Darshan 20 August 1976

[A sannyasin who is an artist, was leaving for a few months to organise some exhibitions for his work. Osho said that his meditation was going well, but into his work he should also try to bring a meditative dimension.... ]

... just paint with the idea that if somebody looks at the painting, he feels awe, reverence, silence.

The basic idea should be what happens to the person who is looking at the painting. If he becomes a little meditative just watching it, then you have created a beautiful thing in the world, something very creative.

A painting can do many things. A painting can create sexuality in people. That's why so much pornography has appeal. It can give a sexual fantasy. When a painting can give sexual fantasies, then why cannot painting give meditative ecstasy? It can. You just have to think about certain combinations of colours, forms, which make a person meditative. Just keep it in mind and go on working on it. Soon you will be able to discover ways.

Just as there is music which makes people sexual, there is music which makes people very spiritual.

There is music which brings you very low, to animal instincts, and there is music which makes you soar very high - to heights which you have not known before, to new altitudes of being. Just a certain combination of sounds makes all the difference. The same can be done through colour, through form. The same can be done through words, poetry. The same can be done through dance.

The dancer can dance in such a way that the people who are looking at the dancer suddenly start soaring high. They leave their general locus at the sex centre and start moving towards a higher centre.

This is what gurdjieff calls objective art - when the art is not just an amusement, not a decorative piece, not just part of the interior decoration of the house, but creates something in the beholder,

something which was not there before. Just listening to a song or listening to certain music, or looking at a certain painting, a person is simply no more the same as he was before.

So a painting can be just a decoration, or a painting can be just an amusement, entertainment. A painting can be just interesting or a painting can be just photography, very realistic. A painting can be sexual, erotic. A painting can be spiritual. And I don't mean when I say spiritual, that if you paint krishna it is going to be spiritual; not necessarily. If you paint jesus it is not necessarily spiritual; that is not the point. You can paint a tree and it can become spiritual, and you can paint a jesus and it may not be spiritual at all.

Ninety-nine percent of paintings of jesus are not spiritual at all, but pathological. They don't give you gladness. They don't give you euphoria. They don't give you a feeling of the divine. Rather they give you the feeling of sadness, death, the cross; of torture, murder, justice. You cannot find a more tragic figure than jesus - just thirty-three years old; has not even known yet the climax of youth - being crucified. He had not known all the seasons of life. He was yet young - and crucified for no reason. Looking at a jesus' painting, one gets the feeling that the world is injust, that god cannot be just.

Even an innocent man like jesus had to cry at the last point, 'Why have you forsaken me? Why do I have to suffer all this?' Even his own faith is forsaken. Even his own idea that god is just and compassionate is forsaken. Ninety-nine percent of paintings of jesus have that feeling: 'Why have you forsaken me?' They don't give proof of god. In fact they give proof that god may be absent or may be uncaring.

On the one hand christians go on saying that jesus is the only begotten son, and on another hand the begotten son cries at the last moment, 'Why have you forsaken me?' In that moment he must have felt that there is no presence of god anywhere. 'What is happening to me? - and for no reason at all?'

That gloomy tragic scene has continued, and people have been painting it. Those paintings are not spiritual, because they can make you sad, they can make you anti-life. They can prepare you to renounce life, but they cannot prepare you to live life in such a way that your very life becomes an argument for god, that your very life becomes a syllogism for god... that your whole life becomes a poem in which everywhere god's presence can be felt... that your whole life becomes a materialisation of god.

A spiritual painting is that painting which creates in the beholder the sense of the mysterious, the sense of awe. A tremor goes up the spine, and one is simply aware for a few moments at least, that god is present in the world, that he has not forsaken it, that he cannot forsake it. How can he forsake it? Even if for a single moment you can give a glimpse of the divine and its presence, then your painting becomes an objective art. So just go on thinking along those lines.

[A sannyasin returning to the west says: It doesn't happen here, but at home by the end of the week I feel very tired. Sometimes I can't even stand.]

I understand. Do one thing. Every night before you go to sleep, just sit in the bed and imagine an aura around your body, just six inches away from your body, the same shape as the body,

surrounding you, protecting you. It will become a shield. Just do it for four, five minutes, and then, still feeling it, go to sleep. Fall into sleep imagining that aura like a blanket around you which protects you so that no tension can enter from the outside, no thought can enter from the outside; no outside vibrations can enter you. Just feeling that aura, fall asleep.

