God and said, "I have never done any wrong to the sun, but it goes on torturing me. Wherever I go, it reaches, and I have to escape from there. I cannot even rest. I don’t want to complain, but enough is enough. How long is it going to go on? And I am absolutely innocent. I have not done anything against the sun, I have not said anything against the sun. This is for the first time I am talking about it."
God immediately ordered that the sun should be called. The sun was called, and God asked him, "Why are you torturing and bothering darkness?"
The sun said, "What are you talking about? I have never met anything called darkness." And God looked around: where had the darkness gone? It had disappeared. The sun said, "Whenever you can manage to bring darkness in front of me, I am ready to apologize or whatsoever you say. But I don’t know perhaps without knowing, in unawareness I may have hurt him. But at least let me see the person -- the person who is complaining against me."
The story says that the file of the case against the sun by darkness is still lying there. God has not been able to bring both sides together in front of him. Sometimes he succeeds and darkness comes; sometimes he succeeds and sun comes; but he has not been able to bring both together, and unless both are present the case cannot be decided.
How can darkness come to face the sun? -- because darkness has no existence, it is just absence of light. So where the presence of light is, the absence cannot exist, cannot stand. And that is what pseudo-religion has been doing: creating fictions, exploiting people -- their imagination, their fear, their greed, their misery, their suffering, their poverty, everything. But the moment science started discovering things every religion became very alert, and ready to stop science in every possible way, because if truth is revealed, the untruth dies by itself; there is no need to kill it. It simply disappears.
Hence I say to you that now is the time for the first religion to happen.
For three hundred years the pseudo-religions have been fighting against science. Now they are tired, fed up, and know perfectly well that science is going to win; it has already won.
So the old religions have lost their ground. You have to understand it. What you see in the churches and in the synagogues and in the mosques and in the temples, is the dead body of the religion that once was alive. It is only a corpse. But they are pretending that it is alive, hoping against hope that some miracle is going to happen. But no miracle ever happens. And no miracle is going to happen. Science has taken firm roots.
Now, if you want anything in the world to be called religion, then you have to start from ABC, from the very scratch: a religion which is a science, and not a fiction.
Just as science discovers in the objective world, outside, religion discovers in the inner world.
What science is to the objective existence, religion is to the subjectivity.
Their methods are exactly the same. Science calls it observation, religion calls it awareness. Science calls it experiment, religion calls it experience. Science wants you to go into the experiment without any prejudice in your mind, without any belief. You have to be open, available. You are not going to impose anything on reality. You are just going to be available to the reality whatsoever it is, even if it goes against all your ideas. You have to drop those ideas -- but the reality cannot be denied.
The scientific endeavor is risking your mind for reality, putting your mind aside for reality. Reality counts, not what you think about it. Your thinking may be right or may be wrong, but the reality will decide it. Your mind is not going to decide what is right and what is wrong.
The same is the situation of an authentic religion, a scientific religion.
If I am allowed, I would like to describe science as two dimensions, the outer and the inner. The word religion can be dropped. You have two sciences: one, objective science; another, subjective science.
And that’s what is going to happen; whether you call it a religion or science does not matter -- names don’t matter, but the methodology is exactly the same: you should not go in with a belief. No believer is ever going to know the truth. To believe is to miss.
You have to put aside your ideology. Howsoever beautiful it looks, howsoever systematic it looks, howsoever philosophical you have made and decorated it, you have to put it aside and see within. That’s the whole method of meditation, awareness, watchfulness.
Meditation, in short, is putting your mind aside.
So the people who say that meditation is a discipline of the mind are absolutely wrong. It is not a discipline of the mind, because if you discipline the mind, it is going to become stronger. It is better to put it aside when it is weaker, undisciplined. Once it is disciplined it is going to give you a tough fight.
So it is more difficult for somebody who has been practicing concentration, because concentration is a mind phenomenon. Yes, it gives you a better mind, a disciplined mind, more penetrating. But to put aside this mind will be very difficult. First, you have given it strength, you have given it a certain crystallization. That’s what happened to Gurdjieff and his whole school. It was a discipline of the mind. He called it crystallization, a very right word.
The ordinary mind is a mess, a chaos. Gurdjieff’s discipline gives you a crystallized mind, together, centered. And he was thinking that the more your mind is crystallized, the more you are coming closer to home. There he was wrong. A crystallized mind starts having certain powers. For example, it can read somebody’s thoughts, which the ordinary mind cannot do. It cannot read its own thought -- how to read somebody else’s thoughts!
But crystallization is not easy. It is a difficult and long process -- years of work, work which will look absolutely unnecessary to you, but you have to do it because the teacher says so. For example, Gurdjieff’s disciples will be told to dig a trench one mile long, and all the disciples are digging the trench the whole day, and by the evening, Gurdjieff comes to look at it and he says, "Fill it up. Only then will you get food. I should not find it there when I come for my morning walk."
Now, absurd ! This man is mad, you will think. He was not mad; he was working very accurately, mathematically. The disciples started filling the trench. The whole day they were digging, the whole day they were thinking, "Why is this being dug?" Now they are thinking, "Why is it being filled again?" And nobody knows -- tomorrow morning he may say, "Dig it again." That man was known to do that.
What he is trying to do is to make you not the ordinary weak mind, who needs all kinds of argument, convictions to go into anything then too, it never goes. He is trying to teach you that you need not bother about why. That is the teacher’s job, to think; your job is to do. And if a person goes on this way, year in year out, he strangely finds things happening in himself which have never happened before. For example, you are passing by his side and suddenly he reads your thought.
It happened: One of my students, when I was teaching in the university, was very interested in Gurdjieff. So he asked me, "I am not asking whether Gurdjieff is right or wrong. Please just explain to me what the methodology is that Gurdjieff was using, and how I can use it."
I said, "If that is so, I can explain to you the method. But l am not responsible for what happens to you then."
He said, "Of course you are not responsible."
" Because you are not giving me even a chance to say whether it is right or wrong; you simply want to know." I said, "Just as a professor, I am telling you this is the method. You practice it. The method is simple. Do anything, for example jogging. There comes a moment when you feel you cannot jog any more; now, that is the moment you have to jog. And suddenly you will be surprised that if you continue jogging there is a new release of energy cand you were feeling that it was impossible to jog any more."
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