Osho on Ramanujan 

 

 

In the 1888 a person named Ramanujan was born in a poor Brahmin family in South India. He became a very famous mathematician. He could not study much, but still his genius in mathematics was unique. Many well educated mathematicians have earned a name because of their training and guidance from others for a number of years. But Ramanuja, was not even a matriculate and had no training or guidance from anyone.

 

With great difficulty he got a clerical job, but very soon news spread that he had an amazing talent in mathematics. Someone suggested that he write a letter to the famous mathematician, Professor Hardy, of Cambridge University – he was the most eminent mathematician of those days. He didn’t write a letter, but solved two theorems of geometry and sent them to Professor Hardy. Hardy was astonished to receive them and could not believe that someone so young could solve such theorems.

 

He immediately wrote back to Ramanujan and invited him to England. When Hardy met him for the first time, he felt that he was like a child before Ramanujan in the field of mathematics. The genius and capabilities of Ramanujan were such that they could not be due to mental powers, because the intellect moves very slowly, thinking takes time, but Ramanujan didn’t take any time in responding to Hardy’s questions. No sooner was the problem written down on the blackboard or put to him verbally than Ramanujan began to reply, without any time gap for thinking. It was very difficult for great mathematicians to understand how it happened. A problem which would take about six hours for an eminent mathematician to solve – and then too he was not sure about being right – Ramanujan solved instantaneously, unerringly.

 

It proved that Ramanujan was not replying through the medium of the mind. He was not very learned, he had actually failed in matriculation; there was no other sign of intellectual ability, but in connection with mathematics he was superhuman. Something happened that was beyond the human mind. He died when he was thirty-six because of tuberculosis.

 

When he was in hospital, Hardy, along with two or three other mathematician friends, went to see him. As it happened, he parked his car in such a place so that Ramanujan could see its number plate. When Hardy went into Ramanujan’s room, he told Hardy that his number plate was unique: it had four special aspects to it. After that, Ramanujan died. Hardy took six months to understand what Ramanujan meant, but he could only discover three of the four aspects. On his death he left a will that research work on that number should continue, to find out the fourth aspect. Because Ramanujan had said there was a fourth, there had to be. Twenty-two years after Hardy’s death, the fourth was discovered. Ramanujan was right.

 

Whenever he began to look into any mathematical problem something began to happen in the middle space between his two eyebrows. Both his eyeballs turned upwards, centering on that middle space. In Yoga, that space is described as the third eye spot. It is called the third eye because if that eye becomes activated it is possible to see events and scenes of some different world in their entirety.

 

It is like looking out of your house through a small hole in the door, and suddenly, when the door opens, you see the whole sky. There is a space between the two eyebrows where there is a small aperture which sometimes opens – as in the case of Ramanujan. His eyes rose to his third eye while solving a problem. Neither Hardy could understand this phenomenon nor would other Western mathematicians ever understand it in the future.

 

-Osho, “Hidden Mysteries, #3”