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Osho,
The other day I heard you mention the idea of an academy for
meditation, and an academy for bringing the body into one,
organic whole. Could you say more about this, and how you see
two such academies complementing each other?
It is one of the most complicated questions. It does not
appear to be so because you are not aware that for centuries
man has been told all kinds of life-negative things. Even to
torture your body has been a spiritual discipline.
My idea of having an academy is for science to become for the
first time intentional and not accidental. Up to now science
has been accidental. People have stumbled upon some
discoveries, inventions. Even discoveries were made for which
they were not looking, but just groping in the dark with no
sense of direction. And obviously the politicians of the world
― who liked more and more destructive power in their
hands ― immediately got the idea to enslave scientists.
Now every scientist is a slave to some nation, to some
government and he functions only for purposes which are
anti-life, destructive. The more destructive things he can
find, the more he is praised by the governments, the more he
is awarded.
My idea of an academy is of creative science which will
consciously avoid anything that destroys life and will seek
and search only for that which enhances life. This academy
cannot be only of science because science is only a part of
human reality. The academy has to be comprehensive, it has to
be for creativity, for art, for consciousness; hence it will
have three divisions, major divisions, not separated, but just
for arbitrary purposes to be denominated as separate.
The most fundamental thing will be creating methods,
techniques, ways of raising human consciousness, and
certainly, this consciousness cannot be against the body; this
consciousness is residing in the body. They cannot be seen as
inimical to each other; in every way, they are supportive. I
say something to you and my hand makes a gesture without my
telling the hand. There is a deep synchronicity between me and
my hand. You walk, you eat, you drink and all these things
indicate that you are a body and consciousness as an organic
whole. You cannot torture the body and raise your
consciousness.
The body has to be loved ― you have to be a
great friend.
It is your home, you have to clean it of all junk, and you
have to remember that it is in your service continuously, day
in, day out. Even when you are asleep, your body is
continuously working for you digesting, changing your food
into blood, taking out the dead cells from the body, bringing
new oxygen, fresh oxygen into the body ― and you are
fast asleep! It is doing everything for your survival, for
your life, although you are so ungrateful that you have never
even thanked your body. On the contrary, your religions have
been teaching you to torture it: the body is your enemy and
you have to get free from the body, its attachments.
I also know that you are more than the body and there is no
need to have any attachment. But love is not an attachment,
compassion is not an attachment. Love and compassion are
absolutely needed for your body and its nourishment. And the
better body you have, the more is the possibility for growing
consciousness. It is an organic unity.
A totally new kind of education is needed in the world where
fundamentally everybody is introduced into the silences of the
heart ― in other words into meditation ― where
everybody has to be prepared to be compassionate to one's own
body. Because unless you are compassionate to your own body,
you cannot be compassionate to any other body. It is a living
organism, and it has done no harm to you. It has been
continuously in service since you were conceived and will be
till your death. It will do everything that you would like to
do, even the impossible, and it will not be disobedient to
you. It is inconceivable to create such a mechanism which is
so obedient and so wise.
If you become aware of all the functions of your body, you
will be surprised. You have never thought what your body has
been doing. It is so miraculous, so mysterious. But you have
never looked into it. You have never bothered to be acquainted
with your own body and you pretend to love other people. You
cannot, because those other people also appear to you as
bodies. The body is the greatest mystery in the whole of
existence. This mystery needs to be loved ― its
mysteries, its functionings to be intimately inquired into.
The religions have unfortunately been absolutely against the
body. But it gives a clue, a definite indication that if a man
learns the wisdom of the body and the mystery of the body, he
will never bother about the priest or about God. He will have
found the most mysterious within himself, and within the
mystery of the body is the very shrine of your consciousness.
Once you have become aware of your consciousness, of your
being, there is no God above you. Only such a person can be
respectful for other human beings, other living beings,
because they all are as mysterious as he himself is, different
expressions, varieties which make life richer. And once a man
has found consciousness in himself, he has found the key to
the ultimate.
Any education that does not teach you to love your body, does
not teach you to be compassionate to your body, does not teach
you how to enter into its mysteries, will not be able to teach
you how to enter into your own consciousness. The body is the
door ― the body is the stepping stone. And any education
that does not touch the subject of your body and consciousness
is not only absolutely incomplete, it is utterly harmful
because it will go on being destructive.
