osho - the last testament

osho - the last testament, ezoteryka

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The Last Testament, Vol 4
Interviews with the World Press
Talks given from 21/10/85 to 11/12/85
English Discourse series
30 Chapters
Year published:
The discourses listed as being titled "The Last Testament, Vol 1" are titled that
way on the tape. The book "The Last Testament, Vol 1" contains a different
numbering scheme, as it contains interviews selected from the whole Ranch
period. Volumes 2, 3 and 4 (as numbered on the tapes) will probably never be
published as such.
All other series in the database have been numbered and titled as in the books
they appear in, this will not be so for the Last Testament series, they will take
their numbering from the original numbers given them.
Many of the interviews from the World Tour have not been listed as being part of
any Last Testament Volume and they have been arbitrarily assigned to Vol.'s 4, 5
and 6 in groups of thirty.
The Last Testament, Vol 4
Chapter #1
Chapter title: The Last Before The First
21 October 1985 pm in Sanai Grove
[NOTE: The first interview is a tape transcript which has not been edited or
published. It is for reference only. The second interview is published in the book:
The Last Testament, Volume 1, as Chapter 31.]
SWAMI PREM PRASAD, MA YOGA PRATIMA, RAJNEESHPURAM, OREGON
INTERVIEW WITH SWAMI PREM PRASAD
QUESTION: BHAGWAN, COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE
SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION? AND COULD YOU SPEAK TO THE
SCIENTISTS WHO ARE MEETING TO DISCUSS CONFLICT AND UNITY IN
THE CHURCHES AT THE UPCOMING CONFERENCE IN GEORGIA?
A: It is one of the most ridiculous questions that I have come across! (laughter) It
is more absurd than somebody asking about a poetic study about mathematics,
or a medical study about paintings! This is more absurd for the simple reason
because scientific approach is basically objective. It needs some object to study,
something outside, something there, so it can be dissected, so that it can be
analyzed, put into test-tubes.
And religious experience is not an objective phenomenon at all. Religious
experience is subjective. The scientist can study everything as an object but he
cannot study himself as an object. It is just not in the nature of things to reduce
your subjectivity into an object.
And the whole religious experience is purely subjective experience. You go more
and more inwards. A point comes when there is nothing left, nothing which you
can say (is) an object, but pure consciousness, pure subjectivity.
This experience of pure subjectivity is religious experience. There is no way for
science to study it. It can study about it. But to study it, and to study about it, are
totally different things. You can study about swimming without knowing
swimming. But to know swimming is a totally different thing. You can study
about love, without ever being in love. There are hundreds of books on love. You
can become a great scholar on love. But that will not make you a lover!
So the first thing I would like, emphatically clear, is that science has no business
as far as religious experience is concerned. Yes, if scientists want to experience
religion, that is possible. But that is not through study; that is through
meditation.
And then, again brings to another difficulty: in science this is one of the basic
rules that you should not be identified with the object of your study. You should
remain indifferent, aloof. If you become identified, then your study will not be
objective.
If that is a fundamental rule in science, then the scientist has to drop that
fundamental rule outside, because in meditation, he has to become one with his
being. All separation has to be dropped. And everything that separates thoughts,
feelings, emotions; they all have to be dropped. So only an organic unity of
consciousness remains.
The scientist cannot stand outside it and watch it. He will be inside it. He will be
experiencing it. But he cannot stand outside it and watch it, the way he is
accustomed to do in his labs: standing outside things, watching. That is not
possible.
Just as science has its own fundamentals, religious experience has its own
fundamentals.
The first fundamental is: it can never be an objective thing. You can experience it
but you cannot study it. You can be it but you cannot be a watcher. Being it will
transform you. It will bring new qualities to you. But that will not be study. That
will be transformation. That will be mutation.
So these people who are thinking to study religions have to understand first
thing that religious experience is not within the world of objective study. You are
it! How can you put yourself on the table? And at the same time standing by the
side of the table dissecting yourself? And if it is possible in some way, then the
person you have put on the table is not you. The person who is dissecting,
standing by the table, is you.
So let me say it in another words: Consciousness is irreducible to an object.
Whatever you do, it always remains the subject.
I am reminded of a Japanese toy children play. In Japan they call it Daruma doll.
Daruma is Japanese name for Bodhidharma. The doll has a special quality. You
can throw it any way, but it will always fall down sitting in a lotus posture. That
you cannot change. You can topple it; you can hit it; you can throw it. But
whenever it will come to settle, it will settle in the lotus posture. Because its
bottom is made heavy, and the whole body is light. So there is no way; in any
other way it cannot settle. It has to settle in the lotus posture. The posture in
which Bodhidharma used to sit.
This Daruma doll signifies the quality of consciousness: Whatever you do it
always settles as a subject; never as an object. And to study, it has to be an object.
The very nature of consciousness debars any study. It is available for experience,
but not available for experiment.
This is the most fundamental thing you have to emphasize before the
Conference.
Second thing: They can study religions. About that, there is not problem. They
can study Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism. Because these are
all corpses. The living religious experience is not there. That mystical quality
perhaps may have been in the beginning. And because of that mystical quality,
people gathered around a master; organized a religion and destroyed the whole
thing.
Truth cannot be organized. That is the sure and certain way to murder it! And all
these religions are murdered corpses. They don't have any soul. You can study
them. But remember: studying them, don't start thinking that you are studying
religious experience. Religious experience always exists within the individual. It
cannot be organized.
