I’ve just commented on a Cif article by Janet Soskice. She’s the reader in philosophical theology at the University of Cambridge and was talking about how she found God in the shower (I’m not kidding). As it is usual with those threads, it hit the hundred comments very quickly and, as it always happens, most of them were just tripe. There was one, however, that caught my attention, even though I’m still not sure whether it was for its being either yet another example of our contempt for Asian people or a sign of Western gullibility. A (I presume) girl whose monicker was bruceybaby wrote,
As Osho says: “In the Western tradition there’s the known and the unknown. One day the unknown will become known. In the Eastern tradition, there’s the known, the unknown and the unknowable”
What can I say? Osho was talking through his back side. It’s not as if skepticism and rationality are all Western and mysticism and credulity Eastern. In fact both exist everywhere, and more than anywhere else, in India. Osho knew that most Western “seekers” didn’t know that and had a romanticised idea about India’s spirituality… and he was bright enough to squeeze them a good buck.
There’s the known, there’s the unknown, and there’s the urge to know what is yet unknown. Pre-assuming the unknowable for any mysterious reason is just surrendering curiosity. It’s intellectually stultifying and I refuse to do that. I’m glad Eve decided to let herself be tempted to know by the serpent….
