ART OshO

BELOVED MASTER, WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT MODERN ART? The first thing is, it is not ART. For the first time something exists in the name of ART which is not ART at all. It is more a therapy than an ART Look at the modern paintings and you will be convinced of what I am saying. The painters must be insane; they have poured their insanity on the canvas. It helps them because it releases some tensions inside their being. It is a catharsis, but it is not ART It is therapy through ART but not ART itself. If Picasso is prevented from painting, he will go mad. Vincent van Gogh went mad before he committed suicide. And I have been looking into his life deeply and my feeling is he went mad because he could not paint as much as he wanted. He had no money to paint. His brother was giving him money enough just to survive, and he was not eating for four days per week. He would eat only for three days and four days he will fast to save money to paint. How long can you do that? But painting was more important for him than food -- and it ended in madness. He could not paint as much as he wanted, and when he saw that there was no possibility to paint anymore -- the brother is tired, the family is tired and nobody wants to help him and nobody wants to purchase his paintings -- he committed suicide. The same would be the case with Picasso if he was prevented from painting: he would go mad or he would commit suicide. Suicide is the ultimate in insanity. But his paintings are a great help, a great relaxation. And it is not only so with painting; it is so with poetry, music, dance. Everything modern is a little crazy because modern man is a little crazy, off the center. Gurdjieff has divided ART into two categories. The modern ART he calls subjective ART The ancient ART -- the real ART -- the people who made the pyramids, the people who made the Taj Mahal, the people who made the caves of Ajanta and Ellora, they were of a totally different kind. He calls that ART objective ART Subjective ART is like vomiting. You are feeling sick, nauseous; a good vomit helps you to feel good. The poison is thrown out, you feel relieved. It is good for you, but not good for others. Now, in the name of modern painting, you are hanging vomited, nauseous, sickening things in your rooms. In the name of modern music you are simply getting into crazier spaces within you. It is subjective ART Objective ART means something that helps you to become centered, that helps you to become healthy and whole. Watching the Taj Mahal in the full moon, you will fall into a very meditative space. Looking at the statue of Buddha, just sitting silently with the statue of the Buddha, something in you will become silent, something in you will become still, something in you will become buddhalike. It is objective ART it has tremendous significance. But objective ART has disappeared from the world because mystics have disappeared from the world. Objective ART is possible only when somebody has attained to a higher plane of being; it is created by those who have reached the peak. They can see the peak and they can see the valley both. They can see the height of humanity, the beauty of humanity, and the sickness and the ugliness of humanity too. They can see deep down in the dark valleys where people are crawling and they can see the sunlit peaks. They can manage to create some devices which will help the people who are crawling in the darkness to reach to the sunlit peaks. Their ART will be just a device for your inner growth, for maturity. Modern ART is childish -- not childlike, remember, childish; not innocent but stupid, insane, pathological. We have to get rid of this trend. We have to create a new kind of ART a new kind of creativity. We have to bring to the world again what Gurdjieff calls objective ART The farmer was looking at one of those modern, abstract paintings. "It is a perfect picture of those fellows in New Delhi," he said. "No matter which way you look at it, it does not make sense." But the farmer is saying something which Picasso himself has said. Picasso has said, "The world today does not make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?" If the world today does not make sense, that means more pictures, more music, more poetry is needed that makes sense -- to help humanity to come out of this absurd state. That was the function of objective art: to help you come out of your absurd state. But Picasso says, "The world today does not make sense..." as if it was making sense in the past. It has never made any sense; the world has always been the same. But he finds a rationalization. He is saying, "If the world itself makes no sense, why should I paint pictures that do?" If you ask me, that should be precisely the reason to make pictures that DO make sense. Otherwise, how is the world going to be helped? It needs music, it needs poetry, it needs dance. It needs paintings which can help it to rise above its misery, its schizophrenia, its neurosis, its psychosis. But Picasso himself is only a representative of the neurotic mind. Picasso became so famous for the simple reason that he represented us very clearly. The marriage broker introduced a really ugly girl to a young man. The victim protested that the lady had misplaced eyes, a broken nose and a deformed face. "Ah," said the marriage broker, "it is apparent that you do not like Picasso." Looking at Picasso's paintings, have you not felt it? Everything is deformed, misplaced. I have heard that a very rich lady wanted a portrait of herself done by Picasso. He agreed for a fantastic sum. The lady was ready to pay. Six months he took to make the portrait. When the portrait was ready, the lady looked at it and said, "Everything is okay; I just don't like the nose. You will have to improve it." Picasso looked at the lady, then he looked at the painting and he said, "It is impossible." The lady said, "Why? I am ready to pay. If you want more money, I am ready to pay." Picasso said, "It is not a question of money. I don't know where the nose is." His paintings are nightmarish. And it is not only Picasso; Picasso simply symbolizes the whole of contemporary ART He is the most representative modern artist. He is right, in a sense, because the world makes no sense. The world has never made any sense, but there have been people who created such ART that it helped people to find some sense in a senseless world. And that finding of sense helps you tremendously to become centered. "It is terrible to see men looking like girls, with long hair and all. You can't tell the difference. I was sitting in a restaurant when a girl came in. I

turned to the person at the next table and said, 'Isn't it terrible how girls look like boys these days?'" "That's my son," she said, pointing to the girl. "Ah, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were the mother." "I'm not," the neighbor said indignantly. "I'm the father!" Things are topsy-turvy. Things are becoming more and more topsy-turvy. The world seems to be less a cosmos now and more a chaos. In the ancient philosophies, cosmology was one of the most important things to be discussed. Now there seems to be no cosmos, no cosmology. The whole world seems to be in a chaos, as if all is accidental. Nothing seems to be essential, intrinsically valuable; everything seems to be just happening as an accident. And this is reflected in everything. It is reflected in ART it is reflected in science, it is reflected even in religion. We need again a cosmology. I know the world IS a chaos; that is a challenge for human consciousness to create a cosmos out of it. It is a tremendously valuable opportunity to create a cosmos. Just to say that it is a chaos, remain with it as it is, is to fall below human dignity; it is not accepting the challenge. It is really a great challenge to change yourself AND the world. It IS a puzzle, but it is a puzzle only if you have already concluded that there can be no meaning at all; otherwise it is a mystery, not a puzzle. A mystery may not have any meaning, but it has significance. And there is a difference between meaning and significance -- and significance is far more meaningful than meaning itself; significance is far more important. What meaning is there in a roseflower? -- but significance certainly is there. Just think of a world without roses. It will be a poor world; some significance will be lost. What significance is there when you hear the sound of running water? Have you not felt some significance? Yes, meaning you cannot prove. Meaning seems to be imposed by the mind upon existence; significance seems to be part of existence itself. We have lost contact with the language that can understand significance; we only understand meaning. Meaning is intellectual, significance is existential. There is no meaning in love, but great significance; no meaning in God, but great significance; no meaning in meditation, but great significance, great splendor. I would like to say to my sannyasins, Asang, that my sannyasins have to be not only meditative, they have also to be creative. And they have to create what Gurdjieff calls objective ART They have to create something which can help a wandering humanity to come to a resting place. Yes, much can be created that can give shelter, that can become a deep, deep experience of communion with nature. That is the real function of art: helping people to commune with nature, because out of that communion arises religion. Science is an intellectual effort to understand nature, ART is an emotional effort to understand nature, and religion is an existential effort to COMMUNE with nature. ART is higher than science, religion is higher than ART Science has to be objective; if science is subjective it will be just fiction -- science fiction. ART has also to be objective; otherwise it will be fiction. And that's what modern ART is -- fiction. And religion has also to be objective, really authentic; otherwise it is speculation, philosophy.

If you are beautiful deep within you, only then can the beauty flow from you. Only out of a beautiful life, a beautiful painting is born. There is no other way. YOU are flowing into your painting, into your work of ART, into your sculpture, into your music, into your poetry. It is coming from you. It brings you; it is your consciousness flowing. If it is only to gain recognition, then you are ugly. The ego is ugly because it is a separation from the whole, because it is false. You are not separate. .... Paint: paint pictures which can become objects of meditation, paint pictures of the inner sky of buddhas. The modern painting is pathological. If you look at Picasso's paintings you cannot look long, you will start feeling uneasy. You cannot have Picasso paintings in your bedroom, because then you will have nightmares. If you meditate on a Picasso painting long enough you will go mad, because those paintings are out of Picasso's madness. Go to Ajanta, Ellora, Khajuraho, Konarak, and you will see a totally different world of creativity. Looking at the statue of a buddha, something in you starts falling in tune. Sitting silently with a buddha statue, you start becoming silent. The very posture, the very shape, the face, the closed eyes, the silence that surrounds a marble statue will help you to get connected with your own inner sources of silence. Gurdjieff used to say that there are two kinds of ART One he used to call objective ART and the other he used to call subjective ART Subjective ART is absolutely private, personal. Picasso's ART is subjective art; he is simply painting something without any vision for the person who will see it, without any idea of the person who will look at it. He is simply pouring out his own inner illness; it is helpful for himself, it is therapeutic. I am not saying that Picasso should stop painting, because if he stops painting he is bound to go mad. It is painting that is keeping him sane; his painting is like vomiting. When you have eaten something wrong, when you have a food poisoning, vomiting is the most healthy way to throw the toxins, the poisons, outside the system; it will help. Picasso's paintings are like vomiting. He is suffering from many illnesses, all the illness that humanity is suffering from. He simply represents humanity, he is very representative. He represents the whole madness that is happening in millions of people. He is a sensitive soul; he has become so attuned with the pathology of mankind that it has become his own pathology. Hence the appeal of his paintings, otherwise they are ugly. Hence his great name because he deserves it, he represents the age. This is Picasso's age: what you cannot say about yourself, he has said it. What you cannot pour out of yourself, he has poured it on the canvas. But it is a subjective phenomenon. It is therapeutic to him, but it is dangerous to everybody else. The ancient ART was not only art; it was, deep down, mysticism. Deep down, it was out of meditation. It was objective, in Gurdjieff's terminology. It was made so that if somebody meditates over it, he starts falling into those depths where God lives. Khajuraho or Konarak if you meditate there, you will know what the Tantra masters were doing. They were creating in stone something that is felt in the ultimate orgasmic joy. It was the most difficult thing to do, to bring ecstasy into the stone. And if the stone can show the ecstasy, then everybody can move into that ecstasy easily. But people who go to Khajuraho are foolish people. They look either at Khajuraho sculpture as obscene then they miss the whole point, then they are seeing something which is within their own unconscious; or they are too moralistic then they don't meditate on any statues, they are in a hurry to get out of the temple somehow, they just throw glances. Khajuraho sculpture is not just to see, it is for meditation. Sit silently and meditate for hours. If one goes to Khajuraho, one should live at least for three months there, so he can meditate on each possible inner posture of orgasmic joy. And then, slowly slowly, the atonement, slowly slowly, the harmony; then suddenly you are transported into another world the world of those mystics who created this temple. This is objective art. .... Eastern ART is anonymous and hence its beauty it is as if of the other world. Western ART, particularly the modern, not the classical, is too much egoistic. Even a Picasso is too much egoistic. He may be a great painter, a great master, but neurotic all the same; a great genius, but gone astray, neurotic. He's mad. His madness may be a method, that's another thing, but he is mad. And the whole madness is because of the ego. Whatsoever he has painted, great works, but the neurosis is there And if you look and meditate on Picasso's paintings long enough, you will feel restless, uneasy. Something of the neurosis will start happening in you also, something of the quality of nightmare. Don't keep Picasso's paintings in your bedrooms; otherwise you will have nightmares! Have a small Buddha, by some anonymous sculptor. That will surround your sleep; that will protect your sleep; that will give you a subtle awareness even while you are asleep. So sharing is one thing, and asking for recognition is totally another. Share; don't ask for recognition. I'm not saying that recognition will not come it will come profusely. Ask for recognition and it won't come so profusely. Even if it comes, it will limp. Because when YOU ask for recognition, the other becomes reluctant to give it. Because when YOU are seeking your ego, the other also wants to seek his own ego. Then you provoke criticism rather than recognition. And the one who recognizes your art is deep down recognizing, through his recognition, his own recognition. So you say that you are great lover

of artthen the ego game. Then the beauty is lost; two lies are trying to prove themselves to be true. Share. Recognition will come; it always comes, like a shadow. Don't be bothered by it. Only small mediocre minds are bothered by it. .... There are poets and poets. There are two kinds of poets in the world. One is the poet who is a dreamer, who is very clever in imagination, in fantasy. He creates works of ART he creates sculpture, music, poetry, but all that remains dream stuff. It may entertain you for the time being, but it cannot give you any insight into reality. It may be a consolation, a solace, a lullaby; it may have a tranquilizing effect on you. Yes, that's exactly what it does. All that is called aesthetics, art... has a tranquilizing effect on you. Listening to classical music you fall into a totally different kind of state. Everything becomes tranquil, still, but it is momentary; it is only a dream world that the musician creates around you. Listening to poetry or looking at great sculpture, for a moment you are dazed, stunned. The mind stops as if you are transported for a moment to some other world, but again you are back in the same old world, in the same old rut. But there are different kinds of poets, painters, sculptors too: the buddhas. A single verse from them may transform you forever. Listening to a buddha is listening to divine music. Listening to a buddha is listening to God himself. A buddha is God visible, a buddha is God available. A buddha is a window into God, an invitation from the beyond. Shakespeare, Milton, Kalidas, Bhavabhuti, and thousands of others these are the dreamers, great dreamers; beautiful are their dreams, but they are not the poets who can transform your being. Mohammed can do it, Christ can do it, Krishna can do it, Buddha can do it, Kabir, Nanak, Farid, yes, these people can do it. What is the difference between the poetry of a Kabir and a Shakespeare? As far as poetry is concerned, Shakespeare is far more poetic, remember, than Kabir. Kabir knows nothing of the ART Shakespeare is very sophisticated; but still a single verse from Kabir is far more valuable than all the collected works of Shakespeare because a single word from Kabir comes from insight, not from fantasy. That is the difference. Kabir has clarity, he has eyes which can see into the beyond. Shakespeare is as blind as you are. Of course, he is very efficient in bringing his fantasy into words. That's ART worthy of respect, but at the most it can entertain you. It can keep you occupied beautifully, but there is no possibility of transformation happening through it. Even Shakespeare is not a transformed being, how can he transform you? Only a buddha, only one who is awakened, can wake you up. Shakespeare is as fast asleep as you are, or maybe even deeper asleep than you are, because he is having such beautiful dreams. His sleep is bound to be deep, because he is not only having dreams, he is singing his dreams. He is bringing his dreams to expression and still his sleep is not broken. Buddha is one who is awakened. Only one who is awake can wake you up. .... Picasso's paintings are insane he IS insane! In fact, if he had been prevented from painting he would have been in a madhouse. Through his paintings he is catharting, throwing out his insanity onto the canvas, getting rid of it. Yes, he feels better it is a kind of vomiting! After vomiting you feel better, but what about others who look at your vomit! But the world is so stupid that if Picasso vomits, people say, "What a great painting something never seen before, something unique!" Vincent van Gogh really went insane, had to be hospitalized for one year, and then he committed suicide. And he was not more than thirtyseven. Now, what kind of paintings had this man been doing? Certainly he had the ART, the skill, but the ART and the skill were in the hands of a madman, suicidal. Watching his paintings you will feel restless, uneasy. Keep a Picasso painting in your bedroom and you will have nightmares! A meditator can become a painter, but then something totally different will come out of him something of the beyond, because he will be capable to receive God. He can become a dancer; his dance will have a new quality to it: it will allow the divine to be expressed. He can become a musician... or he can go into political action, but his political action will be rooted in meditation. Hence there will be no fear of a Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler or Mao Zedong coming out of it; that is impossible. .... Pablo Picasso could not have done better, because ART itself cannot go beyond the halftruth. That's the difference between ART and religion.

