Snowflake

“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a coal-mouse asked a wild dove.

“Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer.

“In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story,” the coal-mouse said.

“I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow – not heavily, not in a raging blizzard – no, just like a dream, without a sound and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch – nothing more than nothing, as you say – the branch broke off.”

Having said that, the coal-mouse flew away.

Primary Preparation

When the coal-mouse said that – I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch – nothing more than nothing, as you say – the branch broke off – he was saying that inner revolution is a sudden explosion.

Meditation is the Primary Preparation for inner revolution.

When we heat water, water warmed to one degree or ninety-nine degrees does not become vapor. Water warmed to one degree is still water and water heated to ninety-nine degrees is still water. At one hundred degrees, the water suddenly turns into steam. But while heating it up to one hundred degrees, the temperature increases gradually. That level of heat does not happen suddenly.

So when I say that water turns into vapor suddenly, I am saying that it is not that water first turns a little into vapor, and then a little more, and then a little more. The water turns into steam at one hundred degrees with a sudden explosion. The vapor replaces the water. But when I say you should heat it up, it means that the hundred-degree temperature comes slowly, slowly. I say that inner revolution is an explosion, but before the revolution, the warming up of the consciousness takes place slowly, slowly. It does not happen suddenly. Otherwise there would be no need to practice meditation. Hence, I said that when the explosion happens it happens.

But your consciousness is not at that point where the explosion can take place; the explosion has a boiling point and after reaching that point, the explosion happens. But you are not there. If you are at that point, the explosion can happen this very moment. The explosion does not take time, but it takes time to reach the point of explosion.

We plant a seed; it suddenly bursts into a sprout. But before sprouting, it remains underground: it disintegrates, it breaks, it cracks – and then it sprouts. Sprouting happens like an eruption.

A baby is born out of the mother’s womb. The birth is an explosion. It is not that the child is born a little now and then he will be born a little more a while later. Birth is not a gradual; happening. The birth takes place in a moment. But before the birth, the baby is gradually growing for nine months. He is getting ready to be born, he is preparing. Then the birth will happen instantaneously. But the preparation will take nine months continuously. When birth happens, there will have been a preparation of nine months behind it. If that preparation is not there, birth cannot happen instantly. There is a gradual growth to reach the point of birth, but birth is an explosion.

Revolution is an explosion and meditation is a gradual growth. And meditation is the primary preparation for that life revolution. I am talking about that preparation; the day the preparation is complete, that very day the explosion will take place. When it happens, you will not say, “I am a little enlightened, I will be more enlightened in a while.” It will not happen like that.

The day enlightenment happens, it happens as a sudden explosion and all the doors will be broken down. But until it happens, the primary preparation for it will continue step by step.

Learning from the story Snowflake: Primary Preparation

Experience Learning

Preparation does not mean preparing for a verbal examination or a written examination. Preparation means preparing for an existential examination; it means going deeper into meditation.

Well, we often prepare for school/college examinations; and these days, coaching centres or the traders of knowledge help us to prepare for these examinations. Preparation, for all practical purposes, means the ability to acquire the exam strategy – how to become ‘smart’ and ‘efficient’, and solve quickly the riddles relating to physics and mathematics, or English grammar and general knowledge. When I am tired of this psychic violence that goes on in the name of ‘preparation’, Osho tells a different story. Yes, real studentship is like ‘preparing for an existential examination’. And this means a great deal of unlearning. The mind has already been burdened with texts and scriptures, or tales of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. No preparation is, therefore, possible without deconditioning the mind. As Osho says, Preparation means that you drop all your conditionings, you drop your prejudices, you drop what you think you know and you do not know: you get as innocent as possible. Your innocence will be the preparation.

In a way, it is like becoming a child once again. However, as Osho reminds us, a child need not necessarily be always pure. In fact, children are not free from anger, hatred, greed and jealousy. ‘If one child has a doll, the other becomes so jealous that they will start fighting’. In fact, there are many ugly instincts we have inherited with nature, and with our birth. And this is the reason why preparation alone is not sufficient; we must go through a process of purification. School Principals or Vice-chancellors have never spoken of the process of purification. Instead, we have been continually asked to be competitive, or to be ‘winners’, ‘achievers’ and ‘leaders’. We have normalized the ethos of competitiveness; and as a result, we negate our specificity and uniqueness; we imitate the ‘toppers’; we evolve some sort of sadomasochism. Hence, purification is needed.

Purification is almost going through a fire of understanding in which all that is instinctive and ugly burns down. And it is a great experience that only the ugly burns. That which is beautiful blossoms. In purification you lose all trace of hate and instead, suddenly a spring of love bursts forth – as if the rock of hate was preventing the spring.  

Indeed, purification is a ‘deeper meditation’ than preparation. Because it can turn greed into compassion, or hate into love.  And then, everything, says Osho, is ‘light, fragrant and fresh’. This invariably leads to ‘perfection’. One becomes awakened or enlightened.

Contrast this ‘alchemy of human transformation’ with what the learning machine does these days. In a way, what the system regards as ‘education’ destroys us. Awakened intelligence is not its goal; deconditioning or purification hardly matters; what is important is the cultivation of instrumental rationality. We get degrees; we become clever, strategic and instrumental; we become doctors, engineers, managers and professors; we make bombs, cause war, pollute the environment; and we manufacture theses and books on our decay.