Essence

 

 

It has been one of the most dangerous ideas down the centuries that life can be divided into separate parts. Life is indivisible, it is an organic whole. The moment you divide it you kill it. This is one of the most fundamental things in my approach towards life: I take it as a whole.

 

And remember, the whole is more than the sum total of its parts. In the world of machines, the whole is exactly the sum total of its parts; there is nothing more in it. A clock is nothing more than all its parts put in a particular arrangement; it functions. Take the parts apart, and the functioning disappears. But you can put the parts together again, and the functioning starts again. The functioning of the mechanism is not something separate.

 

Life is totally different from a machine. If you cut a man into different parts, life will disappear. Now you cannot put those parts together. And even if you manage somehow to put those parts together, life is not going to appear again. It categorically proves one thing, that life is not the sum total of its parts – it is something more, it is something plus. And that “plus” is the real essence of your being.

 

But down the ages all the religions have been committing a crime: the crime of dividing the indivisible. But it was favorable to them. A divided man is a dead man, and to control the dead is the easiest thing in the world.

An undivided man is an individual. That's exactly the meaning of the word "individual" -- indivisible. The individual is dangerous, he is alive. You cannot enslave him, you cannot oppress him, you cannot exploit him. You cannot do anything against his wish. His individuality gives him freedom to think, to express, to be.

Divisions can be made in very subtle ways.For example, "Religion should be separate from the state." What kind of stupidity is this? If religion is something real, something that vibrates in your being, something that you breathe, live, then wherever you are -- in the church, in the office, in the marketplace, it does not matter -- religion is your very breathing. It is going to be with you. Then it is going to decide every step that you take, every word that you utter, every gesture that you make.

How can you divide religion from art? A religious man painting is not in any way separate from his religious being. While painting he is going to paint religion; whatever he paints is going to be colored by his religion. The way he lives, the way he loves, the way he dances -- all is going to be in his painting. The painting of a religious man, whatsoever the subject matter of the painting, will have some fragrance of religion in it; it is inevitable, there is no way to avoid it.

Sometimes you may not be able to see this, because things are very subtle. A man of meditation, silence, serenity, is going to have a different kind of dance from a man who is in anguish, tension, worry, despair. A man who is living his life totally, intensely, moment to moment, and a man who is thinking of committing suicide -- both can dance, but their dances will have different qualities. The person who is thinking of committing suicide, his dance will have the shadow of death in it. It will stink of death, of a dead body. His movements will not be movements of life.

The other man, who loves and lives totally and has a silent space within himself -- that's what I call meditation -- his dance will also have a silence surrounding it. His movements, his gestures will have a grace, a beauty, a fragrance of their own.

You cannot divide man into parts.

 

-Osho, "From the False to the Truth, #2, Q1"