ART is the world of the shadows, the world of the reflections, the world of imagination, the world of dreams, the world of desires, the world of projections. ART cannot give you the whole truth, but the best ART is always giving you half of it that too the best ART I am not talking about the thirdrate ART A thirdrate ART is simply a lie, a fantasy, a fiction. But Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest artists the world has ever produced. The best ART always give you half; more is not possible through art. The artist has glimpses of truth, reflected in the world of his
dreams, in the world of his imagination. The artist is a pool of imagination, a lake of imagination. In that lake is reflected the full moon. And sometimes the moon in the lake looks far more beautiful than the real moon. On the glossy, silent surface of the lake, on the placid, silent surface of the lake, the moon looks even more innocent. But that is not a real moon although the reflection belongs to the real. That is the difference between the mystic and the artist. The best artist comes closer to the mystic than anybody else, but the artist is not a mystic. .... You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be secondrate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the ART of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a steppingstone. You are on an ego trip. And the problem is: to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can God flow through you. Only then can he use your hands and your fingers and your brush. Only then something of superb beauty can be born. It is never BY you but only THROUGH you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that's all; you don't hinder, that's all. But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result that you have to become famous, that you have to win the Nobel Prize, that you have to be the first painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can't paint something original; it will be ordinary. Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the poet and the dancer. And so is the case with everybody. .... The modern painter is insane. He is painting out of his insanity. If you look at a Zen painting, a silence oozes out of it, suddenly something beautiful surrounds you. You are transported to another consciousness. The painting carries something of the touch of the Master. The painting has been done in deep meditation; the painting has been done by one who has arrived. Gurdjieff used to call such ART "objective art". When somebody who has attained to consciousness does something, that something becomes objective ART Looking at that thing, you will have some glimpse of the Master. The Master may have been dead for three thousand years, that doesn't matter. The painting, the statue, the carving will represent him, and through it you can again become connected to him. If you know how to meditate with a painting, it will be easier. .... The greatest ART is just to be, without going anywhere. Not going to the past, not going to the future, not going into desires, into psychological spaces, into psychic travels not to go anywhere, just to be. And right now! if you are just here... immediately something is felt, something which is intangible. ....

Don't avoid extremes, and don't choose any one extreme. Remain available to both the polarities that is the ART, the secret of balancing. Yes, sometimes be utterly happy, and sometimes be utterly sad both have their own beauties. Our mind is a chooser; that's why the problem arises. Remain choiceless. .... Man is like an onion go on peeling. Meditation is the ART of peeling the onion. And of course, when you peel the onion, tears come to the eyes that has to be accepted. It is painful. Go on peeling the onion till nothing is left in your hand that nothing is reality. You can call it God, you can call it nirvana, enlightenment, or whatsoever you want to call it. Names don't matter. .... You are whatsoever God has made you. You are whatsoever existence has made you. Sex is not your creation: it is God's gift. Something tremendously valuable is hidden in it it is just a shell of your samadhi. If the seed is broken, the shell is broken, the flower will bloom but not by repression. You will have to learn inner gardening, you will have to become a gardener, you will have to learn how to use dirty fertilizers, manure, and transform manure into roses. Religion is the most delicate art. .... Enjoy life. Act, but act in a relaxed way. The greatest ART in life is to learn how to act in a relaxed way. Action is a must you cannot live without action but action can be almost inaction. .... Work is beautiful if it can be done without any tension, if it can be done playfully, if it can be done without any hurry and yet without relapsing into laziness. It is a very subtle and delicate ART Then you are neither Eastern nor Western that's what I call the new man. .... I can speak without awareness. There are orators, speakers.... I don't know any oratory; I have never learned the ART of speaking, because to me it looks foolish. If I have something to say, that is enough. But I am speaking to you with full awareness, each word, each pause... I am not an orator, not a speaker. But when you are aware of speaking, it starts becoming ART It takes on the nuances of poetry and music. .... So it is not a question of you going to hell, it is a question of what you can create. You bring your heaven and hell with you." And that's my whole teaching. Don't bother about heaven and hell. Rather, learn to live in hell, in heaven whichever you choose. You are totally free right now. Discipline yourself. If you want to be in paradise, then be in paradise, and start living in paradise from this moment! Then wherever you will be, it does not matter, you will be in paradise. Learn the ART of living. .... A really spiritual person will live life as an ART, will create a deep harmony between the body and the consciousness. And this is the greatest

ART there is. His life will be a joy to see. And he will be fragrant, for the sheer reason that there is no split in his being. The very unity makes
him organic; the wound of division is healed. .... I cannot say what is going to happen when I am not here. One thing I know: the people who have learned the ART of living moment to moment will continue to live the same way of life wherever they are, because no other way can give them so much joy, so much juice. And who cares what is going to happen when I leave my body? How many millions of people have left their body? The place you are sitting must have been the grave of at least ten persons that many people have died on the earth. Life goes on, people come and go. .... You know how to live in the present, so in the future also it will be coming as the present, it will not come as the future you will know the art. And it is not that my presence is making people happy here; it is their own presence. Certainly they have learned the ART of being in the present, but now they are absolutely independent of me. They are not my followers, I am nobody's leader I hate such words! .... Life is the ART of arranging all the instruments of your being into an orchestra. Of course, each individual will have his own song and his own music, but that makes life rich, that makes this earth immensely valuable. Everybody is contributing something to its beauty and its blessings. .... Most of the great painters and other artists have committed suicide because they could not prevent themselves from falling again and again back into madness, and it seemed that only death could become their deliverance. This is shameful, this is ugly! In the East, in the whole of history, not a single artist has been mad, not a single artist has committed suicide. And they have created far greater ART, far deeper music, far more magical dances. The West cannot compare. .... My approach has nothing to do with philosophy. It has something to do with you. And it has something to do with now, because to me there is only one time, that is now; and only one space, that is here. Once you have learned the ART, the knack of being herenow, you will be so fulfilled, so contented you will not need any opium for yourself. On the one hand, you will not need the opium which the religions of the world have been providing for people to keep them dreaming for centuries. On the other hand, you will not find what the socalled existentialists in Europe have found: meaninglessness, anguish, anxiety, despair. .... My religion is nothing but the ART of living, the ART of loving. And if you can manage two things total life, total love the third thing, enlightenment, will come of its own accord. You have earned it. You need not seek it, you deserve it. It is a reward from existence to those people who have respected life, loved, lived, danced, enjoyed. .... In the West the prostitute is selling her body. In the East, in the past, the prostitute was not selling her body; she was selling her genius, her dance, her music, her art. You will be surprised that every Indian king used to send his sons who were going to become his successors to live

with great prostitutes for a few years, to learn etiquette, to learn gentleness, to learn music, to learn the delicacies of dance because a king should be really rich about everything. He should understand beauty, he should understand logic, he should understand manners. That has been the old Indian tradition. .... Don't be worried. If you witness, the moment will remain there and will grow deeper, bigger, more colorful. But not at any point have you to become identified with it. Remain detached, just a spectator. The ART is the same; whether it is boredom or ecstasy does not matter. What matters is that you are not involved, you remain aloof, you remain standing there. .... So start witnessing your boredom, sadness, because the question is not the object, the question is the ART of witnessing. So use any object anger, hate, love, jealousy anything will do. If you cannot find anything just put up a mirror and look at your face and witness it. And you will be surprised, immensely surprised; when you are in a complete state of witnessing the mirror becomes empty, you are not there. In total witnessing the object disappears. .... The very closeness of death makes it possible for you to understand the deathless which is within you. That's the whole ART of meditation: to go within as deep as you can to the very center of your being. And you will be surprised, amazed that at the center of your being you are eternal. There is no death, there has never been any death. Nothing dies in reality, it only changes forms. .... This is the whole ART of meditation: to take you to your real self. The moment you come to your real self, the arbitrary ego disappears in the same way that darkness disappears when you come with a burning torch inside the house. The ego is the absence of your realization of your self. And it is there because your parents, your teachers, your priests, your leaders are all agreed that before you come to know who you are, you should be given a false substitute, a lollipop. .... Every partner in a couple is expecting the other to love him. The husband wants the wife to love him; the wife wants the husband to love her and both are unaware that they don't know the ART of love, because they never loved themselves. They are going to quarrel, fight and destroy each other's life. I teach you clearly to be selfish. .... People have not been taught the ART of living beautifully, the ART of being graceful, the ART of being silent, meditative. Instead of teaching these authentic realities which can be done right now, their minds were taken away from the present to some unknown future nobody knows whether it exists or not. Now, because people become literate, educated, they can see the great deceit. They have been cheated, and a great anger is there. .... nd then every university can become a place, not only to teach you geography which is stupid history which is just rubbish; but to teach you something very essential: meditation, love, the ART of living, the ART of being human. Each university should become a temple of wisdom; it is not yet. .... In fact the urge to create is something biological, sexual. Sexual energy is your creative energy. Women have not been great painters and poets and sculptors for the simple reason that their desire to create is immensely fulfilled by bringing up children. To give birth to a child, alive, radiant what else can be compared to it? You create a painting; howsoever beautiful, it is a dead thing after all. You can create music, you can create song. But what are they compared to a beautiful child? Just look into the eyes of a child and all your paintings are nothing. The child smiles, and all your songs fall flat on the ground. The child tries to walk, and the joy when the child feels "I can walk." All your science, all your ART, are nothing compared to that joy. .... Pseudoreligions cannot support your living. They cannot teach you the ART of how to live, and live intensely and totally. They can only teach you how to escape from life, how to avoid knowing the truth. .... Sex is given by nature; it is an inbuilt program in your biology. Love is not an inbuilt program; that's why so many people go on missing it. It has to be evolved. You have to learn it, it is an ART You have to understand one thing, that nature and biology have no need of love; sex is enough for life to continue. Reproduction is the end of sex, and biology is interested only in reproducing. Love is a luxury. It has no biological function. .... The people who have created wealth have a certain talent for creating it. You should use their talent; you should make it an ART to be taught to everybody. They are not to be punished because they have created wealth. In an aboriginal society, a primitive society, of which a few fragments are still alive here and there on the earth, nobody is poor and nobody is rich; of course there is no jealousy. Everybody owns nothing, everybody equally owns nothing; but nobody is producing wealth. In fact the people who are producing wealth are creating an urge in others also to create wealth. Don't destroy these people use these people as symbols. They have a certain ART of creating wealth make that ART available to everybody, educate everybody. You teach economics in the universities; it would be far better if you taught the ART of becoming rich because by teaching economics you don't help them to know the ART of becoming rich. They win gold medals in the universities and then they disappear. .... And why should we be bothered about the future? If you know the ART of living... and that's what I call religion real, authentic religion the ART of living. If you know the ART of living... and it consists of small things, not of big, great commandments... very small things... just sipping your tea joyfully, meditatively, tasting each sip as if this is the last sip. Perhaps you may not be able again to hold the cup in your hands there is no guarantee. When you are meeting a friend meet. Who knows, you may not be meeting again. Then you will repent. Then that unfulfilled past will haunt you, that you wanted to say something and you could not say it. There are people who want to say to somebody, "I love you," and they

are waiting for years and have not said it. And the person one day may die, and then they will cry and weep and they will say, "I wanted to say to the person, 'I love you,' but I could not even say that." My people are living, living so fully that there is no space for any tomorrow, for any yesterday. .... 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. .... I am a simple man without any secret. I am just an open book, and a book in which nothing is written. If you like to call it a secret it is your choice, but it is a very open secret. If you want to be, learn the ART of being: not to be. Let me repeat it, because I know you are deaf. If you want really to be, the only way is to learn not to be. Disappear. Just as God disappears from existence, you have to disappear from your life. Let life flow of its own accord. It is the simplest ART in the world, to be silent. It is not a doing, it is a nondoing. How can it be difficult? I am showing you the way of enlightenment through laziness. Nothing has to be done to attain it, because it is your nature. You have already got it. You are just so busy with outer business that you cannot see your own nature. Deep within you is exactly the same as outside you: the beauty, the silence, the ecstasy, the blissfulness. But please, sometimes be kind to yourself: just sit down and don't do anything, either physically or mentally. Relax, not in an American way... because I have seen so many American books titled HOW TO RELAX. The very title says that the man knows nothing about relaxation. There is no "how." Yes, it is okay "How to Repair a Car"; you will have to do something. But there is no doing as such as far as relaxation is concerned. Just don't do anything. I know you will find it a little difficult in the beginning. That is not because relaxation is difficult, it is because you have become addicted to doing something. That addiction will take a little time to disappear. Just be, and watch. Being is not doing, and watching is also not doing. You sit silently doing nothing, witnessing whatsoever is happening. Thoughts will be moving in your mind; your body may be feeling some tension somewhere, you may have a migraine. Just be a witness. Don't be identified with it. Watch, be a watcher on the hills, and everything else is happening in the valley. It is a knack, not an art. Meditation is not a science. It is not an ART, it is a knack just that way. All that you need is a little patience. The old habits will continue; the thoughts will go on rushing. And your mind is always in a rush hour, the traffic is always jammed. Your body is not accustomed to sitting silently you will be tossing and turning. Nothing to be worried about. Just watch that the body is tossing and turning, that the mind is whirling, is full of thoughts consistent, inconsistent, useless fantasies, dreams. You remain in the center, just watching. ....

