Question 1 :

The other night you said that philosophies are anti-meditation. but on the other hand you agree that the eastern philosophies such as tantra, yoga and vedant, are the writings of enlightened sages. why do the enlightened sages leave behind them a strong structure of philosophical contemplation, if philosophies are anti-meditation?

 

 

Philosophy is not darshan. Darshan is the eastern term. Darshan means perception, philosophy means thinking. Herman Hesse has coined a new word to translate darshan into western languages. He calls it ‘philosia’ – ‘sia’ from ‘to see’.

 

Philosophy means to think, and darshan means to see. Both are basically different; not only different, but diametrically opposite. Because when you are thinking you cannot see. You are so filled with thoughts that perception is blurred, perception is clouded. When thinking ceases, you become capable of seeing. Then your eyes are opened, they become unclouded. Perception happens only when thinking ceases.

 

For Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the whole western tradition, thinking is the base. For Kanad, Kapil, Patanjali, Buddha, and the whole eastern tradition, seeing is the base. So Buddha is not a philosopher, not at all; neither is Patanjali, nor Kapil or Kanad. They are not philosophers. They have seen the truth; they have not thought about it.

 

Remember well that you only think when you cannot see. If you can see, there is no reason to think. Thinking is always in ignorance. Thinking is not knowledge, because when you know, there is no need to think. When you don’t know, you will the gap by thinking. Thinking is groping in the dark. So eastern philosophies are not philosophies. To use the word philosophy for eastern darshan is absolutely wrong.

 

Darshan means to see, to attain the eye, to realize, to know – immediately, directly, without the mediation of thinking and thought. Thinking can never lead to the unknown. How can it lead? It is impossible. The very process of thinking has to be understood. When you think, what do you really do? You go on repeating old thoughts, memories. If I ask you a question – does God exist? – you can think about it. What will you do?

 

All that you have heard, all that you have read, all that you have accumulated about God, you will repeat. Even if you come to a new conclusion, the newness of it will only be apparent, not real. It will be simply a combination of old thoughts. You can combine many old thoughts and create a new structure, but that structure will be apparently new, not new at all.

 

Thinking can never come to any original truth. Thinking is never original; it cannot be. It is always of the past, of the old, of the known. Thinking cannot touch the unknown; it is repetitively moving in the circle of the known. You don’t know truth, you don’t know God. What can you do? You can think about it. You will move in circles, around and around. You can never come to any experience of it.

 

So the eastern emphasis is not on thinking, but on seeing. You cannot think about God, but you can see. You cannot come to any conclusion about God, but you can realize. It can become an experience. You cannot get to it through information, through knowledge, through scriptures, through theories and philosophies; no, you cannot get to it. You can get into it only if you throw all knowledge.

 

All that you have heard and read and collected, all the dust that your mind has collected, the whole past, must be put aside. Then your eyes are fresh, then your consciousness is unclouded, and then you can see it. It is here and now – you are clouded. You have not to go somewhere else to find the divine or the truth – it is here. It is right there where you are. And it has always been so – only you are clouded, your eyes are closed.

 

So the question is not to think more; the question is how to come to a non-thinking consciousness. That’s why I say that meditation and philosophy are anti each other. Philosophy thinks, meditation comes to a no-thinking consciousness. And eastern philosophies are not really philosophies. In the West, philosophies exist; in the East, only religious realizations.

 

Of course, when a Buddha happens, or a Kanad or a Patanjali happens, when someone comes to realize the absolute, he makes statements about it. Those statements are different from the Aristotelan statements, from western philosophical conclusions.

 

The difference is this: a Kanad, a Buddha, first comes to realize – the realization is the first thing – and then he makes statements about it. Experience is primary, and then he expresses it. Aristotle, Hegel and Kant, they think, and then through thinking and logical argument and dialectics, they reach particular conclusions.

 

These conclusions are reached through thinking, through mind, not through any practice of meditation. Then they make assertions, then they make statements. The source is different.

 

For a Buddha, his statements are only as a vehicle to communicate. He never says that through his communication you will achieve the truth. If you can understand Buddha, that doesn't mean you have achieved the truth; that simply means you have gathered knowledge. You will have to pass through meditations, deep ecstasies, deep pools of the mind, only then will you come to the truth.

 

So truth is reached through a certain existential experience. It is existential, it is not mental. You must change to know it and to be it. If you remain the same and go on collecting information, you will become a great scholar, a philosopher, but you will not be enlightened. You will remain the same man; there will have been no mutation.

 

That's why I said that philosophy is one dimension Meditation is quite the contrary, the very opposite, the polar-opposite dimension. So don't think about life; rather, live it in depth. And don't think about ultimate problems; rather, enter this very moment in the ultimate. And the ultimate is not in the future. It is always there, timelessly there.

 

- Osho, "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2, #12"