Question 3

One day you explained about the imbalance of object-centered western culture and subject-centered eastern culture, and you also mentioned that nowhere in any culture is the total human being accepted. do you visualize such a coming culture which will be able to accept and develop the human being in his totality -- objective as well as subjective?

 

 

This one-sided development has occurred as a natural fallacy, as a very natural fallacy. Try to understand the natural fallacy, because many things depend on it.

 

Whenever something is said, the opposite of it is denied. Whenever something is said, something is simultaneously denied. If I say `God is within;, `God is without' is denied. I have not mentioned it at all. But if I say `God is without', then `God is within' is denied. If I say, `To be silent you have to move inwards,' it is implied that if you move outwards, you will never be silent. So whatsoever is said in language always negates something.

 

This means that language can never cover the whole of life. Or, if you try to cover the whole of life, language becomes illogical, irrational. If I say, `God is within and God is without,' it becomes meaningless. If I say, `Everything is God,' it becomes meaningless. If I say, `Whether you go out or whether you go in, silence can be achieved,' no meaning is carried then because I am saying both -- both the opposites simultaneously. I am putting them together; they negate each other -- and then nothing is said.

 

It has been tried. It has been tried many times that the whole of life be covered by linguistic expression. It has never been successful, and it cannot be. You can do it, but then your assertions become mystic; they don't carry any meaning. Logic has some requirements to be fulfilled -- and language is logic.

 

If you ask me, `Are you here?' and I say, `Yes, in a sense I am here, and in a sense I am not here,' or I say, `Both yes and no,' then if you love me you will call me a mystic; if you don't love me, you will call me a madman -- because how can both be? Either I am here -- then I must say yes; or I am not here -- then I must say no. But if I say yes and no both together, I am taking a jump out of the logical structure of the language.

 

Language is always a choice. Because of this, all the cultures, all the societies, all the civilizations become one-sided. And no culture can exist without language. Really, language creates the culture. Man is the only language animal; no other animal creates any culture or society or civilization. Only man creates culture and civilization and society. And with language, choice enters; and with choice, imbalance. No animal is imbalanced, remember. Only man is imbalanced. All animals exist in deep balance: trees and rocks and everything. Everything is balanced; only man is imbalanced. What is the problem? -- that man lives through language. Language creates choice.

 

If I say to someone that he is both beautiful and ugly, the sentence carries no meaning. Ugly and beautiful both? -- what do you mean? If I say, `You are beautiful,' it is meaningful. If I say, `You are ugly,' it is meaningful. But if I say, `You are both. You are wise and foolish both,' it cannot carry any meaning. But reality is so. Really, no one is simply ugly and no one is simply beautiful. Wherever beauty exists, ugliness exists; wherever ugliness exists, beauty exists. They are part of one whole. And wherever wisdom exists, foolishness exists. You cannot find a wise man who is not also a fool, and you cannot find a fool who is not also a wise man.

 

It may be difficult for you to conceive, because whenever you say, `This man is a fool,' you stop searching, you are closed, you have closed the door. You say, `This man is a fool.' Now you are not going to search for his wisdom. And even if his wisdom is revealed to you, you will not listen to it. You will say, `This man is a fool. How can he be a wise man? It is impossible; something wrong has happened. He must have done it in a foolish way. This is something accidental. He cannot be wise.' If you decide that this man is wise and then something foolish comes out of him, you cannot believe it, or you will have come explanations and you will rationalize it -- that this must be wise.

 

Life is both together, but language divides. Language is a choice. Because of this, every culture creates its own choice-pattern. In the east they developed technology, they developed scientific research; they developed all that is now developed in the west. Five thousand years ago they developed everything, and then they felt the meaninglessness of it -- as it is now felt in the west. They felt that it was useless.

 

When they felt that it was useless, they turned to the opposite extreme. They said, `Now turn within. Whatsoever is without is illusory, it leads nowhere. Turn within.' Then science stopped growing, then technology stopped. Not only stopped: when they turned within, they started condemning all that was without. `Just live the life which is in! Leave all that is without!' They became against the world, life-negative, denying all that is material... only the spiritual, the pure spiritual.

