Gravitation and Grace

Today is Isaac Newton's birthday. People have seen apples falling from trees down the ages but it needed a genius like Newton to apply this phenomenon universally and discover the law of gravitation.


However, Newton could not decipher the emotional laws that govern human minds. To quote his famous statement : "I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."


Osho says, because Newton was not a meditator, he could not find the law of grace which is excatly opposite of the law of gravitation.

Osho points out : "Gravitation is the law which pulls you down; grace is the law which pulls you up. Science has not yet discovered, maybe it is not going to discover it ever, the other law. It has discovered one law.

"You have heard the story that Newton was sitting in a garden, and one apple fell. Watching that apple fall, Newton started thinking, "Why does the apple fall towards the earth? Why directly towards the earth? Why not sideways? Why does it not start flying upwards?" The law of gravitation was discovered, that the earth has a pull and pulls everything towards it.

" But Newton saw the fruit falling; he didn't see the tree rising up. Whenever I read the story. I always felt he saw the small fruit falling towards the earth; he didn't see the tree rising upwards. You throw a stone. It falls back, true, but a tree goes on rising higher and higher. Something is pulling the tree up. A stone is dead; the tree is alive. Life goes higher and higher and higher.

"Man, in his consciousness, has reached to the highest point on this earth. When you close your eyes to the world, when you are in a deep meditative mood, prayerful, blissful, ecstatic -- suddenly, the body is not there. You have become aware of the inner tree of life, and it is going higher and higher, and suddenly you feel that you can fly."



Excerpted from Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 7