Train impartially in every area…

For thousands of years, man has lived in an imprisoned state. Those prisons have been given beautiful names: you call them churches, religions, ideologies. Somebody lives in a Catholic prison and somebody lives in a Communist prison, and both go on bragging about their prison, that their prison is far better. But any person who lives through some ideology is a prisoner, because every ideology narrows down your consciousness, becomes chains on your being. Anybody who belongs to any crowd out of fear, out of conditioning, out of a kind of hypnosis, is not truly a man, is not yet born. The opportunity has been given to him, but he is wasting it.

You have been taught values which are not really values; you have been taught things which are basically poisonous. For example, you have been told not to love yourself, and you have been told so many times that it looks like a simple fact, truth. But a man who is incapable of loving himself will be incapable of loving anybody else. The man who cannot love himself cannot love at all.

You have been told to be altruistic and never selfish. And it looks so beautiful – but it only looks beautiful; it is destroying your very roots. Only a really selfish person can be altruistic, because one who is not rooted in his self, is not selfish, will not bother about anybody else. If he cannot care for himself, how can he care for anybody else? He is suicidal; naturally he will become murderous.

Your whole society up to now has been a society of murderers. A few people commit suicide; they become saints. A few more go on committing murder; they become great politicians, great leaders – Genghis Khan, Nadir Shah, Tamerlane, Alexander, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Mao. But both are neurotic, both are unhealthy.

You have to be taught new values. Atisha’s sutras will help you immensely. He is really a revolutionary, a really religious man – a man who knows, not through scriptures but by his own experience; a man who has looked deep into the misery of man, a man who is really so full of compassion that he wants to help, to be of some help to the suffering humanity. And the suffering humanity is not helped by creating more hospitals or by making more people educated. The suffering humanity can be helped only by giving it a new soul.

People like Mother Teresa of Calcutta are simply serving the status quo. That’s why they are respected by the status quo. They are given gold medals, prizes, awards, and the society thinks Mother Teresa is the symbol of real saintlihoodness. It is not so; she is simply in the service of a rotten society. Of course the rotten society respects her. She is not a revolutionary, she is not a religious person.

And this is something to be understood: society respects only those saints who are not really sages but are agents – agents who help the society to continue as it is, agents of the establishment.

Atisha is not for the establishment. He wants to create a new man, a new humanity, as always buddhas have dreamed about. Their dreams remain yet unfulfilled.

Here I am, again dreaming a great dream of giving birth to a new man. You are my hope, in the same way Atisha had hoped with his own disciples. These sutras were not written as a book, these sutras were given to his disciples to meditate on.

The first sutra:

Train impartially in every area; it is important to have trained deeply and pervasively in everything.

The first thing is impartiality: one should be unprejudiced, and nobody is unprejudiced. And that is a basic requirement to grow into a greater vision. To come out of the prisons, the first thing is to drop prejudices – prejudices called Hinduism, prejudices called Mohammedanism, prejudices called Christianity. One has to drop all prejudices. How can you ever know truth if you have already decided what it is? If you are already functioning from a conclusion, you will never arrive to truth – never! It is impossible.

Don’t start by a priori assumptions, don’t start by any belief. Then only are you a true seeker. But everybody starts by belief – somebody believes in The Bible, somebody else in the Koran; somebody believes in the Gita, and somebody in Dhammapada. And they start by belief.

Belief means you don’t know, still you have taken something for granted. Now your whole effort will be to prove it right, it will become your ego trip. Each belief becomes an ego trip, you have to prove it right. If it is wrong, then you are wrong; if it is right, then you are right. And every person is nothing but a bagful of beliefs.

Remember, all beliefs are stupid. I am not saying that those beliefs are basically untrue – they may not be, they may be – but to believe is stupid. To know is intelligent. It may be that when you come to know, it may be the same thing that you were told by others to believe; but still to believe in it is wrong, and to know it, right – because once you believe in something that you have not known, you have already started gathering around yourself a darkness which will not help you to know, to see. You are already becoming knowledgeable. And knowing happens to those who are not knowledgeable, but innocent. Knowing happens to those eyes which are absolutely without the dust of knowledge.

The first thing Atisha says: Be impartial, start without any conclusion, start without any a priori belief. Start existentially, not intellectually; these are two different dimensions, not only different but diametrically opposite.

