from-ignorance-to-innocence-28

Osho,
It seems that all the pioneers in art and science have reached the unknown spaces through some kind of obsession. What kind of obsessions has the new religious man?
Science, art, and other dimensions open to the human mind are all one-dimensional – hence the obsession. The mind moves in one direction, dropping all others. It chooses a single point to be focused on, against the whole of life, hence the obsession. Concentration is obsession, but there is no other way – science and art can work only obsessively.
For example, a man like Albert Einstein… He is a man of tremendous intelligence, a superb genius, but he is obsessed. He is so much in his own dimension, the world of stars, the universe, that by and by he becomes completely blind to everything else. He forgets when he has to go to sleep, he forgets when he has to come out of his bathroom.
Sometimes for six hours Einstein used to remain in his bathtub – till his wife started making too much fuss, knocking on the door. And she was understanding, hence she tolerated as much as was possible – but six hours in the bathtub! And she would be sitting with his lunch getting cooler and cooler and colder and colder, and she knew it was not good to disturb him because even while he was in his bathtub playing with the soap bubbles, his mind was moving into depths of the universe.
He discovered his theory of relativity in his bathroom. He used to say, “Don’t disturb me. Nothing is more important. When I am moving in a certain direction, and I am coming close to the clue, and you knock on the door… Let lunch be cold, throw it away, because just for your lunch you have distracted me. I was just getting close; now I am as far away as I was before. And nobody knows when again I will come so close to the point. It is not within my hands.” Now, this man is certainly obsessed.
Edison was a great genius; perhaps nobody else has so many discoveries to his name, to his credit, as Edison: one thousand discoveries. But he was so obsessed that once he forgot his own name. That is a very rare possibility, most improbable – forgetting one’s own name! Then you can forget anything.

It was before the First World War, when, for the first time in the world, ration cards were invented, and he had gone to take his ration. He was standing in a line and people went on moving forward. When his number came and he was at the front of the line, they called again and again, “Thomas Alva Edison, is there anybody by the name of Thomas Alva Edison?” And he looked here and there: who is this Thomas Alva Edison?
One neighbor standing behind, far back in the line, said, “What are you looking at? You are Thomas Alva Edison, I know you.”
He said, “If you say so, then certainly I must be, because you are such a nice guy, you can’t lie.”

What happened to him? How did he forget his name? Even standing in the queue for the ration card, he was not there. He was in the world of electricity. He was figuring out things which had no concern with the place where he was standing or with the ration card or with the person named Thomas Alva Edison.
It is said… Perhaps it is just a joke, but it is possible that if a man can forget his own name it may be true and not a joke. He was going on a journey. He kissed his maidservant thinking she was his wife, and patted his wife thinking she was the maidservant. They both were shocked. But he said, “What is the matter? Why are you both looking shocked? Aren’t you my wife and isn’t she my maidservant?” And he was not joking; he was simply not there.
Obsession means you are possessed by some idea so totally that everything else becomes absolutely unimportant, everything else falls into darkness. Only one spot remains lighted, and it goes on growing narrower and narrower and narrower. That’s the way of discovery. When it comes to be the narrowest, you have found the center for which you have been looking for years. But when your focus is narrowing, and when the circle of your focus is becoming smaller and smaller, what about you? You are also becoming narrower and narrower – one-pointed. The whole universe disappears for you.
The scientist is bound to be obsessed: the greater the scientist, the bigger the obsession. Hence, obsession is not a disease for a scientist, it is absolutely necessary. It is his way of working. If you relieve him of his obsession he will be an ordinary man, not a scientist.
It is defined, that science knows more and more about less and less. The object of knowledge becomes less and less, and your knowledge of it becomes more and more. If the definition is stretched to its logical conclusion, it means science ultimately will come to a point where it knows everything about nothing. That will be the logical conclusion.
And science is coming closer to that point where it knows all about nothing, because “less and less” is finally going to become nothing. And knowledge about “more and more” is finally going to become all.
The situation of religion is just the opposite. It knows less and less about more and more. Obviously a religious man becomes more and more nonobsessed. The more he becomes religious, the less obsessed he is. His method is to know less and less about more and more. His ultimate conclusion is to know nothing about all. That’s why Bodhidharma says, “I know nothing.” Socrates says, “I know nothing.”
Nothing about what? – about all.
The focus is no longer there. The religious man is just a presence opening into all dimensions simultaneously.
