Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. THE COSMOS IS A DANCE OF OPPOSITES
accept that man is very much linked with the monkey. Even today, when we walk our hands move
rhythmically with our moving legs – the left hand with the right leg and vice versa – although it is
not at all necessary for our hands to move. We can walk very well without moving our hands; those
whose hands are amputated walk as easily. Evidently Darwin thinks that this movement of the hands
is only a habit, a hangover from out old life as monkeys millions of years ago when we walked on all
fours. Even the little opening where a monkey has its tail is discernible on man’s body as a linkage.
It indicates that man had a tail when he was a monkey.
In this context Hanumana is very significant. Had he known about Hanumana, Darwin would have
been greatly pleased. Darwin was searching for the missing link between monkey and man; he
believed that there must be some species in the evolution of man from monkey who was halfway
between the two, neither a full monkey nor a complete man. Between the two there must be a
transitory period which the monkey took to evolve into man; it is impossible that a monkey was all of
a sudden transformed into a man. It should have been over millions of years when some monkeys
became men and others remained monkeys.
Biologists and anthropologists are still wondering what happened to the missing link. A worldwide
search is still underway to discover the skeleton of that intermediary between monkey and man.
Hanumana seems to be, in many ways, related to that missing link, and it would be great if his
skeleton were found. Darwin’s theory met with stiff opposition, and it took a long time to be accepted.
It was accepted because it was supported by proof.
I say yet another thing which is concerned with the evolution of man. I say that as man has evolved
from the monkey at the level of his body, similarly, he evolved from the cow at the level of his soul.
If the monkey is his predecessor on the physical side, the cow is his predecessor on the spiritual
side. While man’s physical frame has evolved from the monkey’s body, his soul has evolved from
the soul of the cow. Of course, in support of this theory we can not advance proofs as direct and
strong as Darwin’s in support of his. But there are many other kinds of evidence in support of what
I am saying: man as a soul has evolved from the cow.
It is not reason enough to call the cow our mother because we are an agricultural community and
the cow has great use and importance for us. If it were so, we should have called the bull our father,
which we did not. And we don’t turn every utilitarian object into our mother. There is no reason to
do so. The railway train has great utility for us and we cannot do without it, but we are not going to
give it the status of a mother. No community calls the airplane mother, although it is so important
to modern life. Never and nowhere has an object of utility been called mother, despite the fact that
there are any number of things that have utility. And there is no relationship between motherhood
and utility. There must be some other reasons for regarding the cow as our mother.
In my view, the cow is man’s mother exactly in the same way as the monkey, according to Darwin,
happens to be his father. And I have good reasons to say it. Further, most of these reasons are
based on the findings of psychic research into man’s memory of his past lives, called jati-smaran
in Buddhist terminology. Thousands of yogis down the centuries have explored and recalled the
memories of their past lives and have found retrospectively that as soon as the chain of their human
lives comes to an end, the life of the cow begins. If you go back into your past lives – and there
are tested methods to do it – you will find that for many lives you were a human being. but as soon
as the series of human lives ends, you will enter the life of the cow that you were. Everyone who
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 171 Osho