Spiritual Reading Discussion - Maturity by Osho - What Does It Take To Save the World?

Welcome back to the spiritual reading discussion group. Today's installment is the fifth chapter in our review. Feel free to join in leaving comments.

Introduction - Spiritual reading discussion group - Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself by Osho

Chapter one - Growing old and growing up - two different things.

Chapter two - Ignorance or innocence

Chapter three - The rejuvenation of innocence

Chapter four -  Being born again

Chapter five - What does it take to save the world

Chapter five

What does it take to save the world?

The second principle is the pilgrimage. Life must be a seeking—not a desire but a search; not an ambition to become this, to become that, a president of a country or prime minister of a country, but a search to find out “Who am I?”

It is very strange that people who don’t know who they are, are trying to become somebody. They don’t even know who they are right now! They are unacquainted with their being—but they have a goal of becoming.

Becoming is the disease of the soul.

Being is you.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. P.xiii

Comment:

The fourth principle in Unitarian Universalism is the free and responsible search for truth and meaning but most UUs don’t know much about what this search is about. For most people it means searching for a religious faith which is external to them. It is about finding a set of beliefs and a church that they feel comfortable with. This search is always doomed to failure for, as Jesus tells us, the kingdom of God is within you.”

Osho in this passage from his book, Maturity: The Resonsiblity of Being Oneself, is telling us the same thing: that the search for truth and meaning is a search within not a search without.

Dr. Paul Pearsall, the psychologist, taught that the three major existential questions which all human beings struggle with are: Why was I born? What is the purpose of my life? What happens when I die?

Osho tells us that in our ego thought system we are concerned with our becoming when we don’t even understand who we are. Becoming will not make us happy until we realize that we are okay right now as an extension of God’s Unconditional Love. This is the basic understanding of our Universalist faith, and is embodied in our first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, which we affirm and promote. Few, however, actually believe and inexperience this inherent worth and dignity in their lives in the here and now. If a person actually experienced this, the world would be saved.

What is the Unitarian Universalist path to salvation?

The experience and idea of awakening exists in all cultures and all religious traditions. It goes by various labels whether it is called samadhi in Hinduism, enlightenment in Buddhism, Tao in Taoism, the beatific vision in Christianity or Fana in Sufiism. In Unitarian Universalism, it might be called cosmic consciousness or Oneness with the interdependent web.

Regardless of what it is called, the perennial psychology holds the concept of the difference between the unconscious state of being asleep on the path of the ego or the conscious state of being awake on the path of the Spirit to be universal.

It might be said that the ultimate goal of the covenant of Unitarian Univeralism is the love of the interdependent web of existence which provides a cosmic consciousness. This stage of human evolution is not, usually, easily attained. As has been described earlier, some are born more attuned to this sensibility while others achieve it as a result of a crisis in their lives and others achieve it through diligent practice. Affirming, promoting, and living the seven principles as a path to salvation, awakening, is the key to the faith which Unitarian Universalists hold dear.

Cosmic consciousness is our destiny

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the respect for the interdependent web of which we are a part.

It is more than respect for the interdependent web, it is love of the interdependent web. It is more than respect and love, it is a surrender to the experience of the wholeness of it.

On the path of the ego, things can get really complicated fast. We humans have learned that deconstructing entities into their component parts gives us power to manipulate those entities and the things related to them.

We also have learned that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Deconstruction does not give us the whole story. In the last analysis, it is the whole story that we desire not just crumbs.

Salvation lies in the whole. Salvation comes from joining and unifying. Salvation comes from the awareness that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and it is in this wholeness that we experience peace and fulfillment.

Salvation follows from the answer to the question, "What would Love have me do?" The question is simple enough if we respond to it at face value. It is in overthinking it that we get ourselves into trouble.

Giving up our dichotomizing minds frightens us. It seems unnatural on the path of the ego for the ego would have us separate, discriminate, segregate, compare, compete, eliminate, attack, oppress, subjugate, and even kill because it is afraid of wholeness, of nondualistic awareness, because the ego would evaporate, it would cease to exist.

The ego protests against this, fights against this, becomes defensive and antagonistic towards anything that threatens its existence. The ego insists that we protect it, sometimes at all costs. The ego would prefer that we give up our souls so that it can stay intact. We come to learn, it is a sign of wisdom, that this is a fool's bargain. In the end, we must surrender our special drop to the ocean and be reabsorbed once again into the cosmic consciousness.