It is only the flowering of consciousness within
you that prevents you from destruction.
And that gives you a tremendous urge to create ― to
create more beauty in the world, to create more comfort in the
world. That's why I include art as the second part of the
academy. Art is a conscious effort to create beauty, to
discover beauty, to make your life more joyful, to teach you
to dance, to celebrate. And the third part is a creative
science.
Art can create beauty, science can discover objective truth,
and consciousness can discover subjective reality. These three
together can make any system of education complete. All else
is secondary, may be useful for mundane purposes, but it is
not useful for spiritual growth, it is not useful to bring you
to the sources of joy, love, peace, silence. And a man who has
not experienced the inner ecstasy has lived in vain
unnecessarily. He vegetated, he dragged himself from the womb
to the grave but he could not dance and he could not sing and
he could not contribute anything to the world.
According to me a religious person is one who contributes to
the world some beauty, some joy, some happiness, some
celebration which was not there ― something new,
something fresh, some more flowers. But religion has never
been defined the way I am defining it.
All the ways religion has been defined have been proved
absolutely ugly and wrong.
But they have not helped humanity to rise to the heights of
joy and beauty and love. They have drowned the whole humanity
in misery and suffering, they have not taught you freedom. On
the contrary, they have enforced on you all kinds of slavery
in the name of obedience. Obedience to whom? Obedience to the
priests, obedience to those who have money, obedience to those
who have power ― in short, obedience to all the vested
interests. A small minority has been enslaving the whole
humanity for centuries. Only a right education can transform
this ugly and sick situation.
My idea of a World Academy of Creative Science, Art and
Consciousness is really in other words my vision of a real
religion. Man needs a better body, a healthier body. Man needs
a more conscious, alert being. Man needs all kinds of comforts
and luxuries that existence is ready to deliver.
Existence is ready to give you paradise herenow, but you go on
postponing it ― it is always after death.
In Sri Lanka one great mystic was dying.... He was worshipped
by thousands of people. They gathered around him. He opened
his eyes: just a few more breaths would he take on the shore
and he would be gone, and gone forever.
Everybody was eager to listen to his last words. The old man
said, "I have been teaching you for my whole life about
blissfulness, ecstasy, meditativeness. Now I am going to the
other shore. I will not be available anymore. You have
listened to me, but you have never practiced what I have been
telling you. You have always been postponing. But now there is
no point in postponing, I am going. Is anyone ready to go with
me?"
There was a great pindrop silence. People looked at each other
thinking that perhaps this man who had been a disciple for
forty years.... He may be ready.... But he was looking
at the others ― nobody was standing up.
Just from the very back a man raised his hand. The great
mystic thought, "At least, one person is courageous
enough."
But that man said, "Please let me make it clear to you
why I am not standing up. I have only raised my hand. I want
to know how to reach to the other shore, because today of
course I am not ready. There are many things which are
incomplete: a guest has come, my young son is getting married,
and this day I cannot go ― and you say from the other
shore, you cannot come back.
"Some day, one day certainly, I will come and meet you.
If you can just explain to us once more ― although you
have been explaining to us for your whole life ― just
once more how to reach the other shore? But please keep in
mind that I am not ready to go right now. I just want to
refresh my memory so that when the right time comes...."
That right time never comes.
It is not a story only about that poor man, it is the story of
millions of people, of almost all. They are all waiting for
the right moment, the right constellation of stars.... They
are consulting astrology, going to the palmist... inquiring in
different ways what is going to happen tomorrow.
Tomorrow does not happen ― it never has happened. It is
simply a stupid strategy of postponement. What happens is
always today.
A right kind of education will teach people to live herenow,
to create a paradise of this earth, not to wait for death to
come, and not to be miserable till death stops your misery.
Let death find you dancing and joyous and loving. It is a
strange experience that if a man can live his life as if he is
already in paradise, death cannot take away anything from that
man's experience.
My approach is to teach you that this is the paradise, there
is no paradise anywhere else, and no preparation is needed to
be happy. No discipline is needed to be loving; just a little
alertness, just a little wakefulness, just a little
understanding. And if education cannot give you this little
understanding, it is not education.
My conception of a world academy means that the whole world
should have the same education of meditation, of art, of
creative science.
If we can create a sane educational system around the world,
then the divisions of religion and the discrimination between
white and black and nations, the ugly politics that exists
because of them, and the stupid behavior of men preparing
continuously for war....
