Tag: Sankhya

The Door to Sankhya is Open – Osho

There are two things in this sutra: the cave of the heart opens for one who knows, or, one whose heart opens will know. We will enter deeply into both.

How to know the divine? How can this knowing happen? Throughout these talks on the Kaivalya Upanishad, many times I have said that there is only one way to awaken this knowing – and that is that all your actions must happen with awareness, with consciousness. There is no other way to grow towards knowing. People think that the way to knowing is in the scriptures, in doctrines, in words – but this is not the way to grow in knowing. In this way you will only increase your memory, and there is a difference between knowledge and memory.

Memory is when something known by others has been passed on to you; you have borrowed it. Knowing is something that you have experienced in yourself – it is your own, it is individual. When you say that someone is a man of knowledge, that such and such a person has immense knowledge, what you usually mean is that the person has a tremendous amount of information, a big pool of memory. He knows the scriptures by heart, he has memorized the Gita, he has crammed the Vedas. But this is not knowledge, this is memorizing – and to memorize is not something very precious. It is mechanical. Even machines can memorize. Soon only machines will have memories, and man will leave this work to the machines.

True knowledge, knowing, is a very different phenomenon: it is to know directly, it is your own realization. It is your own experience, your own seeing; it is something that you have lived and tasted yourself. It is your own, not information given by somebody else. True knowledge is self-realization, direct. There are no scriptures or doctrines in between. So studying is not the way to grow in knowing. The way to grow in knowing is awareness. The more aware you become in your actions, the more your knowing will grow, will awaken. Awareness means that whatsoever you do, you do it with such intensity and meditativeness that there is no unconsciousness left in it at all.

Try this small experiment sometime, then you will understand how deep your unconsciousness is. Look at the second hand on your watch and decide that for one full minute you will consciously go on looking at it. One minute is not such a big thing; the second hand will just make one full circle and you will consciously go on looking at it.

Let me explain the meaning of consciousness to you so that the experiment becomes easy: you will not forget the moving second hand for one minute, and you will keep on seeing it moving ahead, ahead, ahead…sixty seconds will complete one minute. You will be surprised to discover that in sixty seconds, you will miss at least three times! You will forget what you were watching. Some other thought, some other idea will enter your mind and your mind will have strayed at least three times. It is difficult for you to focus your awareness even for twenty seconds! Then you will come to know how deep your unconsciousness is, because you will not be able to watch the second hand with remembrance and awareness even for twenty seconds. The second hand will go on moving, you will forget for a moment or so, and then again you will remember that you have forgotten. By then the second hand will have moved a few seconds ahead, and during that time your awareness will have wandered off to somewhere else.

Whatever work you are doing, try to do it with awareness. There is no need to make a separate time for this experiment. If you are eating, eat consciously, chew consciously. Nobody will ever know that you are doing some spiritual discipline. The spiritual practices of sankhya are not noticeable: nobody will know if someone is doing them or not. The spiritual practices of yoga are obvious, because they involve outer activity. Sankhya’s activity is within. Breathing is happening – just become aware of it. Buddha has put much emphasis on this.

Buddha has placed much emphasis on this: that whether a man is walking, sitting, lying down or rising, one thing that is constantly present there like a heartbeat is his breathing. So why not watch the breathing itself? When the breath goes in, be aware of it; when the breath goes out, be aware of it. Don’t miss it, don’t let a single breath happen unconsciously. It will not be long before you find that your realization is growing. As your awareness of your breath grows, so will your realization. If you can put aside even one hour out of twenty-four hours to watch your breath coming in and going out, without any interruption, then the door of sankhya will be very close by. It is just a matter of pushing it slightly, and it will open.

Buddha has based his whole teaching on watching the breath – anapanasatiyoga, the discipline of watching the breath coming in and going out. Buddha used to say that if a bhikshu, a monk, could manage only this, he would need to do nothing else. It might seem to be a very small task to you, but when you look at the second hand on your watch and miss it three times in one minute, you will realize how difficult this process of watching your breath can be. But if you begin, then someday the end will also come. If you begin, then someday you will also experience.