Slowly slowly, learn the ART of contacting reality without the mind interfering. Sometimes when the sun is setting, just sit there looking at the sun, not thinking about it -- watching, not evaluating, not even saying, "How beautiful it is!" The moment you say something, the mind has come in. ... Somebody may be thrilled by the stars, somebody may not be. Somebody may be thrilled by the flowers, somebody else may not be affected at all. People are so different that there is no way of determining it in a scientific way; it is not a science. It is not even an ART because an ART can be taught. So I insist on the word knack. It is a knack. ... So the whole ART for the new humanity will consist in the secret of listening to the heart consciously, alertly, attentively. And follow it through any means, and go wherever it takes you. Yes, sometimes it will take you into dangers -- but then remember, those dangers are needed to make you ripe. And sometimes it will take you astray -- but remember again, those goings astray are part of growth. Many times you will fall. Rise up again, because this is how one gathers strength -- by falling and rising again. This is how one becomes integrated. ... Never make the negative the object of your study, because the negative is not there. You can go on and on and you will never arrive anywhere. Try to understand what light is, not darkness. Try to understand what life is, not death. Try to understand what love is, not hate. If you go into hate you will never understand it, because hate is only the absence of love. So is darkness the absence of light. How can you understand absence? If you want to understand me, you have to understand me, not my absence. If you want to study this chair, this chair has to be studied -- not that when Asheesh has taken it away, you start studying the absence. What will you study? Always be alert, never get hooked into anything negative. Many people go on studying negative things; their energies are simply wasted. There is no ART of dying. Or, the ART of living is the ART of dying. Live! ... I can teach you the ART of living; that implies the ART of dying, you need not learn it separately. The man who knows how to live, knows how to die. The man who knows how to fall in love, knows when the moment has come to fall out of it. He falls out of it gracefully, with a goodbye, with gratitude -- but only the man who knows how to love. People don't know how to love, and then they don't know how to say goodbye when the time has come to say it. If you love you will know that everything begins and everything ends, and there is a time for beginning and there is a time for ending, and there is no wound in it. One is not wounded, one simply knows the season is over. One is not in despair, one simply understands, and one thanks the other, "You gave me so many beautiful gifts. You gave me new visions of life, you opened a few windows I might never have opened on my own. Now the time has come that we separate and our ways part." Not in anger, not in rage, not with a grudge, not with any complaint, but with tremendous gratitude, with great love, with thankfulness in the heart. If you know how to love, you will know how to separate. Your separation will also have a beauty and a grace. And the same is the case with life; if you know how to live, you will know how to die. Your death will be tremendously beautiful. ... I am trying to reveal that treasure to you again. Let it sink deep in your heart. The first principle is the ART of living. Be life-affirmative. Life is synonymous with God. You can drop the word god -- life IS God. Live with reverence, with great respect and gratitude. You have not earned this life, it has been a sheer gift from the beyond. Feel thankful and prayerful, and take as many bites of it as possible and chew it well and digest it well. ... Be poets of life, singers, musicians, dancers, lovers, and you will know the real philosophy of life: PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS. And if you know how to live... and it is a simple ART The trees are living and nobody is there to teach them. In fact they must be laughing; seeing that you have asked such a question, they must be giggling -- you may not be able to hear their giggle. The whole existence is nonphilosophical. If you are philosophical, then a gap arises between you and existence. Existence simply is, for no purpose. And the person who really wants to live has to get rid of this idea of purpose. If you start living without any purpose, with intensity, totality, love and trust, when death comes, you will know

how to die -- because death is not the end of life, but only an episode in life. ... there is no ART of death. The ART of life is the ART of death, because death is not something separate from life. Death is the highest peak of life, the Everest, the virgin-snow-covered sunlit Everest. It is the most beautiful thing in existence. ... They say ART is for art's sake. It may be so, it may not be so -- I am not an artist. But I can say to you: Life is for life's sake. Each moment is utterly for its own sake. To sacrifice it for anything else is to be unintelligent. And once the habit of sacrificing settles, then this moment you will sacrifice for the next, and the next for the next, and so on, so forth -- this year for the next year, and this life for the next life! Then it is a simple logical process: once you have taken the first step, then the whole journey starts -- the journey that leads you into the wasteland, the journey that makes your life a desert, the journey that is self-destructive, suicidal. ... Loving, experiencing music, looking at the sunset, let it happen again and again. The more it happens the better, because it is not an ART but a knack. You have to get the knack of it; once you have got it, you can trigger it anywhere, any moment. ... Science is objective, ART is subjective, religion is neither -- neti neti, neither this nor that. Then what is religion? Religion is the meeting of the object and the subject, religion is the meeting of the lover and the beloved. Religion is the disappearance of the separation, of the duality. And in that separation energy is released; energy that was confined by the dual, that was kept separate, simply dances in utter unity. ... Gurdjieff used to say that there are two kinds of ART One he used to call objective ART and the other he used to call subjective ART Subjective ART is absolutely private, personal. Picasso's ART is subjective art; he is simply painting something without any vision for the person who will see it, without any idea of the person who will look at it. He is simply pouring out his own inner illness; it is helpful for himself, it is therapeutic. I am not saying that Picasso should stop painting, because if he stops painting he is bound to go mad. It is painting that is keeping him sane; his painting is like vomiting. When you have eaten something wrong, when you have a food poisoning, vomiting is the most healthy way to throw the toxins, the poisons, outside the system; it will help. Picasso's paintings are like vomiting. He is suffering from many illnesses, all the illness that humanity is suffering from. He simply represents humanity, he is very representative. He represents the whole madness that is happening in millions of people. He is a sensitive soul; he has become so attuned with the pathology of mankind that it has become his own pathology. Hence the appeal of his paintings, otherwise they are ugly. Hence his great name -- because he deserves it, he represents the age. This is Picasso's age: what you cannot say about yourself, he has said it. What you cannot pour out of yourself, he has poured it on the canvas. But it is a subjective phenomenon. It is therapeutic to him, but it is dangerous to everybody else. The ancient ART was not only art; it was, deep down, mysticism. Deep down, it was out of meditation. It was objective, in Gurdjieff's terminology. It was made so that if somebody meditates over it, he starts falling into those depths where God lives. ... The real creator has no self. The real creation comes out of no-self, the real creation comes out of inner emptiness. When one is utterly empty, one is full of God. Not to be is the way for God to enter you. If you are too much, he is not there. If you are not, only he is there. And creativity is part of the creator. No man ever creates; it is always God who creates. Hence the poet while he is creating is divine, and the painter while he is painting is divine. The only thing: if he is self-conscious then God is not there, then whatsoever he will do will be subjective art. ... And that's what Jesus means when he says to Nicodemus, "Unless you are born again, you will not be able to enter into my kingdom of God" -unless you are born again, unless you are capable of giving birth to yourself -- a new vision, a new quality to your energies, a new tuning to your instrument. Your instrument contains great music, but you have to learn how to play on it. Sex has to become a great meditative ART That's the contribution of Tantra to the world. Tantra's contribution is the greatest, because it give you keys to transform the lowest into the highest. ... Criticizing is so simple. It does not need any skill, any ART any intelligence. What will you gain by criticizing me? You will simply lose me. I am not preventing you, I am simply making things clear to you. Are you here to learn criticism, argument, logic? Or are you here to learn the ART of going beyond the mind? It is your freedom. You can choose the mind, or you can choose meditation. This place is for meditation. ... You will come to many stopping places where you will think, "This must be the end, what can be more? Such bliss, such joy, such ecstasy, what can be more than this?" But you don't know. Just go on and you will find there is something more. Once you have learned the ART of not staying anywhere ... Unless you reach to the very end of the road, you have to continue the discipline of meditation. ... And if you come from God, how can you be imperfect? You are gods -- that ART thou, TATTVAMASI. And this is a realization, an understanding, not an achievement; it is not something to be worked out. If you are silent, this very moment it is realized: you are perfect. And once you realize it, that you are perfect, you live perfectly, because whatsoever you do comes from you, arises from you. ... When you love a person, you share; you don't ask for recognition. If you ask recognition, you don't share, you don't want to share. Your sharing is just an empty gesture, just a means to recognition. It is not love; it is prostitution. A great artist does not bother about recognition. He loves his ART his work. He loves to share it, but he's not asking for anything; it is unconditional sharing: and then it has tremendous beauty. That is the difference between great ART and mediocre ART and that is the difference between Eastern ART and Western art. ... Eastern ART is anonymous and hence its beauty -- it is as if of the other world. Western ART particularly the modern, not the classical, is too much egoistic. Even a Picasso is too much egoistic. He may be a great painter, a great master, but neurotic all the same; a great genius, but gone astray, neurotic. He's mad. His madness may be a method, that's another thing, but he is mad. And the whole madness is because of the ego. Whatsoever he has painted, great works, but the neurosis is there And if you look and meditate on Picasso's paintings long enough, you will feel restless, uneasy. Something of the neurosis will start happening in you also, something of the quality of nightmare. Don't keep Picasso's paintings in your bedrooms; otherwise you will have nightmares! Have a small Buddha, by some anonymous sculptor. That will surround your sleep; that will protect your sleep; that will give you a subtle awareness even while you are asleep. ... The object is irrelevant. Only the subjectivity is relevant. Whether listening to me, or listening to a fluteplayer, or listening to the birds in the morning, or sitting by the side of the waterfall and listening to it, the same experience can happen. It happens not from what you listen to, it happens because you listen. Just listening gives you total silence; in deep listening you disappear. The whole ART is how to listen. Once you know how to listen, in deep receptivity, sensitivity, you are not there. The listener is not there, only listening. And when the listener is not there, there is no ego: there is no one who listens, only listening. And then it penetrates to the very core of your being. ... The whole ART of religion is nothing but this -- just be, allow, be in a let-go; sitting by the side of the tree, just sit -- nothing else is needed,

just sitting. Buddha attained to truth just by sitting under the Bodhi Tree. Walking, just walk. Loving, just love. Being, just be. By and by you start feeling that within you the fragments arc disappearing, and an integration is arising. By and by it happens; by and by you start feeling that something is penetrating you from the unknown, from the beyond. You feel happy. ... Religion is not science; it cannot be. More or less, religion is an ART It has no causality in it. So if you feel negative, that means somehow or other, knowingly or unknowingly, you have invested much in your negativity. Now you want to cling to it; you don't want to drop it. If you are miserly, you want to cling to it; you don't want to drop it. See the point. If you want to drop it, I say to you, "Immediately! This very moment!" Nobody is blocking the path. But you don't want to drop it; and you don't want to realize the fact that you don't want. ... First, one has to learn effort. Then one has to learn effortlessness. If in your ART your ART is present, then it is not great ART If you paint and effort is present, you are not a great master yet because the very effort shows that you are not one when you are painting. If you sing and in singing effort is present, then you are not a great singer. You are still trying hard to prove something. When you have really become a great singer, effort drops; you sing spontaneously. Your singing becomes like the singing of the birds; your singing becomes spontaneous. ... Jesus is a whole ART of inner transformation. I say ART I don't say science. When I talk on Patanjali, I can say that whatsoever Patanjali says is a science. When I talk on Buddha, I can say that whatsoever Buddha says is a psychology. But not with Jesus. He has given an ART because he has given love, not law. If you understand Jesus, by and by, you will become aware that it is not a question of following a certain rule. Rather, it is a question of following a quality of love. Love is the only thing that transcends death, because love is the only thing that life exists for. Love is the very center of being. If you love, all is forgiven. If you love, you have repented. If you love, one day or other you yourself will become a witness that there is no death. ... Don't be bothered about Christianity. Christianity has nothing to do with Christ. Jesus is available to all. Jesus is for those who are ready to transform themselves; Jesus is an ART of inner transformation, of rebirth. Listen to his invitation. He still goes on saying,'Come, follow me.' ... I teach the ART of living your life totally, of being drunk with the divine THROUGH life. I am not an escapist. All your old religions have been teaching you escapism -- they were all in a certain sense hip. The word "hippie" has to be understood. It simply means one who escapes from the battle of life, who shows his hips...! All your old religions are hippie! They have shown their hips. They could not accept the challenge of life, they could not confront and encounter life. They were cowards; they escaped to the mountains, to the monasteries. ... The sexual orgasm is nothing compared to the orgasm that death brings, but it brings it only to the person who knows the ART of being total. The sexual orgasm is a very faint thing compared to the orgasm that death brings. ... Beware! While the time is there, give, give as much as you can, give whatsoever you can. Sing a song, share a joke, dance! Give whatsoever you can give. It costs you nothing, but it will bring you more and more joys. Existence goes on repaying you tremendously. Whatsoever you give to existence, it returns a thousandfold; it comes back to you. You give one flower, and a thousand flowers shower on you. Don't be clingers. If you really want to be rich, if you want to have an enriched inner world, then learn the ART of giving. ... Before death happens, let sannyas happen, because sannyas in fact has two functions. For you now it can fulfill only one function. It has two functions: the first is the ART of life and the second is the ART of dying. The first you have missed -- next time you are around don't miss it! But the second is still possible; you can learn the ART of dying. You can die peacefully, silently, blissfully, surrendered to God. And in fact, the second part is far more important than the first p ART because the first ultimately leads to the second. The ART of life is only a preparation for the ART of death. ... Learn the ART of being together AND of being alone. Hence my whole teaching consists of two words, "meditation" and "love." Meditate so that you can feel immense silence, and love so that your life can become a song, a dance, a celebration. You will have to move between the two, and if you can move easily, if you can move without any effort, you have learned the greatest thing in life. ... And my approach is artistic, aesthetic. I cannot help you unless this energy field becomes musical. Music is pure ART And if it is joined with mathematics, it becomes a tremendously powerful instrument to penetrate into your interiority. Of course, it will not be complete unless meditation is the highest peak, the purest religion. ... in the name of aesthetics, there is much garbage. But when I use the word 'aesthetics' I don't mean the garbage collected in the museums and

