Osho Rajneesh Book "The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol 2"

The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol 2

Allow the Heart

6 March 1978 am in Buddha Hall
The first question:
Question 1

HOW BLIND I HAVE BEEN! THERE ARE SO MANY SIGNPOSTS I HAVE MISSED, AND NOW I AM WONDERING ABOUT THOSE WHO WROTE THE SIGNS. THESE DAYS I’M DISCOVERING SO MANY TRACES OF HOW REALITY TRULY IS THROUGH WORDS OF OTHERS AND ASK, ”WHERE WERE THEY?” ESPECIALLY SOME OF THE ENGLISH POETS, SHAKESPEARE AND BOB DYLAN. DID THEY REALIZE WHAT THEY WERE SAYING? ARE THEY CONSCIOUSLY SHARING THEIR GLIMPSES? (T.S. ELIOT, LEWIS CARROLL)

Pradeepa, this is a complex question. A few things will have to be understood before you can have

an understanding of it.

The mystic lives in the other reality, the separate reality. His abode is there. The poet only has

glimpses. Only sometimes the door opens and he sees something, and the door closes. He has no

understanding of what is happening, he can’t figure it out himself. It remains mysterious. He has no

explanation about it, from where it comes, why it comes; it is all from the blue. He’s possessed by

it. In some moments he’s utterly possessed; in those moments he starts saying things which he will

not be able to explain later on.

It is said about a great poet that once a man came to ask him the meaning of a certain poem that

he had written twenty years before. The poet said, ”It is too late. When I had written it, two persons

knew the meaning. Now, only one knows.” The man said, ”Then that one must be you.” And the poet

said, ”I am not that one. When I wrote this poetry, or, to be more true, when this poetry was written

by me or this poetry wrote itself through me, God knew the meaning and I knew the meaning. Now

I don’t know, only God knows.”

The poet is not in a state of meditation, he’s not in awareness. He’s vulnerable to the unknown.

He has certain openings towards the unknown, and the unknown penetrates him, stirs his heart,

resounds in his being, sometimes becomes a song or a painting or a dance, but the poet is utterly

unaware of what is happening from where it all comes. And it comes like lightening, and then

disappears. He has to write it, he has an obligation to write it. Unless he writes it, it persists inside.

It goes on hammering him. A poet writes it because it becomes too heavy if he doesn’t write. He

unburdens himself by writing. The poetry is a catharsis. The poet feels good once he has written

something that was persistently there asking for attention.

The mystic is enlightened – not that he has lightning experiences. The other world, the unknown –

call it God, NIRVANA, or anything you like – has become his abode. It is his reality; he lives there.

It is not something from the blue: he’s part of it, he vibrates with it. The separation is dropped. He

knows what he is saying.

So there are two kinds of art: the ordinary art – Shakespeare, Dylan, Carroll, Eliot – this is subjective

art. Much imagination is involved in it. It is not pure gold. Then there is another kind of art: the

Upanishads, the Bible, the caves of Ajanta and Ellora, the pyramids, the statues of Buddha, the Taj

Mahal, Khajuraho, Konarak; this is a totally different kind of art, objective art.

The people who created the caves of Ajanta and Ellora knew exactly what they were doing. They

were not simply possessed by an idea, they were creating something very deliberately, for some

deliberate results.

Picasso is painting in a kind of dream, and the dream is not even very beautiful – it is nightmarish,

it is a nightmare. He has to paint it, otherwise it will drive him crazy. Just think! If Picasso were

prevented from painting, what would happen to him? He would have gone mad. He would not have

been able to contain all these nightmares. When he painted these nightmares he was finished; it

was a kind of self-psychoanalysis. That is the very foundation of psychoanalysis.

What happens in psychoanalysis? You bring all that is hidden in your unconsciousness to the

surface, you relate it to the psychoanalyst. He listens attentively, passively, patiently. Once you

have related it from all the possible angles it evaporates from your being, you are unburdened. Now

psychoanalysis has found this too – that art can be a good therapy, therapy through art. In fact,

that has always been so. Picasso would have gone mad if he had not painted. That’s exactly what

happened to van Gogh, another great painter. He went mad, because he was so poor he could

not manage to purchase canvases, colors, brushes to paint. He was given enough money from his

brother so that he could live, exactly enough so that he could live, not a single pai more. And what

was he doing for years? – for four days of the week he would eat and three days he would fast and

save money to paint. He went mad. He could not paint all that was clamoring, boiling in his being;

he was sitting on a volcano. Lightnings were happening to him, and he could not unburden himself.

They went on being accumulated inside. First he went mad, then finally he committed suicide. It

was too much to live.

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