This is an internal process. It is much more difficult than chanting Rama-Rama, because to chant Rama-Rama your awareness is not needed. A man can go on chanting Rama-Rama mechanically, his awareness is not needed at all. And it can happen that he can go on doing all his other work and also chanting Rama-Rama. He is not aware of his chanting: it goes on automatically, mechanically. So if someone wants to chant Rama-Rama, two things are involved: one is his chanting, and the other is his awareness of the chanting. Only then is it beneficial, otherwise it is useless.

Many people are doing chanting, and it is simply useless. Their chanting has made them even more retarded in their intelligence, it has not enhanced it. It has not helped their knowing, it has retarded it. This is why you may often notice that these people who chant Rama-Rama and who even wear clothes printed all over with the words Rama-Rama, are a little stupid. Their wisdom does not seem to be growing, it seems to be getting rusty. It is bound to get rusty, because intelligence, the perception involved in intellect, grows with awareness and shrinks with each action done in unawareness – and you are doing all your actions in unawareness. You just add your chant of Rama-Rama to it and that also becomes an unconscious act.

Instead of adding any new activity, it is better to bring awareness to the activities that you are already doing. Even if you have been chanting Rama-Rama, bring awareness to it. No matter what you do, decide one thing: that you will go on making efforts to do it with awareness. You may fail today, you may fail tomorrow, but don’t be worried, because in every failure is hidden the seed of success.

And if your awareness continues and a constant impact happens, one day you will suddenly discover that you are able to perform any action with total awareness. On the day you succeed in being aware, the door to sankhya is open. Nothing else is needed. No other external action is needed – one simply enters the inner sanctum of the heart. Then you will know your inner witness, because awareness is the witness.

When you do something with awareness, you become a witness. You are no more a doer. Whenever you do something in unawareness you become a doer, you are no more a witness. Whatsoever you do with awareness…. You may be eating your food: eat with awareness and you will no more be an eater, you will become a watcher of the act of eating. You may be walking on a path: walk with awareness and you will not be the walker, you will become a witness, a watcher of the one who is walking.

So if your awareness goes on growing, the witness will also go on growing in you. And when the witness in you is totally free of the doer, the outer shell of the doer breaks open and the witness sprouts forth.

-Osho

Excerpted from Flight of the Alone to the Alone, Discourse #17

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

You can read a related post Awareness and Effort.

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.

Awareness and Effort – Osho

For me, there is no earth, water, fire, air or sky. Only the one who has realized the godliness which dwells in the cave of the heart, which is formless, which is beyond the web of illusion, which is the witness to the whole and which is beyond existence and non-existence, will know my pure and godly nature.

Thus ends the Kaivalya Upanishad.
Om, Shantih Shantih Shantih.

The most significant thing to be understood in this sutra is that only one who becomes capable of knowing the formless, the witness to the whole – which is beyond both existence and non-existence – will know the God that lives in the cave of the heart. One must either first become the ultimate witness, and then he will enter the cave of the heart; or first enter the cave of the heart and then he will become the ultimate witness. Either the one who knows the ultimate reality will enter the cave of the heart, or the one who enters the cave of the heart will be able to know the ultimate reality – these are the only two ways. This is why there are only two disciplines for man’s spiritual search.

India has recognized only two disciplines that lead to knowing the truth of life. One is called Sankhya. Sankhya means that if you realize the ultimate reality, then you will enter the cave of the heart. The other is called yoga. Yoga means that if you enter the cave of the heart, then you will come to know the ultimate reality.

Sankhya is direct knowing. Yoga is an effort, a doing. Sankhya says that nothing has to be done; it only has to be realized. Yoga says that much has to be done and only then can realization happen. Both are right, and both can also prove to be wrong. It all depends on you, on the seeker. If a seeker can ignite the fire to know so totally that his ego is burned to ashes, and only the fire to know is left, then nothing else needs to be done. If there is only knowing and there is no knower, if there is no nucleus of ego left within the seeker – only knowing, only awareness, only consciousness – then nothing needs to be done. In this penetrating fire, everything else will happen on its own. Just to see is enough, just to become more aware is enough. To go on growing in awareness is enough. If awareness grows, if wakefulness flowers, that is enough.

But this happens very rarely, only to one in tens of millions. When this happens, it is the result of the efforts of many, many lifetimes. But whenever the phenomenon of Sankhya happens to someone, that person experiences that awareness is enough, that all has happened just through awareness. He has also lived an endless number of lives, and in those many lifetimes he has moved with an endless number of streams of effort.