Somebody can start his journey into love by studying about love, by going to the library, by looking in the Encyclopedia Britannica to learn what love is. This is an intellectual inquiry. He may gather much information, he may write a treatise, and some foolish university may give him a Ph.D. but he knows nothing of love. Whatsoever he is writing is only intellectual, it is not experiential. And if it is not experiential, it is not true.

Truth is an experience, not a belief. Truth never comes by studying about it: truth has to be encountered, truth has to be faced. The person who studies about love is like the person who studies about the Himalayas by looking at the map of the mountains. The map is not the mountain! And if you start believing in the map, you will go on missing the mountain. If you become too much obsessed with the map, the mountain may be there just in front of you, but still you will not be able to see it.

And that’s how it is. The mountain is in front of you, but your eyes are full of maps – maps of the same mountain, maps about the same mountain, made by different explorers. Somebody has climbed the mountain from the north side, somebody from the east. They have made different maps: Koran, Bible, Gita – different maps of the same truth. But you are too full of the maps, too burdened by their weight; you cannot move even an inch. You cannot see the mountain just standing in front of you, its virgin snow peaks shining like gold in the morning sun. You don’t have the eyes to see it.

The prejudiced eye is blind, the heart full of conclusions is dead. Too many a priori assumptions and your intelligence starts losing its sharpness, its beauty, its intensity. It becomes dull. Dull intelligence is what is called intellect. Your so-called intelligentsia is not really intelligent, it is just intellectual. Intellect is a corpse. You can decorate it, you can decorate it with great pearls, diamonds, emeralds, but still a corpse is a corpse.

To be alive is a totally different matter. Intelligence is aliveness; it is spontaneity, it is openness, it is vulnerability, it is impartiality, it is the courage to function without conclusions. And why do I say it is a courage? It is a courage because when you function out of a conclusion the conclusion protects you, the conclusion gives you security, safety. You know it well, you know how to come to it, you are very efficient with it. To function without a conclusion is to function in innocence. There is no security, you may go wrong, you may go astray.

One who is ready to go on the exploration called truth has to be ready also to commit many errors, mistakes, has to be able to risk. One may go astray, but that is how one arrives. Going many many times astray, one learns how not to go astray. Committing many mistakes one learns what is a mistake, and how not to commit it. Knowing what is error, one comes closer and closer to what is truth. It is an individual exploration; you cannot depend on others’ conclusions.

Hence Atisha says:

Train impartially in every area; it is important to have trained deeply and pervasively in everything.

The second thing he says: Let your life be as multidimensional as possible, don’t live one-dimensionally. Monks, nuns and the so-called priests have all lived, down the ages, one-dimensionally. They live a very narrow life; they move as trains move, on fixed rails. They go on doing the same ritual, the same prayer, day in, day out, year in, year out, life in, life out; they go on repeating. Their whole life moves in circles. And they are not rich, they cannot be – richness comes by living life in all its dimensions.

A religious person should explore in every possible way, should try to experience life in all its tastes, sweet and bitter, good and bad. The really religious person will be very experimental. He will experiment with music, he will experiment with dance, he will experiment with poetry, with painting, with sculpture, with architecture. He will go on experimenting with everything, everything that becomes available; he will be a child exploring everything. And that makes your inner life rich.

Do you know, all great discoveries are made by people who are not one-dimensional. One-dimensional people can never make discoveries; it is impossible, because a discovery happens only like crossbreeding. A mathematician starts writing poetry: now you can be certain something is on the way. His whole training is that of a mathematician, his approach is that of mathematics, and he starts writing poetry. Now, no poet can write poetry like this; this is going to be something new, because something of the mathematics is bound to filter in. And mathematics and poetry having a meeting is a crossbreeding.

Scientists say children that are born out of crossbreeding are stronger, more beautiful, more intelligent. But man is so stupid that he never learns. Now everybody knows that it is good to bring an English bull for an Indian cow; that is perfectly beautiful and that is being done. But as far as man is concerned we remain stupid. It would be beautiful if people marry different races, different backgrounds, different cultures. A Siberian marrying someone in Africa – then something is really going to happen, some miracle.

My own suggestion is – because within a few years we are going to find out other planets where evolution has almost reached to the point that it has reached on the earth, or a few planets where it has even reached higher – my own suggestion is for interplanetary marriages. Then miracles will start happening. A Martian marrying a Poonaite: then something is going to happen, something really new which has never happened before!

Atisha says: Experiment, experience as many dimensions as are available to you.

