Wheel of existence

Jul 13, 2010, 12.00am IST

Pythagoras's is the first experiment in creating a synthesis. Twenty-five centuries have passed since then and nobody has tried it again. Nobody else before had done it, and nobody else has done it afterwards either. It needs a mind that is both scientific and mystic. It is rare.

There have been great mystics like the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra. And there have been great scientists like Newton, Edison, Einstein. But to find a man who is at home with both worlds is difficult. Pythagoras is a class unto himself.

The synthesis was needed then as it is needed today because the world is again at the same point. The world moves in a wheel motion. Samsara in Sanskrit means 'the world', it also means the wheel. The wheel is big: one circle is completed in 25 centuries.

Twenty-five centuries before Pythagoras, Atlantis came to an end because of man's own scientific growth. Without wisdom, scientific growth is dangerous. It is like putting a sword in the hands of a child. Now 25 centuries have passed since Pythagoras. Again there is chaos. The wheel has come to the same point.

Uprooted, life loses meaning as values disappear. A great darkness descends. There's no sense of direction. One simply feels accidental. There seems to be neither purpose nor significance in life that seems to be all chance. It seems existence does not care for you; that there is no life after death and whatsoever you do is futile, routine and mechanical. Everything seems pointless.

Chaotic times can either be a great curse, as it happened in Atlantis, or can prove to be a quantum leap in human growth. It depends on how we use them. It is only in such great times of chaos that great stars are born.

Pythagoras was not alone. In Greece, Pythagoras and Heraclitus were born, just as in India, we had the Buddha, Mahavira and others. In China, there were Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius, Mencius, and Lieh Tzu. In Iran there was Zarathustra. In the Brahmin tradition, there have been many great Upanishadic seers. All these great masters were born at a certain stage in human history, 25 centuries ago.


Now we are again in great chaos, and man's fate will depend on what we do. Either we will destroy ourselves like the civilisation that destroyed itself in Atlantis; we will be drowned in our own knowledge; in our own science or, there is a possibility that we can take a quantum leap.

Ordinary people, the majority, live in unconsciousness; so they can't see even a few steps ahead. If we can create a great momentum for meditation, for the inward journey, for tranquillity, stillness and love, humanity will be born anew. A new man will be born. And once you miss these times, then for 25 centuries again you will remain the same. Only a few people will achieve enlightenment. Here and there, once in a while, a person will become alert and aware and divine. The greater part of humanity goes on living in hell.

I feel a deep spiritual affinity with Pythagoras. I am also bringing you a synthesis of East and West, of science and religion, of intellect and intuition, of male and female mind, of the head and heart, of right and left. I am also trying in every possible way to create a great harmony, because only that harmony can save and bring new life.

(Talk: Osho; excerpt from Philosophia Perennis, courtesy: Osho International Foundation. www.osho.com )