Sankhya has always spoken against yoga. It is bound to be so, because when the state of Sankhya happens to someone, he feels that nothing else needs to be done – just to be totally aware is enough. But for someone who is unconscious, simply to become totally aware is very, very difficult. Someone whose sleep has broken can say, “Nothing was needed to be done. I simply woke up and saw the light!” But for someone who is asleep – not only asleep, but drunk, almost in a coma; who has taken poison and has become unconscious – you can go on shouting, “Wake up! Wake up! All that you need is to wake up! Just wake up out of your sleep and that is enough. Nothing else needs to be done and you will know the truth!” – But he cannot even hear your shouts. Someone who is drunk from alcohol will first have to clean his whole system of it. Someone who is unconscious will first have to be revived so that he can at least hear what you are saying. At least what you are saying about him opening his eyes needs to reach him.

This is why this concept of Sankhya, although true, does not help. It is only sometimes that someone has a mind-set for Sankhya, and he goes on speaking in the Sankhya way. My own mind structure has been of Sankhya. For fifteen years I went on saying that nothing needs to be done, that just to become aware is enough. Continuously saying this to people, I realized that they are incapable of hearing it. They are not just asleep, they are unconscious. And even if they understand, their understanding is only intellectual, only on the surface. They hear the words, the teaching, and they even start repeating those same words and teachings, but no transformation happens in their lives.

Then I saw that Sankhya is like a flowering – and when a flower blooms, you have no remembrance of its roots at all. The roots are hidden in the darkness, under the earth; they don’t even come to your mind. But for years the roots are growing, the tree is growing, and only then does the flower bloom. Perhaps the flower can say, “Simply to bloom is enough. One just has to bloom; and the fragrance begins to spread everywhere on the winds. What else needs to be done?” The blooming of the flower is the result of a long process – but when the flower blooms, the process is forgotten. When the flower blooms the process remains hidden. When the final fruition happens, then all else, the whole long journey, is forgotten in its shadow.

I began to feel that only once someone’s flower has already bloomed is it okay to say, “All that is needed is for the flower to bloom.” But to go on saying this to someone whose flower has not yet bloomed can be dangerous, because then that man will not even do what little he could have done to care for the roots. He will not even do what little he might have done to nurture the plant, to take care of the plant. Now he will also think in his mind that, “Simply to flower is enough, so I will!” and he will not be able to flower because the flowering is part of a long process. That long process is called yoga.

This is the mistake that Krishnamurti has been making for his whole life: he is telling people that nothing needs to be done. People even understand it, but it is the kind of understanding that instead of destroying ignorance, only hides it. People start to think that nothing has to be done, so they even stop doing what little they might have done. This is why the flower that Krishnamurti says can bloom does not bloom, and the people who listen to him fall into a tremendous dilemma.

So many of his longtime listeners – people who have been listening to him for thirty years or forty years – come to me and say, “We are in a great difficulty. We have heard this idea so much that there is nothing to do. Now even if we want to do something, we can’t. The moment we do something, we immediately remember that doing is futile and that the flower blooms without doing anything; it blooms through non-doing, through effortlessness; there is no need for any spiritual practice. This idea has gone so deep within us that now we can’t do anything at all! We have also stopped doing what we used to do, and by not doing anything at all we have not had even a glimpse of what Krishnamurti says will happen through non-doing. The flower has not bloomed at all.”

The problem has gone even deeper, because they never reached to the same state as a tree reaches when its flowers bloom on their own. Perhaps there are only roots, or their tree has just sprouted, or the branches and leaves have just begun to grow. Now they are not ready to do anything, either to water the plant or even to put a fence around the plant to protect it. Now they no longer actively try to grow towards the sun. Their beings are restless and their flowers don’t bloom, but deep down the flower wants to bloom. The pain in their being is the pain of the flower that wants to bloom – but they have been told that there is nothing to do.

So on one side there is this problem in the approach of Sankhya, that it talks about the ultimate flowering. On the other side, yoga creates a different problem: yoga searches deeply for the roots in the soil, for the water and the sun, but the danger is that you become lost in all the techniques and rituals of yoga. The flowering that you have been doing the rituals for is forgotten, and the rituals themselves take over so much that you begin to feel as if these rituals are your very life. The rituals and practices have become a habit.