Art is similar to science. Everything except religion is bound to be a kind of an obsession, for the simple reason that you have to go deeper and deeper to find the source of something; but your vision becomes narrower, and everything else starts falling out of your vision. You don’t see, you become more and more blind about everything else except the one thing with which you are obsessed.
The painter, while painting, is not aware of anything; the poet also.

One of the greatest poets of India, Rabindranath Tagore, used to lock himself in his room or in his porch for days together. He was not to be disturbed for food or anything. Nobody knew what he was doing inside his room because he had locked it from the inside. Sometimes three days would pass and the whole family would be in a panic, wondering whether that man was still alive or dead. But there was no way to disturb him. They would all move around outside his room just to figure out if there was some noise inside or not, at least some indication that he was still alive.
When he was asked, “Why do you do it?” he said, “Unless I forget the whole world, and my family…” His family was a big family. His father was one of the richest men in Bengal, his grandfather was even richer. The British government had given them the title of rajah, the king, although they were not kings. But they had so much land and so much property and so much money that they were equivalent to any king; they had their own kingdom.
There were one hundred people in the family. Rabindranath writes in his autobiography: “There were many people that I never came to know who they were. Guests used to come and then never go, and nobody would bother about it. Faraway relatives would appear – nobody had heard about them, they just used to declare that they were faraway cousins. That was perfectly okay, they were allowed in the family. They stayed in the family, they lived in the family, and they were so rich that nobody bothered whether these people should work or anything.
So, Rabindranath says, “In that family it was always a marketplace. It was impossible to be in that space where poetry becomes possible. It comes only when you are alone. It is very shy, it is very feminine; it won’t come in a crowd. It won’t come if you are concerned with something else. It will come only when you are concerned only with it. It is very possessive, just like the feminine. Of course, as graceful as the feminine, and as shy as the feminine, but of course, as possessive too.”
He said, “When I am possessed I don’t want any disturbance. So many times I have missed, and a half poem has remained half. I could not manage that space again; the remaining lines never came. And I am not a poet who will compose poetry just intellectually. If it comes from the beyond, I am receptive.”

And that beyond is really within your unconscious; it comes from there. But it looks like it is coming from the beyond.
Now, if you cure the poet of obsession, you kill him. Sigmund Freud is not needed by poets and scientists and artists. He will destroy them all. He will psychoanalyze them, disperse their obsession, and they will be reduced into ordinary human beings. But religiousness is not one-dimensional, hence there is no need for any obsession. In fact, if you are obsessed you cannot be religious.
Yes, these people – scientists, poets, painters, musicians, dancers – have sometimes reached into unknown spaces through their obsession. But those unknown spaces are not spiritual spaces; they are within the mind, and they belong to some part below the conscious mind, either to the unconscious or to the collective unconscious or to the cosmic unconscious.
The deeper the space is, the more unknown it is. But just because it is unknown does not mean that you have touched something spiritual. It is unknown but part of the unconscious world of your mind – it is not spiritual. It is tremendously exciting because it is so unknown. You have entered into an unknown corner of your being.
It is just a tremendous discovery, but still it is not religious. It won’t bring you to the ecstasy and the blessing of a religious man. On the contrary, it may create a tremendous anguish in you, a tension which is unbearable, a nightmare which is pure suffering. Hence, you will find poets, musicians, scientists, in a kind of anguish. What they are doing is certainly a kind of fulfillment to them, but it does not bring solace to the soul.
Albert Einstein, before dying, said, “If I am born again I would prefer to be a plumber than to be a physicist.” What anguish he must have suffered, that he is ready to become a plumber and does not want to be a physicist again! – because any obsession is a torture. You are being stretched. It is not a harmonious growth of your being because it is one-dimensional. It is as if a man’s head starts growing and becoming bigger and bigger and bigger; the whole body shrinks and the head becomes so big that he can only stand on his head, there is no other way. The body cannot support the head.
In Japan they have dolls called daruma dolls. Daruma is the Japanese name for Bodhidharma. Those dolls are beautiful. They represent Bodhidharma: their bottom is heavy, very heavy, so you throw the doll in any way, and it will always sit in the lotus posture again. Because the base is heavy and the head is light, and the whole body is light, it cannot remain in any other position. If you put it in any other position it will immediately turn and sit in the lotus posture. The daruma doll was created because of a certain statement of Bodhidharma. He said, “When you become really centered in your being, nothing in the whole of existence can create even a slight trembling in you. No fear is possible. And when you are centered in your being, even if the whole of existence wants to throw you upside down, it is impossible; you will always come rightside up.” That gave the idea of the daruma doll.