Become a gardener, become a shoemaker, become a carpenter – that’s what is going to happen in my commune. All dimensions have to be made available, and people have to experiment and enjoy and explore. It is not that when you do some scientific work, something happens only in the outside world. When you are doing some scientific work, something happens inside your consciousness: your consciousness starts taking a form, a scientific form. If this person starts painting, then the painting will have something of the science in it. And if the painter starts becoming a physicist, certainly his vision is going to give birth to new things.

All great discoveries up to now have been made by people who were trained for something else, but were courageous enough to enter into arenas where they were amateurs. Less courageous people remain clinging with the thing that they know best. Then they go on doing it their whole life. And the more they do it, the more efficient they become; the more efficient they become, the less capable of trying anything new.

A country remains alive only if people are multidimensional. America is now the most alive country in the world for the simple reason that people are trying every kind of thing. From mathematics to meditation, everything is being tried. America is just on the verge of a great step; if a new step is going to happen anywhere, it is going to happen in America. It can’t happen in India. It can’t happen because Morarji Desai and people like that won’t allow it to happen in India – rigid, stale minds, having no vision of the future, having no vision of what is going to happen tomorrow, having no idea of what is really happening today.

In America, people go on changing their jobs – three years is the average limit when people change their jobs. Three years also is the average limit when people change their towns. Three years is also the average limit when people change their spouses. The number three is very esoteric.

When a man has lived with many women, has done many kinds of work – has been a cobbler, has been a carpenter, has been an engineer, has been a painter and a musician – naturally he is very rich. Each woman that he has lived with has imparted some color to him, and each work that he has done has opened a new door into his being. Slowly slowly, many doors of his being are opening; his consciousness expands, he becomes huge, enormous.

You are your experience. Hence, experience more. Before settling, experience as much as possible. The real person never settles; the real person always remains homeless, a wanderer, a vagabond, a vagabond of the soul. He remains continually in search, he remains an inquirer, a learner – he never becomes learned. Don’t be in a hurry to become learned, remain a learner. To become learned is ugly, to remain a learner has tremendous beauty and grace in it, because it is life itself.

Train impartially in every area; it is important to have trained deeply and pervasively in everything.

Whatsoever you are learning, learn it in its totality. Don’t let it be just a hit-and-run affair, go into it as if it is your whole life. Stake everything! Be total, whatsoever you do, because it is only out of totality that one learns. It is only when you are totally into something that mysteries are revealed to you. If you are totally in love, then love reveals its mysteries; if you are totally in poetry, then the world of poetry opens its heart.

If you are totally in love with anything, that is the only possible way to have a rapport with that certain dimension. So be total, and go to the very depth of it. Don’t just go on swimming in many rivers; become a diver, go to the rock bottom of everything – because the deeper you go into anything, the more and more deep you will become. Depth calls the depth, height provokes the height. Whatsoever we are doing outside simultaneously goes on happening inside. This is a fundamental law of life.

Atisha says: Discipline in many many things, be total, go into depth, to the very roots of everything – because the secrets are in the roots, they are not in the flowers. Flowers are only expressions of joy, but the secrets are not there. Secrets are hidden in the roots, secrets are always hidden in darkness. You will have to go into dark depths, then only you will know the secrets. And the more you experience life in its multidimensionality, the richer will be your soul. It depends on you, how rich you make your soul, or how poor you live.

Millions of people are living a life of poverty – and I don’t necessarily mean the outer poverty. I know rich people, and so poor that sometimes even beggars are richer than they are. I know rich people who can afford everything but have never experimented with anything, who are simply vegetating comfortably, who are simply dying, slowly slowly… existing comfortably, but not living – no intensity, no flair, no flame, no fire, just a cold life. Comfortably they will live and comfortably they will die – but in fact they will never have lived.

And one who has never lived, how can he die?

Death is the ultimate mystery. That gift is given only to those who have lived really intensely, who have burned their torch of life from both the ends together. Only then it happens sometimes that in a single moment of intensity the whole life is revealed. In a single moment of total intensity, the whole eternity opens its doors to you, you are welcomed by God.

God is not found by praying on your knees; God is not found in the temples and churches. God is found in intense living – a life of depth, depth and totality, and a death also of depth and totality. Live totally and die totally, and God is yours and truth is yours.

Osho, The Book of Wisdom, Vol. 2, Ch 21

Read whole discourse: osho.com/osho-online-library