Birthday of Andrew Carnegie

Born on November 25, 1835, in Scotland, Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history.He became a leading philanthropist in the United States and in the British Empire. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away ~$350 million to many charities, foundations, and universities – almost 90 percent of his fortune. His 1889 article proclaiming “The Gospel of Wealth” called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, expressed support for progressive taxation and an estate tax, and stimulated a wave of philanthropy.

Carnegie started work as a telegrapher, and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges, and oil derricks. He accumulated further wealth as a bond salesman, raising money for American enterprise in Europe. He surpassed John D. Rockefeller as the richest American for the next several years.

Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to large-scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education, and scientific research. With the fortune he made from business, he built Carnegie Hall in New York, NY, and the Peace Palace and founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund,  and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others.

Osho recalls an anecdote  and says, “Once a man stopped Andrew Carnegie, who had gone for a morning walk in the garden. Andrew Carnegie was the richest man in America; the man who stopped him was looking like the very incarnation of a beggar. And the man said, “Please don’t be deceived by my appearance. I am an author, I have also written a book.” Andrew Carnegie asked, “What kind of book have you written?” The man said, “I have written a book entitled ONE HUNDRED WAYS TO BECOME RICH.” Andrew Carnegie could not stop himself laughing. He said, “ONE HUNDRED WAYS TO BECOME RICH? And you are a beggar! What kind of book is this?” The beggar started laughing, and he said, “This is the hundredth way of becoming rich — it is included in my book.” The beggar also thinks of becoming rich, writes books about how to become rich — even thinks that by begging he will become rich. But Andrew Carnegie is not happy either; he was one of the most unhappy men ever born on the earth. He lived in unhappiness, he died in unhappiness. The day he died somebody asked, “You must be dying fully contented — because you are leaving such a lot of money behind you. You are the richest man in the world.” Andrew Carnegie opened his eyes and said, very sadly said, “I am not fulfilled in my desires. My target was far higher — I have not been able to reach it. I could accumulate only ten percent of my target.” But even if you achieve one hundred percent of your target, how is it going to help? One is going to remain unfulfilled. Each life you will find the same thing repeated; forms change, but the discontent remains…. The mind is not a gift from God; the mind is a conditioning by the society. The soul is a gift, the body is a gift, and sandwiched between the two, the society has played tricks with you: it has created your mind. It gives you ambition, it gives you jealousy, competition, violence, it gives you all kinds of ugly diseases. But this mind can be transcended, this mind can be put aside. This mind is not a must. I am sitting before you and I say it through my own experience, I say it on my own authority: that mind can be put aside. It is so simple, you just have to know the knack of it.”

Osho say……

OSHO, I NEVER WANT WHAT I GET; I REJECT IT. I ALWAYS WANT WHAT IS NOT GIVEN TO ME; THIS I TRY TO GET. I NEVER FEEL SATISFIED WITH WHAT I HAVE, I ALWAYS WANT SOMETHING ELSE. AND I NEVER SAY WHAT I REALLY WANT. L SUFFER MUCH FROM THIS BUT, IT SEEMS, NOT ENOUGH AS I STILL CLING TO IT. CAN YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

Mandiro,

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD IS MADE.

The world is a great device of God. Just as Masters create small devices for the disciples, God creates the ultimate device for all beings. The world is a device.

It was Christmas time and a professor, a professor of philosophy and logic, went to a toyshop with his wife to purchase something beautiful, a new toy, for their only child as a Christmas gift. They tried many toys but they were all old, a little bit modified here and there. The shopkeeper, seeing that they were not satisfied, went inside the store and brought out an absolutely new toy they had never seen before. It was a jigsaw puzzle. He said, “This is the latest and the best — you MUST like it.”

They tried to fit the jigsaw puzzle together. First the wife tried — ladies first. She failed, she could not figure it out. The husband laughed — the male chauvinist laughter! — and he said, “Wait! I will do it.” And he was a logician, a professor of philosophy; if he cannot do it, then who will be able to do it? He tried hard. First he was very much inspired and finally he was simply perspiring — the whole inspiration became perspiration! He was drenched in perspiration. And a crowd had gathered, and there was no way to figure it out. The puzzle remained a puzzle, became more and more puzzling.