The religious man is multidimensional. All his windows and all his doors are open. His consciousness is available to everything.
He is not looking for a certain discovery, he is not looking even for God. That is why I am continually saying to you, “There is no God, don’t look for him otherwise you will be obsessed. That’s why I call all the religions that have existed up to now pseudo-religious: they are obsessed, just like anybody else – in fact, more obsessed.
What is a Tibetan monk doing his whole life? – just repeating the name of Buddha. If that is not an obsession, then what can be an obsession? – and a useless obsession too. If Albert Einstein is obsessed, at least he contributes to the world. He suffers, but he gives something to the world.
These Tibetan monks, what have they given to the world? The Hindu monks, what have they given to the world? What is their contribution? Of the Christian monks, the Catholic monks alone are one million in number. One million monks! And what is their contribution? They are just burdens on humanity – obsessed people, but obsessed with something that does not exist; hence there is no contribution.
The scientist is obsessed with something that really exists – he is obsessed with some objective reality. The poet is obsessed with something of subjective reality. But your pseudo-religious man is obsessed with a God which does not exist, and out of a nonexistent God what are you going to get? Where are you going to reach? These monks are moving in circles their whole life. They are obsessed.
So let me make it clear to you. If you find a religious man obsessed, then that is enough proof that he is not religious. A really religious man is not obsessed at all. He is open to the whole. And he is not concerned in any way to discover something, to create something: a song, a painting, a dance, a sculpture. No, he is not concerned.
It is possible that a really religious man may create a song, but that is just play; he is not serious about it. It is just… You are sitting on the beach and you start playing and making a statue out of wet sand. You are not obsessed with it; there is no need to complete it. And when you leave you may give a hit to the statue that you have been creating for hours.
This was not an obsession, you were just being playful. Sitting alone… You were not doing something serious. A religious man sometimes composes poetry or music or dance or a statue or a painting, but they are all just games.
There are millions of statues in the East so beautiful that Michelangelo would feel jealous, but the sculptors have not even signed their name: that would become a serious affair. Millions of statues of the same caliber and quality as those of Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo – but nobody knows who made them. The people who made them were just enjoying, playing. If something comes out of play, you cannot claim it is your creation and that you have to sign it.
Who made the Ajanta caves? – the Ellora caves? Who made the Khajuraho temples? Who made the Konarak temples? There is no way to find out. The people who made such tremendous beauty, incomparable, were not concerned at all to leave even a single trace behind. They enjoyed making it, of course, but that was all. It was not an obsession.
If you go to the Ajanta caves, which are Buddhist caves, where for thousands of years Buddhist monks must have been working… Many caves are incomplete. I used to go there, and I asked the guides – different guides – again and again… There were many guides, and I would always choose a different one so I could torture him. Incomplete caves, incomplete statues, Buddhas only half-made… And I would ask, “What was the matter?” And they would have no explanation.
Somebody said, “Perhaps the artist died.”
I said, “There were so many other artists – there must have been thousands of artists for so many caves; each cave must have needed hundreds of artists to make it – couldn’t they even complete a Buddha? Just the body is there, the head was just being started. This looks a little disrespectful to Buddha. You should complete it.”
And they would say, “What can we do? Nobody knows who made them. Nobody knows why they stopped in the middle.”
I said, “I know, that’s why I am asking. This whole thing was just a big game. The person who was making it was not obsessed, otherwise he would have completed it. If he was dying, he would have taken a promise from a friend to complete it.”
The obsessional man is a perfectionist. He will not leave anything incomplete, he will make it entire; he will not rest till it is complete. But to a religious man… They played as long as they enjoyed it. The moment they felt it was time to stop this game, they stopped the game. And because they stopped the game, no other artist – they were all religious people – would interfere with it.
Anybody could have completed it; just a little work was needed and it could have been completed. It was almost complete, but nobody interfered with it because that was trespassing. If that man wanted his Buddha to remain this way, it was his business. And that man may have started something else, because it was all play.
A religious man can create playfully but cannot be serious.
Seriousness is part of obsession. For example, Karl Marx is the ideal obsessional man. His whole life he spent in the British Museum library. He had no actual experience of poverty; he had never been part of the proletariat, the laborers for whom he was going to be the messiah. He had not a single friend who was a laborer.
