OSHO: Science and the Inner Journey

OSHO International Foundation - http://www.osho.com

Excerpt from an Interview with Osho by the Italian edition of SCIENCE 85 MONTHLY.

Q: ONE OF THE BASIC PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE IS LANGUAGE. SCIENCE IS GROWING BECAUSE WE HAVE A CLEAR DEFINITION OF WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT. ONE OF THE BASIC PROBLEMS FOR A SCIENTIST, WHEN THEY ARE TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE INNER JOURNEY MEANS, IS TO DEFINE CLEARLY, FOR EXAMPLE, WHAT CONSCIOUSNESS MEANS. MOST OF THE SCIENTISTS DON'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONSCIOUSNESS, AWARENESS AND THE CONSCIOUS MIND. THEY ARE USING THIS TERM IN THE SAME WAY. SO I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU IF IT'S POSSIBLE TO HAVE AN UNDERSTANDING ABOUT THOSE TERMS.

Yes, there is no difficulty. Words can be defined clearly. The difficulty is not because of the words, the basic difficulty is coming from somewhere else.
That is, the scientist, deep down, does not believe that there is anything inner. He may say so, he may not say so, but his whole training, his whole education, makes him trust only objects which he can dissect, which he can observe, which he can analyze, which he can compose, create, uncreate, find out their basic constituents. His whole mind is object-oriented, and subjectivity is not an object.
So if he wants subjectivity to be put before him on the table, that is not possible; that is not the nature of subjectivity. So the scientist goes on finding everything in the world except himself.

A great barrier exists, and the barrier is that there is nothing inner. When you cut a stone into pieces, what do you find? -- more stone. You go on cutting smaller pieces, smaller pieces; you get to molecules, you get to atoms, you get to electrons, but still you have not come to anything inner. They are all objects.
He would also like life to be found in the same way, and because he cannot find life in the same way, he starts denying it. And consciousness is even more difficult a problem; because he cannot touch it, dissect it, find out its constituents, he simply rejects it. It does not exist.

So this is his prejudice. Because of this prejudice, he gets confused. And this prejudice can disappear very simply, if he hypothetically accepts -- I'm not saying he has to believe it, just hypothetically he accepts that if there are things outside, then it is something very scientific to accept that there must be things which are inner, because in existence, everything is polarized by its opposite. The outer can exist only if there is an inner. The unconscious can exist only if there is consciousness. This is the simple dialectics of life -- and he knows it, in existence everywhere he will find the same dialectics. Everything is opposed by its opposite. And they both are in some strange way complementary to each other -- opposing, and still complementary to each other.

Denying the inner is a very unscientific attitude. So first one has hypothetically to accept that the inner exists. Secondly, one has to understand that the methodology that works for the outer cannot work for the inner. Simply because the inner is the opposite dimension, the same methods will not be applicable. You will have to find new methodology for the inner. And that's what I call meditation: this is the new methodology for the inner.

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[Sumalia]

@incognito509b His meaning of emptiness is totally different than what scientists mean when they get the conclusion that there is no soul.

Osho have said many times that what is within cannot be expressed by words.It is both empty and full and all kind of terms can be used to describe it and those words would still be wrong.It is something unique that can only be lived and cannot be talked about.

[Jewbeanz]

@TomasMikaX just because you can't wrap your head around it, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. "water is not an elephant" makes perfect sense to me.

[TomasMikaX]

So basicaly scientists are fools for only believing claims that have been empiricaly proven and dismissing those that haven't? Nobody claims that subjectivity is an object, that doesn't even make sense, it's like saying water is not an elephant.

[otti7021]

@tobo86 yeah right!

[danijmay]

Osho meets science on its own terms...and then tells it about it's own mistakes... that is truly inspired and inspirational. Thank you Osho - much love and gratitude

[FFreeLevant]

Basically you have to build your own telescope to watch the inner sky. You can't borrow someone else's tools to test their claims. That's the difficulty.

Just like if in astronomy you had to build your own telescope before you can even begin to watch the night sky, that would be a major barrier to establishing it as a legitimate science.

[tobo86]

He talks about science of his day. Science has evolved since then.

[thehype04]

@TheStigma chemical reactions explain true conciousness and awernes of this experience, nah dont think so

[lookatmepleasesir]

@TheStigma if this phenomenon is only chemical reactions, how can we know it from both a subjective perspective and an objective perspective. Why can't a computer know the inner by detecting chemical reactions in the brain

[chinmoy23roy]

osho's vision is beyond explaination