Apathy, Osho, ecstasy, Krishnamurti , and Ramakrishna

           Apathy is therefore both an internal and external event: internally it vaporizes the struggle to 'know' because the individual realizes that 'awareness requires no effort'; externally it vaporizes the individual's participation in the falsities of society because society offers nothing but the absence of stillness, and in stillness is the only peace and real communion for the sensitive soul.

Osho proffers, "...I don't teach you the result-oriented life at all. I teach you the relaxed way of life. ...Truth cannot be practiced. You have to dissolve yourself into it. ...You have to relax into it, dissolve into it. ...Let it be. Go into it. Be drowned in it. ...Don't make an effort." (Ecstasy, p49,51)

Hence we must rid ourselves of the desire to understand what is not understandable and the desire to do what need not be done (which is the greater part of everything), only then shall we be effortless and silent enough to re-ceive what we cannot con-ceive.

Krishnamurti continues on the theme, adding to his last quote: "...if the mind realizes its own absolute incapacity to know the unknown, if it perceives that it cannot take a single step towards the unknown, then what happens? Then the mind becomes utterly silent."(talks in Bombay, Jan6/1960)

It is interesting that Krishnamurti , arguably one of the most lucid men of the century (and I use the term 'lucid' because it implies clarity, not intellect) was often caned and punished as a schoolboy because he could never remember his lessons, and he would often sit for hours with his mouth hanging wide open, oblivious to the world, behaving exactly like an utter fool. He was empty, vacant of ideas, and totally removed from the cares of the day, which made him a perfect victim of the world, and a perfect vessel for the Spirit.

This same countenance- of rapt oblivion- was observed in Ramakrishna, an Indian saint born in the nineteenth century, who often sat for hours completely absorbed in awe, staring off into the profundity of the cosmos, doing nothing, totally useless to the world, and yet completely fulfilled.

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These excerpts are taken from unpublished chapters from

THE WAY OF WONDER, by Jack Haas