What is the relationship between consciousness and energy?
Modern physics has discovered one of the greatest things ever discovered, and that is: matter is energy. That is the greatest contribution of Albert Einstein to humanity: e is equal to mc squared, matter is energy. Matter only appears; otherwise there is no such thing as matter. Nothing is solid. Even the solid rock is a pulsating energy, even the solid rock is as much energy as the roaring ocean. The waves that are arising in the solid rock cannot be seen because they are very subtle, but the rock is waving, pulsating, breathing; it is alive.
Friedrich Nietzsche has declared that God is dead. God is not dead on the contrary, what has happened is that matter is dead. Matter has been found not to exist at all. This insight into matter brings modern physics very close to mysticism, very close. For the first time the scientist and the mystic are coming very close, almost holding hands.
Eddington, one of the greatest scientists of this age, has said, “We used to think that matter is a thing; now it is no more so. Matter is more like a thought than like a thing.”
Existence is energy. Science has discovered that the observed is energy, the object is energy. Down through the ages, at least for five thousand years, it has been known that the other polarity the subject, the observer, consciousness is energy.
Your body is energy, your mind is energy, your soul is energy. Then what is the difference between these three? The difference is only of a different rhythm, different wavelengths, that’s all. The body is gross energy functioning in a gross way, in a visible way.
Mind is a little more subtle, but still not too subtle, because you can close your eyes and you can see the thoughts moving; they can be seen. They are not as visible as your body; your body is visible to everybody else, it is publicly visible. Your thoughts are privately visible. Nobody else can see your thoughts; only you can see them or people who have worked very deeply into seeing thoughts. But ordinarily they are not visible to others.
And the third, the ultimate layer inside you, is that of consciousness. It is not even visible to you. It cannot be reduced to an object, it remains the subject.
If all these three energies function in harmony, you are healthy and whole. If these energies don’t function in harmony and accord you are ill, unhealthy; you are no more whole. And to be whole is to be holy.
The effort that we are making here is to help you so that your body, your mind, your consciousness, can all dance in one rhythm, in a togetherness, in a deep harmony not in conflict at all, but in cooperation. The moment your body, mind and consciousness function together, you have become the trinity, and in that experience is the divine.
Your question is significant. You ask, “Please say something about the relationship of consciousness and energy.”
There is no relationship of consciousness and energy.
Consciousness is energy, the purest energy. The mind is not so pure; the body is still less pure. The body is much too mixed, and the mind is also not totally pure. Consciousness is totally pure energy. But you can know this consciousness only if you make a cosmos out of the three, and not a chaos.
People are living in chaos. Their bodies say one thing, their bodies want to go in one direction; their minds are completely oblivious of the body because for centuries you have been taught that you are not the body. For centuries you have been told that the body is your enemy, that you have to fight with it, that you have to destroy it, that the body is sin.
Because of all these ideas silly and stupid they are, harmful and poisonous they are, but they have been taught for so long that they have become part of your collective mind, they are there you don’t experience your body in a rhythmic dance with yourself.
Hence my insistence on dancing and music, because it is only in dance that you will feel that your body, your mind and you are functioning together. And the joy is infinite when all these function together; the richness is great.
Consciousness is the highest form of energy. And when all these three energies function together, the fourth arrives. The fourth is always present when these three function together. When these three function in an organic unity, the fourth is always there; the fourth is nothing but that organic unity. In the East, we have called that fourth simply the fourth turiya; we have not given it any name. The three have names, the fourth is nameless. To know the fourth is to know the divine. Let us say it in this way: the divine is when you are an organic orgasmic unity. The divine is not when you are a chaos, a disunity, a conflict. When you are a house divided against yourself there is no divinity.
When you are tremendously happy with yourself, happy as you are, blissful as you are, grateful as you are, and all your energies are dancing together, when you are an orchestra of all your energies, the divine is. That feeling of total unity is what the divine is. The divine is not a person somewhere, The divine is the experience of the three falling in such unity that the fourth arises. And the fourth is more than the sum total of the parts.
If you dissect a painting, you will find the canvas and the colors, but the painting is not simply the sum total of the canvas and the colors; it is something more. That “something more” is expressed through the painting, the color, the canvas, the artist, but that “something more” is the beauty. Dissect the rose flower, and you will find all the chemicals and things it is constituted of, but the beauty will disappear. It was not just the sum total of the parts, it was more.
The whole is more than the sum total of the parts. It expresses itself through the parts but it is more. To understand that it is more is to understand the divine. The divine is that more, that plus. It is not a question of theology; it cannot be decided by logical argumentation. You have to feel beauty, you have to feel music, you have to feel dance. And ultimately you have to feel the dance in your body, mind and, soul. You have to learn how to play on these three energies so that they all become an orchestra. Then the divine is not that you see it; there is nothing to be seen. The divine is the ultimate seer, it is witnessing.
Learn to melt your body, mind, soul. Find ways in which you can function as a unity.
~ Osho, The Book of Wisdom, Talk #23