Patanjali has mentioned the Eightfold Path of Yoga, and the last three points are dharana, conception, dhyana, meditation and samadhi, enlightenment. These three are the really significant ones, and the other five are the basic steps that lead to them. Samadhi, enlightenment, is the flower, and the other seven are the tree. But often yogis go on doing body postures and pranayama, breath exercises, for their whole lives. They go on doing these same things for their whole lives: they forget the flower of samadhi completely and these rituals become an end in themselves. The means becomes the goal; the path itself starts to become the destination.

The mistake of Sankhya is that the goal becomes all-important, as if no path is needed. And the folly of yoga is that the path becomes so important that even if the goal has to be abandoned in favor of the path, it is done. Even if God were to stand in front of a man who is obsessed with rituals, he would ask God to wait until he has finished doing his rituals! This idea that on the path of yoga rituals are everything misleads thousands of people. The mistake of Sankhya rarely happens, because people with a Sankhya personality are rarely born. Not many people fall into that trap.

Krishnamurti spoke for his whole life, but I don’t think that there are more than five thousand people in India who really hear or understand him. And these five thousand are also the same people who have been listening to him regularly, for the past thirty years – but there seems to be no transformation in their lives. Yes, they accumulate some words, like transformation or words of this sort, and they just start repeating those words. But they always feel the pinch, that the real thing has not happened within them yet; their flower has not bloomed yet.

The danger in yoga is even greater, because whenever people on the Earth become interested in religion, most of them immediately become interested in some activity, in some techniques. It is natural – because man does not achieve anything in life without activity, so naturally he thinks that religion will also have to be an activity. They approach religion in the same way that they approach money. If God is what they seek, that too will have to happen only by doing something. This is how most people think. But the other side of this danger is that man becomes so obsessed with these rituals and the mind enjoys the rituals so much that it becomes difficult to let them go. They lose sight of the destination and the path becomes a trap.

So what can be done to experience the cave of the heart? I say that instead of taking sankhya and yoga as two separate disciplines, take them as two parts of one discipline: take yoga as the beginning part and sankhya as the end part. Take yoga as the tree and Sankhya as the flower. I join the two together for you: sankhya-yoga.

You will certainly have to do something, because as you are, nothing can happen unless you do something. But also, keep in mind that if you remain stuck only in doing, then too, nothing will happen. Much will have to be done, and at a certain moment, all doing will simply have to be dropped. It is like someone climbing a ladder: he climbs it, but then he also leaves it. When someone takes medicines, when the disease is cured he stops taking them; or when someone walks on a path, when he arrives at his destination he leaves the path.

It is not right to say that then he leaves the path, because in reality, the meaning of a path is that you have to go on leaving it at each step – this is the exact meaning of a path. To get closer to your destination you have to go on leaving the path. One has to go on abandoning the path each day so that the destination will keep coming closer. When I say that your destination will come closer as you walk on the path, it means that it comes closer as you constantly leave the path behind. If you have walked one step ahead, it means that you have left one step of path behind you, and this has also brought the destination one step closer.

You have to walk on a path, you have to accept a path, but you also have to let go of it; only then will you come closer to the destination. But people find it easier to get stuck with one of these two. You say, “If I have to abandon the path, why walk on it in the first place?” This is the mistake of Sankhya. Or the other way that makes sense to you is, “Why let go of something that I have already started? Once I start, I should go on forever. I will go on holding on to it and never let go of it.” This is the mistake of yoga.

If both ways – Sankhya and yoga – are in the seeker’s awareness, the cave of the heart can be found very easily.

-Osho

Excerpt from Flight of the Alone to the Alone, Discourse #17

You can read a related post at: The Door to Sankhya is Open.

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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.

Aurobindo, Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi – Osho

This talk was from a series that was originally given in Hindi and subsequently translated into English.

Questioner: Shree Arvind (Aurobindo) has written a commentary on the Geeta in which he talks about the relationship between the creation and its perception. From one point of view it is reality that is important, and from another its perception is important. In his concept of the supramental he believes that divine consciousness is going to descend on this earth, but this concept of his seems to be dualistic. What do you say? And do you think that Raman Maharshi’s concept of ajatvad, of unborn reality, is closer to you and to Chaitanya’s concept of achintya bhedabhedvad, or unthinkable dualistic non-dualism?….

