Category: on Pythagoras

Listen, says Pythagoras – Osho

Listen, says Pythagoras. Down the ages the Masters have always been saying: Listen. But what you do at the most is you hear — you don’t listen. And there is a tremendous difference between these two words.

Hearing is very superficial. You can hear because you have ears, that’s all. Anybody who has ears can hear. It is an ordinary phenomenon. Listening has a different quality to it. When you hear attentively, then it is listening. Hearing is only physical; when your soul also gets involved in it, then it becomes listening. […]

And to listen is to understand. Truth needs no proof. Truth is self-evident. All that is needed is the capacity to listen.

The student hears; the disciple listens. The curious hears, because his inquiry is intellectual. But the one who is a seeker, whose inquiry is not only a kind of curiosity, whose inquiry is a question of life and death to him, he listens. Everything is at stake. How can you afford not to listen?

Listening means your body and soul function together in a deep harmony. You become all ears; your whole body functions as an ear — your legs, your hands, every cell of your body and your whole being inside is attentive. Something immensely important is imparted to you. Something is communicated and you would not like to miss it.

If you are a seeker, a disciple, only then do you know what listening is. When you hear with great love, intensity, passion, when you hear aflame, when you hear totally, when you hear in silence, it is listening.

Pythagoras says: Listen . . .!

One of the great contemporaries of Pythagoras, Mahavira, has said that there are two ways to move into the world of truth. One is by right listening — just by right listening. Those who fail in right listening, for them the other is by right practice. You will be surprised. Right practice is needed for those who have failed in right listening. Otherwise, to listen to a man who has arrived is enough. To listen to a Buddha is enough. He is fire, and in listening you will become afire. Something will jump from the enlightened person to the disciple; something mysterious will be communicated — a transmission beyond scriptures and beyond words. But for that, listening is needed.

I was travelling in this country for many years, almost for fifteen years, talking to millions of people, but they were hearing, not listening. I tried hard to help them to listen, but it was impossible. I had to stop travelling. Now I wait only for those who can listen. You can see this silence, this presence of yours, this utter attentiveness, this being with me . . . this very moment a transformation starts happening. Something will be triggered in you. These moments are precious, and these moments are as precious as you are capable of listening.

If your mind is wandering somewhere else, then physically you will be hearing but you will not be able to listen. If many thoughts are moving inside you, and there is great traffic, then you will be hearing. Those thoughts won’t allow what I am saying to reach you, and they won’t allow what I am to reach you. When the mind has no thoughts, when the traffic inside has stopped, when the inner talk is discontinued, in that gap, in that silence, in that state of love and being listening happens.

And to listen rightly is to understand. There is no other effort needed. There is no need to practice truth because truth already is — if you understand, it is there; if you open your eyes, you have found it. Truth is not lost; you have only fallen asleep. If you listen, you will be awakened. Truth is where it has always been.

-Osho

From Philosophia Perennis, V. 2, Discourse #2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Surrender vs Be a Light unto Oneself – Osho

Can I truly surrender and still be a light unto myself?

That is the only way to be a light unto yourself to surrender. Life is paradoxical: day/night, birth/death, summer/winter, love/hate, and so on ad infinitum.

If a person thoroughly understands this, he will agree and not worry. In other words, he knows when he loves that soon he will hate; therefore, he will laugh when he is going uphill, and weep when he is going downhill. He will realize the paradox of life, that he cannot be perfect and he cannot be consistent either. Our idea is to be consistent and to have absolutely clear situations, but it is impossible – it is too one-sided, and we are not one-sided. We are infinite; we contain both the poles in our being, and both the poles have to be lived.

Hence, if you surrender you become a light unto yourself. If you become a light unto yourself, you become capable of surrendering.

It was constantly a question before Buddha – constantly, because he used to say to his people: Be a light unto yourself. That is his statement: Appo dipo bhava – be a light unto yourself. That was his constant teaching, the undercurrent of all his teachings. And still he was teaching people surrender.

When people came to be initiated they would have to declare a triple surrender: buddham sharnam gachchhami – I come, I surrender myself to Buddha’s feet; sangham sharnam gachchhami – I surrender to the commune of the sannyasins; dhammam sharnam gachchhami – I surrender to the fundamental law of life, logos, tao, dhamma.

These three surrenders would make a person a disciple – and Buddha’s whole teaching was: Be a light unto yourself. So he was asked again and again, “There is a contradiction! On the one hand people surrender to you, on the other hand you go on saying to them: Be a light unto yourself.” And yet there is no contradiction – they are complementaries.

This is how life works. Life is so vast that it contains contradictions, and yet those contradictions are not enemies, not opposites. They are complementaries and they help each other. In fact, without the one the other will not be possible.

Surrender will help freedom, and freedom will make you capable of surrender. Don’t choose one, otherwise you will remain half. Never choose one pole, otherwise you will always remain half – and to remain half is to remain split.

You have to be a whole; you have to be one piece. Always remember to choose the whole paradox, and then you will be at ease. Then great silence and great bliss will arise out of your totality. The total is musical, it is a symphony.

-Osho

From Philosophia Perennis, V.2, Discourse #9, Q4

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

 

Then Logic Becomes a Steppingstone to Love – Osho

Osho, as well as being someone like you, Pythagoras was also a great mathematician. How is this possible?

Bruno,

Man is not only the outer, and he is not only the inner either — he is both. And more: he is inner, he is outer, and he is transcendental too. Man is a three dimensional being. Those three dimensions are represented by Christianity as the Trinity, and by Hinduism as trimurti — three faces of God. And the man who lives only in one dimension lives a partial life. He will never know the beauty of the whole and the joy of the whole.