He had only one friend, who was a capitalist, Friedrich Engels. And he had to be friendly toward Engels because who was going to feed him? His obsession was to create the whole philosophy of communism, in its entirety, so there would be no need for anybody else to add anything. He was a Jew – and somehow it is very difficult to get rid of your conditioning. Although he became an atheist, denied God, denied the soul, a Jew is a Jew – he wanted to make communism absolutely complete.
Before the museum library was open, he was standing there at the door. The librarian would come after him; before he came, Marx was waiting. And the whole day he was in the library. The library would be closed, and the librarian would be persuading him, “Now, please stop. Come tomorrow.”
And Marx would say, “Just wait a few minutes longer; something is still incomplete. I have to complete this note.”
In the beginning they used to be nice to him. Finally they found this was not going to help: they had to forcibly throw him out of the library. Four people would take him out, and he would be shouting, “Just a few minutes longer! Now, are you mad, or what? What are you doing? Tomorrow I will have to work hours to find those few sentences that I could write just now. Just wait!”
But the library has to be closed at a certain time, and those people have to go to their homes. They are just servants. They don’t care about your communism and what philosophy you are writing. And you have been doing this for twenty years, thirty years, forty years! Forty years continuously! And sometimes it used to happen that he would not eat. The food would be with him, because he used to come with his food so that he did not have to go home or to a hotel and waste time.
So he would be just eating and referring to encyclopedias and books: with one hand he would be continually writing, and with the other hand he would be eating. And sometimes he forgot to eat; and as he became older, many times it happened that he was taken not to his home but to the hospital, because he was found unconscious: hungry, continuously reading, writing, reading, writing.
One feels sad that nobody reads this poor Karl Marx’s book, Das Kapital – nobody! I have not come across a single communist who has read it from the first page to the last. Perhaps I am the only person who has read it from the first page to the last – just to see what kind of madman this Karl Marx was. And he was certainly a madman – so obsessed with economics, with exploitation, that he forgot the whole world.
He forgot small things. He was moving into the higher realms of mathematical theorizing, and he forgot simple mathematics, simple economics. He was a chain-smoker; he was reading, writing – and smoking. His wife, his physician, his friend Engels were all worried that this smoking would kill him.
One day he came home with big boxes of a certain cigarette that had just come on the market. His wife could not believe it: “Are you going to open a shop? Are you going to sell cigarettes? So many big boxes!”
And he was so happy. He said, “You don’t understand. I have found this new cigarette, just introduced on the market. And the cigarette that I was smoking was costing double. Now with this cigarette you smoke one cigarette, and you save so much money; you smoke two cigarettes and you save so much money again. The more you smoke, the more money is saved! And I am going to smoke them because everybody has been torturing me, saying, ‘You don’t earn.’ Now you will see how much money is saved.”
The wife thought, “Your economics…!” She informed his friend Engels, and called him to come immediately. “Your friend seems to have gone completely mad, because this stupid thing even I can understand. How will money be saved? But he does not listen and he is just in his room smoking two cigarettes together, to save money!”
Engels came, took the cigarettes from his mouth and said, “Are you mad? What are you doing?”
He said, “I am just trying to do something so that I need not depend on you: I am saving money.”
It was so difficult to explain to him, “Nothing will be saved, you will simply kill yourself. Yes, in figures it looks as if you smoke one cigarette and half the money is saved, but in actuality there is no money saved. And just to save that money you will be smoking double, treble, four times the number of cigarettes. So in fact you will be wasting more money than you were wasting before. And money is not the question,” Engels said, “I take care of it. You need not be worried about it.” He was a millionaire, owned factories, and he loved Karl Marx.
But Marx was so obsessed with making the system complete. And of course he has left a complete system; after Marx there has been no addition to it. To add anything to it, first you will have to read him, and that is going to drive you nuts.
Aristotle has created the whole system of logic; that was his obsession. Just a single man… His whole life, whole obsession was this: that the system of logic that he was creating should be complete; he should leave it as a closed chapter. So for future generations, for the whole future eternity, he would remain the logician, the only logician. And he completed a system. Of course he was obsessed. Day and night he was working: he wouldn’t sleep until he fell asleep on his books. But these people are not religious people.