Just as it cannot be objectified; in the same way, it cannot be organized. The
difficulty is: you cannot bring it to language. The experience happens in absolute
silence. How to bring that silence into words. Whatever you do, it escapes your
small words. It is too big; it is too vast! Even the sky is not the limit for it. For
thousands of years we have been trying to bring religious experience into words.
But it goes on defying.
All these religions are organized around words: the Holy Bible, the Koran, the
Gita. And words are absolutely impotent.
You can study these religions. There is no problem about it. They are objective.
And being objective is a solid proof that they are no more religious experience.
There is only one book which can be said to have STILL "having the religious
experience". It is a Sufi book called the Book of Books. It is all empty; not a single
word written in it. It has been handed over from one master to another disciple,
who had arrived and become a master. From master to master, for generations
the book has been passed on. It contains the truth. But it has no words: empty
pages.
Those empty pages say something, and say very loudly that all words are lies.
That only if you can empty yourself from all words, thoughts, perhaps you may
have the taste of religious experience.
You can study these religions, their rituals, their prayers, their architecture, their
different codes of conduct, manners. But these have nothing to do with religious
experience. In fact these religions are the greatest hindrances for individuals to
achieve the experience. Studying these religions in the name of religious
experience is not only befooling yourself, it is befooling the whole world.
It is simply hilarious! All these religious scriptures, rituals, prayers, should be
part of museums, not part of human life. Corpses...! You loved your wife, you
loved your mother, you loved your father, but one day your father dies. You
have to take him to the crematorium. That does not mean that you did not love
him. Burning his body in the crematorium is not a proof that you never loved
him. What do you want? To go on carrying his dead body whole of your life as a
proof that you loved your father? But how many bodies you will carry? Your
mother will die; your wife may die; your child may die; your friend may die.
Soon your house will be full of corpses. And living among those corpses, do you
think you will remain alive? You yourself will become a corpse.
These religions have been the most poisonous thing that has happened to
humanity. Yes, once in a while a man like Gautam Buddha or Lao Tzu
experienced. And the fragrance of his experience, without saying a single word,
started drawing people towards him as if some invisible magnetic force was
working.
People loved to be near Gautam Buddha for no other motive: just to be in his
presence; just to hear whatever he says. His each word has a poetry, has a song
in it. But remember it does not express his experience. His experience has
changed even his gestures. They have a grace now.
You will be surprised to see the statues in India of Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna,
and twenty-three Jaina masters. None of them has beards or moustache. Strange!
It is not possible that they were not having moustache and beard. Once in a while
there is somebody who does not grow, is missing in some hormones. But so
many people, and particularly the enlightened one, missing in some hormones!
And all without exception.
The truth is something else. They all had moustaches. They all had beard. But
after their enlightenment, their whole being became so graceful and so feminine.
To give expression to that gracefulness, the sculptor has found a symbol. That is
just symbolic. He has removed the moustache and the beard. They are all young.
They all became old. Buddha died when he was eighty-two but all the statues
show him nearabout, at the most, thirty-five.
And the same is the case with Mahavira. He has died at eighty. But the statues
are all young, again it is symbolic. The body became old but the spirit remained
young. Now how to express it in marble? The youthfulness became almost their
very being. The body became sick, the body became old, the body died. But what
they had experienced is still alive, is still young, is still part of existence.
But around these people, and it was natural, the way the Buddha walked, the
way he talked, the language he used, the food he ate, the clothes he wore,
everything became to the lovers something to be followed. As if by following it,
you can become a buddha!
That's how traditions are created, religions are created. Then for thousands of
years people are doing the same. Still the Buddhist monks learn the language
Pali that Buddha used. Now it is a dead language. Nobody uses it. But Buddhist
scriptures are in Pali, and Buddhist scholars like it to read it in the original. It has
some flavor of Buddha himself. But no language can carry the flavor. Because he
used only a certain kind of clothes, the Buddhist monk has been using the same
clothes. He used to have a beggar's bowl. Every Buddhist monk has a beggar's
bowl.
You are just imitating the outward signs and thinking that, if you can perfectly
imitate all outward signs and symbols, perhaps the inward experience will
automatically happen. This is not so. It has no relationship. You can eat the same
food. That does not mean you will become a Buddha.
You can study religions. They are all dead. Science can study corpses. That's
what science does. In every medical college you can find corpses being studied.
Science cannot study anything living, for the simple reason: the moment you
dissect it, it dies. I suspect, and perhaps one day my suspicion will be found to be
true, that when you study the blood of a man, you take the blood out and you
study it. That is dead blood. You are not really studying the blood that is alive in
the man.
It is like you cut my finger and you study it. Do you think the finger that you
have cut and studying is my finger? It is dead!
So all the studies of blood, all the studies about human body are not really about
the real living organism. You take something out of it. The moment you take it
out of it, you have taken out of its living context. It is something dead. And this is
about small parts.
And science has not been able yet to find anything that it can pin-point as life, for
the simple reason: If you dissect a man you have killed him already.
It is like you are studying dance. But to study the dance, you have to stop the
dancer because his dance disturbs your study: "You keep still and let me study
the dance". But while he is still there is no dance. You can have either the dancer,
or you can have the dance. You can't have both together to study.
Religions can be studied because they are corpses. But what is the point of
studying corpses? They should be taken to the crematorium. You will not find,
by studying them, what religion is.
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