 

Life is both. Really, to say life is both is not right. Life is one. That which we call material is just one expression of the spiritual, and that which we call spiritual is nothing but one expression of the material. Life is one. The within and without are not two opposite things, just two poles of one existence.

 

But whenever a society reaches to the extreme of one choice -- because one choice is bound to be extremist -- immediately you will miss the other, and that which you miss, you feel more. That which you have, you can forget, but that which you miss, you feel more. So the east, at the peak of scientific and technological development, felt the absurdity of it: it is useless, you cannot attain silence through it, you cannot attain bliss through it, so throw it away, renounce it, move inward, move to the inner world. And then this inner movement automatically became a denial of the outer.

 

In the west that is happening now. Now the west has attained to a technological height; now the meaninglessness is felt. Now India has gone to the depths of poverty. It was bound to happen, because the eastern mind started moving inwards. When you move inwards at the cost of all that is without, you are going to be poor, and you are going to be in bondage, and you are going to be in disease and suffering. That is bound to be so.

 

Now India is not interested in meditation, India is not interested in the inner world, India is not interested in the nirvana. India is interested in the modern technology. The Indian student is interested in engineering, in medical science. The Indian genius is going to the west to learn the know-how, the atomic energy. And the western genius is interested in coming to the east to know what meditation is, to know how to move in the inner space.

 

And they have achieved. For the first time in the history of man they have known how to move in the outer space. They have reached the moon. Now that they have reached the moon the thing has become absurd. Now they are asking, `What will come out of it? Even if we have gone to the moon, what has happened? -- man remains in the same misery.' The moon is not going to help, because you can transfer man to the moon, but he remains the same man. So movement in the outer space seems to be of no use, a wastage of energy. How to move in the inner space?

 

Now they turn to the east, and the east is turning to the west -- again the choice. If the west turns to the east completely, within two or three centuries the west will become poor. Look at the hippies -- they are already doing that. And if the new western generation turns absolutely hippie, then who is going to work for the technology, and who is going to work for the industry, and who is going to work for the civilization that the west has achieved? It takes centuries and centuries to achieve something; you can lose it within a generation.

 

If the generation denies and says, `We are not going to the universities,' what can you do? The old generation -- how long can it prolong it? Twenty years and everything can disappear, just through the denial of the new generation -- `I am not going to the university~' And they are leaving, they are becoming dropouts. They say, `What is the use of big cars, of big houses, of a big technology, when there is no love? When there is no peace of mind, what is the use of all this wealth? What is the use of this high standard of living when there is no life? So leave this!'

 

Within two centuries the west can go to the very depths of poverty. It has happened in the east. In the days of the Mahabharat, almost the same technology was developed in the east. Then it was found to be of no use. And if the Indian mind turns to technology, within two generations religion will disappear -- it has already disappeared -- and just the word `meditation' will look out of date. If you talk about the inner, people will think you are not in your senses: `What do you mean by the inner? There is no inner.'

 

This happens because of the language -- because language is a choice, and the mind moves to the extreme. And when it moves to one extreme, the other is lost. And with the other, many qualities disappear, and when they disappear you feel the hunger for them. Then you again move to the other extreme. Then something else is lost.

 

So no total culture has been born yet, and it cannot be born unless man learns to remain silent, unless silence becomes the very core of human mind. Not language but silence -- because in silence you are whole, in language you are always part. Unless humanity starts living through silence -- not through language, not through mind, but through the totality of the being -- no total culture is possible. Only total human beings can constitute a total culture.

 

The human being is partial and fragmented. Every human being is just a fragment of that which he can be, that which he should be. He is just a fragment of his potentiality. These fragmentary human beings create fragmentary societies. Fragmentary societies have always been there. But now it seems possible that we may become aware of this whole nonsense of turning to extremes. And if this awareness becomes intense, and we don't move to the opposite, but rather we start to look at the whole....

