The more you know it, the less you know it

Question 1:

Prem Oscar, the scientific analysis of the mind, or more particularly of the brain, has nothing to do with my work with the New Man and the new humanity. The brain is part of the body; it dies with the body, it is born with the body. My work consists of provoking in you that which has been before birth and that which will remain even after your death. My concern is with your immortality. Hence, the difference is tremendous.

Scientists have not yet come to accept that which is beyond matter. Their whole work remains confined to material existence. They don't think you have a soul; they don't conceive of you as a spiritual being. And that is one of the most dangerous things about science: it destroys your basic dignity. It also destroys your most fundamental mystery.

What Robert Bly is talking about is very mundane. It is the analysis of how man"s brain has developed from the reptile to the mammalian. And now there is a third layer growing which he thinks is the transcendental. The transcendental, by its very nature, means that which is beyond the mind. The brain cannot have any layer for the transcendental.

It is true that the brain has three divisions. The first is certainly concerned with survival. You can give it any name - the reptile brain. It is very basic, because unless you survive, nothing else is possible. The second is mammalian. That reminds me of Jesus, when he says, "You cannot live by bread alone." The bread is absolutely needed, but just bread is not enough for human beings. They need art, they need music, they need philosophy, they need religion, they need civilization; their needs grow to much greater heights than just survival. The third brain that is still growing consists not of the transcendental, as Robert Bly speaks of, it consists only of an effort to know the unknown - not the transcendental, but only the unknown.

There is a difference to be understood between the unknown and the transcendental. The transcendental is the unknowable: whatever you do, you will never be able to know it. You can experience it, you can have it, you can dance it, you can sing it, you can drink it, but you cannot make it part of your mind and part of your knowledge. But there is much that is still unknown; perhaps it is almost infinite, that which is unknown.

The third layer is trying to move into the unknown. And its effort is how to make the unknown known.

The whole scientific endeavor is to demystify existence, to make everything known - nothing remains unknown. And science accepts only the division between the two; the whole existence is divided into the known and the unknown.

The known is every day growing more and more as science progresses, and the unknown goes on diminishing. But the unknown is the infinite. It will go on diminishing, but I don't think that there will come a day when science will be able to say, "Now there is no unknown left any more; our work is finished, we can close shop."

Even just for argument"s sake, if it can be accepted that there may be a possibility that all the unknown becomes known, then too, there is a third dimension which science has been consistently denying. And that third dimension is my work. It is the work of all the buddhas of all the ages, of all the mystics, of all those who are really concerned with the essence of existence. The third category is of the unknowable; hence, the word "mysticism". Hence the word "mystic" - it is just the polar opposite of the scientist.

Science tries to demystify existence, and the mystic tries to destroy all demystifications - and to uncover the mystery again, in its immense beauty and glory, in its wonder, and in its splendor. The mystic"s work is of a totally different dimension; it is not of the brain, not of the mind - it is beyond the capacity of both.

Meditation is the way to go beyond mind and to enter into the dimension of the unknowable. And because science is not willing to accept the unknowable, it is harming the whole of humanity, because unless you accept the possibility of the unknowable, meditation is meaningless. Meditation gains meaning only if there is the third category of the unknowable, because meditation is a means to the unknowable.

If you, from the very beginning, deny the unknowable, you are not going to accept the possibility of meditation.

And this is the blindness of science. In other words, this is scientific superstition. Man has suffered long from religious superstitions; now he is suffering from scientific superstitions. My work is to rid man of all superstitions: scientific, religious, political. Whatever their name may be, a superstition is a superstition.

Science has no reasons, no arguments, no evidence to deny meditation, but it still goes on denying it. Its very denial is so unscientific, so laughable, so ridiculous. The scientist does not understand a very simple phenomenon; that by denying meditation, by denying the unknowable, he is denying himself. He is saying, "I am a robot"; he is saying, "There is nothing like consciousness in me." He is saying, "I am only matter, and a by-product of matter." The moment man becomes just a by-product of matter, then what is the harm in being cannibals? Whenever you have a chance, you can eat each other without any difficulty. Just a by-product of matter ....

It is an old story, that people can"t see their own defects. It is not only applicable to people, it is also applicable to all that man has created. Religions are incapable of seeing their own defects. Strangely enough, Judaism cannot see the defect that is intrinsic to it - Buddhism can see it. Buddhism cannot see the defect on which it is based - Jainism can see it. And so the merry-go-round goes on.

Everybody is capable of seeing the straw in the other"s eye, and nobody is able to see the camel in his own eye; we become immune to our own defects.

That was the fallacy of all the religions. That"s why they failed humanity; they could not help. They had immense potential, but it was not used because of their superstitions; it was all lost in the desert.