Finally he asked the shopowner, “What kind of jigsaw puzzle is this? If I cannot do it — I am the Head of the Department of Logic in the University, mathematics is my hobby — if I cannot do it, then how do you hope that a five-year-old child will be able to do it?”

The shopkeeper said, “Who told you that anybody can do it? This toy represents the world. It is made in such a way that it cannot be fixed. This is just a lesson for the child about how the world is!”

Do whatsoever you like — EVERYTHING fails. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. But it takes millions of lives for people to arrive at this point, because in one life you cannot try all there is. You try a few things; they fail, but the hope remains: maybe you have not tried the right things. You earn money, you become the richest man in the world — you become an Andrew Carnegie. And at the peak, when you have become the richest man in the world, suddenly you see your whole life has been a wastage. Money is there, but there is no contentment inside — and life has gone down the drain.

You can see the misery of an Andrew Carnegie. When he was dying, somebody who was writing a biography said to him, “You must be the most contented man in the world.” He said, “Contented? I am the MOST discontented man in the world! Don’t you know I am the wealthiest man in the world? That is my discontent. Now I know there is no more to wealth: all that is possible I have attained, and yet I am dying empty. My life has been just a wastage. Next time, if God gives me another opportunity, I am not going to try money any more — it has failed.” But the hope is there — he will try politics…? Those who attain to political power, they fail. But then they think maybe it is knowledge: “We should try knowledge.” And so on and so forth. Mandiro, remember:

the world is made as a device by God. EVERYTHING here is bound to fail. You can hope and you try, but nothing is going to succeed. The day you understand that nothing is going to succeed is the day of great transformation. That is the day Sannyas is born.

In Detroit, brothels are now automatized. One puts twenty dollars in a slot and a door opens. A politician decides to have a go. He puts in the twenty bucks and the door opens. He finds himself in a corridor with two doors: one reads “Blonde”, the other reads “Brunette”. He chooses the door with “Blonde” written on it. He then finds himself in another corridor with two doors: one reads “Tall” and the other reads “Small”. He opens the door with “Tall” written on it and finds himself in another corridor with two doors: one reads “Big Tits”, the other reads “Small Tits” Immediately he chooses the door with “Big Tits” on it, and finds himself in another corridor with two doors, the one reading “Small Ass”, the other “Large Ass”. He rushes through the door with “Small Ass” written on it, and again finds himself in a corridor with two doors, one with “Real Screw” on it, the other “Fancy Fuck”. He throws himself on the door with “Real Screw” on it…and finds himself in the street on the other side of the same building!

But you can try other ways. You will ALWAYS find that you end up in the street on the other side of the building! The whole of life is like that…otherwise there would have been no reason for Sannyas. There would have been no reason for religion to exist at all.

Religion exists only because the world fails. It is the failure of the world that brings you to a new awareness: that if the cherished goal cannot be found in the world, then let us try it inwards.

Mandiro, THERE you have not tried yet. Move inwards! Contentment is a quality of your center; it is not found on the circumference. Fulfilment is when you have arrived at your real, authentic being; it is not found in the ego.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse series: Be Still and Know
Chapter #9
Chapter title: He Died in Samadhi
9 September 1979 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken extensively on ‘art, music, painting, poetry, dance’ and creative geniuses like Picasso, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Salvador Dali, Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Mozart, Wagner, Pt. Ravi Shankar, Taansen, Byron, Bhavabhuti, Coleridge, Dinkar, D.H. Lawrence, Ghalib, John Ruskin, Kalidas, Kahlil Gibran, Keats, Milton, Nijinsky, Omar Khayyam, Shelley, Tagore, Yeats and many more in the course of His talks. More on this subject can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles:

1. Ah This
2. Beyond Psychology
3. Come Follow to You Vol.1-4
4. The Guest
5. Going All the Way
6. This Is It
7. The Book of Wisdom
8. The Path of the Mystic
9. A Sudden Clash of Thunder
10. The Path of Love
11. The Secret
12. The Last Testament, Vol 1
13. Come, Come, Yet Again Come