Osho,
Modern science has discovered a number of laws such as the law of gravity, which describe the behavior of the material world. Does the science of the inner soul also have laws which apply to consciousness and being?

It is one of the most fundamental differences between the outer and the inner.

The outer is ruled by laws:

The inner is just freedom.

Consciousness knows no laws. It is matter that needs laws. Without laws, the material existence is impossible. And in the same way, with laws, the world of consciousness is impossible.

Consciousness can exist only in absolute freedom, with no limits, with no conditions, with no laws.

Matter will immediately fall apart without laws, for the simple reason that it has no individuality. It has no center of being which can hold it together if there are no laws. Matter is without a center, or in other words, without a self. Just because there is no center in it, it cannot remain together unless it is surrounded by all kinds of laws, conditions, rules.

Science goes on discovering laws because it deals only with dead matter. It has not yet come to encounter consciousness. Perhaps the very existence of consciousness is beyond its scope. It can discover laws, it cannot discover freedom.

Laws create a certain slavery. Matter exists in slavery. Hydrogen and oxygen meeting in a certain proportion make water; H2O is their formula, no freedom, it cannot be H3O. Hydrogen cannot say, “I am bored always being H2; just for a change, today I am going to be H3.

The material existence is absolutely mechanical. There is no freedom, there cannot be, because there is no one to be free. Freedom needs consciousness; its first requirement is consciousness. There is no consciousness in hydrogen, no consciousness in oxygen; they simply follow a routine eternally. That routine we call a law because we cannot find any exception to it.

What is a law? – a certain way of behavior without any exception. The moment you find the exception, the law has to be dropped; it is not a law, you have to find out more, you have to go deeper. The exception is not allowed in the objective world. And in the subjective world there are only exceptions. Each individual is an exception.

You cannot find laws, in the inner world, like gravitation. You throw a stone up; it goes to a certain height which is determined by how much force you have put into throwing it. When that force is exhausted that stone starts falling according to the force of gravitation. The stone has no decisiveness of its own. It cannot say, “Today I am not going to fall downward,” or, “Today is a holiday.” There is no holiday – the stone has to fall downward.