They became so much involved in protecting their superstitions that they became uncreative, only protective, defensive. The same is now happening with science, the same story. Now science is very much afraid of anybody showing the defect in its basic structure.

The New Man will be free from the old religion, and will be also free from the old science. He will be simply free from any superstitious approach to life. He will have an open approach, without any prejudice. He will be available to any dimension, for any inquiry.

Religion used to say to science, "This is not possible because it is not written in the BIBLE." The BIBLE was the prejudice in the West; how can it be possible if it is not written in the BIBLE? The religions were not ready to go beyond their scriptures. Again it seems that man goes round in a circle ....

Science has suffered so much from the hands of the religious people. Just within this century it has been able to get out of the prison. But it seems that prison is something natural; although the scientists are out of the prison of religion, they have created their own prison, just out of old habit. Now if anything goes against their scientific researches up to now, or if anything goes against the foundations of science, without any enquiry they immediately deny it; they don't even give an opportunity to look into the matter. It is the same stubbornness, the same adamant, prejudiced outlook which they have borrowed from religion.

Robert Bly is just a writer about science. He has no idea that science is not all - there is much more to life.

All that I want is to make man capable of remaining open and vulnerable to everything, whether it is according to his belief system or not. It may destroy his whole belief system, but if it is true, the New Man will go with truth.

There are only two possibilities: either you are ready to go with truth, or you drag truth behind yourself. That"s what has been done up to now. Religions have been trying to drag truth according to their opinion; truth has to be according to their ideology, their prejudice. Now science is doing the same stupidity. Now everything has to be according to science.

Life is neither confined to religions, nor is it confined to science. Religion was created by the man of old, science is created by modern man. But life is far bigger than the ancient man or the modern man or the future man - life will always remain bigger. And to accept the possibility of oneself always being in the wrong, makes one humble.

The New Man will be absolutely humble before truth. His devotion will not be to any prejudice - scientific or religious - his devotion will be wholeheartedly for whatever is true. He will be ready to drop all kinds of prejudices, all belief systems, all hypotheses, if he comes to feel that there is some truth which is beyond all that he has been thinking up to now. The New Man will be ready to go into the unknowable.

The unknowable is not part of the mind. The unknowable is available to your being, to your consciousness, to the hidden sources of your life.

Except meditation, nothing can help you to drink out of the living sources of life. The spring is within you. It is not in the brain, it is not in the mind, it is not in the body; it is somewhere far deeper, beyond time and beyond space. To me, meditation is the only possibility to destroy all superstitions and to make man free to seek and search without any preconceived ideology.

Prem Oscar, the New Man will use science for survival; more than that is not the purpose of science.

It can give you better bread, better technology, better machines, better medicines. The New Man will use it as a survival measure.

The mammalian mind will be used for entertainment: for art, painting, music, dance, drama - any dimension that makes your life richer and more decorated. And the New Man will use the third layer of the mind to search hidden layers of reality, unknown spaces of reality.

But these are only three divisions of the mind. The New Man will also use the fourth; he will use meditation to get beyond mind and to see as a pure observer and a witness the miracle of existence, the mystery which cannot be demystified. In fact the more you enter into it, the more mysterious it becomes. In other words the more you know it, the less you know it. The day you know it, you don't know it at all.

Question 2:

Deva Dwabha, the fear you are suffering from is rooted in every being. It is bound to be so, because every day we know someone dies and we know that we are standing in the same queue. And whenever someone dies we are moving in the queue, closer to death. Soon we will be at the window to take a ticket to get out of existence.

The poet is right when he says, "Don't send anybody to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."

When someone dies, there is an old tradition: in the churches the bells start tolling to inform the whole village, "Someone is dead - come back from your farms, your gardens, your orchards." It is a call to people that somebody has died and he has to be given the last send-off. But the poet is perfectly right, "Don't send anyone to ask for whom the bell tolls, it always tolls for thee." Whenever someone dies you are reminded again that you are a mortal being, that death can take possession of you any moment.

This is the root fear; all other fears are reflections of it. If you go deep down into any fear, you will find the fear of death.

You are asking, "I feel like I am buried alive under my fear." Everybody is in the same situation. You are fortunate that you have become aware of it, because if you are aware, you can come out. And if you are unaware then there is no possibility of coming out.

You say, "I have always been so desperately trying to be someone special to hide this fear, running further and further away from myself until I don't know any more what it means to be real."

Do you think the people who are special are doing something else? The presidents and the prime ministers and the kings and the queens - do you think they are in a different boat? Just look around and you will find them all in the same boat. They are all trying to be special in the hope that perhaps if they are special, life will treat them differently than it treats ordinary people. Obviously it cannot treat a president of a country the same way it treats a shoemaker.

But they are absolutely wrong. Life makes no discriminations ... presidents or shoemakers, toilet cleaners or prime ministers, it does not matter at all as far as life is concerned. Death knocks them off with equality. Death is the only communist in the world; it does not care whether you have money or you are a beggar, you are educated or uneducated.

