What happens when the Eastern mind meets the Western mind?

Osho, what will happen if the eastern mind meets with the western mind?

The officer-in-charge took pity on him and he said, 'I can understand your difficulty, but now only one thing can be done. That too is not regular, but for you I will make a concession. You can choose either the indian hell or the german hell.' 'But what is the difference?' the man asked. 'In the german hell,' explained the officer-in-charge, 'you spend half your time eating all the food you want, listening to music and disporting yourself with girls. in the other half of the time you are pinioned to the wall and beaten mercilessly. Your nails and teeth are pulled out and boiling oil is poured over you.' 'And in the indian hell?' 'In the indian hell you spend half your time eating all the food you want, listening to music and disporting yourself with girls. In the other half of the time you are pinioned to the…

Eastern philosophy locates the essence of man in the atemporal observer. Western philosophy since the rise of technology, locates the chief dignity of man in the ability to control the world, to act. In psychosynthesis assagioli marries east and west by positing both a passive witness and an active willer. Do mixed marriages work?

And in the morning you are more at ease, more at peace, more together. Again your compassion is back, again you are flowing, again your juice is flowing. Now to say no will be difficult, to say yes is easier. In the morning people are less egoistic than in the evening; in the morning people are less violent, less ambitious than in the evening. In the morning people are more religious -- by evening they turn into politicians. Hence the morning prayer and its importance.... When you open your eyes the first thing is either meditation or prayer because this moment is very, very valuable. You will not get it again in the whole day, you will have to wait twenty-four hours to get it again. This is a great, significant, potent moment. Use it, don't disturb it. Get into it. Get into this lucidity of being, into this grace…

Beloved master, the western mind is so oriented toward analysis, the left hemisphere of the brain -- the eastern mind just the opposite, the intuitive right hemisphere. The west is fascinated by the east and the east by the west. Equal amounts of both -- is this the harmony of wisdom and the transcendence of opposites?

Prem Dhanesh, the transcendence of opposites is not a quantitative phenomenon, it is a qualitative revolution. It is not a question of equal amounts of both; that will be a very materialistic solution. Quantity means matter. Equal amounts of both will give you only an appearance of synthesis but not a real synthesis -- a dead synthesis, not alive, not breathing, not with a heart beating. The real synthesis is a dialogue: not equal amounts of both, but a loving relationship, an I/thou relationship. It is a question of bridging the opposites, not putting them together in one place. Both are important, immensely important. Neither analysis can be discarded nor intuition. Discard analysis and you become outwardly poor, starved, unhealthy. And when one is outwardly poor, starved, unhealthy, how can he go inwards? It is impossible. The outward poverty prevents the inward journey. You are so obsessed with food, clothes,…

Osho, you said that the Hindu genius was once supremely intelligent and succeeded in touching the ultimate heights of religion. As a result there came into being devas, dvijas, gurus and gnanis; the Upanishads, the Gita, the Dhammapada and the Jina-vani. Then what is the reason that the same people have fallen into the great abyss of decline for a thousand years, with no sign of rising?

The West too produces, once in a while, an Einstein—knower of the outer. But even that does not solve anything. The masses remain full of tension and anxiety. Is it not possible to accept the outer and the inner together? Both are; your acceptance or rejection makes no difference—only you get into trouble. Take breathing: it goes out and it comes in. If you insist, “I will only draw it in; I will not let it go out,” you will die. Another insists, “I will not let it go in; I will hold it out here”—he too will die. The East died; the West died—because both embraced only half. I call courageous the one who accepts both together, who says, “I will keep both pans of the scale in balance.” The East has lost; the West has lost. And the danger is: when you lose one thing, a craving arises…

Why is the west becoming more and more interested in meditation? And also, why is the east losing interest in its own spiritual treasures?

After a time, penniless but still submissive to the decrees from one high, he landed in the county poorhouse. One day the overseer sent him out to plow a potato field. A thunderstrom came up but was passing over when, without warning, a bolt of lightning descended from the sky. It melted the plowshare, stripped most of his clothing from him, singed off his beard, branded his naked back with the initials of a neighbouring cowman, and hurled him through a barbed wire fence. When he recovered consciousness he got slowly to his knees, clasped his hands and raised his eyes towards heaven. Then, for the first time, he asserted himself: "Lord," he said, "this is getting to be plumb ridiculous!" This is the situation of the East: "This is getting to be plumb ridiculous!" But the East goes on thanking God, goes on feeling grateful. There is nothing to…