ART galleries. When I use the word 'aesthetics' I mean a quality in you. It has nothing to do with objects -- paintings, music, poetry -- it has
something to do with a quality in your being, a sensitivity, a love for beauty, a sensitivity for the texture and taste of things, for the eternal dance that goes on all around, an awareness of it, a silence to hear this cuckoo calling from the distance ... Museums you can bypass, ART galleries you can bypass -- in fact, you should bypass them. You need not be worried about ART and ART criticism -- forget all about it. But you have to become an artist of life itself. ... It is not a question of objects of art: it is a question of an inner approach, a vision -- of seeing things artistically. You have that quality! In fact, because of that quality you were bored by classical music and you were bored by galleries -- because in an unconscious way, in a groping way, you feel something far superior inside you. But you are not yet fully aware of it. Bypass the ART galleries and you will not be losing anything. But you cannot bypass the aesthetic layer of your being: you have to go through it. Otherwise you will always remain impoverished; something will be missing, something of immense value. Your enlightenment will never be total. A part of your being will remain unenlightened; a corner of your soul will remain dark -- and that corner will remain heavy on you. One has to become totally enlightened. Nothing should be bypassed, no shortcuts are to be invented. One has to move very naturally through all the layers, because all those layers are opportunities to grow. Remember it: whenever I use the words 'music' or 'poetry' or 'painting' or 'sculpture', I have my own meaning. ... The ART of putting the mind aside is the whole secret of religion, because as you put the mind aside your being explodes into a thousand and one colors. You become a rainbow, a lotus, a one-thousand-petaled lotus. Suddenly you open up, and then the whole beauty of existence -which is infinite! -- is yours. ... We don't know the ART of looking in. First you have to practice the ART with yourself. First you have to go into your interiority, your inner world. You have to go deeper and deeper into your consciousness, to the very center of it. Once you have penetrated the core of your being, you

will be able to see into anybody else's core of being. Then nobody can deceive you, because then you don't see the appearance -- you see the reality. ... Gossip should be a pure ART with no motivation -- joking for joking's sake, gossiping for gossiping's sake. And then it will keep you cheerful. And when it stops...and how long can you gossip? There is a natural limit to everything. ... And that is the whole ART of meditation: becoming conscious of consciousness itself. The moment you know who is residing in the body, who you are, in that very revelation you have transcended death and the world of death. You have transcended all that is momentary. ... Learn the ART of acting of your own accord. Don't be worried about criticisms and don't be interested in praises. If you are interested in being praised by others, then you cannot be unconcerned about criticism. Remain aloof. Praise or criticism, it is all alike. Success or failure, it is all alike. ... Many times I say learn the ART of love, but what I really mean is: learn the ART of removing all that hinders love. It is a negative process. It is like digging a well: you go on removing many layers of earth, stones, rocks, and then suddenly there is water. The water was always there; it was an undercurrent. Now you have removed all the barriers, the water is available. So is love: love is the undercurrent of your being. It is already flowing, but there are many rocks, many layers of earth to be removed. That's what I mean when I say: learn the ART of love. It is really not learning love but UNlearning the ways of unlove. ... Eating, walking, sleeping, one can remain continuously in a state of meditation. It is nothing special that you are doing, but doing the same things with a new way, with a new method, with new art. ... There are poets and poets. There are two kinds of poets in the world. One is the poet who is a dreamer, who is very clever in imagination, in fantasy. He creates works of ART he creates sculpture, music, poetry, but all that remains dream stuff. It may entertain you for the time being, but it cannot give you any insight into reality. It may be a consolation, a solace, a lullaby; it may have a tranquilizing effect on you. Yes, that's exactly what it does. All that is called aesthetics, art... has a tranquilizing effect on you. ... Money is not bad in itself. That's my basic approach towards existence: money is neutral, it depends on you. In the hands of a man of understanding, money is tremendously beautiful. It can become music, it can become ART it can become science, it can become religion. It is not money that is bad, it is the person. The stupid person, if he has money, does not know what to do with it; his money creates more greed. Money can free you from greed, but the stupid person changes money into more greed. It becomes anger, it becomes sexuality, it becomes lust. The more money the stupid person has, the more stupid he becomes, because he becomes more powerful to do stupid things. With the wise, everything is transformed into wisdom. ... Walk on the earth, but no, don't let your feet touch the earth. Yes, there is an ART to it. And that's what sannyas is all about: the ART of living in the world without being part of it, the ART of living life without being identified with it. That's what real let-go is. ... Art explores the world of love. Hence ART is far truer than science, goes deeper than science. The vision of the artist contains much more than scientific knowledge can ever contain, although the way of ART is totally different from the way of science. It has to be different. Science can be objective because it is peripheral. ART cannot be absolutely objective; it is fifty percent objective, fifty percent subjective. It cannot be free from the observer. ... Become still -- not a forced stillness, not a practiced and cultivated stillness -- become still naturally. Understanding the futility of desire, seeing the absolute absurdity of ambition, become still -- through understanding, not through practice. LIKE A BROKEN GONG BE STILL, BE SILENT. KNOW THE STILLNESS OF FREEDOM WHERE THERE IS NO MORE STRIVING and you have gone into the beyond and you have become the beyond.... This is the goal of sannyas, this is the goal of all religion. This is the essential core of all spirituality. Science only knows the part;

ART a little more than science. Religion knows the whole.

... Actors are also born like poets, because acting is poetry, it is art; you have to have an inborn spirit. Not everybody can be an actor, because one has to get so much involved in the act, so deeply involved, that one forgets that one is separate. One has to lose one's identity in the acting, one has to become one's part; one has to forget everything about oneself. ... The real ART is to transform the mundane into the sacred. ... Friendship is a great ART Love has a natural instinct behind it; friendship has no natural instinct behind it. Friendship is something conscious; love is unconscious. ... Vincent van Gogh really went insane, had to be hospitalized for one year, and then he committed suicide. And he was not more than thirtyseven. Now, what kind of paintings had this man been doing? Certainly he had the ART the skill, but the ART and the skill were in the hands of a madman, suicidal. Watching his paintings you will feel restless, uneasy. Keep a Picasso painting in your bedroom and you will have nightmares! ... We are part of the whole. We arise out of the ocean of the whole as a wave and we disappear back into the ocean. Enjoy the sunlight and the wind for the moment, and then disappear. Appear beautifully, joyously, dancing, and disappear beautifully, joyously, dancing. Live with immense joy and die with immense joy. This is how a sannyasin has to be: he knows the ART of living and he knows the ART and ecstasy of dying. ... Without physiological attraction there will be no psychological growth. And without psychological love affairs with ART music, sculpture, there is no possibility of spiritual love. Poets and painters and dancers and musicians are a necessary step towards becoming a buddha. ... And that's what meditation is all about: the ART of moving away from the mind, being above the mind, becoming transcendental to the mind, knowing that "I am not the mind." That does not mean that you have to throw out the mind. Knowing that "I am not the mind" makes you again the master. You can use the mind. Right now, mind is not within your hands. You are not a good charioteer. ... Hence a meditative person becomes more intelligent, he becomes saner. Whatsoever he does there is an ART in it. Whatsoever he touches he transforms into gold. Mind is a blessing with meditation, otherwise it is a curse.

... Hearing is simple, listening is an art. ... Love for love's sake, ART for art's sake, meditation for meditation's sake. All that is beautiful and great can never be reduced to a means to something else. And the businessman knows only that. The businesslike mind always reduces everything to a means to some end. And these are ends. Meditation is an end unto itself, not a means to anything else. Hence, be childlike, innocent, noncalculative. Be pure ... Rest, relaxation, is known only by those who have understood the ART of being desireless. That's what Buddha is pointing out: ... You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the ART of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping-stone. You are on an ego trip. And the problem is: to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can God flow through you. Only then can he use your hands and your fingers and your brush. Only then something of superb beauty can be born. It is never BY you but only THROUGH you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that's all; you don't hinder, that's all. But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result -- that you have to become famous, that you have to win the Nobel Prize, that you have to be the first painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto -- then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can't paint something original; it will be ordinary. Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the poet and the dancer. And so is the case with everybody. ... To fall into forgetfulness is suffering; to remember is to come out of suffering. And rest is the most necessary step for remembering, for awareness. Relaxation is the whole ART of meditation and bliss both. How can you rest with so many desires? They go on pulling you apart. You can rest only if you learn the secret of desirelessness; if you learn to live moment to moment without any future; if you learn to live without any hope for the future; if you live concentratedly in the present, totally involved in the moment, neither worried by the past nor worried by the future, relaxed, at rest. Then meditation and bliss both are easy, spontaneous growths out of a restful he ART out of a relaxed being. ... Just as ART is for art's sake, so sannyas is for sannyas' sake. Then it has tremendous beauty, and then it brings bliss, it brings paradise to you. Do whatsoever you want to do, but do it consciously. To be conscious is to be a sannyasin. ... The whole ART of sannyas is to live a rich life -- but the richness comes through your inner awareness. You can live a very poor life and you can be very rich outwardly; you can have a big bank balance, but you can live a dog's life. ... The basic education is missing. The first thing to be taught is meditation, the ART of going in, because only out of that arises a discipline. The word 'discipline' is beautiful; it means the capacity to learn. A disciplined man is always ready to learn more. He is never closed, he never claims that he knows everything. He knows what he knows, and he also knows what he does not know ... Life is in harmony with the mysterious. Life is in being full of wonder. Life is knowing the ART of wondering, of being in awe. The knowledgeable person is a poor person, very poor, utterly impoverished -- and he himself is responsible. He thinks he is very rich because he knows about roses, although he has not seen a single rose. He knows all about love, although he has never loved himself. He knows about God, but to know about God is not to know God. To know about light is not to know light. ... the paradox of ART is that first you have to learn its discipline and then you have to forget it totally. ... if you really want to be creative you will have to accept that you can't be famous, you can't be well-known. If you really want to be creative, then you have to learn the simple phenomenon: ART for art's sake, for no other motive. Then enjoy whatsoever you are doing. If you can find a few friends to enjoy it, good; if nobody is there to enjoy, then enjoy it alone. If YOU are enjoying it, that is enough. If you feel fulfilled through it, that is enough. ... True ART means: if it helps you to become silent, still, joyous; if it gives you a celebration; if it makes you dance -- whether anybody participates with you or not is irrelevant; if it becomes a bridge between you and God -- that is true ART If it becomes a meditation, that is true

ART If you become absorbed in it, so utterly absorbed that the ego disappears, that is true art. True ART comes very close to religion. So don't be worried what true ART is. If you rejoice in doing it, if you feel lost in doing it, if you feel overwhelmed with joy and peace in doing it, it is true ART And don't be bothered what critics say. Critics don't know anything about ART In fact, the people who cannot become artists become
critics. If you cannot participate in a running race, if you cannot be an Olympic runner, at least you can stand by the side of the road and throw stones at other runners; that you can do easily. ... And ART can be the most prayerful thing, the most meditative thing possible. If you can be in any ART music, painting, sculpture, dance, if any ART can take a grip of your being, that's the best way to pray, the best way to meditate. Then you don't need any other meditation; that is your meditation. That will lead you slowly slowly, step by step, into God. So this is my criterion: if it leads you towards God, it is true ART it is authentic art. ... And it happens on its own accord, because the moment you sit on the bank of your mind you are no longer giving energy to it. This is real meditation. Meditation is the ART of transcendence. ... A man full of lust is nothing but an animal. Women must have learned the ART of closing their eyes seeing again and again that the man turns into an animal. ... Be harmonious, be graceful. Learn the ART of being alone and yet utterly happy. Then one day, in that solitude, something starts happening which you had never expected. Something immense, something vast descends in you. Something of the beyond penetrates you. A great uplift, a great feeling of levitation arises in you. ... The Zen people call it the original face. This witnessing is your original face. And meditation is nothing but an ART to discover your original face.

You are immortal, but not physically; just in your awareness, in your consciousness you ARE immortal, you are universal. ... It is very difficult to keep silent when you know the answer, but part of being a bodhisattva is to learn the ART of being silent. Let them ask again and again. Let them feel that your bliss is not just something crazy, that your bliss is something real, authentic. Let them feel it of their own accord. Let them come and knock at your doors again and again. Only in a right moment, when you see that they can understand, when you feel that their hearts are open, when you see a real thirst, a longing in them, when a search has arisen in them, only then tell them; otherwise you will simply be wasting your breath. ... Communication is a difficult ART and communicating the ultimate truth is the most difficult phenomenon in the world. A master is one who waits for the right time. ... The man who lives for happiness, who knows the beauty of music, who knows the beauty of paintings, ART who knows something higher than the animals can know, is far more confused; he is in far more of a mess... because while you are listening to great music something is contributed by the music which is outside and something is contributed by the music which is inside; it is a meeting of two polarities. You are hanging in the middle and both are pulling you in separate directions. You will find more anxiety in your life. That's why poor people are less i n anguish than rich people. Rich countries live in anguish because they have enough pleasure; they are fed up with it. Now they want something higher, and with the higher the problems arise. ... Buddha is not in favor of prayers. And this difference has to be understood: he is absolutely in favor of meditation, but never in favor of any prayer. Prayer is again the old trick, the old game which does not allow you to be alone. Meditation is the ART of being alone. ... Meditation is the ART of hearing the soundless sound, the ART of hearing the music of silence -- what the Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping. When you are utterly silent, not a single thought passes your mind, there is not even a ripple of any feeling in your heart. Then you st ART for the first time, hearing silence. Silence has a music of its own. It is not dead, it is very much alive, it is tremendously alive. In fact, nothing is more alive than silence. ... Whenever any ART is perfect it ends in meditation -- it HAS to end in meditation. If it is not leading you towards meditation then something has gone wrong. That's why much of the modern ART is not ART it is insanity. Much modern music is not music; it simply makes you sexually excited. It is just the opposite of real music. Real music helps you to transcend your biology, your physiology, your psychology. Real music takes you to the world of the beyond -- what Buddha calls the farther shore, even beyond the beyond. Gurdjieff used to call real ART "objective art." Modern ART is not, in that sense, objective ART In the past the awakened masters have used all kinds of devices: painting, sculpture, music, dance, drama. Every kind of device has been used to help you, because there are different types of people who can be helped in different ways: somebody through music, somebody through painting, somebody through poetry. ... People who enjoy ART people who can enjoy and appreciate harmony, color, people who can see some poetry in life and existence, who can feel some celebration going on all around, of course they are going still deeper ... When you are born you are born only with the potential to exist, to survive, not with the ART of making life a joy, a bliss, a celebration. That

ART has to be learned. To me, religion is that very ART the supreme art: the ART of transforming the lower into the higher. Religion to me is
alchemy. It is the process of transforming the potential into the actual. ... That ART of awakening is Dhamma, the religion. ... But remember that here my whole approach is an integrated approach. Meditation is needed, so is poetry, so is aesthetics, so is religion, so is music, so is ART Man should evolve in many dimensions in an integrated way. Then comes the ultimate flowering when all your petals have opened. And you will have greater joy and greater benediction in life. ... Whenever religious activity predominates, ART is created, music is created, great painting is created; the world becomes a little more beautiful. It doesn't become more powerful, but it becomes more beautiful, more lovely, worth living. ... Happiness is an ART that one has to learn. It has nothing to do with your doing or not doing. ... You meet a woman -- the canvas is there. You immediately become a lover -- you start painting. And she starts painting on you. Of course you both prove to be foolish -- painted fools -- and sooner or later you understand what is happening. But you never thought that love is an ART You are not born with the ART it is nothing to do with your birth. You have to learn it. It is the most subtle art. You are born only with a capacity. Of course, you are born with a body; you can be a dancer because you have the body. You can move your body and you can be a dancer -- but dancing has to be learned. Much effort is needed to learn dancing. And dancing is not so difficult because you alone are involved in it. Love is much more difficult. It is dancing with somebody else. The other is also needed to know what dancing is. To fit with somebody, it is a great ART ... But remember one thing -- never forget the ART of risking, never never. Always remain capable of risking. And wherever you can find an opportunity to risk, never miss it, and you will never be a loser. Risk is the only guarantee for being truly alive. ... Religion is the ART of dropping questions. ... When a man is happy with his body, has enough to eat, has a good house to live in, he starts becoming interested in music, poetry, literature, painting, ART Now a new hunger arises. ... When a person has listened to all the music that is available in the world, and has seen all the beauty, and has found that it is all dream; has listened to all the great poets, and has found that it is just a way to forget yourself, just a way to intoxicate yourself, but i t does not lead you anywhere; has seen all the paintings and the great ART -- amusing, entertaining, but then what...? Then hands remain empty, more empty than they ever were before. Then music and poetry are not enough. Then the desire to meditate, the desire to pray, a hunger for God, a hunger for truth arises.

