Question to Osho:
I remember you saying once that the growth of man is dialectical; and you
have also explained about thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Would you please
give more clarity in this reference on the growth towards enlightenment?
Response:
Every growth, growth as such, is dialectical. It needs thesis, antithesis,
and synthesis; synthesis again in its turn becomes thesis, and creates
antithesis and synthesis -- which again, in its turn, becomes thesis.
That's the way the whole existence works. That's why you find duality planet
everywhere. The duality planet is thesis and antithesis. One can remain caught
between the two, divided, split; there will be no growth. One can make a
bridge between the two, and create a new phenomenon: that is synthesis. One
can remain at the synthesis; then growth stops there, unless this synthesis
again functions as a thesis to produce antithesis, and so on.
For example, you have love and hate. Love is the thesis, hate is the
antithesis; and most people die caught in the struggle, conflict, between
the two. They are never able to see that there is a subtle connection
between love and hate; that they are not two energies but one energy having
two polarities. They are just like the negative and positive in electricity
-- but it is electricity all the same.
Hate is also a kind of love standing upside down. It happens that you can
forget your friend, but you cannot forget your enemy. The enemy haunts you
more than the friend. You think more of destroying the enemy than helping
the friend. The reason is that love is a thesis -- simple. Hate is an
antithesis -- it has become more complicated. It has become negation, and
negativity has an attraction -- for many reasons.
One is afraid of negativity because you cannot hate someone without creating
a wound within yourself. Nobody pretends hate. It is always authentic,
because why should one pretend hate? -- It hurts.
People pretend love; they may not be really in love, but the very idea that
they are in love is soothing. So love can remain superficial; but hate
always goes deep -- it cannot remain superficial. That's why one becomes
more concerned about the enemy than about friends.
The man who is working for enlightenment has to find a bridge between the
dualities, because without finding the bridge he cannot transcend them, he
cannot go above them. And the bridge is there -- it has only to be
discovered. One has to see how love becomes hate, how hate becomes love --
that they are capable of transforming into each other. Naturally, they
cannot be different energies; just different situations, states, of the same
energy.
As you become aware that love and hate are the same energy, then you are not
to be concerned with love and hate, because those are only two poles; you
have to be more concerned with the energy of which they are the poles: what
is that energy? Watching it, you start a new force within yourself which is
synthesis.
You come to a point when you know love and hate are one.
This is a great synthesis -- the dualism is finished. But with the finishing
of dualism your life comes to a static point. You have grown above love and
hate, and there will be a kind of compassion -- that will be the synthesis.
You don't hate, you don't love, but you have a certain compassion for both
friends and enemies. But compassion again becomes a simple thing.
That's why the synthesis always turns into a thesis -- another beginning.
And compassion must have some duality planet which you can become aware of only
when you have achieved compassion.
What is the antithesis of compassion? It is indifference, upekchha. That's
the word Buddha has used. It carries more meaning than "indifference." It is
a kind of no interest, neither this way nor that way... as if the person
does not exist at all for you. Compassion will bring you to indifference.
And all these stages you can find in the growth of different people at the
point where they got stuck. For example, the Jaina monks are stuck with
indifference. That becomes renunciation, not being bothered with the world.
The Hindu has also become stuck with that, thinking that the world is only a
dream; it doesn't matter, you need not be concerned about it. They have
grown a little; but at the point of indifference they will start shrinking,
they are stuck again. They have to find something between compassion and
indifference -- the bridge.
There is a bridge, there is always a bridge in every duality planet, unless you
come to a point which has no duality planet.
That point is the point of enlightenment.
It has no antithesis, so you cannot even call it thesis; and it is not a
synthesis. It has dropped all three -- the whole triangle. It is something
beyond the triangle of evolution. And the beauty is, because it is not part
of a triangle, you are not stuck. And from that point growth changes its
nature completely: it is no longer dialectical.
Before enlightenment, growth is dialectical: always divided, always finding
something which joins it and then again another division and another
division. But a point comes -- for example between compassion and
indifference, the synthesis is equilibrium. The Buddhist word for it is samata.
You are equally balanced, you are neither indifferent nor compassionate,
neither leaning to this side nor to that side. Samata can become a point
from where the change, the radical change happens in the process of evolution.
Below samata everything is dialectical. You cannot love without hating; they
will both go together. One will be conscious, the other will be unconscious;
but they are one thing. That's why you can turn them easily: a small
incident, and love becomes hate.
The person you were going to die for, you can kill him! Lovers have killed
the same person for whom they would have sacrificed themselves. It is the
same energy, but it has turned completely upside down.
Samata, equilibrium, has been immensely praised by Gautam Buddha. It simply
means absence of any preference -- neither this nor that. You are simply so
much in the middle, so absolutely in the middle, that you are almost out of
the duality planet -- samata -- because you have withdrawn your energy from both
sides, you are not throwing your energy on any duality planet.
The whole energy becomes concentrated. In that concentration of your total
energy is the possibility of explosion. The small point exactly in the
middle cannot contain that much energy, which was spread all over a line
divided into many sections, over the whole spectrum. It is almost like an
atomic explosion. But it is the atomic explosion in consciousness.