You ask me, what kind of an obsession will the new religious man have? The new religious man is simply the religious man. The old religious man was not religious, he only pretended to be religious. He made religion also an obsession. He was more obsessed than the scientist, than the painters and poets – because at least poets were going to the coffee house, meeting with the friends, doing things other than poetry. Painters were not only painting, they were doing a thousand and one other things too. But these pseudo-religious people were not doing anything else. They closed themselves in cells, in monasteries, and all that they were doing was nagging God.
Nietzsche said, “God is dead.” Nobody asked him, “Who killed him?” I know: these so-called religious people! They nagged him for centuries. And all kinds of religious people, in all languages, nagging a single poor God – he must have committed suicide. His suicide is more probable than a natural death. He cannot die a natural death; he must have committed suicide.
But those people are still after him. Even in his grave he will be tossing and turning, because the Catholic is shouting in his ear, the Protestant is shouting in his ear, and then come the witnesses of Jehovah, who can drive anybody nuts. All these people, all around the world, day and night, year in, year out, after just one single poor old God. These people must have provoked the desire for suicide in him.
It is a known fact that God never created anything after he created man. I have been wondering why. Why did he stop with man? Up to man’s creation; everything was good. The horses were not becoming monks. The donkeys were not becoming priests. The monkeys were not declaring themselves popes. God was happy. It is said that he created each thing and said, “Good” – just the way I say, “Good.” He must have learned it from me because I don’t know anybody else who says good the way I say good. But when he created man he didn’t say that.
He must have lost his nerve – “What have I done?” – because immediately man must have created the business of the so-called religions. He must have caught hold of his feet immediately: “God, my Lord…” Since then nobody has heard about him, where he is. Either he escaped to the farthest star – and physicists say those stars are running farther away; perhaps it is because of God.
Those stars are not static there. That was the idea up to this century, that the stars are static there, far away, but they are there. Now physicists say that they are not there. Where you see the stars in the night, there they may have been millions of light-years ago. The light has reached your eyes tonight, but light takes time to travel.
Where you see a certain star tonight. one thing is certain: it is not there. It may have been sometime far, far back – perhaps when the earth was not made, when even your solar system was not in existence, the star was there. That day the light started moving toward the nonexistent earth and the nonexistent sun, and it has arrived today. That much time it took to reach. Meanwhile the star is not sitting there. The light is coming toward you and the star is going farther away with the same speed as light – that is, at one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second, the light is coming toward you and the star is going away from the point where it was.
Perhaps God is riding on the farthest star and running as fast and as far away as possible from all these prying monks and religious people and churches, temples, mosques, synagogues. But it is good to say that there is no God, it saves God all the trouble. And one day it will save man also from this stupid obsession.
The religious man has no obsession. His life is simple, natural, spontaneous, moment-to-moment. He has no great ideas that he wants to bring to the world. He has no great ideologies that he wants to impose on humanity.
He is a simple man. That’s why it is very difficult to find a religious man, because he will be so simple and so ordinary that you are going to miss him. He won’t have any talent. He will not be a Picasso, he will not be an Einstein, he will not be a Stalin; he won’t have any kind of talent. You will not be able to judge his genius because his genius is unobsessed, so he cannot produce science, he cannot produce new discoveries, new inventions.
It is not just a coincidence that in the East, where religion has existed for at least ten thousand years… And there have been a few authentically religious men. Of course there has not yet been an authentic religion; but here and there, once in a while, there have been authentic religious men.
But the East has not been able to create science. Do you think Buddha had not the genius equivalent to Albert Einstein? He had a far bigger, higher, deeper genius than any Albert Einstein could ever have. But he is not obsessed, hence his genius does not move in one direction. His genius becomes a fragrance around him, becomes a light around him. Those who have eyes can see the light. Those who have ears can hear the music around him, can hear the silence that surrounds him, can smell the fragrance of the man.
But Buddha is not going to invent a computer. He is not obsessed; he is absolutely unobsessed. So you can feel his genius, but you cannot see it reflected in some objective achievement. What is his achievement? Far smaller people have achieved much more. He has not achieved anything, but he has been just himself. If you can call it an achievement, then call it an achievement. But it is not achievement.
What he is, he has always been. An achievement means something that was not there and now is there. But to realize oneself; to know oneself, is not to bring any new thing into existence. It has been there; whether you know it or not does not make any difference to its existence. It has been there. It is there. Yes, there was a time when you were keeping your back to it, and now you have taken a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and you are facing it – but nothing new has come into existence.
