There are hidden meanings not visible from the outside

Discourses

Osho speaks about the alchemical secrets of places of holy pilgrimage. From ‘Hidden Mysteries’, Ch 2, Part 1 of 9 – “A tirtha, a sacred place of pilgrimage, is a unique invention, very deep and symbolic, made by an ancient civilization.”

moai-statues-easter-island

In the Pacific Ocean there is a small island, Easter Island, on which there are one thousand huge stone idols, all about seventy feet tall. The population of the island is just two hundred. It was found, when that island was first discovered, that it was so small, it couldn’t produce food for more than two hundred people. When only two hundred people can live there, it was surprising to find such huge stone idols and as many as one thousand! Five idols for every person! Those people would not have been able to make such huge idols even if they wanted to, because their lives are spent in taking care of their day to day needs. What could be the purpose of those idols? Who would have made them and why? Many questions arose for historians.

Beings from other planets
also seem to have made
contact with our earth.

In central Asia there is another place that is equally puzzling. It could have been meant to be used for an airport, but as long as airplanes were not made, that wasn’t possible. The area seemed to be developed fifteen to twenty thousand years ago. Only after the airplane was invented could we understand its use, could we understand that that place in central Asia must once have served as an airport.

I am telling you these things to convey to you the idea that we will not be able to understand the significance of places of pilgrimage until we ourselves realize the need to have them.

When the idols of Easter Island were photographed from airplanes, it could be imagined that they were installed at certain geometrical points, in such a way that they could be seen from the moon on particular nights. Those who have studied this subject think that we, in this century, are not the first people to look for life on other planets. Many times before experiments and attempts have been made to find animals and other forms of life on other planets so that communication could be established with them. Not only that, but beings from other planets also seem to have made contact with our earth.

These twenty feet long idols are not meaningful in themselves, but when their whole pattern is observed from a plane there are indications of some signs and secret messages. Those signs could only be read from the moon. But as long as we had not seen the idols from a plane we could not imagine their possible use; they were still then just idols. In the same way there are many things on this earth about which we will know nothing until our civilization investigates and sets up a similar situation again.

Just three or four days ago, I was talking about a small iron box which was found in Tehran. It was kept in The British Museum for a long time, for many years it was just lying there. Now it has been found to be a type of battery which was used in Tehran about two thousand years ago. It was beyond the imagination that in Tehran, two thousand years ago, such a battery existed. But now it is an established fact that it is a battery. If we had not invented the storage battery we would never have been able to imagine that that such a box could be a battery.

A tirtha, a sacred place of pilgrimage, is a unique invention, very deep and symbolic, made by an ancient civilization. But our present civilization has lost all knowledge about the significance of such places. Today visiting a place of pilgrimage is just a dead ritual for us. We just tolerate them, without knowing why places of pilgrimage were established, what their use was and who made them.

Whatever can be seen from the surface is not everything. There are some hidden meanings which are not visible from the outside. We should understand first that our civilization has lost the purpose and meaning of the sacred place of pilgrimage and so today people who go on a pilgrimage waste their time. Those who oppose the idea are also wasting their time, however right they seem to be, because they know nothing about such places. Neither the people who visit the places of pilgrimage, nor those who oppose the idea know the purpose of them, so let us understand a few things about them….

samvet-shikhar

There is a famous place of pilgrimage for Jainas known as Samved Shikhar. Twenty-two out of the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas have died there, have left their bodies there. It all seems to have been pre-arranged; otherwise it is impossible that out of twenty-four, twenty-two should happen to die, with long periods of time between them, in the same place. If we believe the Jainas, there is a gap of one hundred thousand years between the first and the twenty-fourth tirthankara. That twenty-two of them died in the same place is worth thinking about.

kaaba

The place of pilgrimage for Moslems is the Kaaba. Until the time of Mohammed, there were three hundred and sixty-five idols in Kaaba – a different idol for each day of the year. All these idols were removed or destroyed, but the central stone which was the center of the temple was not removed. The Kaaba is more ancient than the Muslims’ religion. The history of Islam is only about fourteen hundred years old, but that black stone in the Kaaba is hundreds of thousands of years old.

The stone at Kaaba
may not be part
of a meteorite
but may have been left
by some inhabitants
of another planet.

Another interesting fact is that the stone does not seem to belong to our earth. How did it come to earth? The only hypothesis we have is that it is part of a meteor. Within twenty-four hours of the disintegration of a meteor, thousands of stone fragments fall to the earth. Many of these are burnt up before they reach the earth. At night when we see stars falling – these are not stars but meteors. Sometimes even huge stones manage to reach the earth; these stones are of a different composition. The stone at Kaaba is such a stone.

But some people who have gone deeper into this feel that such big stones could have been brought to earth and left here, just as our astronauts have left a few things from earth on the moon. Whatever the astronauts have left on the moon will remain there safely, even if there is a nuclear war and life on this earth is destroyed. If ever some civilization reaches the moon, they will be very surprised to see those things we have left there.

So the stone at Kaaba may not be part of a meteorite but may have been left by some inhabitants of another planet. Perhaps it was once possible to establish a connection with those inhabitants through the medium of that stone. But now, only the worship of it has remained. The science of how it might have been used as a means of communication is lost.

An unmanned Russian spaceship became lost because its radio contact with the earth broke, so it was not possible to trace it. Whether it was burnt up, destroyed, or is still somewhere in space is not known. But if it has landed on some planet, and if the inhabitants of that planet could repair the radio they could re-establish contact with the earth. Otherwise they might break it up, or store it in their museum. They may even be afraid of it, may wonder at it or they may even start to worship it. The Kaaba stone may be one such instrument sent out by spacemen from some other planet to establish contact with the earth.

I am telling you this only as an illustration to explain that a sacred place of pilgrimage was a means to establish contact, not with any living beings in space but with enlightened souls who once lived on this earth.

Osho, Hidden Mysteries, Ch 2  (translated from Hindi), Part 1 of 9

Comments are closed.