To live a partial life is to live in sickness because the parts that are not allowed, go on fighting with you. They want to express themselves. The denied being will take revenge on you. It will sabotage your life. It will not allow you to live peacefully; you will be in a constant civil war.

If you deny the body, the body will be angry with you. If you deny the soul, the soul will be angry with you. And a house divided against itself cannot be whole, cannot be at peace, cannot be at ease.

That’s why you see millions of people in such great misery. The misery is caused because they live a fragmentary life. They accept only a part of their being and the major parts are rejected. It is like a tree rejecting its roots because they are invisible — the tree will start dying, the roots will be angry. Or it is like the tree denying its flowers, foliage, branches, and accepting only the roots, then it will have no meaning.

Man has lived in a partial way, hence the question.

The total man will be rooted in the body like a tree rooted in the soil, and he will be growing into the sky like the branches of a tree — he will be moving into the inner sky. And he will have something more too, something transcendental to this duality, a third dimension.

The first dimension is very visible, it is material. It can be measured: it is the world of mathematics, the world of science. The second, the inner, is not so visible — it is vague, cloudy, mysterious. It is a twilight zone, neither day nor night, just in the middle between both. It exists on the boundaries of the material and the ultimate, of this and that. That is the world of poetry, art.

And the third is absolutely invisible. Nobody has ever seen it, nobody can ever see it, because it is the very being of the seer itself. You cannot reduce it to an object: it is your very subjectivity. It is always the witness and never the witnessed. It is always the observer and never the observed. That is the world of the mystic: the transcendental. And a whole man will be a scientist, a poet and a mystic. Pythagoras was a whole man, a holy man.

When I say this, that the whole man will be all the three together, please don’t take me literally. One need not be literally a scientist and yet one can be whole — but his approach will be scientific. He may not be an Albert Einstein, or a Newton, or an Edison. Buddha is not an Albert Einstein, but still his scientific approach is there: he is utterly scientific in his approach. He will not allow any superstition. He will not allow any illogical approaches. He will be very logical — although he will lead you beyond logic! but he will lead you very logically, step by step, with a method.

Buddha is as much a scientist as Albert Einstein; you can look into his words. He says, “Don’t believe what I say unless you have experienced it. Unless it has become your own understanding, don’t believe in me.” This can be said only by an utterly scientific mind. He says, “Don’t believe anything because it is written in the scriptures. The scriptures may be wrong — who knows? Unless you have become a witness to it there is no guarantee of its truth.” It may be in the Vedas, in the Upanishads — there is no need to believe or disbelieve. Experiment, experience! Become a lab — your own lab. And unless you have concluded, all beliefs are just prejudices, superstitious, illogical, unfounded. And truth believed is a lie. Truth experienced is a totally different phenomenon. Truth believed is a lie.

This is the approach of a scientific mind.

Buddha is not a poet either in the ordinary sense — he never composed poetry. But he is a poet! The way he walks is poetry, the way he looks at life is poetry. The way he showers his compassion is poetry. He may not be a poet in the ordinary, literal sense, but he is sheer poetry. His very existence is poetic. The tremendous grace that surrounds him, the infinite beauty that he lives, and the splendor that he has brought to the earth — the earth has never been the same again. It was something else before Buddha, it is totally something else after Buddha.

What difference has Buddha made to the world? He walked on the earth, and he belonged to the beyond. He was embodied just like you and me, but he had come from the ultimate source. He lived here and now, but as the ultimate source. His fragrance is still there in the winds. Those who are alert will still feel his presence. That presence is eternal. So is Jesus, so is Pythagoras . . . they are all mystics, poets, scientists. The real man is bound to be a total man. And that’s my teaching too: I would not like you to be partial, I would not like you to be lopsided. I would not like you to live only in the body or only in the soul. People have tried that! And because of those efforts, man has not become what he has the birthright to become. Man has not bloomed, has not flowered. He cannot. Unless all the three dimensions are together, something will be missing. And that missing part will go on haunting you, will go on creating misery for you.

The missing part will not allow you to be really contented. The missing part will not allow you to be grateful to God. The missing part will not allow you to release the fragrance in tremendous gratefulness, thankfulness — to be prayerful. It will not allow you prayer. Only a fulfilled man can pray. Only a contented man can pray: contentment is prayer. Prayer is the perfume of absolute contentment.

Live in the body as Epicurus lived in the body. Live in the soul as all the mystics have always tried to live in the soul but don’t deny Epicurus. My vision of the whole man implies Epicurus too, as much as Jesus, as much as Zarathustra. And the poet is just between the two, the meeting-point of the mystic and the scientist in you. It is there that the poet exists — on the boundaries, on the frontiers. Let your poet also have its say. Dance, sing, create music. Live a life which is rooted in scientific outlook and has the grace and the beauty of poetry, and the depth of mysticism.

Bruno, Pythagoras is a whole man. It should be so with everybody else too.

You ask me: As well as being someone like you, Pythagoras was also a great mathematician. How is this possible?

I am not a mathematician, but whatsoever I am saying to you is utterly mathematical. I am not a logician, but what I am saying to you is absolutely logical. Although my logic will help you to go beyond logic — that’s what I mean when I say “absolutely logical.” Because the illogical is as much part of existence as the logical. If somebody is really logical, he will accept the illogical too because it is there and it cannot be rejected. To be logical means to accept the illogical too, then logic becomes a stepping-stone to the illogical. Then logic becomes a stepping-stone to love . . . And when everything in you has been used and nothing is neglected, you become an orchestra, then you are [a] harmony of tremendous grace. That harmony is the goal of religion.

-Osho

From Philosophia Perennis, V.2, Discourse #4, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.