All Arvind’s (Aurobindo) talk of supraconsciousness and the supramental is within the confines of the rational mind. He never goes beyond reason. Even when he speaks about the transcendence of reason, he uses rationalistic concepts. Arvind is a rationalist. Everything he says and the words and concepts he uses to say it belong to the grammar of rationalism. There is a great consistency in the statements of Arvind which is not there in statements from supra-rationalism. You cannot find the same logical consistency in the statements of mystics. A mystic speaks in terms of contradictions and paradoxes. He says one word and soon contradicts it by another word that follows it. A mystic is self-contradictory. Arvind never contradicts himself.

Arvind is a great system-maker, and a system maker can never be a supra-rational. A system is made with the help of reason. Supra-rational people are always unsystematic; they don’t have a system. System is integral to logic; that which is illogical cannot follow a methodology or order.

The unthinkable cannot be systematized. All the thinkers of this century who have crossed the threshold of reason are fragmentary in their statements; none of them followed a logical order. Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger, Marlo Ponti and the rest of them, have made fragmentary statements. Krishnamurti belongs to the same category which denies system, order. Their statements are atomic, and they contradict themselves.

Arvind’s case is very different. The truth is, after Shankara there has been no greater system-builder in India than Arvind. But this is what makes for the weakness and poverty of his philosophy. He is very skilled in playing with words, concepts and theories. But the irony is that the reality of life is far beyond words, concepts and doctrines. His trouble is that he was wholly educated in the West where he learned Aristotelian logic, Darwinian Theory of Evolution and the scientific way of thinking.

His mind is wholly western; no one in India today is more western in his way of thinking than Arvind.

And ironically he chose to interpret the eastern philosophy, with the result that he reduced the whole thing into a system. The East has no logical system. All its profound insights transcend logic and thought; they cannot be achieved through thinking. Eastern experiences go beyond the known. The knower and knowledge itself; they all belong to the unknown and the unknowable – what we call mystery. And Arvind applies his western mind to interpret the transmental experiences and insights of the East. He divides them into categories and makes a system out of them, which no other eastern person could have done.

So while Arvind always talks of the unthinkable he uses the instrument of thought and the thinkable throughout. Consequently his unthinkable is nothing but a bundle of words. If Arvind had the experience of the unthinkable he could not have categorized it, because it defies all categories. One who really knows the unthinkable cannot live with categories and concepts.

Curiously enough, Arvind creates concepts out of things that have never been conceptualized. His concept of the supramental is a case in point. But he goes on fabricating categories and concepts and fitting them into logic and reason. And he does it without any inhibitions.

The other part of your question is relevant in this context. In a sense, no religious thinking subscribes to the concept of evolution.

In this respect, we can divide the religions of the world into two groups. One group believes in the theory of creation with a beginning and an end, and the other believes in an existence that has no beginning and no end. Hinduism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism believe in creation; they believe that God created the universe. The other group of religions like Jainism and Buddhism, deny the theory of creation; according to them, that which is, is beginningless. It was never created.

All those who believe in creation cannot accept the theory of evolution. If they accept it, it would mean God created an incomplete world which developed gradually to its present state. But how can a perfect God create an imperfect world? Evolution means that the world grows gradually, and creation means that the whole world comes into being altogether.

It is significant that originally the word shristhi, meaning creation, belonged to the Hindus, and prakriti, meaning pre-creation, belonged to the Jainas and Buddhists and Sankhyaites. In the course of time, however, they got mixed up. But the Hindus cannot accept the word prakriti, which means that which is is there from the time before creation, that which is uncreated, which is eternal.

Creation means something which was not always there and which was created and which can be terminated.

The concept of the pre-created, the uncreated, of prakriti, belongs to an altogether different school which does not believe in creation. Sankhyaites, Jainas, and Buddhists don’t have the concept of a creator because when nothing is created, the question of a creator does not arise. So God disappeared, he has no place in their philosophies. God is needed only in the form of a creator, and so those who rejected creation also rejected God. God as creator belongs only to those who accept the idea of creation.

