Everything is joined to the cosmos

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Osho says, “Even miniature organisms possess an inner source of feeling.” From ‘Hidden Mysteries’, Ch 5, Part 4 of 6.

Ocean

As I have told you, the water of the ocean is subject to certain influences. But all life is created out of water; without water, no life is possible. So in ancient Greece, seers used to say that only from water is life born, that water is life. Ancient Indian, Chinese and other mythologies also say this. Today scientists who believe in evolution also say that life was born in water, that perhaps the first life on the planet lived in the water. This was the first form of life, and then out of this, man eventually evolved.

Water is the most mysterious element of all.

Whatever influences from the stars reach man from the universe, from space, reach him through the medium of water. Having once affected the water in a man’s body, any radiation can gain entrance into him. Much work is being done with water, and many mysteries concerning water are coming to man’s attention.

The biggest mystery about water which has come to the attention of scientists in the last ten years is that water possesses a lot of sensitivity. Whatever influences are active from any direction in life are first felt by water. The water in us is the first thing to be affected. Once the water in us is influenced, then it will be very difficult for us to avoid being influenced.

You will be surprised to learn that when the child swims in the mother’s womb, he swims just as if he were in the ocean. The water in which the child swims in the mother’s womb possesses the same proportion of salt as is present in the ocean. Whatever influences reach the child from the mother’s body do not reach him directly; between the mother and the child growing in her womb there is no direct connection. Water is the mediator. Whatever influences reach the child from the mother do so through the medium of water; there is no direct relationship. Then throughout our lives the water in our bodies behaves just as the water in the sea.

Fish in the ocean have been much studied. There are fish which come onto the seashore and lay their eggs when the tides of the ocean are ebbing, when the sea is receding. Riding with the waves, the fish come onto the sand, lay their eggs, and return with the ocean waves. At a fixed time the ocean waves return. By then the eggs will have burst and the spawn will have come out. Then the incoming waves will take the spawn back out to sea.

Scientists who studied these fish were very surprised, because the fish always come to lay their eggs at the time when the tide is ebbing. If they were to lay their eggs while the tide is rising then the eggs would be washed away in the flood. They lay their eggs when the tide is going down, and withdraw for a little time in the recess of the waves. The waves do not wash a second time over the place they lay their eggs, otherwise the waves would wash the eggs away.

Scientists are very puzzled as to how these fish know when the tide will go down – when the time of the ebb-tide has arrived. If there were even the slightest mistake in timing, the eggs would be washed away. But they have never made a mistake in hundreds of thousands of years. If they had made an error they would have disappeared as a species. But they have never made any error. What equipment do these fish possess by which they can know about the tides? What sense organ do they possess that tells them when the tide will ebb? A hundred thousand fish will be gathered together at one time over the entire seashore…. There must be some code, some informative mechanism in the possession of these fish. A hundred thousand fish will come from thousands of miles away to lay their eggs on the ocean beach – and all at the same time.

Those who study the phenomenon say that besides the moon there can be no other source. The moon is the source of the fish’s intuition, nothing else. It is from intuition that the fish know when the tide is ebbing and when the tide is rising. The impact of the moon is the only way they have of knowing the tides.

There is another possibility. It has been conjectured that these fish might somehow be informed by the waves of the sea. So, scientists put them in a place where there are no ocean waves: in water, in an unlit room. But the results turned out to be very surprising. The fish were enveloped in darkness, the moon was not in view. No light was in view at all, but when the moon reached the exact point at which the fish in the ocean would go and lay their eggs on the shore, at just exactly the same moment the fish in the laboratory laid their eggs. What does this fact show? That it is not a question of the ocean waves.

Someone may say that the race begins only when the fish receive signals from each other, but this hypothesis cannot stand either. Scientists have witnessed the fish when they were isolated from each other. They have tried to disturb the brains of these fish in every way. They have placed the fish in darkness for twenty-four hours so that the fish do not know when it is morning and when it is night. They have observed these fish after placing them under a bright light for twenty-four hours so that the fish would not know when it is day. They have observed them after setting up an artificial moon, and daily they either lessened or increased its brilliance. But these fish could not be fooled. When the authentic moon came to the right point, at that moment only did the fish lay their eggs. Wherever they were, they would lay their eggs at that moment.

A hundred thousand birds every year fly hundreds and hundreds of miles. The winter is on its way, and soon snow will fall, so the birds begin to fly away from the areas where snow will fall. They will stop at a place thousands of miles away. To reach their winter encampment, two months are required. These birds depart exactly one month before the coming of snow. At the time of departure snow has not yet begun to fall, but after exactly a month it will fall. How do these birds calculate the date on which snow will fall? Our weathermen, who have the most elaborate observatories, cannot come up with such exact information. I have heard that some weathermen first ask astrologers sitting on the roadside, “What do you think – will it rain today or not?”