 

For example, myself. I am not against the material, I am not against the spiritual. I am not for the spiritual, and I am not for the material. I am for both. There is no choice for me between the material and the spiritual, the inner and the outer. I am for both, because if you accept both, only then you become total and whole. But this is difficult to understand, to grasp, because of the heritage.

 

Whenever you see a spiritual man, you start looking to see whether he is poor or not. He must be poor, he must be living in a hut, he must be starving. Why? Why should he be poor and why should he be starving? -- because the inner has to be chosen against the outer; that has become a part of the heritage. If you see a man living in luxury, you cannot believe that he is spiritual. How can he be spiritual?

 

What is wrong in luxury? And how is spirituality against luxury? Really, spiritually is the ultimate luxury. Really, only a spiritual man can be in luxury. He knows how to relax, and he knows how to enjoy, and he knows how to carry bliss wherever he moves. But the heritage has gone into the very cells of your brain. If you see a spiritual man walking in poverty, you feel that he must be authentic. How is poverty related to spirituality? And why? We have been choosing extremes. This is difficult to understand because of a long tradition -- and you are not even aware.

 

Someone was just here, and he told me that in Wardha where Vinoba lives, it is very hot now the whole day -- and he will not use a fan, he will not use a cooler, he will not use an air-conditioner. Impossible! How can a spiritual man use an air-conditioner? He cannot even use a fan. The man who had come from there was very much impressed. He said, `See, what a great spiritual man! He is not even using a fan.'

 

Then I asked, `What is he doing?'

 

He said, `The whole day, from ten to five, for seven hours, he goes on putting cold cloths on his head and on his stomach.'

 

Seven of Vinoba's hours wasted every day! -- and what is the cost of a fan or a cooler or an air-conditioner? And Vinoba's seven wasted hours every day...? But if there was a fan, this man would have felt that Vinoba is not spiritual. And somehow Vinoba is also agreeing with this type of attitude -- that Vinoba's seven hours every day are not important.

 

Life is very short, and a genius like Vinoba is wasting seven hours unnecessarily. But he himself also feels that technology is somehow anti-spiritual. The outside and the inside -- he has chosen the inside. But if you are choosing the inside, even putting on the wet cloth is outside. It is doing the same thing, only in a very primitive way. What are you doing? You are creating a sort of cooling. And you are wasting seven hours for it! This is at a very great cost. But we will say, `No, this is austerity, this is spirituality, and this man is great.' This has gone to the very cells of our brains.

 

I accept life in its totality. The outer and the inner both are there, and they both belong to me. And they must be balanced. You need not choose one at the cost of the other. And if you choose, you are falling a victim -- victim of an extreme -- and you will suffer for it.

 

Create a balance. The outer and the inner are not opposed. They are movements of the same energy, two banks of the same river, and the river cannot flow with only one bank. You can forget the other, but the other will be there. And the river can exist only if the other is there. You can forget it completely: then hypocrisy is born, because unnecessarily you have to go on hiding the other. There is no need. The river cannot flow.

 

Life flows between the inner and the outer, and both are essential. Life cannot exist with one. And the two are not really two. The two banks of the river only appear two; if you go deep in the river they are joined -- the same ground is appearing as two banks. The outer and the inner are the same ground, the same phenomenon.

 

If this insight goes deep, and human beings... and I am interested in human beings, not in cultures, not in societies, not in civilizations. If human beings become total and balanced, it is possible that some day humanity can become a balanced society. And only then will man be at ease. And only then will it be possible to grow without any unnecessary difficulty.

 

Now, rarely it happens that someone grows -- rarely. Almost all the seeds are wasted. In millions, one seed grows and comes to flower. This seems sheer wastage. But if society is balanced -- nothing is denied, nothing is chosen, but the whole is accepted in a deep harmony -- then many will grow. Really, quite the reverse will be the case: it will happen rarely that someone will not grow.

 

- Osho, "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2, #14"