... You have to be fully aware. In Zen they say: The ART of meditation is almost the ART of being a thief. You have to be so aware that you can walk into somebody else's house where you may never have been before; not only can you walk, you can remove things without making any noise; not only that, but without any light in the dark night. You have to be like a thief: very aware, very conscious. ... Live in the world but don't allow the world to live in you. And then you will be alone even in the crowd... and even in the crowd you will see the other shore. The other shore becomes so close that you can cross the barrier any moment you want. It is so easy, like breathing -- but the ART has to be learnt. It is a question of ART skill. Be skillful. Love, but don't allow your love to become lust. Love, but don't allow your love to become attachment. Love, but don't allow your love to become a dependence, a slavery. And then... then love tremendously. Then there is no fear. And loving, you will be able to cross to the other shore without any difficulty. ... It has been a centuries-long debate: What is ART for? There have been pragmatic utilitarians who say that ART should serve some purpose, otherwise it is useless. But these people don't know ART ART can only be for its own sake. It is the sheer joy of a solitary cuckoo, of the bamboos standing in silence, of a bird flying into the sky. Just the very flight, the very feel of freedom, is enough unto itself. It need not serve anything else. ... This is the difference between ART and religion. When the vast surrounds you, the artist starts making efforts to express it, and the mystic simply gets lost in it. And the mystic comes to know it. The artist misses at the very last moment. ... That is what ART is, poetry, painting, music. It is a dream activity, so it is not just accidental that we call the poets dreamers, that we call the artists dreamers, that we don't trust them much -- they are not reliable, they cannot be the guides to reality. We enjoy them, it is fun, but we cannot accept them as guides to reality -- they are not. They live in fantasy. They dream while awake. Their eyes are full of dreams. So waking is science, philosophy, theology, logic; and ART all kinds of ART is dream activity. Unconsciousness minus thinking means sleep. Of course all activity ceases in sleep, so nothing is born out of sleep -- no science, no art. Consciousness minus thinking is SAMADHI. SAMADHI gives birth to religion. ... And the whole ART of meditation is to be herenow. To be herenow means you have slipped out of the mind. ... Whenever a man like Buddha moves, walks on the earth, that's what happens -- his truths become half-truths in our minds. A half-truth is a reflection of truth. A halftruth is a shadow of truth. In our monkey minds, in our imitative minds, we start imitating half-truths. And there is something which has to be understood. A half-truth deceives better. But Pablo Picasso could not have done better, because ART itself cannot go beyond the half-truth. That's the difference between ART and religion. ART is the world of the shadows, the world of the reflections, the world of imagination, the world of dreams, the world of desires, the world of projections. ART cannot give you the whole truth, but the best ART is always giving you half of it -- that too the best ART I am not talking about the third-rate ART A third-rate ART is simply a lie, a fantasy, a fiction. But Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest artists the world has ever produced. The best ART always give you half; more is not possible through art. ...

If you are beautiful deep within you, only then can the beauty flow from you. Only out of a beautiful life, a beautiful painting is born. There is no other way. YOU are flowing into your painting, into your work of ART, into your sculpture, into your music, into your poetry. It is coming from you. It brings you; it is your consciousness flowing. If it is only to gain recognition, then you are ugly. The ego is ugly because it is a separation from the whole, because it is false. You are not separate. .... Paint: paint pictures which can become objects of meditation, paint pictures of the inner sky of buddhas. The modern painting is pathological. If you look at Picasso's paintings you cannot look long, you will start feeling uneasy. You cannot have Picasso paintings in your bedroom, because then you will have nightmares. If you meditate on a Picasso painting long enough you will go mad, because those paintings are out of Picasso's madness. Go to Ajanta, Ellora, Khajuraho, Konarak, and you will see a totally different world of creativity. Looking at the statue of a buddha, something in you starts falling in tune. Sitting silently with a buddha statue, you start becoming silent. The very posture, the very shape, the face, the closed eyes, the silence that surrounds a marble statue will help you to get connected with your own inner sources of silence. Gurdjieff used to say that there are two kinds of ART One he used to call objective ART and the other he used to call subjective ART Subjective ART is absolutely private, personal. Picasso's ART is subjective art; he is simply painting something without any vision for the person who will see it, without any idea of the person who will look at it. He is simply pouring out his own inner illness; it is helpful for himself, it is therapeutic. I am not saying that Picasso should stop painting, because if he stops painting he is bound to go mad. It is painting that is keeping him sane; his painting is like vomiting. When you have eaten something wrong, when you have a food poisoning, vomiting is the most healthy way to throw the toxins, the poisons, outside the system; it will help. Picasso's paintings are like vomiting. He is suffering from many illnesses, all the illness that humanity is suffering from. He simply represents humanity, he is very representative. He represents the whole madness that is happening in millions of people. He is a sensitive soul; he has become so attuned with the pathology of mankind that it has become his own pathology. Hence the appeal of his paintings, otherwise they are ugly. Hence his great name because he deserves it, he represents the age. This is Picasso's age: what you cannot say about yourself, he has said it. What you cannot pour out of yourself, he has poured it on the canvas. But it is a subjective phenomenon. It is therapeutic to him, but it is dangerous to everybody else. The ancient ART was not only art; it was, deep down, mysticism. Deep down, it was out of meditation. It was objective, in Gurdjieff's terminology. It was made so that if somebody meditates over it, he starts falling into those depths where God lives. Khajuraho or Konarak if you meditate there, you will know what the Tantra masters were doing. They were creating in stone something that is felt in the ultimate orgasmic joy. It was the most difficult thing to do, to bring ecstasy into the stone. And if the stone can show the ecstasy, then everybody can move into that ecstasy easily. But people who go to Khajuraho are foolish people. They look either at Khajuraho sculpture as obscene then they miss the whole point, then they are seeing something which is within their own unconscious; or they are too moralistic then they don't meditate on any statues, they are in a hurry to get out of the temple somehow, they just throw glances. Khajuraho sculpture is not just to see, it is for meditation. Sit silently and meditate for hours. If one goes to Khajuraho, one should live at least for three months there, so he can meditate on each possible inner posture of orgasmic joy. And then, slowly slowly, the atonement, slowly slowly, the harmony; then suddenly you are transported into another world the world of those mystics who created this temple. This is objective art. ....

Eastern ART is anonymous and hence its beauty it is as if of the other world. Western ART, particularly the modern, not the classical, is too much egoistic. Even a Picasso is too much egoistic. He may be a great painter, a great master, but neurotic all the same; a great genius, but gone astray, neurotic. He's mad. His madness may be a method, that's another thing, but he is mad. And the whole madness is because of the ego. Whatsoever he has painted, great works, but the neurosis is there And if you look and meditate on Picasso's paintings long enough, you will feel restless, uneasy. Something of the neurosis will start happening in you also, something of the quality of nightmare. Don't keep Pi casso's paintings in your bedrooms; otherwise you will have nightmares! Have a small Buddha, by some anonymous sculptor. That will surround your sleep; that will protect your sleep; that will give you a subtle awareness even while you are asleep. So sharing is one thing, and asking for recognition is totally another. Share; don't ask for recognition. I'm not saying that recognition will not come it will come profusely. Ask for recognition and it won't come so profusely. Even if it comes, it will limp. Because when YOU ask for recognition, the other becomes reluctant to give it. Because when YOU are seeking your ego, the other also wants to seek his own ego. Then you provoke criticism rather than recognition. And the one who recognizes your art is deep down recognizing, through his recognition, his own recognition. So you say that you are great lover of artthen the ego game. Then the beauty is lost; two lies are trying to prove themselves to be true. Share. Recognition will come; it always comes, like a shadow. Don't be bothered by it. Only small mediocre minds are bothered by it. .... There are poets and poets. There are two kinds of poets in the world. One is the poet who is a dreamer, who is very clever in imagination, in fantasy. He creates works of ART he creates sculpture, music, poetry, but all that remains dream stuff. It may entertain you for the time being, but it cannot give you any insight into reality. It may be a consolation, a solace, a lullaby; it may have a tranquilizing effect on you. Yes, that's exactly what it does. All that is called aesthetics, art... has a tranquilizing effect on you. Listening to classical music you fall into a totally different kind of state. Everything becomes tranquil, still, but it is momentary; it is only a dream world that the musician creates around you. Listening to poetry or looking at great sculpture, for a moment you are dazed, stunned. The mind stops as if you are transported for a moment to some other world, but again you are back in the same old world, in the same old rut. But there are different kinds of poets, painters, sculptors too: the buddhas. A single verse from them may transform you forever. Listening to a buddha is listening to divine music. Listening to a buddha is listening to God himself. A buddha is God visible, a buddha is God available. A buddha is a window into God, an invitation from the beyond. Shakespeare, Milton, Kalidas, Bhavabhuti, and thousands of others these are the dreamers, great dreamers; beautiful are their dreams, but they are not the poets who can transform your being. Mohammed can do it, Christ can do it, Krishna can do it, Buddha can do it, Kabir, Nanak, Farid, yes, these people can do it. What is the difference between the poetry of a Kabir and a Shakespeare? As far as poetry is concerned, Shakespeare is far more poetic, remember, than Kabir. Kabir knows nothing of the ART Shakespeare is very sophisticated; but still a single verse from Kabir is far more valuable than all the collected works of Shakespeare because a single word from Kabir comes from insight, not from fantasy. That is the difference. Kabir has clarity, he has eyes which can see into the beyond. Shakespeare is as blind as you are. Of course, he is very efficient in bringing his fantasy into words. That's ART worthy of respect, but at the most it can entertain you. It can keep you occupied beautifully, but there is no possibility of transformation happening through it. Even Shakespeare is not a transformed being, how can he transform you? Only a buddha, only one who is awakened, can wake you up. Shakespeare is as fast asleep as you are, or maybe even deeper asleep than you are, because he is having such beautiful dreams. His sleep is bound to be deep, because he is not only having dreams, he is singing his dreams. He is bringing his dreams to expression and still his sleep is not broken. Buddha is one who is awakened. Only one who is awake can wake you up. .... Picasso's paintings are insane he IS insane! In fact, if he had been prevented from painting he would have been in a madhouse. Through his paintings he is catharting, throwing out his insanity onto the canvas, getting rid of it. Yes, he feels better it is a kind of vomiting! After vomiting you feel better, but what about others who look at your vomit! But the world is so stupid that if Picasso vomits, people say, "What a great painting something never seen before, something unique!" Vincent van Gogh really went insane, had to be hospitalized for one year, and then he committed suicide. And he was not more than thirtyseven. Now, what kind of paintings had this man been doing? Certainly he had the ART, the skill, but the ART and the skill were in the hands of a madman, suicidal. Watching his paintings you will feel restless, uneasy. Keep a Picasso painting in your bedroom and you will have nightmares! A meditator can become a painter, but then something totally different will come out of him something of the beyond, because he will be capable to receive God. He can become a dancer; his dance will have a new quality to it: it will allow the divine to be expressed. He can become a musician... or he can go into political action, but his political action will be rooted in meditation. Hence there will be no fear of a Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler or Mao Zedong coming out of it; that is impossible. .... Pablo Picasso could not have done better, because ART itself cannot go beyond the halftruth. That's the difference between ART and religion.