Whenever I see a soldier I cannot believe that this man has a
mind at all. Even animals don't become soldiers. But man seems
to have only one interest: how to kill, how to kill more
efficiently, how to go on refining instruments for killing.
A right education will teach you how to find your own song and
how to learn the dance and not be shy; how to celebrate the
small things of life and make this whole planet alive. It is
only one, as far as we know, where people can love, where
people can meditate, where people can become buddhas, where
people like Socrates and Lao Tzu can exist.
We are most fortunate to be on this small planet. It is one of
the smallest planets in the universe, but even the greatest
stars, millions of times bigger than this earth, cannot claim
a single Albert Einstein or a Jesus or a Yehudi Menuhin. It is
strange that in this vast universe existence has been
successful only on this small planet to create a little
consciousness, a little life. Now it is in our hands to grow
from this small beginning into the infinite heights which are
our potential and which are our birthright.
Up to now education has not been in the right direction. It
has been torturing people unnecessarily with history, with
geography. If somebody is interested, these subjects should be
available. If somebody is interested to know about
Constantinople, then let him know. And if somebody is
interested to know about Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, let him
know. But there is no need to teach people compulsorily all
the nonsense and garbage that has happened in the past. That
is so stupid and so unbelievable. To teach people that there
have been persons like Genghis Khan and Nadirshah and
Tamerlane and Alexander the Great is to teach people about the
wrong side of their being.
I have been fighting in the universities, "Why don't you
teach about Socrates? Why don't you teach about Chuang Tzu?
Why don't you teach about Bodhidharma...?" These are the
right side of consciousness.
And teaching about the wrong kind of people gives you an idea
that it is perfectly good if you are wrong. If you are going
slowly to be a Genghis Khan it is perfectly right. You are not
doing something new, man has always been doing this.
We have to sort out history, cut out all those wrong people
and protect our children from being conditioned that man has
been involved in nothing but war, fighting, competition,
greed. We should teach our children not what has been but what
can be ― not the past, but the future. Why waste so much
time on teaching subjects which are of no significance in
actual existential life and not give them a single direction
about the art of love, the art of life, the meaning of
existence, preparation for death with joy, silence and
meditativeness. All that is essential is missing, and that
which is non-essential and absolutely stupid is being forced.
They say history repeats. History does not repeat. It is our
stupidity that we go on and on teaching the same thing to each
generation. The poor children are conditioned to imitate the
same great heroes who were really criminals, not heroes. Just
a single man, Genghis Khan, killed forty million people. It is
better to drop all information about these people from
education. Give an education about the dance of a Shiva, the
flute of Krishna. Teach them all that has been beautiful and
good so that they become accustomed that all that is good is
natural, and the bad is accidental ― that the bad does
not happen, has never happened, and the good is absolutely
normal.
To be a buddha is not something abnormal. It should be taught
to every child that to be a buddha is a normal phenomenon.
Anybody who is wise enough is going to become a buddha. You
are going to become a buddha.
The greatest revolution has to happen in education and its
systems; otherwise, man will go on repeating history.
Now time for silence and time for laughter....
Hymie Goldberg comes home from work one evening and Becky
says, "Did you go to the store and pick up the snapshots,
like I asked you? You probably did not! You never listen to
me! You never remember anything! Oh! You did get them. Well,
thank goodness for miracles. Let me see them! This shot is
terrible and this one is even worse. My God! This one is
horrible and this one is a disaster. In fact, this is the
worst lot of photographs I have ever seen in my life.
"You can't do anything right! You can't drive a car
properly! You can't even change a fuse. You can't sing in
tune, and as a photographer, you are the worst! "Just
take a look at these pictures: in every one you took of me, I
have my mouth open!"
A reformed prostitute is giving testimony on a street corner
with the Salvation Army. She punctuates her talk by beating on
a big drum.
"I used to be a sinner!" she shouts.
BOOM! goes the drum.
"I used to be a bad woman!" she cries.
BOOM!
"I used to drink!"
BOOM!
"Gamble!"
BOOM!
"Chase men!"
BOOM! BOOM!
"I used to go wild on Saturday nights and raise
hell!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
"And now what do I do on Saturday nights?" she
cries.
"I stand on the street corner beating this fucking
drum!"
Osho: Om Shantih Shantih Shantih, Chapter 27
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