Arvind brought with him the idea of evolution from the West. When Arvind was a student in England, Darwin’s ideas were sweeping across Europe. Evidently he was very much influenced by them.

After his return to India he studied eastern philosophy, and studied it deeply. I deliberately use the word ”studied” to say that he did not know the truth on his own, his knowledge was merely intellectual. Although he possessed a sharp intellect, his direct experience of truth was very dim.

Consequently he produced a crossbreed of eastern mysticism and western rationalism, which is an anomaly. India’s psyche is not much concerned with the study of nature, matter and their evolution, it is basically concerned with the understanding of mind and spirit. The meeting of the western thought of evolution with the eastern understanding of the psyche gave rise to a strange idea of psychic evolution, which became Arvind’s lifework. Like nature, he thought consciousness evolves too.

Arvind added something new to the idea of evolution which is his own, and for this very reason it is utterly wrong. Very often original ideas are wrong, because they happen to be the finding of a single person. It is true that traditional beliefs, in the course of time, degenerate into fossils, but they have a validity of their own because millions of people go out to find them. This new idea which built Arvind’s reputation concerns the descent of divine consciousness.

Down the centuries we have believed that man has to rise and ascend to God; it is always an upward journey, an ascent. Arvind thinks otherwise: he thinks that God will descend and meet man. In a way this is also like the two sides of a coin. The truth happens to be exactly in the middle. That truth is that both man and God move towards each other and meet somewhere midway. This meeting always happens somewhere midway, but the old idea emphasized man’s efforts – and not without reason. As far as God is concerned, he is always available to man providing man wants to meet him. That much is certain, and therefore God can be left out of this consideration. But it is not certain that man will make a move to meet God. So it mostly depends on man and his journey towards God, his efforts. God’s journey towards man can be taken for granted. Too much emphasis on God moving toward man is likely to weaken man’s efforts.

Arvind starts from the wrong end when he says that God is going to descend on us. But he has great appeal to people who are not interested in doing anything on their own. They took enthusiastically to Arvind’s idea of the descent of the supramental energy and they rushed to Pondicherry. In recent years more Indians have gone to Pondicherry than anywhere else. There, God could be had for a song. They need not move a finger, because God on his own was on his way to them. There could not be a cheaper bargain than this. And when God descends he will descend on one and all; he will not make any distinctions. Many people believe that Arvind alone, sitting in seclusion at Pondicherry, will work for it and divine energy will be available to all, like the river Ganges was available when it was brought to earth by Bhagirath. Arvind is to be another Bhagirath, and at a much higher level. It has put a premium on man’s greed and led to a lot of illusions.

I think that is a very wrong idea. It is true God descends, but he descends only on those who ascend to him. A great deal depends on the individual and his efforts. Divine energy descends on those who prepare themselves for it, who deserve it. And there is no reason for God to be collectively available to one and all. In fact, God is always available, but only to those who aspire and strive for him. And it is always the individual, not a collective or a society, who walks the path to God. And he has to go all alone. And if God is going to descend on all, why do you think he will exclude animals, trees and rocks?

The experiment that is in process at Pondicherry is utterly meaningless; there has not been a more meaningless experiment in man’s history. It is a waste of effort, but it goes on because it is very comforting to our greed.

In this context, the questioner has remembered Raman who is just the opposite of Arvind. While Arvind is a great scholar, Raman has nothing to do with scholarship. Arvind is very knowledgeable, he is well informed; Raman is utterly unscholarly, you cannot come across a more unscholarly man than him. While Arvind seems to be all-knowing, Raman is preparing for the non-knowing state; he does not seem to know a thing. That is why man’s highest potentiality is actualized in Raman, and Arvind has missed it. Arvind remains just knowledgeable; Raman really knows the truth. Raman attained to self-knowledge, not knowledge. So his statements are straight and simple, free from the jargon of scriptures and scholarship. Raman is poor in language and logic, but his richness of experience, of being, is immense; as such he is incomparable.

Raman is not a system-maker like Arvind. His statements are atomic; they are just like sutras, aphorisms. He does not have much to say, and he says only that which he knows. Even his words are not enough to say what he really knows. Raman’s whole teaching can be collected on a postcard, not even a full page will be needed. And if you want to make a collection of Arvind’s writings, they will fill a whole library. And it is not that Arvind has said all that he wanted to say. He will have to be born again and again to say it all; he had too much to say. This does not mean that he did not bother to attain real knowing because he had already so much to say. No, this was not the difficulty.