ART is the world of the shadows, the world of the reflections, the world of imagination, the world of dreams, the world of desires, the world of projections. ART cannot give you the whole truth, but the best ART is always giving you half of it that too the best ART I am not talking about the thirdrate ART A thirdrate ART is simply a lie, a fantasy, a fiction. But Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest artists the world has ever produced. The best ART always give you half; more is not possible through art. The artist has glimpses of truth, reflected in the world of his
dreams, in the world of his imagination. The artist is a pool of imagination, a lake of imagination. In that lake is reflected the full moon. And sometimes the moon in the lake looks far more beautiful than the real moon. On the glossy, silent surface of the lake, on the placid, silent surface of the lake, the moon looks even more innocent. But that is not a real moon although the reflection belongs to the real. That is the difference between the mystic and the artist. The best artist comes closer to the mystic than anybody else, but the artist is not a mystic. .... You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be secondrate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the ART of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a steppingstone. You are on an ego trip. And the problem is: to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can God flow through you. Only then can he use your hands and your fingers and your brush. Only then something of superb beauty can be born. It is never BY you but only THROUGH you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that's all; you don't hinder, that's all. But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result that you have to become famous, that you have to win the Nobel Prize, that you have to be the first painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can't paint something original; it will be ordinary. Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the poet and the dancer. And so is the case with everybody. .... The modern painter is insane. He is painting out of his insanity. If you look at a Zen painting, a silence oozes out of it, suddenly something

beautiful surrounds you. You are transported to another consciousness. The painting carries something of the touch of the Master. The painting has been done in deep meditation; the painting has been done by one who has arrived. Gurdjieff used to call such ART "objective art". When somebody who has attained to consciousness does something, that something becomes objective ART Looking at that thing, you will have some glimpse of the Master. The Master may have been dead for three thousand years, that doesn't matter. The painting, the statue, the carving will represent him, and through it you can again become connected to him. If you know how to meditate with a painting, it will be easier. .... The greatest ART is just to be, without going anywhere. Not going to the past, not going to the future, not going into desires, into psychological spaces, into psychic travels not to go anywhere, just to be. And right now! if you are just here... immediately something is felt, something which is intangible. .... Don't avoid extremes, and don't choose any one extreme. Remain available to both the polarities that is the ART, the secret of balancing. Yes, sometimes be utterly happy, and sometimes be utterly sad both have their own beauties. Our mind is a chooser; that's why the problem arises. Remain choiceless. .... Man is like an onion go on peeling. Meditation is the ART of peeling the onion. And of course, when you peel the onion, tears come to the eyes that has to be accepted. It is painful. Go on peeling the onion till nothing is left in your hand that nothing is reality. You can call it God, you can call it nirvana, enlightenment, or whatsoever you want to call it. Names don't matter. .... You are whatsoever God has made you. You are whatsoever existence has made you. Sex is not your creation: it is God's gift. Something tremendously valuable is hidden in it it is just a shell of your samadhi. If the seed is broken, the shell is broken, the flower will bloom but not by repression. You will have to learn inner gardening, you will have to become a gardener, you will have to learn how to use dirty fertilizers, manure, and transform manure into roses. Religion is the most delicate art. .... Enjoy life. Act, but act in a relaxed way. The greatest ART in life is to learn how to act in a relaxed way. Action is a must you cannot live without action but action can be almost inaction. .... Work is beautiful if it can be done without any tension, if it can be done playfully, if it can be done without any hurry and yet without relapsing into laziness. It is a very subtle and delicate ART Then you are neither Eastern nor Western that's what I call the new man. .... I can speak without awareness. There are orators, speakers.... I don't know any oratory; I have never learned the ART of speaking, because to me it looks foolish. If I have something to say, that is enough. But I am speaking to you with full awareness, each word, each pause... I am not an orator, not a speaker. But when you are aware of speaking, it starts becoming ART It takes on the nuances of poetry and music. .... So it is not a question of you going to hell, it is a question of what you can create. You bring your heaven and hell with you." And that's my whole teaching. Don't bother about heaven and hell. Rather, learn to live in hell, in heaven whichever you choose. You are totall y free right now. Discipline yourself. If you want to be in paradise, then be in paradise, and start living in paradise from this moment! Then wherever you will be, it does not matter, you will be in paradise. Learn the ART of living. .... A really spiritual person will live life as an ART, will create a deep harmony between the body and the consciousness. And this is the greatest

ART there is. His life will be a joy to see. And he will be fragrant, for the sheer reason that there is no split in his being. The very unity makes
him organic; the wound of division is healed. .... I cannot say what is going to happen when I am not here. One thing I know: the people who have learned the ART of living moment to moment will continue to live the same way of life wherever they are, because no other way can give them so much joy, so much juice. And who cares what is going to happen when I leave my body? How many millions of people have left their body? The place you are sitting must have been the grave of at least ten persons that many people have died on the earth. Life goes on, people come and go. .... You know how to live in the present, so in the future also it will be coming as the present, it will not come as the future you will know the art. And it is not that my presence is making people happy here; it is their own presence. Certainly they have learned the ART of being in the present, but now they are absolutely independent of me. They are not my followers, I am nobody's leader I hate such words! .... Life is the ART of arranging all the instruments of your being into an orchestra. Of course, each individual will have his own song and his own music, but that makes life rich, that makes this earth immensely valuable. Everybody is contributing something to its beauty and its blessings. .... Most of the great painters and other artists have committed suicide because they could not prevent themselves from falling again and again back into madness, and it seemed that only death could become their deliverance. This is shameful, this is ugly! In the East, in the whole of history, not a single artist has been mad, not a single artist has committed suicide. And they have created far greater ART, far deeper music, far more magical dances. The West cannot compare. .... My approach has nothing to do with philosophy. It has something to do with you. And it has something to do with now, because to me there is

only one time, that is now; and only one space, that is here. Once you have learned the ART, the knack of being herenow, you will be so fulfilled, so contented you will not need any opium for yourself. On the one hand, you will not need the opium which the religions of the world have been providing for people to keep them dreaming for centuries. On the other hand, you will not find what the socalled existentialists in Europe have found: meaninglessness, anguish, anxiety, despair. .... My religion is nothing but the ART of living, the ART of loving. And if you can manage two things total life, total love the third thing, enlightenment, will come of its own accord. You have earned it. You need not seek it, you deserve it. It is a reward from existence to those people who have respected life, loved, lived, danced, enjoyed. .... In the West the prostitute is selling her body. In the East, in the past, the prostitute was not selling her body; she was selling her genius, her dance, her music, her art. You will be surprised that every Indian king used to send his sons who were going to become his successors to live with great prostitutes for a few years, to learn etiquette, to learn gentleness, to learn music, to learn the delicacies of dance because a king should be really rich about everything. He should understand beauty, he should understand logic, he should understand manners. That has been the old Indian tradition. .... Don't be worried. If you witness, the moment will remain there and will grow deeper, bigger, more colorful. But not at any point have you to become identified with it. Remain detached, just a spectator. The ART is the same; whether it is boredom or ecstasy does not matter. What matters is that you are not involved, you remain aloof, you remain standing there. .... So start witnessing your boredom, sadness, because the question is not the object, the question is the ART of witnessing. So use any object anger, hate, love, jealousy anything will do. If you cannot find anything just put up a mirror and look at your face and witness it. And you will be surprised, immensely surprised; when you are in a complete state of witnessing the mirror becomes empty, you are not there. In total witnessing the object disappears. .... The very closeness of death makes it possible for you to understand the deathless which is within you. That's the whole ART of meditation: to go within as deep as you can to the very center of your being. And you will be surprised, amazed that at the center of your being you are eternal. There is no death, there has never been any death. Nothing dies in reality, it only changes forms. .... This is the whole ART of meditation: to take you to your real self. The moment you come to your real self, the arbitrary ego disappears in the same way that darkness disappears when you come with a burning torch inside the house. The ego is the absence of your realization of your self. And it is there because your parents, your teachers, your priests, your leaders are all agreed that before you come to know who you are, you should be given a false substitute, a lollipop. .... Every partner in a couple is expecting the other to love him. The husband wants the wife to love him; the wife wants the husband to love her and both are unaware that they don't know the ART of love, because they never loved themselves. They are going to quarrel, fight and destroy each other's life. I teach you clearly to be selfish. .... People have not been taught the ART of living beautifully, the ART of being graceful, the ART of being silent, meditative. Instead of teaching these authentic realities which can be done right now, their minds were taken away from the present to some unknown future nobody knows whether it exists or not. Now, because people become literate, educated, they can see the great deceit. They have been cheated, and a great anger is there. .... nd then every university can become a place, not only to teach you geography which is stupid history which is just rubbish; but to teach you something very essential: meditation, love, the ART of living, the ART of being human. Each university should become a temple of wisdom; it is not yet. .... In fact the urge to create is something biological, sexual. Sexual energy is your creative energy. Women have not been great painters and poets and sculptors for the simple reason that their desire to create is immensely fulfilled by bringing up children. To give birth to a child, alive, radiant what else can be compared to it? You create a painting; howsoever beautiful, it is a dead thing after all. You can create music, you can create song. But what are they compared to a beautiful child? Just look into the eyes of a child and all your paintings are nothing. The child smiles, and all your songs fall flat on the ground. The child tries to walk, and the joy when the child feels "I can walk." All your science, all your ART, are nothing compared to that joy. .... Pseudoreligions cannot support your living. They cannot teach you the ART of how to live, and live intensely and totally. They can only teach you how to escape from life, how to avoid knowing the truth. .... Sex is given by nature; it is an inbuilt program in your biology. Love is not an inbuilt program; that's why so many people go on missing it. It has to be evolved. You have to learn it, it is an ART You have to understand one thing, that nature and biology have no need of love; sex is enough for life to continue. Reproduction is the end of sex, and biology is interested only in reproducing. Love is a luxury. It has no biological function. .... The people who have created wealth have a certain talent for creating it. You should use their talent; you should make it an ART to be taught to everybody. They are not to be punished because they have created wealth. In an aboriginal society, a primitive society, of which a few fragments

are still alive here and there on the earth, nobody is poor and nobody is rich; of course there is no jealousy. Everybody owns nothing, everybody equally owns nothing; but nobody is producing wealth. In fact the people who are producing wealth are creating an urge in others also to create wealth. Don't destroy these people use these people as symbols. They have a certain ART of creating wealth make that ART available to everybody, educate everybody. You teach economics in the universities; it would be far better if you taught the ART of becoming rich because by teaching economics you don't help them to know the ART of becoming rich. They win gold medals in the universities and then they disappear. .... And why should we be bothered about the future? If you know the ART of living... and that's what I call religion real, authentic religion the ART of living. If you know the ART of living... and it consists of small things, not of big, great commandments... very small things... just sipping your tea joyfully, meditatively, tasting each sip as if this is the last sip. Perhaps you may not be able again to hold the cup in your hands there is no guarantee. When you are meeting a friend meet. Who knows, you may not be meeting again. Then you will repent. Then that unfulfilled past will haunt you, that you wanted to say something and you could not say it. There are people who want to say to somebody, "I love you," and they are waiting for years and have not said it. And the person one day may die, and then they will cry and weep and they will say, "I wanted to say to the person, 'I love you,' but I could not even say that." My people are living, living so fully that there is no space for any tomorrow, for any yesterday. .... 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. .... I am a simple man without any secret. I am just an open book, and a book in which nothing is written. If you like to call it a secret it is your choice, but it is a very open secret. If you want to be, learn the ART of being: not to be. Let me repeat it, because I know you are deaf. If you want really to be, the only way is to learn not to be. Disappear. Just as God disappears from existence, you have to disappear from your life. Let life flow of its own accord. It is the simplest ART in the world, to be silent. It is not a doing, it is a nondoing. How can it be difficult? I am showing you the way of enlightenment through laziness. Nothing has to be done to attain it, because it is your nature. You have already got it. You are just so busy with outer business that you cannot see your own nature. Deep within you is exactly the same as outside you: the beauty, the silence, the ecstasy, the blissfulness. But please, sometimes be kind to yourself: just sit down and don't do anything, either physically or mentally. Relax, not in an American way... because I have seen so many American books titled HOW TO RELAX. The very title says that the man knows nothing about relaxation. There is no "how." Yes, it is okay "How to Repair a Car"; you will have to do something. But there is no doing as such as far as relaxation is concerned. Just don't do anything. I know you will find it a little difficult in the beginning. That is not because relaxation is difficult, it is because you have become addicted to doing something. That addiction will take a little time to disappear. Just be, and watch. Being is not doing, and watching is also not doing. You sit silently doing nothing, witnessing whatsoever is happening. Thoughts will be moving in your mind; your body may be feeling some tension somewhere, you may have a migraine. Just be a witness. Don't be identified with it. Watch, be a watcher on the hills, and everything else is happening in the valley. It is a knack, not an art. Meditation is not a science. It is not an ART, it is a knack just that way. All that you need is a little patience. The old habits will continue; the thoughts will go on rushing. And your mind is always in a rush hour, the traffic is always jammed. Your body is not accustomed to sitting silently you will be tossing and turning. Nothing to be worried about. Just watch that the body is tossing and turning, that the mind is whirling, is full of thoughts consistent, inconsistent, useless fantasies, dreams. You remain in the center, just watching. .... I am not teaching you skepticism, I am teaching you the ART of doubt. Doubt does not say that it is not so. The doubt simply says, "I am ignorant. I have not experienced it yet; hence, I will continue to doubt till I achieve the authentic, the real. Then I will be all yes -- but not before that." The man of doubt, only the man of doubt, some day becomes the man of truth. ... Transform whatsoever you are doing into ART, into music. Let it be a dance, not a burden and a duty. Let it be love, not marriage. Marriage is a serious affair; business people do it, with all the business considerations -- financial, educational, social status. These are the considerations for marriage. ... It happens more to the artistic people. They are against the whole world, against everything, because they think they can create a new world. The old poetry, the old paintings are nothing to them, and their very ordinary painting is just the greatest piece of ART. ... A moment comes when the gazer and the gazed become one, the observer and the observed become one. That is the moment of meditation -and there are no more golden experiences in existence. These golden moments can be yours... just a little ART, or rather a little knack, of losing yourself into something vast, something so big that you cannot contain it. But it can contain you! And you can experience it only if you allow it to contain you. ... People don't want you to speak, they want you to listen. And if you learn a simple ART of listening to people, so much misunderstanding in the world will be avoided. ... Consciousness is an altogether different matter. It has nothing to do with creativity, it has nothing to do with inventiveness, it has nothing to do with science or ART; it has something to do with tremendous silence, peace, a centering

... If something falls in tune with our mind -- that means with our past -- we hear it. But if it goes against it, we certainly hear the sound but we miss the meaning. To listen is a great ART. ... The West needs a deep acquaintance with its own life source, then there will be no hurry. One will enjoy when life brings youth, one will enjoy when life brings old age and one will enjoy when life brings death. You simply know one thing -- how to enjoy everything that you come across, how to transform it into a celebration. I call the authentic religion the ART of transforming everything into a celebration, into a song, into a dance. ... In the East music has been always used as a support for meditation. It is difficult to fight with the mind, its constant rush of thoughts, but being absorbed in beautiful music all those thoughts disappear. Music is sound, but sound can be used in such a way that it creates silence; that is the whole ART. ... The fourth dimension of a school should be of ART and creativity: painting, music, craftsmanship, pottery, masonry -- anything that is creative. All areas of creativity should be allowed; the students can choose. There should be only a few things compulsory -- for example an international language should be compulsory; a certain capacity to earn your livelihood should be compulsory; a certain creative ART should be compulsory. You can choose through the whole rainbow of creative arts, because unless a man learns how to create, he never becomes a part of existence, which is constantly creative. By being creative one becomes divine; creativity is the only prayer. ... In the West, perhaps Gurdjieff is the only man who has divided ART into two sections: the objective ART and the subjective ART. Subjective