You can feel that experience – yes, it is an experience. All that you need is to be receptive, available, open, because a man like Buddha cannot even knock on your doors: even that will be interfering with somebody else’s being.
Buddha can stand before your doors and wait till eternity: someday you may open the door, someday you will invite him in. Without your invitation he is not going to come in. There is not a question of ego. It is your house, you are the host, and unless you invite him it is not right to trespass on your privacy in any way.

Buddha became enlightened – but for seven days he remained silent. And he gave many arguments why he remained silent for seven days; in fact he wanted to remain silent forever. Later on when he was asked again and again why he had remained silent for seven days and then had spoken, he said, “Even to speak is to interfere; let the other understand the silence. And if he cannot understand the silence, do you think he will understand my words? – because my words will be far away from my silence, they won’t be representative. There is every possibility he may be misguided by my words, and I may be helpless to prevent it. In silence if somebody comes to me, he cannot misinterpret it. He may understand, he may not understand; there are only two possibilities, and I will not be responsible for sending him on a track which was not my intention at all. But my words can take him in a direction which is not the direction I am pointing at.”
So for seven days he remained silent and people asked, “Why did you speak?”
He said, “Now, this you will have to just take on faith, if you trust me. But there is no need to accept it, because it is meaningless. I was persuaded by other enlightened beings who are in the cosmos. But this you will have to take it on faith, unless you reach that state.” He insisted, “This should not be part of my teachings; I am just fulfilling your curiosity. You can reject it because it is not an essential part of my teaching. But if you insist on asking why I spoke, then I have to answer you.”
Buddha said, “People who have become enlightened before persuaded me, argued with me. They said, ‘In thousands of years a man comes to the state of being where you are. Even if out of a hundred people, one person understands your words rightly, that is enough. Don’t be worried about the ninety-nine because they will go astray even without hearing you. They are bound to go astray.
“‘If they can go astray even hearing you, then what do you think – that without hearing you they will not go astray? Take it for granted: those ninety-nine are determined to go astray whether you speak or not. But what about that one percent? We appeal to you for that one percent who may not be able to find the path without your speaking.’”
And Buddha said, “I am speaking for that one percent.”

Strangely, I am still speaking for that one percent.
The world has not moved a single inch. Twenty-five centuries and man is as blind, as asleep, and unconscious as he ever was.
Charles Darwin was absolutely wrong, because looking at man there seems to be no evolution: as far back as we can see, he is the same. If for ten thousand years there has not been any evolution in man, do you think one day suddenly a few monkeys jumped from their trees and, without any Patanjali to teach them Yoga exercises, stood – instead of on their four legs, on two legs? And their two front legs turned into two hands? And their monkey mind became man’s mind?
It seems to be a far greater miracle than any prophet or messiah has been performing. It would have been far better for Jesus to turn a monkey into a man, because that would have proved poor Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. But he could not even turn man into man – what to say about turning a monkey into a man!
In English you have only one word for man; that is a poverty of language. In Hindi we have two words for man: one is admi – that is from Adam – and another is insan: both mean man. Admi is the lowest state of mankind; insan is the highest state of mankind.
One of the great poets, Mirza Ghalib, has a statement in which he says, “In this world the most difficult thing is the transformation of an admi into an insan. It is one of the most difficult things to make man really a man. He is subhuman.”
So I say, still I am speaking for the one percent. And that one percent are not people having a special talent, a special quality, no – they just have an open heart, an open being, open from all directions, unobsessed with anything. They will be pure ordinariness – not in any way tense, pushed, pulled in any direction, as if there was a magnet. They will be relaxed, with no tensions.
Yes, if the whole of humanity one day turns into a religious commune, many things will disappear from the world which are not needed.
Ninety percent of scientific discoveries are used only in war; they are not needed. Ninety percent of paintings are just absurd; they are not needed. Ninety percent of problems that you continuously have to face are absolutely unwanted, unbased. They will disappear.
And whatever ten percent is left, the whole of humanity, radiant in its innocence and simplicity, will be able to cope with.
There will be no problems.
With that much innocence on the earth, and that much fragrance on the earth, and that much light on the earth, it is inconceivable that any problem could exist.
But many professions will disappear. What will the psychoanalyst do? What will the psychologist do? What will the therapist do? What will the priest do? Hence all these people are going to prevent the coming of the new man in every possible way, because his coming is their departure.
