All our lives we are trying to play safe and secure. Wherever we go, we make reservations and bookings to ascertain our place. We don’t spend money; we accumulate it so that it can be used in the times of trouble. But life does not know about our arrangements, despite all these efforts it takes us by surprise again and again. The improbable and the unpredictable has its fair share in everybody’s life. It seems in our minds there is a kind of secret race going on with life as if we are enemies.
The latest discovery in quantum physics has found a peculiar phenomenon which the scientists call “the uncertainty principle”. They have discovered that the more precisely the position of a subatomic particle is determined, the less precisely its dynamics can be known. In simpler terms, the position and the speed of a particle cannot be measured at the same time. You can determine the position, but you cannot know how it will move. Osho observes: “We cling to the mind because of our fear of the unknown, because of the infinite possibilities of the future.
The past is fixed because it has already happened. It is dead; you can deal with it. But you cannot deal with the future. The future is always unknown, uncharted. There are unknown, infinite possibilities about which you can never be certain. Life means uncertainty; life means insecurity. That is why we have made everything that has become known to us a part of our consciousness. We cling to our experiences, our knowledge so that we don’t have to move into the unknown so that we don’t have to feel insecure about what is going to happen. We are clinging to that which has already happened. These are our safety measures.” But these safety measures are entirely against the principle of life. What will help is the understanding that uncertainty is a not a negative state; it is the essence of life.