Buddha had much to say and he said it. Buddha was like Raman so far as his experience of truth was concerned, and he was like Arvind in general knowledge. Mahavira has said little, he spent most of his time in silence. His statements are few and far between; they are telegraphic. In his statements Mahavira resembles Raman. Digambaras, one of the two Jaina sects, don’t have any collection of his teachings, while the Shwetambaras have a few scriptures which were compiled five hundred years after Mahavira’s death.

Questioner: You compare Raman with Buddha who happened in distant past. Why not compare him with Krishnamurti, who is so close by?

The question of being close or distant does not arise. Krishnamurti is exactly like Raman. I compare Arvind with Raman and Buddha for a special reason. In the experience of truth, Krishnamurti is very much like Raman, but he lags behind Arvind in knowledge. Of course, he is more articulate and logical than Raman. And there is a great difference between Krishnamurti and Arvind in so far as the use of logic and reason is concerned.

Arvind uses logic to reinforce his arguments; Krishnamurti uses logic to destroy logic; he makes full use of reason in order to lead you beyond reason. But he is not much knowledgeable. That is why I chose Buddha as an example; he compares well with Arvind in knowledge and with Raman in self-knowledge.

As far as Krishnamurti is concerned, he is like Raman in transcendental experience, but he is not scholarly like Arvind.

There is yet another difference between Raman and Krishnamurti. While Raman’s statements are very brief, Krishnamurti’s statements are voluminous. But in spite of their large volume, Krishnamurti’s teachings can be condensed in a brief statement. For forty years Krishnamurti has been repeating the same thing over and over again. His statements can be condensed to a postcard.

But because he uses reason in his statements, they grow in volume. Raman is precise and brief; he avoids volume. You can say that the statements of both Krishnamurti and Raman are atomic, but while Krishnamurti embellishes them with arguments, Raman does not. Raman speaks, like the seers of the Upanishads, in aphorisms. The Upanishads just proclaim: the Brahman, the supreme is; they don’t bother to advance any argument in their support. They make bare statements that, “It is so” and “It is not so.” Raman can be compared with the Upanishadic rishis.

Questioner: Please tell us something about Raman’s ajatvad or the principle of no-birth.

According to Raman and people like him, that which is has no beginning, it was never born, it is unborn. The same thing has always been said in another way: that which is will never die, it is deathless, it is immortal. There are hundreds of statements which proclaim the immortality of Brahman, the ultimate, who is without beginning and without end. Only that which is never born can be immortal, that which is beginningless. This is Raman’s way of describing the eternal.

Do you know when you were born? You don’t. Yes, there are records of your birth which others have kept, and through them that you came to know that you were born on a certain date, month and year. This is just information received from others. Apart from this information you have no way to know that you were born. There is no intrinsic, inbuilt source of information within you which can tell you about it; you have no evidence whatsoever to support the fact of your birth. The truth of your innermost being is eternal, so the question of its birth does not arise. In fact, you were never born; you are as eternal as eternity.

You say you will die someday, but how do you know it? Do you know what death is? Do you have any experience of death? No, you will say you have seen others die, and so you infer that you too will die someday. But suppose we arrange things and it is quite possible, that a certain person is not allowed to see any other person die. Can he know on his own that he is ever going to die? He cannot. So it is just your conjecture, based on external evidence that you will die in some future.

There is no internal evidence, no intrinsic source of knowledge within you which can sustain your conjecture that you will die. That is why a strange thing happens, that in spite of so many deaths taking place all around, no one really believes that he is going to die; he believes while others will die he is going to live. Your innermost being knows no birth and no death; it is eternal. You only know that you are.

Raman asks you not to guess, but find out for yourself if there is really birth and death. You have no inner evidence in support of birth and death; the only dependable evidence available within you says, “I am.”

I too, say to you there is every evidence that makes you know, “I am.” And if you go still deeper you will know, “I am not.” Then you will know only a state of “am ness” within you.

– Osho

Excerpted from: Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy, Chapter 14.

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.

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