You cannot say, "Just wait, I am qualified enough. You cannot behave the way you behave with uneducated people. Just wait a little ... I am a police commissioner of Poona, you cannot behave this way. First, give me a notice and I will consider. And you have to follow a certain discipline decided by me." Whether you are a police commissioner or just a stray dog, it makes no difference - death comes and makes everybody equal.

But the desire is that if you are special existence will treat you with some kindness, some compassion. It will think twice, "The man is a Nobel Prize winner, you should just give him a little more life. The poor fellow is a great painter, you should not blow out his candle just the way you do with everybody else."

This is the hidden hope, unconscious hope, why everybody goes on trying to be special. But it is absolutely foolish and absurd. Just look back at what has happened to the millions of kings and millions of queens who were so powerful ....

Before death everybody is absolutely powerless.

In Jaina scriptures there is a very beautiful story. In India there is a myth that if a man becomes a world conqueror he has a special name - for no ordinary king, not even an emperor. He is called a chakravartin. It means that the wheel of his chariot can move around the earth anywhere, nobody can hinder it. He is all-powerful.

The story is about one chakravartin, and because he is a chakravartin ... the myth says that in heaven the chakravartins are treated in a special way.

There is a golden mountain ... the Himalayas is nothing but a very small toy in comparison to the gold mountain called Sumeru. Only chakravartins have the special privilege of signing their name on the gold mountain.

And when this chakravartin died, he was so excited ... to sign on the gold mountain in heaven is the greatest privilege that any human being can ever attain. But what is the use if you are alone there to see it? So he managed that his whole court - his queen, his friends, his generals - should all commit suicide immediately, the moment he dies, so that they all reach heaven simultaneously. He wanted to sign on the gold mountain as nobody else had ever done before. Signing alone, there is not even a witness - what is the joy in it? He must have been a perfect exhibitionist.

Because of his orders, all his friends, his queens, the members of his court, his generals, all committed suicide as he died and they all entered the gates of heaven together. The gatekeeper stopped them and he said, "Let the chakravartin go alone first to sign on the mountain."

But they said, "We have committed suicide only for a simple purpose: we want our chakravartin to sign before all of us. His queens are here, his generals are here, his wise counselors are here, his ministers are here ... and we have even sacrificed our life just to see him sign. You cannot prevent us."

But the gatekeeper said to the chakravartin, "Forgive me, I have been on this post for centuries and before that, my father, and before that, my grandfather; this post has been occupied by my forefathers since the very beginning of time. And I have heard from my elders, "Never allow any chakravartin to go to the mountain in front of others because he will repent it very badly later on."

And the chakravartins all insist .... You are not the first who has brought a whole army with him; almost every chakravartin has done the same.

"So I simply want you to remember that you will repent if I allow these people. I have no problem, you can have some time to think it over. You are new, you don't know what the experience is going to be. I have seen many chakravartins coming and going and they have all thanked me afterwards and said, "You are very kind that you prevented everybody else and sent me alone.""

The chakravartin thought, "What to do? because I do not know what is actually going to happen, and this man seems to be authentic and sincere and he has no reason to prevent me unnecessarily .... There is no harm if these people go and see, but I don't know what actually is going to happen, so it is better to listen to his advice." So he stopped everybody at the gate, he took the instruments from the gatekeeper to go and sign on the gold, and he went inside the gate towards the mountain.

He could not believe ... such beauty! As far as he could see there was all gold and gold - mountain peaks reaching so high that the Himalayas certainly looked like a toy.

As he came closer to find a place to sign, he was shocked because there was no space! The whole mountain was signed, because we have been here for eternity; millions and millions of chakravartins have died. He was thinking, "I am very special and there is not even a little space left on this big mountain."

He moved around - no space anywhere. And then he came across another person, the mountain keeper. He said, "Don't waste your time. Even if you go in search for a millennium, you will not find any empty space; all space is filled."

So the chakravartin said, "Where am I going to sign?"

The mountain keeper said, "For centuries I have been serving here. My father has served here - from the very beginning my family has been at this job. And I have heard from my forefathers the same story, that whenever any chakravartin had come, there was no space. So the only way that has been found is: erase one of the names and sign your name, and forget all about being special.

It is such a vast existence. That"s why the gatekeeper has prevented the army that you had brought; before all those people you would have lost all pride. You can just erase ... I will help, I am here."

The whole joy was gone, the whole excitement was gone, and he said to the man, "It means somebody else will come tomorrow and he will erase my name." The mountain keeper said, "That, of course, is the case, because there is no space; to create space, that is the only way. We cannot create more mountain; all the gold in heaven has been used to create the mountain. You simply sign. Back at the gate you can go with your head high and you can brag ... nobody is going to know because I am not going to tell anybody. That"s why the gatekeeper did not tell you why he was preventing your army. Just go and brag that the whole mountain was empty."

