Logic

 

 

Question 1

Osho,

To what extent does life have relevance to logic?

 

 

Logic is a very small thing, life is vast. Logic is utilitarian, it is an invention of man. Life is non-utilitarian, it is not an invention of man; on the contrary, man is life's invention. Logic is one-dimensional, life is multi-dimensional. But for thousands of years man has been conditioned to believe that logic and life are synonymous.

 

This has destroyed the whole joy of the human heart, it has destroyed the most precious thing in existence: it has poisoned man's capacity to love, because logic goes against love, logic goes against bliss, logic goes against meditativeness, logic goes against godliness. But logic is good in a marketplace -- it is calculative, mathematical. Logic is good with things but not good with persons.

 

If you want to live with things logic is enough, but that is not going to be much of a life. When you live with persons, when you relate with persons, logic is not enough at all; in fact you have to put logic aside.

 

To relate to a person is to relate to an infinity. Logic cannot contain infinities. To fall in love means you are moving into the world of the uncalculated, the incalculable, the immeasurable, the uncharted. Logic will tell you, "You are going mad. Stop before it is too late!" Logic always creates a prison around you. Of course, it convinces you that it is for your own sake, it is for your safety, security, comfort. And in a certain sense it does give a certain security to you -- but that security is the security of death not of life.

 

If you want to be absolutely secure the grave is the best place; then there is no insecurity, no discomfort, no illnesses, no problems, no anxieties, no calamities, no death even! Once you have died you have died; it is all finished. Now you can rest forever. That's why on graves you will find these words: Now Rest in Peace. What else can you do in a grave?

 

One woman made a beautiful marble stone for her husband's grave: "Rest in Peace" was written on it in golden letters. After three days the will was opened and the husband had not left anything for the woman. She was furious. She rushed to the grave and underneath the golden letters "Rest in Peace" she wrote in her own hand "Till I Come!"

 

Life is insecure. There are wives and there are husbands, and there are children and whatnot. Life is insecure but that's the beauty of life, that's its adventure, that s its exhilaration, ecstasy. Logic makes everything dull, boring -- two plus two is always four.

 

In life it is not so: two plus two is sometimes three, sometimes five -- in fact, it is never four! In life it is never four. And now even mathematicians, geometricians, logicians have started becoming aware of the phenomenon. A new branch of geometry has happened, non-Euclidean geometry; it has changed the whole Euclidean static world. In non-Euclidean geometry nothing is logical. But you will be surprised to know that Albert Einstein found it far more helpful in discovering the Theory of Relativity than Euclidean geometry, which is logical.

 

Albert Einstein, before he died, just two days before, said, "When I started my adventure into the world of science I was very certain that two plus two is four. Now I cannot say that -- I cannot say it with any certainty. All certainty is gone. As I have gone deeper into the mystery of existence. I have found that our logic is applicable only to the most superficial. The deeper you go, the more irrelevant it becomes." His last words were, "To me life is a mystery now, and I feel that there is something in life which is absolutely unknowable."

 

Logic believes in two categories: the known and the unknown. That which is unknown today will become known tomorrow. That which is known today was unknown yesterday. So there is not much difference between the known and the unknown; they belong to the same category. Logic does not believe in the unknowable -- and the unknowable is the very heart of life, the very heartbeat of the universe.

 

I am not against logic. Use it -- it is a beautiful strategy as far as things are concerned, the marketplace is concerned, the superficial world is concerned -- but beware that you don't go on carrying it into deeper layers of life and experience. There it is a hindrance.

 

Logic means mind. Mind is helpful in understanding the objective world. Mind is a hindrance in understanding the subjective world, because the subjective world is beyond the mind, behind the mind. You can use your eyes to see others, but you cannot use your eyes to see yourself. If you want to see yourself through your own eyes you have to use a mirror. To look in a mirror means you are creating a reflection of yourself -- which is not you, certainly not you, but you can see the reflection. Logic can see only the reflected glory of existence; it cannot see existence itself because existence is far deeper than logical formulations. [....]

