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 me 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.
Osho, Om Shantih Shantih Shantih, Talk #27
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