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

CHAPTER 13. KRISHNA GOES TO THE WEST
Someone wants to know what love is and he reads huge scriptures on love. Perhaps on no other
topic has so much been written as pundits have written on love. There is a huge amount of literature
on love in the form of poetry and epics and philosophical treatises. He will become knowledgeable
about love, he can write great treatises on love, yet in reality he will not actually know what love is.
There is another person who has not read a word about love, but has experienced it, lived it. What is
the difference between this man and the one who has gone through a huge pile of literature on love?
This man knows love through experiencing; the other man knows it through words and concepts.
Experiencing is always unthinkable, it does not happen through thinking; in fact, it happens before
thinking. Experience precedes thought, and thought follows experience. Experience comes first and
thought follows it by way of its expression.
That is why Chaitanya says that unity and separateness of the world and God is beyond thought.
When Chaitanya says this is unthinkable, he means much more than what meets the eye. Meera will
say it is unthinkable, but she was never given to serious thinking – she was through and through a
woman of feelings. But as far as Chaitanya is concerned, he was a great logician, renowned for his
sharp mind and brilliant logic. He had scaled the highest peaks of thinking. Pundits were afraid of
entering into argument with him. He was incomparable as a debater; he had won laurel after laurel
in philosophical discussions.
Such a rational intellect, who had indulged in hair splitting interpretations of words and concepts
throughout his life, was one day found singing and dancing through the streets of Navadeep. Meera,
on the other hand, had never indulged in pedantry and scriptures; she had nothing to do with logic.
She was a loving woman; love was in her blood and bones. So it was no wonder when she walked
through the streets of Merta with a tanpoora in her hands, dancing and singing hymns of love. It was
just natural. But Chaitanya was her opposite; he was not a man of love, and he turned to love and
devotion – which was a miracle. This one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn in his life demonstrates
the victory of love over logic. He had defeated all his contemporaries with his logic, but when he
came to himself he found it to be a self-defeating discipline. He came to a point where the mind lost
and life and love won. Beyond this point one can only go with life and love.
That is why I said that among people who walked the path of Krishna, Chaitanya is simply
extraordinary, incomparable. When I say so I am aware of Meera, who loves Krishna tremendously.
But she does not come near Chaitanya. It is unthinkable how a tremendously logical mind like
Chaitanya could come down from his ivory tower, take a drum in his hands, and dance and sing
in the market place. Can you think of Bertrand Russell dancing through the streets of London?
Chaitanya was like Russell – out and out intellectual. And for this reason his statement becomes
immensely significant. He makes his statement that reality is unthinkable not with words, but with a
drum in his hands – dancing and singing through the streets of his town, where he was held in great
respect for his superb scholarship. It is in this way that he renounces mind, renounces thinking and
declares that, ”Reality is beyond thought, it is unthinkable.”
Chaitanya’s case demonstrates that they alone can transcend thinking who first enter into the very
depth of thinking and explore it through and through. Then they are bound to come to a point where
think ing ends and the unthinkable begins. This last frontier of mind is where a statement like this
is born. That is why Chaitanya’s statement has gathered immense significance; it comes after he
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 245 Osho