To enrich your mind and soul, fill your bag of life with a wide variety of experiences
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 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, some miracle, is
really going to happen.
Experiment,
experience as many dimensions as are available to you. Become a
gardener, become a shoemaker, become a carpenter. 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 they become 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. 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, a carpenter, an
engineer, a painter and a musician—naturally he is rich. Each woman that
he has lived with has imparted some colour 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.
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 starts
happening inside. This is a fundamental law of life.
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. 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 your soul will be. 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. They can afford everything but have
never experimented with anything. They are simply vegetating
comfortably. 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 they will
never have lived.
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.
Excerpted from The Book of Wisdom Courtesy: Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com
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