For Heraclitus, fire became the symbol -- and fire is really a beautiful symbol. Heraclitus says fire is the basic substance of life. It is! Now physicists agree with Heraclitus. They agree that electricity is the base of all existence, that everything is nothing but modes of electricity. Heraclitus says it is fire. What is the difference? And fire is a more beautiful word than electricity. Fire gives a sense of more aliveness than electricity does, fire is more wild than electricity. When you say electricity is the base, it looks as if the universe is somehow mechanical because electricity has become associated with a mechanism, and then God looks like an engineer -- but electricity is fire.

 

Hindus have called this basic element PRANA, vitality -- but vitality is fire. When you are vital, alive, you are fiery, aflame. Henri Bergson has called the base of all, elan vital, just like prana. Those who have been seeking, somehow or other they come near fire. Deep down this existence is fire. Fire is life. And Zarathustra is right: he made fire the suprememost god. He must have agreed with Heraclitus -- they were contemporaries, Zarathustra and Heraclitus. Fire became the supreme god for the followers of Zarathustra.

-Osho, "The Hidden Harmony, #6"

 

 

 

No difference because the abyss is infinite, God is infinite. How can you meet him gradually? But these ninety-nine steps will befool you. Patanjali is more clever. Heraclitus is innocent: he simply says you, "This is the thing: the abyss is here. Jump!" He does not persuade you; he does not seduce you. He simply says, "This is the fact. If you want to jump, jump; if you don't want to jump, go away."

 

And he knows that to make steps is useless because finally one has to take the jump. But I think it will be good for you to follow Patanjali because, by and by, he seduces you. One step you can take at least, then the second becomes easier, then the third. And when you have taken ninety-nine steps, to go back will be difficult, because then it will look absolutely against your ego to go back: because then the whole world will laugh, and you had become such a great sage, and you are coming back to the world? And you were such a maha-yogi -- a great yogi, and why you are coming back? Now you are caught, and you cannot go back.

 

Heraclitus is simple, innocent. His teaching is not of a kindergarten school, but he is a child -- that's right -- innocent like a child, wise also like a child. Patanjali is cunning, clever, but Patanjali will suit you because you need somebody who can lead you in a cunning way to a point from where you cannot go back. It becomes simply impossible.

-Osho, "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2, #2"

 

 

 

First: The FRAGMENTS of Heraclitus. I love this man. Let me mention it, just by the way, as a note in the margin, that I love all, but I don't like all. I like a few and I don't like a few, but I love all. About that there is no question. I love Jaydeva as much as I love Heraclitus, but Heraclitus I like too.

 

There are very few whom I can put in the same category as Heraclitus. In fact, even to say that is not true; there is no one. Now I am saying what I really wanted to say always. There is no one, I repeat, who can be put in the same category as Heraclitus. He is just far out -- dangerously awakened, unafraid of the consequences of what he was saying.

 

He says in these FRAGMENTS -- again the notes of a Devageet, a disciple. Heraclitus did not write. There must be something, some reason why these people do not write, but of that a little later. Heraclitus says in the FRAGMENTS: "You cannot step in the same river twice." And then he says: "No, you cannot step in the same river even once...." This is tremendously beautiful, and true too.

 

Everything is changing, and changing so fast that there is no way to step in the same river twice; you can't even step in the same river once. The river is constantly flowing; going, going, going to the ocean, to the infinite, going to disappear into the unknown.

 

This is the first on my list this evening: Heraclitus.

-Osho, "Books I Have Loved, #4"

 

 

 

※ Heraclitus was born in Ephesus (near modern-day Selçuk, Turkey) ca. 535-475 BCE.

 

He was a Greek philosopher, known for his doctrine of change being central to the universe, and for establishing the term Logos (λόγος) in Western philosophy as meaning both the source and fundamental order of the Cosmos.  

 

He criticized his predecessors and contemporaries for their failure to see the unity in experience. He claims to announce an everlasting word (Logos) according to which all things are one, in some sense. Opposites are necessary for life, but they are unified in a system of balanced exchanges. The world itself consists of a law-like interchange of elements, symbolized by fire. Thus the world is not to be identified with any particular substance, but rather with an ongoing process governed by a law of change. The underlying law of nature also manifests itself as a moral law for human beings. Heraclitus is the first Western philosopher to go beyond physical theory in search of metaphysical foundations and moral applications.