ART is from the mind, and is out of anguish. Objective ART -- the Taj Mahal, the caves of Ellora and Ajanta, the temples of Khajuraho -- has
come from meditative people. Out of their love, out of their silence, they wanted to share; it is their contribution to the world. The Western artist has lived under a very heavy burden. It is time that he should be made aware that there is something more beyond mind. First reach to that beyond, and then you can create stars; and they will not only be a great joy to you, they will also be a great joy for those who see them. ... An objective piece of ART like the Taj Mahal is not just to be seen, but to be lived -- and then you will be in a certain way connected with the creators of that beautiful architecture. It was created by Sufi masters. Its very shape somehow creates within you a new blissful space. But the Western tourist comes with the camera, takes a few shots from here and there and runs away to some other place. He does not know how to appreciate an objective ART. One has to meditate on it -- it may be that thousands of years have passed between the creator of that piece and you. Suddenly that distance disappears; you become part of that creative joy, of that creative dance. ... Whether you create, or you observe an objective piece of creativity, meditation should be the key. Without it, mind can only spread on the canvas its nightmares. Most of the paintings of the great painters like Paul Gaugin or Picasso are almost like vomit. They could not contain their agony and suffering -- it was so much they threw it on the canvas to get relief. The real objective ART is not a relief; it is not a sickness that you want to get rid of. It is a blissfulness that you want to share. And by sharing, it grows; you have more of it, the more it is shared. ... There are two ways of living. One is the way of the buffalo -- it lives horizontally, in a single line. The other way is of a buddha. He lives vertically, in height and in depth. Then each moment can become an eternity. And unless you learn the ART of transforming each moment into an eternity, you have not been with me -- you missed me. ... There are two ways of living. One is the way of the buffalo -- it lives horizontally, in a single line. The other way is of a buddha. He lives vertically, in height and in depth. Then each moment can become an eternity. And unless you learn the ART of transforming each moment into an eternity, you have not been with me -- you missed me. ... Every ART has to reach to a point where technologies are dropped. Every meditation has to reach to the point where methods are dropped. They are good for the beginners, for learning the ABC's, but when you have reached to the point of XYZ, they are of no use. Silently, you are filled with music. Without moving, you are dancing. Without any thought, any feeling in you, there is just pure grace, gratitude arising out of you, just like fragrance arising out of a lotus flower. One has to reach to this point. Only then one is fulfilled. Only then, one has attained his destiny. ... The new man is a manifesto of one humanity. It is the greatest revolution the world has ever seen. You have heard about the miracle that Moses parted the sea in two parts. That miracle is nothing. I want to part humanity, the whole ocean of humanity divided in two parts: the old and the new. The new will love this life, this world. The new will learn the ART of living and loving and dying. The new will not be concerned about

heaven and hell, sin and virtue. The new man will be concerned about how to increase the joys of life, the pleasures of life -- more flowers, more beauty, more humanity, more compassion. And we have the capacity and the potential to make this planet a paradise, and to make this moment the greatest ecstasy of your life. ... the so-called great men -- Julius Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon and others -- were certainly driven by women; they were trying to prove themselves. The woman has one very special quality about her: she is, in a way, very contented with small things. Just because she is a woman she has a natural capacity to create children; her desire for creativity is fulfilled -- she becomes a creator naturally, biologically. There, man feels impotent: he cannot produce children. Something like an empty womb hurts inside. He wants to prove before the woman, particularly the woman he loves, that "I can also create," that "I can also conquer," that "I can also show the world that I am not just useless, just like an appendix," that "I have also something to contribute to the world, to its beauty, to its power, to its ART, to its music, to its dance. I have to prove it!" That is a very unconscious longing in every man -- to prove something. And the moment a person falls in love with a woman, immediately the question becomes of predominant importance. He starts proving himself by earning more money, by becoming a president or prime minister, by conquering the world. But whatsoever he does still remains incomplete -- he cannot compete with the woman. She remains so round, so centered and grounded, that the man can go on to the very end of the world, but still he will not be grounded. He will go to Everest, he will go to the moon, he will become a world conqueror, he will discover great truths of science, he will fight wars, he will explore the unknown, but wherever he is he will find that something is missing. That missing link is biological. ... Hence, move from the mind. Let ART, poetry, painting, dancing become more important -- they will bring you closer to meditation -- and finally take the plunge. If you have tasted something of poetry you will gather enough courage to take the ultimate plunge. Hence, to me religion consists of three layers; the first layer is of science. Just as your body consists of material, atomic constituents, so religion consists first, the most peripheral p ART of science. I am not against science -- science is an absolute need -- but it is only a peripheral phenomenon, the most superficial, the first concentric circle around your center. Then comes the second concentric circle, which is deeper than science; that is of ART, aesthetics. And then the third; that is meditation. And if you have entered these three concentric circles, slowly slowly you will attain to the fourth. The fourth in the East is called TURIYA ... The greatest ART in the world is to be a disciple. It cannot be compared to anything. It is unique and incomparable. Nothing like it exists in any other relationship, nothing like it can exist. To be a disciple, to be with a master, is to move into the unknown. You cannot be very aggressive there. If you are aggressive, the unknown will never be revealed to you. It cannot be revealed to an aggressive mind. The very nature of it is such that you have to be receptive, not aggressive. ... I am a man who lives moment to moment, and I want those who love me to learn the ART of living moment to moment. What happens tomorrow we will see tomorrow. At least one thing is certain: whatever happens, our blissfulness, our ecstasy, our dance, our song will continue -- if not on this planet, then on another planet. ... And this place is for only those who are ready to be gone. You become your ultimate flowering only when you are not. It is a strange fundamental law of existence, and there is no way to change it. The more you are, the less you are. The less you are, the more you are. If you are all, then you don't exist. If you are a nothingness, you have tasted existence for the first time. So, while I go on taking small pieces from your ego, from your so-called personality, you keep yourself engaged in spaghetti and pizza. It is a perfect ART ! The authentic master kills the disciple, so that he also can become a pure nothingness, and can become one with the universe. ... This is simply a known fact, that children are created through sex. So sex is certainly a creative force, which can even create life. But there are highly sexed people, and just to produce children is not enough to exhaust their sexuality. They create music; music becomes their outlet. They create ART, they create paintings, poetries... and they are thought of always by the society as outsiders, they are not accepted as normal human beings. Something is crazy about them; they are eccentric. ... Begin with love of the body, which is your outermost part. Start loving your mind -- and if you love your mind you will decorate it, just the way you decorate your body. You keep it clean, you keep it fresh; you don't want your body to smell horrible to people, you want your body to be loved and respected by others. Your presence should not be simply tolerated but welcomed. You have to decorate your mind with poetry, with music, with ART, with great literature. Your trouble is, your mind is filled only with trivia. Such third-rate things go on through your mind that you cannot love it. You think of nothing which is great. Make it more in tune with the greatest poets; make it in tune with people like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Turgenev, Rabindranath, Kahlil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy; make it filled with the greatest heights that mind has reached. ... In short, every country's parliament has said that I can corrupt the young people of their country; hence, as a precaution, the law was passed -unanimously. Have I corrupted you? Have I destroyed your consciousness? Have I destroyed your love? Have I destroyed your gratitude towards existence? But it seems idiots have always been in power. And those idiots are almost the same as the "deaf crocodile": they can't understand music, they can't understand love, they can't understand beauty, they can't understand ART, they can't understand meditation -- but they pretend that they are the most intelligent people in the world because they have the power. ...

Science's whole effort is to demystify existence. Poetry and ART are concerned in rejoicing, in welcoming the mystery of existence.And the mystic, the religious man, lives the mystery -- not from the outside as a poet, but from the very inside of it. He becomes himself mystery. ... One has to learn the ART of living with awareness. To me, that can be the definition of religion: the ART of living with awareness -- not renouncing, but rejoicing. ... All fanatics, fundamentalists, fascists remain retarded. They are living in the past, which is no more. They are completely blind as far as the reality is concerned. They go on seeing things which have disappeared from the scene, and they are incapable... they really avoid seeing what has become real. YOU CAN ENTER ONLY WHEN YOU'VE PUT TO DEATH YOUR FABRICATED "REALITY." Unless you learn the ART of dying every moment to the past, you are not really living. The past goes on becoming heavier and heavier, because the past is growing every day. And your future is so fragile, so small, that the past does not allow you to live in the present. It pulls you backwards. It is as if you, being a fundamentalist, go on insisting, "I will continue to use my underwear from my childhood." You will be a phenomenon...! ... Every idea that comes from the past is crippling your consciousness. You have to learn the ART of dying to everything that has passed, so that you can live in the present with totality, with no burden. And when the present moves, you also move, because now the present is becoming past -- die to it. ... One has to become feminine. One has to become receptive rather than being aggressive. One has to learn the ART of relaxation rather than learning the strategies of how to conquer the world and the reality. Truth is not going to be a conquest, it is going to be a total surrender. One has to become a host, one has to open up, one has to be just a receptivity so the wind can come in, the rain can come in, the sun can come in. And just hidden behind the sun and the rain and the wind one day comes the Guest. And the Guest does not come from the outside, it arises within you. God is the Guest. But you have to be a host first, you have to learn the ART of being a host. You have to become a welcome, you have to become a prayer, you have to become an invitation, and you have to become a waiting, an infinite waiting. If it takes ages for Him to come you have to wait, of course with tears in your eyes but with tremendous trust in the heart. ... One has to become feminine. One has to become receptive rather than being aggressive. One has to learn the ART of relaxation rather than learning the strategies of how to conquer the world and the reality. Truth is not going to be a conquest, it is going to be a total surrender. One has to become a host, one has to open up, one has to be just a receptivity so the wind can come in, the rain can come in, the sun can come in. And just hidden behind the sun and the rain and the wind one day comes the Guest. And the Guest does not come from the outside, it arises within you. God is the Guest. But you have to be a host first, you have to learn the ART of being a host. You have to become a welcome, you have to become a prayer, you have to become an invitation, and you have to become a waiting, an infinite waiting. If it takes ages for Him to come you have to wait, of course with tears in your eyes but with tremendous trust in the heart. ... Listening is totally different from hearing. Hearing, anybody who is not deaf can do. Listening is a rare ART, one of the last arts. Listening means not only hearing with the ears but hearing from the he ART in utter silence, in absolute peace, with no resistance. One has to be vulnerable to listen, and one has to be in deep love to listen. One has to be in utter surrender to listen. ... PHILOSOPHY means mind, philosophy means thinking, philosophy means going away from yourself Philosophy is the ART of losing yourself in thoughts, becoming identified with dreams. Hence I am against philosophy, because I am all for religion. ... The whole ART of journalism is the ART of Lying in such a way that people think it is true. ... You are not missing anything. The moment you realize, "I am not missing anything," all your problems will disappear. It is up to you. There are only two alternatives: either to get it right now and become blissful, or to postpone and remain miserable. My preference is, get it right now. And what I have said for you about witnessing is nothing but a simple ART of seeing. You are breathing, you are seeing, your heart is beating, you are surrounded by a beautiful universe. What more do you want? And are you certain that even if something more is added, you will not want more again?

ART
I want to teach you the great pilgrimage from here to here. I want you to learn the ART of reaching to God singing, dancing, rejoicing. Laugh your way to God. In essence that is my teaching.

ART
Science's whole effort is to demystify existence. Poetry and ART are concerned in rejoicing, in welcoming the mystery of existence.And the mystic, the religious man, lives the mystery -- not from the outside as a poet, but from the very inside of it. He becomes himself mystery.

ART
I say unto you: because the roseflower which has blossomed in the morning and is dancing in the sun and in the air and in the rain will be gone by the evening... before it is gone, dance with it, rejoice with it, let its fragrance become part of you. Don't cling to it! When it is there, be grateful to existence. When it is gone, it will leave a beautiful memory in you, a great remembrance. But nothing to be worried about because more and more roses will be coming. One has to learn the ART of living with awareness. To me, that can be the definition of religion: the ART of living with awareness -- not renouncing, but rejoicing.

ART
A man of enlightenment makes his whole life a prayer, a worship. Whatever he is doing is qualitatively different, it has a grace. It comes not just as a commodity to be sold, it is a piece of ART... and the customers are no longer ordinary human beings. To the person of awareness the whole existence becomes divine. He cannot hurt even a tree. Out of this awareness comes a life of non-violence.

ART
Man is suffering for the simple reason that he does not know himself. His ignorance about himself is the only cause of his suffering, misery, torture. Enlightenment brings everything to a very simple and scientific conclusion. It pinpoints that all that you need is to learn the ART of awareness.

ART
Every idea that comes from the past is crippling your consciousness. You have to learn the ART of dying to everything that has passed, so that you can live in the present with totality, with no burden. And when the present moves, you also move, because now the present is becoming past -- die to it.

ART
One has to become feminine. One has to become receptive rather than being aggressive. One has to learn the ART of relaxation rather than learning the strategies of how to conquer the world and the reality. Truth is not going to be a conquest, it is going to be a total surrender. One has to become a host, one has to open up, one has to be just a receptivity so the wind can come in, the rain can come in, the sun can come in. And just hidden behind the sun and the rain and the wind one day comes the Guest. And the Guest does not come from the outside, it arises within you. God is the Guest. But you have to be a host first, you have to learn the ART of being a host. You have to become a welcome, you have to become a prayer, you have to become an invitation, and you have to become a waiting, an infinite waiting. If it takes ages for Him to come you have to wait, of course with tears in your eyes but with tremendous trust in the heart.

ART
Stopping the world is the whole ART of meditation. And to live in the moment is to live in eternity. To taste the moment with no idea, with no mind, is to taste immortality. Time is mind. Time is death. Going beyond time is going beyond mind and beyond death. But if you want to know about chronological time you have to ask a physicist; that is not my concern. Psychological time is my basic concern. That's my whole work here: to help you get out of psychological time.

ART
Listening is totally different from hearing. Hearing, anybody who is not deaf can do. Listening is a rare ART, one of the last ARTS. Listening means not only hearing with the ears but hearing from the he ART in utter silence, in absolute peace, with no resistance. One has to be vulnerable to listen, and one has to be in deep love to listen. One has to be in utter surrender to listen.

ART
All sacred scriptures are in the head, and all your rituals, religions, are in the head. Your rituals, your religions, your theologies, don't even reach to the second. If you want to reach to the second you will have to learn from the painters and the poets and the singers, musicians, dancers. You will have to go into the world of ART But if you want to go to the third -- and without going to the third you will never know what God is -- you will have to go into a deep communion with a Master.

ART
PHILOSOPHY means mind, philosophy means thinking, philosophy means going away from yourself Philosophy is the ART of losing yourself in thoughts, becoming identified with dreams. Hence I am against philosophy, because I am all for religion.

