Question 3 :

Why are you so much against logic?

 

 

Because it is logical to be against logic.

 

Logic proves nothing, that’s why I am against logic. It only pretends to prove; it proves nothing. It is an empty game, verbal. But the pretension is such that millions of people are befooled by it, and down the ages we have been trained for logic, so it has appeal.

 

But logic has never proved anything. Proof comes only through experience, never through logic. Logic can help to explain your experience. No experience is ever derived out of logic. Yes, logic can be a servant. when you have attained to a certain experience, logic can help to explain it, logic can help to make it clear. Logic is secondary.

 

So, the first thing: logic proves nothing.

 

Reporter: They say the moon is made of green cheese. Is this correct?

 

Spaceman: We didn’t find any cheese on the moon.

 

Reporter: (laughing) Perhaps all the moon mice had eaten it.

 

Spaceman: We didn’t find any mice on the moon either.

 

Reporter: What do you expect with all the cheese gone?

 

Now this is how logic goes on moving: it is circular.

 

A famous Sufi story:

 

Mulla Nasruddin was seen by the people in the market-place throwing some seeds all around. From his bag he would take one fistful of seeds and throw. So a crowd gathered, and they asked ‘What are you doing, Mulla?’

 

He said ‘These seeds are very miraculous. If you throw these seeds, then no lion, no tiger, no elephant, no snakes, no wild animals ever come around.’

 

So they laughed. They said ‘Mulla, there are no wild animals, no elephants, no tigers, no lions, no snakes here!’

 

And Mulla said ‘See! They work! They are a miracle, they have miraculous power. It is because of the seeds they are not here.’

 

Logic is a game good only for small children to play. But a few people remain childish even when they have become old. They may be professors in the universities, but they go on playing with the game. It is a good game, an intelligent game like chess — but a game all the same.

 

First, logic never proves anything. And second logic can prove anything — this way or that, for or against. Logic is a whore! It has no grounds of its own. You can bribe logic, and it will be with you. Your enemy can bribe logic, and logic will be with the enemy.

 

A certain French general named Guillard, who lived in the time of King Louis XV and was renowned for his gallantry towards women, said, on one occasion, that there was no such thing as an ugly woman. His remark was overheard by a lady whose face was disfigured by a squashed nose and who thereupon accosted him with the words ‘Confess, General, that you are now face to face with a really ugly woman.’

 

‘Not at all, madame’ replied the general. ‘You are like all women, an angel fallen from heaven. You merely had the misfortune to fall on your nose.’

 

Logic cannot prove anything, that’s why it can prove ANYTHING. Logic has no truth in it. Logic is empty of truth. Truth is attained only by existential experience. I am against logic because logic is impotent. I would like you to go beyond logic. And that is the whole meaning of the word Jesus uses: faith.

 

It does not mean belief. It means trust in existence not belief in dogmas. Faith simply means that you are finished with logic. The day you are finished with logic, you are finished with doubt too because logic is a support to doubt; they are in a mutual conspiracy — doubt and logic. A doubter becomes a logician, a logician remains a doubter. They go together. Once logic is dropped, all the props for the doubt disappear, and doubt falls to the ground. And when you are free of doubt, then you are in faith.

 

Faith transforms. Trust transfigures. The sooner you can get out of logic and doubt, the better. A man is religious only when he has known the same of logic and is finished with it.

 

- Osho, “I Say Unto You, Vol 2, #8, Q3“