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

CHAPTER 16. ATHEISM, THEISM AND REALITY
room, and she was immensely pleased to see her desire fulfilled: the room had exactly the color of
the ashtray. And the painter happily went home with a million francs in his pocket.
Later the painter wrote in his autobiography that he first painted the walls of the countess’ living
room and then repainted the ashtray in the same color. And the job was done
Arvind and Dayananda and the rest of the tribe first paint the walls and then they paint the ashtray
in the same color. First they create their own doctrines and then they impose those doctrines on the
Vedas and claim their infallibility.
All the ancient languages like Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin, and Greek, were meant for poetry, not for
science. And such languages have both their advantages and disadvantages. Their advantage is
that their words have more than one meaning; their words are pliant and tender. And this is their
disadvantage too. Because their words have more than one meaning, it becomes difficult to uncover
the meanings with which they were first used.
But they are most suitable for poetry; they lend tenderness and color, depth and richness to poetry.
That is why poetry casts its spell on so many different types of people, who all discover their own
meanings reflected in them. But these languages are not suitable for science, which needs definitive
words with absolutely precise meanings. In science ”a” should accurately mean a, and nothing else.
None of the ancient languages is scientific; and science did not develop in them. For the exact
sciences, which require absolute or qualitative precision, an altogether different kind of language is
needed, and scientists are busy creating it.
You will be surprised to know that physics, which is the most advanced of the sciences now, has
gradually given up the use of words and instead begun to express itself through arithmetical formulas
like H20. Mathematical formulas are much more exact than ordinary words with more than one
meaning. So to understand Einstein it is necessary to be well acquainted with higher mathematics.
It is not enough to know a language if you want to understand advanced physics; proficiency in
mathematics is essential. So scientific language is taking the form of mathematics And men like
Einstein think the language of science in the future will consist more of signs and symbols than of
words and phrases; otherwise it cannot be exact and precise.
Not only in India but all the world over, languages in the past had only one form – their verse. Most
ancient scriptures were composed in verse form. It is amazing that even books on ancient Indian
medicine were written in verse. And there is a reason for it. In the past, all knowledge had to be
communicated orally from the teacher to the taught, and from one generation to another – writing
came much later. For this kind of communication, verse became essential; verse could be easily
committed to memory. Prose could not be memorized so easily. That is why the UPANISHADS, the
GEETA and the KORAN were composed in verse form, to keep the oral tradition going for thousands
of years. But this tradition is also responsible for a lot of confusion about the meanings of words and
phrases. And so everyone was free to interpret the VEDAS the way he liked.
As I see it, the work they are carrying out at Pondicherry is the most sterile work ever undertaken in
the field of spiritualism. We need not leave it for the future to decide whether it has any value or not.
It can be decided here and now.
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 305 Osho