There are many people here too who are very expert in so-called esoteric jargon.
They always talk of so many planes, so many bodies, so many centers…and they talk so seriously that it seems they know what they are talking about. Avoid esoteric garbage! Avoid esoteric knowledge! It is not knowledge, it is just to befool people. If you are interested in such things you should read the great literature that has been created by theosophists.
Anything goes, you just have to talk in such a way that it seems otherworldly. It can neither be proved nor disproved. Now how can you prove how many planes there are? Seven or thirteen?
One man came to me. His religious sect believes in fourteen planes, and he had a chart, he had brought the chart. Mahavira has attained only to the fifth plane, Buddha to the sixth, Kabir, Nanak, to the ninth – because he was a Punjabi he had been a little generous with Nanak and Kabir. But his own Radhaswami guru, he has attained to the fourteenth! Even Buddha is just hanging around the sixth! And Mohammed, do you know where Mohammed is? – just the third! A Hindu and a Punjabi, how can you allow Mohammed to go beyond the third? He keeps him third-rate. Jesus he is a little more generous with – on the fourth; he places Jesus on the fourth. But his own guru – nobody knows about his guru – he has reached the fourteenth! The fourteenth is called satch-khand – the plane of truth.
So I asked him, “What about the other thirteen?”
He said, “They are just coming closer and closer to truth, only approximately true.”
Now, can there be an approximate truth? Either something is true or something is not true. Either I am here in the chair or I am not in the chair – I cannot be approximately in the chair. So “approximate truth” is a beautiful name for a lie.
He had come to ask me what my opinion is about the fourteen planes. I said, “I have reached the fifteenth. And just as you are asking about the planes, your Radhaswami guru asks me again and again how to enter into the fifteenth.”
He was very angry. He said, “Never heard about the fifteenth plane!”
I said, “How can you hear? Your guru has only reached the fourteenth, so you have heard about fourteen. But I have reached the fifteenth!”
Just nonsense! But it can be presented in such a way that it looks very spiritual. Avoid!
Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 1, Ch 3 (excerpt)
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