From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 28. SCIENCE PLUS RELIGION – THE DYNAMIC FORMULA FOR THE FUTURE
He discovered his theory of relativity in his bathroom. He used to say, ”Don’t disturb me. Nothing is
more important. When I am moving in a certain direction, and I am coming close to the clue, and
you knock on the door.... Let the lunch be cold, throw it away, because just for your lunch you have
distracted me. I was just getting close; now I am as far away as I was before. And nobody knows
when again I will come so close to the point. It is not within my hands.” Now, this man is certainly
obsessed.
Edison was a great genius; perhaps nobody else has so many discoveries to his name, to his credit,
as Edison: one thousand discoveries. But he was so obsessed that once he forgot his own name.
That is a very rare possibility, most improbable... forgetting one’s own name! – then you can forget
anything.
It was before the first world war, when, for the first time in the world, ration cards were invented, and
he had gone to take his ration. He was standing in a line and people went on moving forward. When
his number came and he was at the front of the line, they called again and again, ”Thomas Alva
Edison, is there anybody by the name of Thomas Alva Edison?” And he looked here and there: who
is this Thomas Alva Edison?
One neighbor standing behind, far back in the line, said, ”What are you looking at? You are Thomas
Alva Edison, I know you.”
He said, ”If you say so, then certainly I must be, because you are such a nice guy, you can’t lie.”
What happened to him? How did he forget his name? Even standing in the queue for the ration
card, he was not there. He was in the world of electricity. He was figuring out things which had
no concern with the place where he was standing or with the ration card or with the person named
Thomas Alva Edison.
It is said... perhaps it is just a joke, but it is possible that if a man can forget his own name it may
be true and not a joke. He was going for a journey. He kissed his maidservant thinking she was
his wife, and patted his wife thinking she was the maidservant. They both were shocked. But he
said, ”What is the matter? Why are you both looking shocked? Aren’t you my wife and isn’t she my
maidservant?” And he was not joking; he was simply not there.
Obsession means you are possessed by some idea so totally that everything else becomes
absolutely unimportant, everything else falls into darkness. Only one spot remains lighted, and
it goes on growing narrower and narrower and narrower. That’s the way of discovery. When it
comes to be the narrowest, you have found the center for which you have been looking for years.
But when your focus is narrowing, and when the circle of your focus is becoming smaller and smaller,
what about you? You are also becoming narrower and narrower – one-pointed. The whole universe
disappears for you.
The scientist is bound to be obsessed: the greater the scientist, the bigger the obsession. Hence,
obsession is not a disease for a scientist, it is absolutely necessary. It is his way of working. If you
relieve him of his obsession he will be an ordinary man, not a scientist.
It is defined, that science knows more and more about less and less. The object of knowledge
becomes less and less, and your knowledge of it becomes more and more. If the definition is
From Ignorance to Innocence 410 Osho