Life is freedom

AN OLD FABLE has it that when God was creating the world he was approached by four questioning angels. ’How are you doing it?’ the first one asked. The second queried, ’Why?’ The third one said, ’May I have it when you finish?’ The fourth one said, ’Can I help?’

The first one was the question of the scientist, the second, the philosopher’s, the third, the politician’s, and the fourth was the question of the religious one.

The scientific inquiry into existence is that of detached observation. The scientist has to be objective. To be objective he has to remain uninvolved; he cannot participate, because the moment he becomes a participant he becomes involved. Hence the scientist can only know the outer circumference of life and existence. The innermost core will remain unavailable to science; its very methodology prohibits it.

The philosopher only speculates, he never experiments. He goes on asking AD infinitum, ’Why?’ And the question is such that whatsoever the answer, it can be asked again – ’Why?’ There is no possibility of any conclusion through philosophy. Philosophy remains in a state of non-conclusion. It is a futile activity; it leads nowhere.

The politician simply wants to possess the world, to own it. He is the most dangerous of all because he is the most violent. His interest in life is not in life itself but in his own power. He is power-hungry, power-mad; he is a maniac, he is destructive. The moment you possess something alive, you kill it, because the moment something becomes a property it is no more alive. Possess a tree, and it is no more alive. Possess a woman or a man, and you have killed them. Possess anything, and death is the outcome, because only death can be possessed.

Life is freedom. It remains basically free. You cannot possess it, you cannot put it into the bank, you cannot draw a line around it. You cannot say, ’This is mine’; to say so is disrespectful, to say so is egoistic, to say so is mad.

Life possesses us. How can we possess it? We have to be possessed by life more and more.
The whole gestalt has to change: from being possessive, one has to become capable of being possessed by the whole.

The politician never comes to know the truth of life.

The religious person participates. He dances with life. He sings with existence. He helps life. He is surrendered to existence, and he is not detached and aloof. He does not really ask any question, he is not after knowledge; his whole effort is how to be in harmony with existence, how to be totally one with it. Hence the Eastern word for the ultimate experience: SAMADHI.

It comes from two words. SAM – SAM means together with. The same root SAM has moved
into English, too; it is in ’sympathy’, it is in ’symphony’. A little bit changed, it is in ’synthesis’, ’synchronicity’. SAM means together with. ADHI means the lord, God. SAMADHI means union with God, to be one with God. And that is exactly the meaning of the English word ’religion’. It means to become one with existence; not to be divided, not to remain separate but to become one. And only in this oneness does one come to know, see, experience, and be.

Religion is also a great experiment – the greatest, in fact – but with a difference. Science
experiments with the object, religion experiments with the subject itself. Its whole concern is: Who am I?

The Secret of Secrets 

Osho