Mystic Mantra: Understanding the way of Lao Tsu

Lao Tsu was the greatest spiritual mystic in ancient China (and the wisest of all) who was born about 25 hundred years ago. Very few people knew about him because he was much ahead of his time — and the tragedy is that he is not so much known even today — as most people know Confucius who was a mediocre moralistic thinker. Both were contemporaries.

Osho talks about both. Once Confucius was passing through a village when he saw a man and his son, harnessed to the water-wheel, drawing water from the well. Confucius was shocked. He went up to the old man and said, “Do you not know that now people use horses or bullocks to draw water from the well? In the capital there are also machines that do this work.” The old man said, “Please speak softly lest my son hears you. Come after some time.”

Confucius was more perplexed now but be returned after some time, for he was curious to know. The old man was lying under a tree. “I am well aware of the fact that horses and bullocks are used now a days to draw water from the well,” he told Confucius. “I also know I can save my son’s time and energy by using a horse but what shall I do with the unused energy of my son? I have no other use for it. Please let your horses and machines remain in your towns. Do not bring them here.”

But this news of machines could not be stopped from spreading. And now we see the whole world is using machines for everything and living a very comfortable modern life, full of luxuries. Unfortunately, this change has brought untold miseries too, also some very dangerous weapons of destruction in the hands of man.

So the question persists: What is Man to do with the time on his hands? What is he to do with the unused energy? The unused energy is available to all the violent people who are not evolved in consciousness. This is the right moment and LaoTsu can be understood what he means when he says — that constructive methods for utilisation of man’s energies, should first be evolved before introducing mechanisation.

Osho interprets it that his soul or consciousness should attain such heights and become so vast that he can be trusted with an atomic energy. Otherwise, the atom bomb in the hands of a violent man, is bound to be dangerous.

The illness has been born within these 2,500 years, and its cure is LaoTsu alone. He can now be understood for now we have tread the whole long way and seen for ourselves that he was right when he said that this way ultimately ends only in sickness and sorrow.