The Delights of Thinking

OSHO International Asharam via Wikipedia

I have just had an epiphany and it is the first time I realized that "epiphany" is what it is called!

Isn't it great when you make these discoveries?  It seems that all of a sudden a veil has been lifted from something you've been straining to see so long it seems like forever.

This discovery comes from reading some of the thoughts of a controversial, possibly misunderstood original thinker who I have only recently stumbled across: Osho, also known as  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

For most of my recallable past I have been a person who has not subscribed to the popular way of thinking about life and the things that we see and hear around us.  I have been aware of this and occasionally have tried to share or explain my ideas to others.  Most of the time, however, I have not tried to recruit others to join my viewpoint.

It's not that I don't care, the fact is that I would like to have more people think the way I do but the idea that came out of the blue after my introduction to Osho was a notion that says:

 I would like you to agree with me, but I don't want you to accept my ideas without thinking about them.

Now, I don't consider most of my ideas to be original because I have adopted the majority of them from others, but I tend accept the ideas I hold because I have thought about them, examined them from a number of different angles, compared them with my experiences, attempted to extrapolate them into other situations which I haven't had but think might possibly come to pass, and after all this still conclude that they could be useful to me.  I believe that if anyone else passes through a similar process and THEN adopts my ideas, then it is healthy for them and for me to be in agreement.

I don't believe it is healthy, or perhaps a better term might be "reliable" for you to agree with me simply because I happen to present the idea in a way that sounds good, or because you wish to please me or avoid conflict with me.  If that is the only basis of your agreement, I would be reluctant to accept that I could count on your support if some kind of harsh test were to arise.

In addition, I don't think our world would be better off if everyone agreed with me about everything.  Yes, it is something that might feel good, but in the long run it would lead to stagnation and boredom.

If everyone agreed with everyone else about everything, there would be no change, no growth, no progress.   Of course it's nice to think how pleasant it might feel if we could experience a life where everything was perfect, where we had no problems, where everything went just as we wanted it day in and day out, but I submit that sooner or later we would become bored with that kind of life and, if nothing else, we would start inventing problems just to have a bit of variety.

So then the question arises:  How much disagreement is the optimal amount? Is it even possible to measure this and would it be possible to agree on the answer?

That's the delightful thing about thinking -- you think you've made an important discovery about yourself, or the world around you and when you start to examine your discovery you find out that there are more questions to be answered each time you reach a new level of understanding.