Pythagoras is the first experiment in creating a synthesis. Twenty-five centuries have passed since then and nobody else has tried it again. Nobody else before had done it, and nobody else has done it afterwards either. It needs a mind which is both -- scientific and mystic. It is a rare phenomenon. It happens once in a while.
There have been great mystics -- Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra. And there have been great scientists -- Newton, Edison, Einstein. But to find a man who is at home with both worlds, easily at home, is very difficult. Pythagoras is that kind of man -- a class unto himself. He cannot be categorized by anybody else.
The synthesis that he tried was needed, particularly in his days, as it is needed today -- because the world is again at the same point. The world moves in a wheel. The Sanskrit word for "the world" is samsara. Samsara means the wheel. The wheel is big: one circle is completed in twenty-five centuries. Twenty-five centuries before Pythagoras, Atlantis committed suicide -- out of man's own scientific growth. But without wisdom, scientific growth is dangerous. It is putting a sword in the hands of a child.
Now twenty-five centuries have passed since Pythagoras. Again the world is in a chaos. Again the wheel has come to the same point -- it always comes to the same point. It takes twenty-five centuries for this moment to happen. After each twenty-five centuries the world comes into a state of great chaos.
Man becomes uprooted, starts feeling meaningless. All the values of life disappear. A great darkness surrounds. Sense of direction is lost. One simply feels accidental. There seems to be no purpose, no significance. Life seems to be just a by-product of chance. It seems existence does not care for you. It seems there is no life after death. It seems whatsoever you do is futile, routine, mechanical. All seems to be pointless.
These times of chaos, disorder, can either be a great curse, as it happened in Atlantis, or they can prove a quantum leap in human growth. It depends on how we use them. It is only in such great times of chaos that great stars are born.
Pythagoras was not alone. In Greece, Pythagoras and Heraclitus were born. In India, Buddha and Mahavira and many others. In China, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius, Mencius, Lieh Tzu, and many more. In Iran, Zarathustra. In the brahmin tradition, many great upanishadic seers. In the world of Judaism, Moses.... All these people, these great Masters were born at a certain stage in human history -- twenty-five centuries ago.
Now we are again in a great chaos, and man's fate will depend on what we do. Either we will destroy ourselves like the civilization that destroyed itself in Atlantis -- the whole world will become a Hiroshima; we will be drowned in our own knowledge; in our own science we will commit suicide, a collective suicide. A few, a Noah and a few of his followers, may be saved, or may not be.... Or, there is a possibility that we can take a quantum leap.
Either man can commit suicide, or man can be reborn. Both doors are open.
If such times can create people like Heraclitus and Lao Tzu and Zarathustra and Pythagoras and Buddha and Confucius, why can they not create a great humanity? They can. But we go on missing the opportunity.
The ordinary masses live in such unconsciousness that they can't see even a few steps ahead. They are blind. And they are the majority! The coming twenty-five years, the last part of this century, is going to be of immense value. If we can create a great momentum in the world for meditation, for the inward journey, for tranquillity, for stillness, for love, for God... if we can create a space in these coming twenty-five years for God to happen to many many people, humanity will have a new birth, a resurrection. A new man will be born.
And once you miss these times, then for twenty-five centuries again you will remain the same. A few people will achieve enlightenment, but it will remain only for a few people. Here and there, once in a while, a person will become alert and aware and divine. But the greater part of humanity goes on lagging behind -- in darkness, in utter darkness, in absolute misery. The greater part of humanity goes on living in hell.
But these moments when chaos spreads and man loses his roots in the past, becomes unhinged from the past, are great moments. If we can learn something from the past, if we can learn something from Pythagoras.... People could not use Pythagoras and his understanding, they could not use his great synthesis, and they could not use the doors that he had made available. A single individual had done something immense, something impossible, but it was not used.
Pythagoras, Atlantis, and the Greatest Luxury
Osho, Philosophia Perennis, Volume 1, Number 1
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