Certainty

Osho, you say there is no certainty about tomorrow. But that is exactly what those who live by “eat, drink and be merry” also say. What is the difference between you and them?

Real wealth is that which, once found, is forever yours. When such wine exists, why do you drink the paltry when the vast is present! That is why the Sufi fakirs named God “wine.” Read the Sufis—do not misunderstand. Read Umar Khayyam—do not mistake him. Wherever he speaks of wine, he is speaking of samadhi. Umar Khayyam is a Sufi fakir, an accomplished saint, a siddha. Where he speaks of the tavern, he means the temple of God. Where he speaks of the wine-maid, he speaks of the Divine—God pouring, like a wine-maid, decanter upon decanter; and this whole world is His tavern. From everywhere the wine is being poured—from flowers, from birds, from the moon and the stars—on all sides His fragrance, His sweet breath, His sap is dripping. Drink this sap. Drink it and you will be truly fulfilled. Jesus once came to a well—tired and dusty from…

Beloved Osho, in a recent article by stephen jay gould, he said, "certainty is unattainable in science." Osho, is modern man at last showing signs of coming of age?

There is an ancient proverb: Camels don't like to go to the mountains. I don't know what the camels think about it, but it is certain they don't go to the mountains. They go to the deserts where there are no mountains. But the people who formed the proverb knew better. Camels don't like to go to the mountains because as they come close to the mountains they feel very inferior, they have an inferiority complex. Freud discovered it just recently, and camels have known it since the beginning -- that it is better not to go to the mountains; there you will get an inferiority complex, and then it is very difficult to get rid of it. It is better to be in the desert where you are the highest, tallest, biggest thing. So why not enjoy a superiority complex? Why unnecessarily go to the mountains? Everything that we…

Are there different levels of hedonism? I suspect 'eat, drink and be merry' means different things to different people.

Because the first hedonist lives in the body, there are people who are against the first hedonist and they think they are spiritual. They are not. That's a logical fallacy. Because the first goes on living in the body, there are people who Logically think 'We have to go against the body, then only can we enter into the second realm of our being, then only can we attain to happiness, to heaven, to bliss. Because the first is missing -- and the first is missing because he is too much obsessed with the body -- the second, this so-called spiritualist, becomes obsessed AGAINST the body. This is not a real spiritualist. The real spiritualist is a hedonist. Let me repeat it: He is not against the body, he is for the soul. So now there are three kinds of people: the ordinary hedonist who lives in the body, the…

Osho, modern science has taken humankind away from nature and developed many dimensions of life. Please tell us: given the complexity of the scientific way of living, how can a balance be established today with the Taoist era’s effortless, natural way of life?

There is no question of establishing a balance. It is not a matter of balancing Lao Tzu and modern science. If Lao Tzu’s vision truly comes into view, an entirely new science will be born—utterly new. A science founded on Lao Tzu’s vision would be born, because the whole perspective on life would be different. The science that has evolved on Aristotle’s foundations is very incomplete, ignorant. It has tried to understand such a tiny fragment of life and has left the whole. One should say it is childish. It has made no attempt to see the totality. But until now it could not have. Now it will have to. After the discovery of atomic weapons and the development of atomic energy, science has been compelled to reconsider all its basic premises. Why? Because if science keeps moving as it has till now—if it says, “We will go on this…