 

Logic can make you very stupid. Of course its stupidity is a very decorated stupidity, polished, cultured, so it is very difficult to see the foolishness of it. But life is far more because logic can contain only one polarity. For example, logic can think of darkness OR light but not of both together; logic can think of life OR death but never of both together. That becomes inconceivable. But that's how it is: life is death too. Light is darkness too.

 

Logic will not be able to comprehend Dionysius' idea of luminous darkness; it will look simply mad. Luminous darkness? How can darkness be luminous? How can darkness be translucent? Darkness has to be dark, light has to be light. Logic believes in pigeonholes, in categories, and life is one organic unity. Everything penetrates everything else. There are no categories; life goes on flowing. Light becomes darkness, darkness becomes light. Birth becomes death, death becomes birth. Love becomes hate, hate becomes love. Friendship becomes enmity, enmity becomes friendship.

 

And now we know that a man can become a woman, a woman can become a man. There is no intrinsic impossibility in it. Just as electricity consists of two poles, the negative and the positive, the whole existence consists of polarities. Logically they look opposite, but if you put logic aside then they are not opposites but complementaries: without The negative the positive cannot exist. Then how can you call them opposites? If the negative is a necessity for the positive to exist, if the positive is a must for the negative to exist, they are not opposites, they are complementaries.

 

Now a totally different vision is arising slowly: the vision that takes opposites as complementaries. Aristotelian logic is dying, it is on its deathbed. In fact, it is dead; it is being kept alive by artificial breathing. The Theory of Relativity has dealt it the final blow, the death blow. The Theory of Relativity has simply transcended all logic. And that is the beauty of Einsteinian physics: it is for the first time that a physicist has spoken the language of the mystic. It is one of the greatest events that has happened in our lifetime: that physics speaks the same language as mystics have always spoken.

 

Physics has come very close to mysticism; that is the beginning of a meeting, of a synthesis. And the synthesis Is not very far away. Soon you will see -- those who have clear eyes can see it right now -- that logic has no more relevance because physics has gone deeper than the superficial, objective world. Now matter exists no more. You SEE matter, it is very logically there; in fact logically you cannot disprove matter. [....]

 

Buddha has said God is a hypothetical reality, self is a hypothetical reality. Logically they are needed -- I and thou are needed -- but the need is logical, not existential. Those who have penetrated the subjective reality, they have come to know that all our words, all our logic, all our hypotheses are only arbitrary. And now even physics agrees. The Theory of Relativity is the beginning of a totally new science, the beginning of the meeting of East and West.

 

You will be surprised to know that Mahavira, the twenty-fourth TEERTHANKARA of the Jainas was the first man in the whole world who talked about the Theory of Relativity, twenty-five centuries before Albert Einstein ever thought about it. Of course, he was talking about the theory of relativity in relation to the subjective world and Einstein focuses the same vision on the objective world, but both have come to one conclusion: that life is more than logic -- far more, immensely more.

 

But unless you are deeply meditative you will not be able to live that tremendously illogical life because it will drive you mad. If you are not meditative, Mavji Savla, then remain confined to the world of logic, otherwise you will go mad.

 

In English we have two words, very beautiful, of great significance: one is "breakdown," the other is "breakthrough." Breakdown is when you don't know any meditation and your logic becomes irrelevant. You don't know how to reach to the heart and your head has become absolutely meaningless to you, then there is a breakdown, you go insane. But if you know meditativeness -- meditativeness means the art of transforming the opposites into complementaries -- then there is a breakthrough: you enter into a new world, a new vision, a new perspective.

 

In a sense you are again mad. That's why Jesus is known as mad. Francis used to call himself mad -- and for all practical purposes he if mad. Buddha and Mahavira... they are all mad in a sense. They are not sane the way you are sane, either they are below you or above you, but one thing is certain: they are somewhere else. If they are below you it is a breakdown. If they are above you it is a breakthrough. Meditation is the art of transforming madness into Buddhahood. Meditation is the art of taking you beyond logic and yet keeping your sanity intact. Meditation is the greatest discovery ever made, and I don't think there is ever going to be another discovery which can surpass meditation.

 

-Osho, "Theologia Mystica, #5, Q1“