The arrangements which man has made seem juvenile. Birds know a month and a half or two months before snow falls. After thousands of experiments it has been observed that the day birds fly is fixed for every type of bird. Every year the date changes, because there is no fixed date for snow to fall. But it is certain that every bird will fly away one month before snow falls. If snow is to fall ten days later than the previous year, then they will fly ten days later. If snow falls ten days earlier, they will fly ten days earlier. If the date of the first snowfall is uncertain, then how are these birds informed?

In Japan there is a bird which will evacuate a town twenty-four hours before an earthquake occurs. It is just an ordinary town bird – in every town there are many of them – but twenty-four hours before an earthquake these birds will evacuate the town. At present, scientists are unable to predict whether an earthquake is coming, even two hours beforehand. Two hours before they are still uncertain, they are still unsure. There is only a probability, a possibility, that an earthquake can happen. But in Japan, people know twenty-four hours in advance that an earthquake is coming. From whichever town this bird flies away, the people of that town know that now there is only twenty-four hours’ time. This bird has retreated; not a single one of that species remains in the town. How does this bird become informed?

For ten years now, scientists have been saying something new – that every organism possesses an internal sense organ which feels the outside world. Perhaps man too possesses it, but has lost it through depending on his intellect. Man is the only living being in the world who has, through intelligence, lost many things which he once had. Through the same creative intelligence, he has also gained many things he did not have, but at a great loss. What he had he has lost, what he did not have he has invented. But even miniature organisms possess an inner source of feeling. And now scientific data is becoming available which proves that such an inner source exists. This discovery of an inner source makes us aware that nothing alive on this earth is isolated or separate. Everything is joined to the cosmos. If anything happens anywhere its results will begin to be felt here.

I was talking about Paracelsus…. Present-day physicians are also arriving at the conclusion that when spots emerge and grow on the sun, illness on the earth increases, and that when sunspots decrease, illness on the earth also decreases. We will never get rid of disease on earth while sunspots last. Every eleven years there is great turmoil on the sun and huge explosions take place. When explosions and turmoil occur on the sun, at that time wars and disturbances occur on earth. The wars that take place on earth follow a ten-year sequence. Epidemics also follow a ten or eleven-year sequence. Revolutions also follow approximately a ten or eleven-year sequence.

Once you have the idea that we are not separate or isolated but joined together in an organic way, then it will be easy to understand astrology. This is why I am explaining all this to you.

Some men have thought, and even now think, that astrology is superstition, blind faith. To a great extent this seems to be true. Those things that it is difficult to find a scientific explanation for seem to us to be based only on blind faith. But astrology is very scientific. The meaning of science is the investigation of the relationship between cause and effect. Astrology says that whatever happens on this earth is not uncaused. However, we may not be aware of the causes. Astrology says that the shape which the future will take cannot be isolated from the past but must be joined to it: what you will be tomorrow will be joined to what you are today; what you were until today is joined to what you will be tomorrow.

Astrology is a very scientific way of thinking. It says that the future will emerge only out of the past: your today has emerged from your yesterday; your tomorrow will emerge from your today. Astrology also says that whatever will happen tomorrow is in some subtle way present even today. Now try to understand a little about this.

Three days before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln dreamt that he had been murdered and that his corpse was lying in a special room in the White House. He even noted the number of his room. At that point his sleep was broken, and when he woke up, he laughed. He said to his wife, “I dreamt that I was murdered and that my body was lying in such-and-such-number room, and in such-and-such wing of the White House” – he was sleeping in that wing of the White House. “You stood at my head, and such-and-such people were standing all around.”

It was a joke, a laughing matter to him. Lincoln and his wife went back to sleep. Three days later Lincoln’s assassination took place. Three days later his body was lying in that number room, in that very place, and in that sequence people were standing around his body.

If what was to occur three days later had not in some fashion already occurred, then how could such a dream have taken place? How could the dream resemble, in such detail, what actually took place? Such a glimpse is given in a dream only if in some way it is already implied in the present moment. Then only can we get a glimpse of what will take place in the future.

If we open the window of the present, then we will be able to see that the future is just outside this window. It is the thesis of astrology that the future is simply our ignorance – so, it is “the future.” If we were to see, then the future would not be a “happening” for us – we would know it is already present here and now.

Osho, Hidden Mysteries, Ch 5 (translated from Hindi), Part 4 of 6

Read more parts of this discourse
Hidden Mysteries

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