ART
And what I have said for you about witnessing is nothing but a simple ART of seeing. You are breathing, you are seeing, your heart is beating, you are surrounded by a beautiful universe. What more do you want? And are you certain that even if something more is added, you will not want more again?

ART

Prayer is not a doing at all -- it is simply being receptive, it is simply being open. A door is open and you are waiting. It is infinite patience and waiting. A priest is aggressive. You can learn it: priesthood is an ART, you can learn it. Prayer is not an ART, you cannot learn it anywhere. You can learn it only in life. There exists no school, no university, which can teach you prayer -- only life.

ART
Hell is for all extraordinary people. They may be in politics, in ART, literature -- wherever they are, hell is for all geniuses, for all extraordinary people, all egoists. Ego is the hell, it gives you suffering -- because unnecessarily you start conflicting with everything. You are never at ease, unease becomes your style of life; with the ego you will always be at unease. Ego is a discomfort; it is a nail in the shoe, it continuously pinches, but you want to be extraordinary. Then....

ART
Whatever you are doing, do it with such love, with such care that the smallest thing in the world becomes a piece of ART It will bring great joy to you. And it will create a world without competition, without comparison; it will give dignity to all people; it will restore their pride, which religions have destroyed.

ART
Music is not property; it is ART, it is love. It is devotion, it is prayer. You cannot possess it. The same is my feeling about your being. You have it, but you don't possess it because you don't know how to play the instrument of your being. All that you know is the mind, which is only a vehicle; the he ART which is only a vehicle. But they are empty. Your thinking leads nowhere. Your heart remains at the point of lust, and never gets to know love.

ART
Never renounce action, only renounce thinking. But if you renounce thinking there is a possibility you may become unconscious, or you may become a fool. You may start doing anything whatsoever, because now you don't know what to do, and you don't think. You may go crazy. Thinking is to be renounced, but you are not to become more unaware, more unconscious. You have to become more conscious. This is the whole ART of meditation: how to be deep in action, how to renounce thinking, and how to convert the energy that was moving into thinking to become awareness. It is going to be very delicate and subtle, because if you miss a step you fall into infinite ignorance.

ART
Life is one. God, Devil -- one. There is no division where God ends and where Devil begins; there cannot be. In life, Ram and Ravan are one, but for the mind they are the enemies, they are fighting. For the mind everything is a conflict, it is a war. And if you choose then you remain part of the game. And how not to choose is the whole ART of religion, how to drop into a choicelessness. But remember, don't choose choicelessness!

ART
There is no need to go beyond the body. The only thing is: the body should function rightly, perfectly. It is an ART, it is not austerity. It is not an austerity; you are not to fight with it, you are simply to understand it. And the body is so wise -- wiser than your mind, remember, because the body has existed longer than the mind. Mind is a very new arrival, just a child.

ART
There have been many ARHATAS but very few BODHISATTVAS. The BODHISATTVA is both enlightened and skillful to teach what has happened to him. It is the greatest ART in the world; no other ART can be compared with it, because to say the unsayable, to help people come out of their sleep, to find and invent devices to bring what has happened to him to those who are thirsty for it and help them to get it... it is a rare gift.

ART
The ashram is not a condemnation of the world. Rather it is a learning place -- where you learn the ART of how to LIVE in the world.

ART
When you dance meditatively your dance starts having a new flavor -- something of the divine enters into it -- because if you are meditatively dancing then the ego disappears, the DANCER disappears. That is the whole ART of meditation: disappearance of the ego, disappearance of the mind. The dancer become thoughtless, silent. the dance continues and the dancer disappears. This is what I call the divine quality: now it is as if God is dancing through you, you are no more there.

ART
It is only through action, through creativity, that you go beyond death. Action functions as negative: it is the ART of removing hindrances. For example, you are digging a well: Action means removing all the layers of earth and the rocks -- if sometimes needed, dynamiting the rocks, drilling so that you can find the water sources. The function of action is negative: it is removing hindrances, obstacles, obstructions. And the function of meditation is realization of that which is. When the water starts coming up, meditation is drinking of the water to quench the thirst. Both are needed: action to remove the rocks and meditation to make you capable of drinking the ultimate, the wine of the ultimate.

ART
America is young, lives in the moment, hence there is great exploration going on about everything: science, religion, philosophy, ART, new

forms of ART new methods, new ways to reach to the moon, to the Mars and finally to the stars, new methods, quicker methods to enter into meditation, into samadhi. In every dimension America is interested to explore; the young man's adventurous spirit is there. They are going to the farthest corners of the world to explore all possibilities. India is old, dying; China is still born, just now growing towards a future; America is young.

ART
When tomorrow comes it will come as today, so you have to learn the ART of being here, living today, because tomorrow will come but it will also be another today. And if you know how to live THIS day you will know how to live that day which will be coming.

BELOVED OSHO, WAS RABINDRINATH'S LONGING, HIS CREATIVE ANGST, THE VERY THING THAT IN THE END BECAME AN OBSTACLE TO HIS ENLIGHTENMENT? AM I ALSO DESTINED TO DIE WITH TEARS IN MY EYES, AND A POCKET FULL OF SONGS? .....long silence................................. A poet is not in search of truth. His search is for beauty, and through the search for beauty nobody has ever become enlightened. One can become a great poet, a great painter, a great singer, a great dancer; but on the path of beauty, enlightenment is not possible. The seeker of truth, and only the seeker of truth, attains to enlightenment. And this is the miracle of enlightenment, that once you have discovered truth, then beauty, the good, and all that is valuable simply become available to you. Beauty cannot lead to enlightenment, but enlightenment opens your eyes to all dimensions and all directions. Rabindranath was very close to enlightenment, but his search was not for enlightenment -- he was searching for the beautiful. And the search for the beautiful, deep down, is the search for expressing beauty -- in words, in music, in dance, in any kind of creativity. The seeker of beauty is really seeking a vision which he can reproduce in his poetry, in his song, in his painting. Always the search is inner, but the goal is somewhere outside. And that's the problem for all great creative people: they come to know, but then expressi on becomes difficult; they come to experience beauty, but how to share it? You may see a roseflower and be suddenly overwhelmed by its beauty, but how to share it? How to express it? The concern of the artist is expression; the concern of the seeker is experience. Neither of them is able to express, but because the seeker of truth is totally concerned with experiencing, he comes to enlightenment, and he can die with a smile on his face, with fulfillment, whether he has been able to say something about it or not -- that is not his concern, that is not his angst, his anxiety. The artist also comes to know what he is seeking, but his problem is that basically, his interest in seeking beauty is for expression -- and expression is almost impossible. At the most you can stutter a little bit -- all your songs are stutterings of great poets. They look beautiful to you, immensely meaningful and significant, but to the poet... he knows he has failed. All artists, either in the East or in the West, have felt an immense failure. They have tried their best, and they have produced great pieces of art -- for us they are great pieces of art, but for them they are faraway echos of their experience. Hence, they die either mad.... Almost seventy percent of painters, dancers, poets have gone mad. They have made too much effort. They have put too much tension into their being, so that it brought a breakdown, a nervous breakdown. And many of the artists have even committed suicide. The wound of failure became unbearable: to live any longer and to carry the same wound, and feeling again and again... became too difficult, and it was better to destroy oneself. And those who have not gone mad or committed suicide, they have also not died in a blissful way. In the East, we have defined the ultimate values as three: satyam, shivam, sundaram. Satyam means truth -- that is the highest. The seeker, the mystic follows that path. Then comes shivam: goodness, virtue. The moralist, the saint, the sage -- they follow that path. And sundaram means beauty. The poets, the singers, the musicians -- they follow that path. Those who attain to truth automatically come to know what is good and what is beauty. Those who follow good, neither come to know what is true, nor do they come to know what is beauty. The followers of good -- the moralists, the puritans -- also never achieve enlightenment. All that they achieve is a repressed personality -- very beautiful on the surface, but deep inside very ugly. They have great reputation, honor, respect, but inside they are hollow. The people who follow sundaram, beauty, are inside fulfilled, utterly fulfilled, but their misery is that that is not their aim: just to be fulfilled. They want all that they have experienced to be brought into language, into paintings, into sculpture, into architecture. Hence, even though they have experienced beautiful spaces they remain anxiety-ridden. The people who follow beauty are most often not very respectable -- not in the same sense as the saints are. They are very natural people, very loving and very lovable, but they don't have any ego, any idea of holier-than-thou; they remain just simple and ordinary. These three values have been for centuries followed separately. So the people who have become enlightened have never painted, have never made beautiful statues, have never composed music; they have never danced. They have never followed the dictates of the society, they have never followed the conventions of the society; hence most of them have been crucified, poisoned, killed -- because people want you to be a puritan, a moralist. In people's eyes morality is a social value, truth is not. Beauty is for entertainment; they don't take it seriously. I have been trying in many ways to open new doors -- this is one of the most important doors. I want you to be a seeker of truth, but when you have attained to truth you should not be without songs and without dances. Beauty is a little lower value than truth, but the man of truth can express beauty more clearly than the poet, than the painter. For the higher, the lower is always understandable -- not vice versa. The man who has attained truth should also take care that his life radiates godliness, goodness. It may not be in tune with the morality of the society -- it cannot be, because that morality is created by blind, unconscious people, just as a convention For the man of truth it is not convention, it is simply his life. In utter nudity, he should make his life available to existence, to people, so that the ordinary morality of convention slowly, slowly changes into a real and authentic morality of a man who knows the truth. The man of truth should not look at poetry and music and dance as just entertainment for ordinary people. He should make it a point, because he has risen to a height from where he can see beauty in its absolute glory. He can contribute many riches to existence : Each of his words can be a poem in itself, each of his silences can become celestial music, each of his gestures can indicate towards the most beautiful phenomenon, grace. But this has not been so up to now -- they have all followed their paths separately. I want my people to seek the truth, because by seeking it the other two will become available on their own accord. But remember, when you have experienced truth don't forget that it is part of your compassion to give humanity new dreams of goodness, new visions of morality, ethics, which are not of the marketplace, which are not only conventions. And he should not forget that his truth is so deep inside him that the unconscious people will not be able to have a taste of it -- he should create beauty in all possible dimensions. Once in a while it has been done. For example, when the Taj Mahal was created. .. it was not the work of great architects, but it is the most beautiful architecture in existence. Shahjehan, the emperor who was creating it as a memorial grave for his beautiful wife, Mumtaz Mahal -- hence the name Taj Mahal -- searched for years for Sufi mystics, who have no concern for beauty. He asked the Sufi mystics, "Although it is something lower, and you are not interested in it -- and why should one be? -- just for my sake, you design the Taj Mahal. The architects will make it, but the design should come from those who have known

beauty in its fullness, from a height." George Gurdjieff used to say that there are two kinds of art. One is subjective art -- ninety-nine percent of art in the world is subjective: you are simply pouring your feelings, your desires, your longings, your dreams, into whatever you are making. But once in a while there is objective art -- only one percent. What he calls objective art is art created by those who were not artists, who were realized people. They created music to help meditation -- it was not for entertainment. They created poetry to convey that which cannot be conveyed by prose. They sang, they danced, to give you just a glimpse of their ecstasy, of their inner dance, of their joy, their blissfulness. In India, there are many places which have objective art. Even Gurdjieff had to mention them, although he was in the West; he was born in the Caucasus, but when he was talking about objective art, he had to fall upon India. Indian classical music is not just for entertainment. Listening to it, you start going deep into yourself. It is not for all, it is only for those who are ready for an inner pilgrimage. He mentioned the Taj Mahal, too. On the full moon night, when the moon comes just in the middle of the sky, the Taj Mahal becomes the greatest object of meditation that man has created. You just sit silently and look at it, and just looking at it your thoughts will subside. The beauty of it is so enormous that your mind simply feels at a loss. It cannot grasp it, so it becomes silent. The caves of Ajanta and Ellora, the temples of Khajuraho, Puri, and Konarak... all these he mentions as objective art -- objective because they are not an effort to express feelings or ideas, they are devices, so that for centuries to come people will be able to have the same taste, the same feeling, the same joy. The pyramids in Egypt are part of objective art. Just in the beginning of this century, when excavations were begun in the pyramids, a cat was found dead inside. The pyramid was three thousand years old -- perhaps when they were closing the pyramid, the cat had remained inside and died. For three thousand years the cat had been there, dead, but its body had not deteriorated. That was a miracle: three thousand years, and the body of the cat was as if she had just died. The scientists were puzzled. Finally it was discovered that the shape of the pyramid is the cause. That particular shape of the pyramid is tremendously capable of preserving things as they are. Even if you put a dead body inside, it will be preserved. Nothing else is needed, because the shape of the pyramid changes the direction of the rays of the sun, and in that change of direction the miracle happens. Now there are small plastic pyramids, glass pyramids available in the market. And people who are very much health-oriented, they just sit inside that pyramid. A small pyramid, portable -- you can fold it, keep it in your suitcase -- and wherever you want you can fix the pyramid up like a tent, and just sit inside it for one hour. And you will feel as immense a well-being as you have ever felt. The possibility is that if these pyramids are used widely, man's life can be prolonged. If it becomes a routine exercise for every child, in every home, in every school, in every college, life can be stretched up to three hundred years. Just one hour every day inside the pyramid, and you are not to do anything, just sit there. It is helpful in both ways: It will preserve your life, and that one hour of wellbeing will give you a deep feeling of meditation. The people who created the pyramids must have been mystics who had come to such a clarity, to see things which are not available to us. I want my people to be seekers of truth. But never forget that you have to bring a revelation into the moral codes of humanity, too. You should not feel satisfied that you have found the truth, and you have found what is good. You should make your good as much manifest and available to humanity as possible. The same is applicable to beauty. One feels a great loss... if Buddha had painted, or composed music, or sang songs, or once in a while danced with his disciples, the world would have been immensely enriched. I say to you, remember in those moments when you realize the truth that a great responsibility has fallen on your shoulders: you have to change the ordinary morality into a spiritual code, and you have to change subjective art into objective art. This will be the new expression of the contemporary mystic, and it will make a new breakthrough for the future. Milarepa, you are asking, "Am I also destined to die with tears in my eyes, and a pocket full of songs?" If you remain interested only in songs and music, you will die with tears in your eyes, and those tears will not be of joy. Let your search be for the truth, and only on the margin go on practicing your music, composing your songs; so when you reach to your enlightenment you are articulate enough to bring beauty to expression. Then you can go laughing, fulfilled, without any tears.