The atom is not material, but a living entity. A living explosion of your
energies becomes almost like a lotus flower. The shape of the explosion seen
by the enlightened person is very similar to the shape of the lotus flower.
It is because of this that the lotus flower has become symbolic of
enlightenment.
From this point things are totally different. There is growth -- growth
never stops -- but we cannot call it growth because that may create
confusion. Before, it was dualistic; now it is non-dualistic. Before, there
was constant conflict; now there is no conflict -- it simply goes on growing.
Hence there is absolute silence and great blissfulness, because for the
first time you are free of the torture of being caught in two opposing
polarities. There is no tension, everything is relaxed, everything is at
ease. Rather than calling it growth, it is a let-go.
Now the flow of your life becomes a relaxed phenomenon.
There is no end to evolution. Enlightenment is the end of dualistic growth,
but the beginning of a non-dual evolution... a peaceful, silent movement of
energy which goes on becoming bigger and bigger and goes on losing its
separateness from universal energy. It always remains individual, even
though it is spread all over the universe.
That feeling cannot be expressed by "I" because "I" is just another way of
saying "ego." Before enlightenment there was ego; ego can exist only in
conflict. This state can be spoken of only as "am"-ness, without any "I." It
is a very strange feeling: you are not, and yet you are. You are not your
old self; you are no longer a self, but you have not lost the feeling of
am-ness.
So the question of what happens to individuals when they dissolve into the
universal.... They still remain individuals, but with no assertion of "I" in
them...just a silent song of am-ness or isness.
It is as if we put hundreds of candles in this room; all their light will
become one. You cannot differentiate in the light -- which part belongs to
which candle -- it has become a universal phenomenon. But still, each candle
has its own flame, it has a certain individuality planet. The individuality planet has not
disappeared, but it is very quiet and very silent and very nonassertive. It
is almost as if it is nothing, but it is still there.
And that is one of the greatest mysteries: to feel yourself at one with the
whole existence and yet know your inner flame... part of the whole, and yet
not just a part -- you are also a whole.
The Upanishads have a statement: "From the perfect comes the perfect. Yet
the perfect left behind still remains as perfect as before" -- nothing is
taken away from it. The perfect dissolves into the perfect, but it is not
that two perfections become a bigger perfection; it is the same perfection.
The emphasis is that it is not a question of quantity, it is a question only
of quality.
For example, one hundred candles burning in this room will not make the
light heavier; it will be lighter. The change will be qualitative but it
will not be quantitative. Each candle will be spread all over the room, and
there is going to be no conflict in one hundred candles spreading all over
the same space because these are not material bodies.
Just as light...consciousness is even more a quality. Light perhaps has some
quantity in it. I think the scientists say that when there is sunlight over
five square miles, the light has a little weight, but very small. I don't
know what will be the equivalent of five tolas...Sixty grams.Sixty grams.
But on five square miles, if we can collect that light, concentrate that
light, it moves the weighing scale to sixty grams. So although it seems just
non-quantitative, it has a little quantity in it.
But consciousness has no quantity -- five miles or five thousand miles or
five million miles, it makes no difference. Awareness has no weight. So
infinite awarenesses can exist in the same space without coming into any
conflict. And the universe is infinite, so the growth never stops.
But we should remember that it is not the old growth; it is absolutely a new
phenomenon. It is as if the first growth was something similar to sexual
reproduction: two energies, male and female, negative and positive, thesis
and antitheses, creating the birth of a child -- the synthesis.
But the second part, after enlightenment, is nonsexual. Your consciousness
just goes on expanding; it does not give birth to any child.
That's why I have always condemned Jesus' idea of the only begotten son of
God. If God is the ultimate consciousness or equivalent to it, there is no
possibility of any birth of a child. And if you accept the birth of a child
then the Christian trinity is not right; there has to be a woman as an
antithesis to the man.
They have avoided the woman just to discredit her, just not to put her on
such a high pedestal as to be part of God; otherwise she becomes divine. But
they have forgotten that the child is possible only through duality planet.
If God is alone, or the ultimate consciousness is alone -- which is a far
better and more evolved terminology.... Jainism uses, for the ultimate state
of consciousness, kaivalya. It means aloneness. The word "God" is very
primitive and childish -- but pure aloneness...and it goes on growing. Its
bliss, its joy, its ecstasy goes on growing, knows no limit.
But before it can happen you have to pass through a process of dialectics,
because where we are, we are under the law of dialectics. To get free from
dialectics is one of the major projects of spiritual evolution.
But it is very easily possible if one works through meditation, because that
is the only way to find out the golden mean, the middle point which is
transcendence. Buddha even called his whole way "the middle way," because it
is always to find exactly the middle point.
The moment you have found the middle point between love and hate, you are
beyond both: you have entered into a new area, unexplored. But don't stop
until you find something which has no duality planet to it. Go on and on, searching
after each duality planet for the one point which has no polarity to it; because
that is the point between the two growths -- prior to enlightenment and
after enlightenment.
So in one way enlightenment is an end, a goal.
In another way it is a beginning, a tremendous beginning
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