Who will bother about nuclear scientists? They will be simply cured from their obsession. Nuclear science? – you must be nuts! Man is starving, and you are piling up atom bombs and hydrogen bombs and neutron bombs – and man is starving. What kind of intelligence is at work? People are dying for small, little things: no shelter, no clothes, no food – and you are trying to reach the moon! For what? At what a cost!
Nobody asks, “Please at least let us know what the point is. Even if you reach there, then what you are going to do?” What did those people really do when they reached the moon? They must have looked absolutely foolish standing there – and they had risked their lives. They went through all kinds of strange training – in isolation tanks, in isolation rooms, in airless rooms, in gravitation-less rooms, for years. And then the whole journey, which was full of hazards – any moment anything could have gone wrong. And when you arrived what did you do there? What has been the attainment?
Now they are trying for Mars and other planets. Something seems to be crazy, buzzing in the politicians’ mind, in the scientists’ mind. Something seems to be basically wrong. And I say to you, it is the unobsessed religiousness that is missing. When a man is simple, innocent, ordinary, with no pretensions, no hypocrisy, his eyes are clear, he can see through and through: problems simply drop.
There is no need for problems to be. We create problems with one hand and we try to solve the problems with the other hand – and both are our hands! And where is this nonsense going to stop? Because with one hand we will go on creating problems, and with the other hand we will go on solving the problems. And it is our energy.
The religious man simply understands that these are both his hands; they have to learn to be together, they have to learn to function together in harmony.
If all the scientists of the world can have a little understanding of religiousness, they can at least refuse to create for war.
And if politicians are so interested, they can have wrestling matches. Everybody will enjoy it and there will be no harm. Why kill people? – people who have no interest in anything for which they will be killed. Why kill children? Why kill women? Why kill old people? They have no desire, no ideology; they simply want to live and be left alone to live. But the politicians won’t let them.
Now, is it not a simpler thing that the president of America goes into a wrestling match with the president of Russia? Then whosoever wins, good. And drop all this nonsense – just a little sportsmanship will do; no politics is needed, no army is needed. If your generals are so interested in fighting, then let generals have boxing matches – or Indian-style wrestling, which is far better, far simpler, more human: you don’t hit people’s faces and their noses and their eyes and their lips and you don’t disfigure them. And you don’t break people’s bones; there is no need. It is more articulate, more sophisticated. Just let the politicians – rather than have the Olympics for ordinary people, have Olympics for politicians, generals, and each year you can decide who is the winner. It is simple.
What I am saying is that to me it looks so simple that the world can be one. And there is the solution: the whole world, one. Poverty cannot exist. All the efforts going into war can move into production. All the sciences working to kill each other can work together – they are both our hands. And I don’t see that there is any problem that cannot be solved; we only need a simple vision.
The religious man’s vision is simple, uncomplicated, clear.
Unclouded is his being.
He is just a mirror. You can see your face in the mirror. You can see how you are creating your troubles, how you are creating your misery, your suffering, and then searching for solutions. Once you can see how you create the suffering, you stop creating it. There is no need for any solution, no question needs any answer, you just have to be simple to see that the question is meaningless, and the question drops. And in the dropping of the question, without finding any answer, you have found it.
Let me repeat: except for the religious man, every direction in life is in some way obsessional. The religious man is not moving in any direction, he is simply sitting in himself, just being himself, not going anywhere. He has no goal, no target.
He simply is, and in his is-ness there is no possibility of any obsession. He is the only really healthy and whole person. Everybody else is sick – in different ways, but sick all the same.
And I call the whole man the holy man.
Yes, once in a while these people have existed, but one person in centuries is not much help. It is just dropping a teaspoonful of sugar in the ocean to make it sweet. Obviously you simply lose the one teaspoonful of sugar which might have been used in a cup of tea. Make a cup of tea, that is understandable, but don’t try to make the ocean sweet. The ocean is too big. For the ocean you will need oceanic methods.
My basic effort is to create communes – rather than the religious man, religious communes. Religious men have existed but they have not been of much help. Yes, to themselves – they arrived home – but the whole of humanity is still wandering in darkness. I want religious communes all over the world. Slowly, slowly in every city, create a religious commune. Many religious people together may perhaps be able to transform the face of the earth and to create a new world, which is urgently needed.
If we miss twenty years more then there is no hope, because the other side is coming to a climax. The mad side of man – the politician, the priest – is coming to a climax where the only conclusion is war.
And this war means total annihilation of all life from the earth, which will be the most idiotic thing to do.