Energy IS Understanding – Osho

Is there any relationship between understanding and energy?

Santosh, yes. There is great relationship. In fact, to call it relationship is not right – because energy IS understanding. They are not two things.

What kind of energy is understanding? When the energy is unoccupied, it becomes understanding.

When energy is occupied, it remains ignorance, it remains: unconsciousness.

For example, your sex energy is occupied with a woman or with a man. It will remain ignorance – because the energy is focused on the object, it is going outward, it is extrovert. If the energy is freed from the object, where will it go? It will start falling into the subject, into your inner source. And energy falling back into the source becomes understanding, becomes awareness.

And I am not saying be against sex. No. But let sex be more a subjective phenomenon than an objective phenomenon. And that is the difference between sex and love. Love is subjective, sex is objective.

You become interested in a woman or in a man as an object. And sooner or later the interest will be finished, because once you have explored the object, then nothing is left. Then you are ready to move to somebody else. Yes, the woman looks beautiful but how long can she look beautiful? An object is an object. She is not yet a person to you. She is just a beautiful object. It is insulting.

You are reducing a soul into an object, a subjectivity into an object. You are trying to exploit, you are turning her into a means. Your energy will remain ignorant. And you will go on moving from one woman to another, and your energy will go on remaining in a circle. It will never come back home.

Love means you are not interested in the woman or the man as an object. In fact, you are not there to exploit her. You are not there to get something from her. On the contrary, you are so full of energy; you would like to give some energy to her. Love gives. Sex only wants to get.

And when love gives, it remains subjective, it remains rooted into oneself. Lovers help each other to be more and more themselves. Lovers help each other not to disappear, but to become authentically individual. Lovers help each other to be centered. Love is respect, reverence, worship. It is not exploitation. Love is understanding. Because energy is unoccupied with the object, it remains free, untethered to anything. And that brings the transformation. It accumulates inside you.

And remember: just as it happens in the world of physics, so it happens in the world of metaphysics.

After a certain quantity of energy… the qualitative change happens. The qualitative change is nothing but quantitative change. For example, if you heat water up to a hundred degrees it evaporates. Up to ninety-nine it has not evaporated; it is still water – hot, but still water. But beyond a hundred, it evaporates – it is no more water. It has changed its form. The transformation has happened.

Just like that, when your energy accumulates and you don’t go on wasting it on objects…. And people are wasting it on objects. Somebody is interested in money – he puts his whole energy on the money. Of course, he accumulates much money, but in accumulating it he dies, dissipates, becomes empty, becomes a beggar. Money goes on accumulating and he goes on becoming more and more beggarly. Somebody puts his energy into politics, into power. He becomes a prime minister, but deep down he is a beggar. He may be the greatest beggar in the country….

If you put your energy into objects, you will live a life of non-understanding, unawareness. Don’t put your energy into objects. Let energy fall into your being. Let it accumulate. Let your life become a great reservoir. Let your energy just be there without any occupation. And at a certain point… the jump, the quantum leap, the transformation. And energy becomes luminous, turns into awareness, becomes understanding.

You ask, Santosh: Is there any relationship between understanding and energy?

Yes, there is. It is energy that becomes understanding. So when you are depleted of energy, you start losing your understanding. When you are tired, your intelligence is less. You have observed it. In the morning your intelligence is more fresh than in the evening. In the morning you are more understanding, more compassionate, more loving, than in the evening.

Have you observed? – Beggars come in the morning to beg. They understand the psychology. In the evening, who is going to give to them? People are so angry by that time, so frustrated with life. In the mowing, they have rested the whole night, a deep sleep, the energy is fresh – eight hours accumulation of energy. They have more understanding, more compassion, more love, more sympathy. It is possible to persuade them to give something to you. They have, so they can give. By the evening, they don’t have; they have lost all they had. They are dead tired.

Children are more understanding than old people. Have you observed it or not? Old people become very, very hard, cruel, cunning. Their whole life they have remained occupied with objects.

All old people become Machiavellian. Young children are innocent, trusting, closer to Buddhas.

Why? – The energy is overflowing.

Young children learn things so fast. Why? The energy is there, hence the intelligence. The older you become, the more difficult it becomes to learn a thing. They say it is difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. Why? It should not be so, because the dog knows so many tricks, he can learn a few more. It should be easier for him because he has learnt so much. He has practiced learning so much that he can learn a few more easily. But that is not so.

Children learn fast. If a child is born in a town where five languages are spoken, he starts learning all five; he becomes efficient in all five languages. They all become his mother languages. A child has infinite capacity to learn. And the reason is only one: his energy is still overflowing. Soon it will be dissipated in life.

The man of meditation becomes the man of understanding because his energy accumulates. He is not wasting it. He is not interested in trivia; he does not put any energy at all into petty things. So whenever the time arises to give, he has energy to give.

Energy is understanding. Be conscious of it and use your energy very consciously, and use your energy in such a way that you don’t simply go on wasting it.

-Osho

From The Perfect Master, V.2, Discourse #8

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