This has to be done the last thing at night. After it, simply go to sleep so the feeling continues in your unconscious. That is the whole thing. The whole mechanism is that you start by consciously imagining, then you start falling asleep. By and by when you are on the threshold of sleep, a little imagination continues, lingers on. You fall asleep but that little imagination enters the unconscious.

That becomes a tremendous force and energy.

I don't see that the problem is within you. The problem is coming from the outside. You don't have a protective aura. It happens to many people, because we don't know how to protect ourselves from others. Others are not only there - they are broadcasting their being continuously in subtle vibrations. If a tense person passes by you, he is simply throwing arrows of tension all around - not particularly addressed to you; he is simply throwing. And he is unconscious; he is not doing it to anybody knowingly. He has to throw it because he is too burdened. He will go mad if he doesn't throw it. It is not that he has decided to throw it. It is overflowing. It is too much and he cannot contain it, so it goes on overflowing.

Somebody passes by you and he goes on throwing something at you. If you are receptive and you don't have a protective aura.... And meditation makes one receptive, very receptive. So when you are alone, it is good. When you are surrounded by meditative people, very good. But when you are in the world, in the marketplace, and people are not meditative but are very tense, anxious, have a thousand and one strains on their mind, then you just start getting them. And you are vulnerable.

Meditation makes one very soft, so whatsoever comes, enters.

After meditation one has to create a protective aura. Sometimes it happens automatically, sometimes it doesn't. It is not happening automatically to you, so you have to work for it. It will be coming within three months. Any time between three weeks and three months, you will start feeling very very powerful. So in the night, fall asleep thinking this way.

In the morning the first thought has to be again this. The moment you remember that now sleep Is gone, don't open your eyes. Just feel your aura all over the body protecting you. Do it for four, five minutes again, and then get up. When you are taking your bath and your tea, go on remembering it.

Then in the daytime also whenever you feel you have time - sitting in a car or a train, or in the office doing nothing - just again relax into it. For a single moment feel it again.

Between three weeks and three months you will start feeling it almost like a solid thing. It will surround you and you will be able to feel that you can now pass amidst a crowd and you will remain unaffected, untouched. It will make you tremendously happy because now only your problems will be your problems, nobody else's.

It is very easy to solve one's own problems because they are one's own. It is very difficult when you go on getting others' problems; then you cannot solve them, because in the first place they don't belong to you. Many people come to me and they say they had some problem but suddenly here it is gone. It was never their problem - otherwise it cannot go. It must have been somebody else's.

They must have been step-fathering it, fostering it. It must have entered from somebody else's mind.

But people are so unaware that they don't know what is theirs and what is the others. Everything goes on getting into a mess.

You don't have many problems, and you will be able to solve your problems; that is not a big thing.

This time try to create a protective aura - and you will be able to see it and its function. You will see that you are completely protected. Wherever you go, things will be coming to you but they will be returned; they will not touch you.

[A visitor says: I find it difficult to just surrender myself to the meditations, just to let myself go soft.

... I love you, and can you give me sannyas?]

Mm, but to surrender is so difficult for you? Sannyas means surrender. The very word sannyas comes from two roots - san and yas. an means perfect and yas means surrender. Sannyas - the very word - means perfect surrender.

But if you are ready to take the jump, I am always ready. Close your eyes and just feel me.... (Osho places the mala round his neck.) Surrender will be coming. You just have to cooperate with the coming possibility. Allow it to happen.

Surrender is not a difficult thing; we make it difficult. Otherwise it is the easiest thing possible. To fight is difficult. To surrender is simple.

And in fact all that is significant happens through surrender, is continuously happening through surrender. You go on breathing, it a surrender. You are not doing it. You are not needed to do it. It is surrender to life. You breathe out - you trust that it will come back. If you don't trust you will not breathe out, you will be afraid. In the night you go to sleep. You trust that in the morning you will get up. Who knows? If you are really sceptical.... A real person of doubt should not go to sleep because who knows? - in the morning he may not be able to get up again. You eat food in deep trust that it will be digested.

In fact all that is significant and basic to life goes on happening through surrender. We fight only in futile things. Politics we fight. These so-called religions we fight. Ideologies we fight. But deep down look into each human being - everybody is living in surrender. Only on the surface for a few non-essential things, we go on creating conflict; otherwise there is none.

If you understand, surrender is the easiest thing, because you have not to do it; that is the easiness of it. You cannot do it, because all that you will do will never be a surrender. You have simply to allow it. You have simply to relax, to receive it. You have to be passive. You need not be active about it.