But the chakravartin was a man of some integrity and truth. He said, "That I cannot do; neither can I erase any name. And I am not going to sign - it is absolutely stupid." He went back and he told the gatekeeper, "I am thankful to you and I am going to tell my people why I am thankful. I am going to spread the news in the world, because many of these people have committed suicide. They will have to be born again, they cannot remain in heaven.

"I will make every effort to send the message to the world: "Don't unnecessarily waste your life in conquering the world to sign on the gold mountain in heaven. There is no space. First you have to erase somebody"s name, which is ugly, and then you have to sign in that place and tomorrow somebody else will erase it. The whole exercise is one of simple stupidity." I am shocked, but a great realization has arisen in me: one should not ask to be special, because existence does not accept anybody as special, superior or inferior."

Your fear is driving you towards being special but that will not change the situation. The only way the fear can be dropped is, rather than putting your energy into being special, put your whole energy into being yourself. Just find yourself, because in trying to be special you are running further and further away from yourself. That you are clearly aware of it is good: the further away you go from yourself, the further away you are from knowing the truth that you are an immortal, that there is no death.

Once you recognize your immortality, death disappears. And with death, all fears evaporate into the air. But not by becoming someone special.

In the religious instruction lesson, the teacher asked the class, "Who wants to go to heaven?" All the children put their hands up, except for little Hymie. The teacher asked him why he did not want to go to heaven. "Well," little Hymie said, "my father keeps saying, "Business has gone to hell" and I want to be where the business is! What should I do in heaven?"

You will go on running further and further away from yourself in search of something that can take away your fear, your paranoia, your death. But the further away you are, the more will be the fear, the more will be the paranoia, the more overwhelming will be the death. It is better to go inwards and find your real being.

This is a simple logic, a simple arithmetic: before searching anywhere else, please search within yourself. The world is vast, you will be lost in the search ... so first look within yourself; maybe what you are looking for is already there. And all the great enlightened people of the world are absolutely in agreement that it is there, without any exception.

This is the only scientific truth that has no exception - which has remained unchanged as far back as you can go. You will find it has always been declared by those who have known themselves, "We are immortal; we are deathless. Life knows no end."

So first, go in.

Just a glimpse of your own immortality, and it is as if one has awakened from a nightmare. All the fear disappears, and instead of fear there is nothing but pure bliss, pure joy - just flowers showering eternally with the fragrance of eternity.

Question 3:

Premdipa, once there was a man who took a ride in an airplane. Unfortunately he fell out of the plane. Fortunately he was wearing a parachute; unfortunately the parachute was not properly packed and it did not open. Fortunately there was a haystack in the field below; unfortunately there was a sharp pitchfork sticking straight out of the haystack. Fortunately the man missed the pitchfork; unfortunately he also missed the haystack!

That"s how life goes on. There is no need to be too much worried about it. Enjoy your energy.

Sometimes it is fortunate, sometimes it is unfortunate - you have to accept both. If you want it to be always fortunate then you are asking too much; it is not possible in this changing world.

Everything is always going up and down. So when you are up, enjoy; when you are down, rest and wait, then soon you are going to be up. The down periods should be rest periods and the up periods should be dancing periods. And it is perfectly natural, otherwise life will become very monotonous.

This tragi-comic drama - one moment it is tragedy, another moment it is comedy - makes life more juicy, more spicy. So I don't see, Premdipa, that there is any problem.

You say, "Sometimes I have so much energy, I really think I might burst." You only think. I know people who really burst and then come together again!

Unfortunately they burst, fortunately they come together again. You only think, and still you are thinking that you are in a great difficulty.

"This energy materializes in different forms." Great!

"One moment it is pure excitement and frenzied joy, the next it is total, paralyzed misery." Great!

"I am so addicted to action and drama that by lunch break I am already out cold from exhaustion."

Great!

"How can I direct this loopy energy phenomenon, so that I can enjoy it, rather than it enjoying me?"Just say every time it changes: "Great!" and you will be enjoying it rather than it enjoying you.

It is a simple secret: whenever it changes, say "Great!"

And don't be worried that others are hearing, because they may not know what is going on inside.

But this communion is of the mad people; they know that here are all kinds of crazy people ..."This woman must be having some great things happening inside. She cannot contain her joy, she shouts loudly, "Great!""

And you will start a movement. You will find others also thinking, "This is something! Why should we be left behind?" And soon you will be seeing people just walking around shouting, "Great!"

There is no need to bother about anybody. Here everybody understands everybody else - that all are mad and they enjoy each other. Nobody is going to condemn you. If anybody condemns, report it!

What else am I here for?

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.