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

CHAPTER 20. BASE YOUR RULE ON THE RULE
NORTHWARD PATH ATTAINS TO LIBERATION. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ONE WHO DIES WHEN
THE SUN IS ON HIS SOUTHWARD PATH? AND HOW DOES KRISHNA’S STHITAPRAJNA, ONE
WHO IS SETTLED IN HIS INTELLIGENCE, COMPARE WITH HIS DEVOTEE WHO IS ON THE
PATH OF LOVE? KRISHNA DEFINES STHITAPRAJNA AS ONE WHO REMAINS UNPERTURBED
AND STEADY IN THE MIDST OF BOTH HAPPINESS AND PAIN. BUT THIS STATE CAN ALSO
LEAD TO UTTER INSENSITIVITY. AND WILL YOU CALL IT HUMAN IF SOMEBODY DOES NOT
TAKE PLEASURE AS PLEASURE AND PAIN AS PAIN?
This statement of Krishna’s is very profound and meaningful. He says sthitaprajna is one who
remains unperturbed and steady in the midst of both happiness and misery. And your question is
equally relevant: that if someone does not feel happy in happiness and miserable in misery will it
not destroy his sensitivity?
There are two ways of remaining unperturbed in the midst of happiness and suffering. One way is
to kill your sensitivity. Then you will cease to be happy in happiness and miserable in misery. If your
tongue is burned you will cease to taste both the sweet and sour. If your eyes are blinded you will
know neither light nor darkness. A deaf person is insensitive to every kind of sound – pleasant and
unpleasant. Insensitivity is the simplest way of achieving evenness of mind in both pleasure and
pain.
And it is not surprising that by and large Krishna’s followers have chosen the way of insensitivity.
Most of those who are known as sannyasins, renunciates or recluses, do nothing but systematically
destroy their sensitivity so they become dead to the experience of pleasure and pain, happiness and
misery. But this is a travesty of what Krishna really means.
Krishna’s meaning is very different. He says a sthitaprajna remains unperturbed in pleasure and
pain – he does not say he is insensitive to them. He means to say that a wise man goes beyond
happiness and sorrow, he transcends them – not by killing his sensitivity but by attaining to a higher
state of consciousness, to superconsciousness. An unconscious person, one under the influence of
drugs, is insensitive to pain and pleasure but he cannot be said to have transcended them. He has
rather fallen below the normal state of consciousness. In that way every dead person is insensitive.
Transcendence is entirely different.
And I interpret this aphorism of Krishna’s very differently. In my view, Krishna’s way of transcending
happiness and sorrow is different and unique. If someone experiences happiness fully, if he is utterly
sensitive to pleasure, if he lives it so totally that no. thing remains to be lived, he will soon transcend
it. Then he will be unperturbed and steady in every situation of pleasure and happiness.
Similarly if someone experiences pain and misery totally, if he goes into it with all his being, without
trying to escape it in the least, he too will go beyond pain; he will never again be disturbed by
suffering. Krishna does not ask you to kill your sensitivity; on the contrary, he wants you to heighten
your sensitivity to its utmost, so it becomes total. Krishna stands for sensitivity, and total sensitivity
at that.
Let us understand it in another way. What do I mean by total sensitivity? For example, someone
insults me and I am pained. If I know, if I think that I am in pain, it means that I am not fully in pain.
I am yet keeping some distance from pain. In that case I say I am in pain, I don’t say I am pained.
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 383 Osho