Mindfulness of Zen: 'Synthesis is closer to truth'

Our mind is a strange thing. The word mind appears to be described as one entity, but in reality, this oneness seems to be an illusion. And we always tend to identify ourselves with our mind, which we think is one, but it is not what we think. Our mind is not one, and so is the case with all of us — none of us is one.
About 26,000 years ago, Lord Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara, described man as bahuchitvaan, what in modern psychological terms can be described as poly-psychic or multi-psychic. The dictionary provides the meaning — “having many souls or modes of intelligence” — which is also spiritually wrong, as there cannot be many souls in one individual.

An individual simply means one who is indivisible, one who cannot be divided.

An individual has one undivided soul. Also, many minds in one person cannot create one soul. The soul is beyond mind, transcendence of mind — one or many.

The soul means consciousness of our total being. Our mind — one or many — pulls us always to opposite directions. One part wants to do one thing and another part wants to do another thing.

One mind wants to earn lots of money and become very wealthy — another mind tells us: Don’t be greedy or ambitious, renounce the world and live a peaceful life in the Himalayas. This duality is born out of the fragmented mind — and both parts are always sucking the energy, making us neurotic or schizophrenic.
There is an interesting joke about this mind problem: Two psychiatrists meeting in a busy restaurant got to talking and one said he was treating a rather interesting case of schizophrenia. At that the other analyst balked.

“What’s so interesting about that? Split-personality cases are rather common, I would say.” “This case is interesting,” responded his colleague. “They both pay!”

Gautama Buddha, Zen and Osho teach us a certain mindfulness where all the fragments of the mind become one, indivisible, a consciousness without ripples.
They look at humanity with undivided vision — they have a total look.

The mindfulness of Zen is not theology or philosophy, nor is it psychology. It is more like poetry.

Osho explains: Philosophy is logic; poetry is love. Philosophy dissects, analyses; poetry synthesises, puts things together. Philosophy is basically destructive; poetry is life-giving. Analysis is the method of philosophy — and it is the method of science, the method of psychoanalysts. Sooner or later psychoanalysis will have to be replaced by the more profound psychosynthesis. Assagioli is far more right than Sigmund Freud because synthesis is closer to truth.

The world is one. It is unity. Nothing is separate. Everything pulsates together. We are joined with each other, interlinked. The whole of life is a net. Even the small leaf around this Chuang Tzu auditorium is joined with the farthest star.

If something happens to this leaf something is going to happen to that farthest star too.

Everything is together, this togetherness. Existence is a family. Zen says don’t dissect, don’t analyse.