Don't be worried - the worst will also happen

Question 1:

Deva Darpana, the distinction between the subjective and the objective art is basically based on meditation. Anything that comes out of the mind will remain subjective art, and anything that comes out of no-mind, out of silence, out of meditation, will be objective art.

This definition is simple and will destroy your confusion. Whether you are creating something - you may be a sculptor, you may be a carpenter, you may be a painter, a poet, a singer, a musician - all that has to be remembered is that it is coming out of a silence within you, that it has a spontaneity.

It is not prearranged, preprogrammed, pre-thought. As you are creating something you go on being surprised yourself - you have left yourself in the hands of existence.

Now your hands are not your own hands. They are simply following what the existence longs for.

You are not to interfere, you have just to be a watcher - a watcher of your own creative activity. From the doer you have to shift to being just a watcher.

The ancient UPANISHADS are one of the best expressions of objective art - tremendously meaningful statements, immensely beautiful poetry, yet we don't know the name of the poet, the name of the mystic. They have not mentioned their names for the simple reason that they are not the doers; they are just instrumental in the hands of existence.

Mind is a doer, so when you are doing something according to your mind, it will be subjective art - subjective in the sense that you are pouring your own thoughts onto the canvas in colors, singing your own thoughts on the flute, but it cannot be sacred. Your mind is so full of trivia, your mind is concerned with absolutely nonessential things. It is a mess.

Just sit silently in a corner one day. Close the door - lock it so that you can be confident that nobody is going to see what you are doing - and then go on writing whatsoever arises in your mind. Don't edit it; don't try to make it better. Don't even complete the sentences - if they remain incomplete and another sentence intrudes, leave it as it is. It has to be photographic. Just a small ten minute exercise - and then read what you have written. And you will be surprised: are these your words?

Is this your mind? This seems to be the mind of a madman!

But twenty-four hours, day in and day out, those thoughts go on rushing in your mind. When anything is created out of this madness which you call mind, it is going to reflect it. That's why even a great painter, a genius like Picasso, has never attained to what I am calling objective art. All his paintings are subjective.

And if you watch his paintings, sitting silently, looking at them, the paintings will create not silence in you, not beauty in you, not grace in you, not a feeling of the divine in you, but you will start feeling a little crazy. Those paintings are crazy. They have come out of a mad mind. It does not matter that the mad mind was a genius.

On the other hand, if you sit silently on a full moon night near the Taj Mahal and watch it, you will be surprised how your mind becomes calm and quiet. The Taj Mahal has a totally different effect, because it was created by Sufi mystics. It is an example of objective art.

The subjective art is a kind of vomiting. You are filled with so much rubbish; you want to get rid of it, and the only way to get rid of it is to throw it on the canvas, on the musical instruments. Objective art is coming out of a silence so deep... it is almost an expression, to convey to you that this silence is possible in everybody.

Objective art has a message.

Subjective art has a madness.

You need not be worried. You are asking, "Since you first spoke about subjective and objective art, the artist and the mystic, a deep reflection has been triggered in me. I am confused concerning meditation and doing." There is no need to be confused. If doing comes out of your mind, full of thoughts, then it is subjective. If your doing pours out of silence, blissfulness, serenity, ecstasy, then the same doing has a different flavor, a different significance; it becomes objective.

You must have heard about the haikus of the Zen masters of Japan. They are examples of objective art. One of the famous haikus of Basho... and Basho is a genius, but he is not writing through the mind. Whatever he is writing is growing within him in his silence like a flower, and he gives it as a gift to the world.

Listen deeply to this haiku. You have to visualize it; then only will you be able to feel its freshness, its beauty, and its penetration into your own being. Just visualize:

Just these three lines... not even lines.

Naturally, he creates a certain sound.

If you visualize it, you will find yourself sitting by the side of an ancient pond... a frog jumps in. You will hear the sound of the frog jumping in, and after the sound, an immense silence. That silence is the message. Basho is trying to give you the message which he has lived, felt, and he feels a responsibility that it should reach to anybody who is in search of it.

In comparison to Basho, Picasso is not concerned with you. He is burdened in his head and he wants to unburden it. And when you look at Picasso's paintings you will feel a certain burden, a tension arising in you. If you keep Picasso's paintings in your bedroom you will have nightmares.

Each of his paintings is a nightmare. He has relieved himself of his nightmare, given it to the painting.

The distinction is very significant.

Before you do anything, let your doing come out of your silence. Before you sing, let your song come out of your silence. Before you paint you should meditate. Unless you come to the point where you feel you are no more, and now existence can use you as its instrument....

You say, "I have always felt my art to be my meditation." Just a little change - let your meditation be your art. You have always felt your art to be meditation. Art has the priority, and you are calling it meditation because you get absorbed in it, involved in it, and you forget yourself.

Just a little change - let your meditation be the art. First cleanse yourself; let fresh breezes pass through you, let new flowers of silence blossom in you. Then you know the spring has come, and now you are in the hands of the unknown. Just leave your hands in the unknown, allow them to move not according to your wishes, but according to something bigger than you, something vaster than you. You will be surprised that they move, and you will be surprised that that movement is not coming from you - it is coming from the beyond.

Darpana, just a little change - let your meditation be your art.... but meditation has the priority; art is only a by-product. Meditation cannot be a by-product of anything.

You are asking, "I have always felt my art to be my meditation, but is it still not a doing?"

It is. If art has the priority then it is a doing. If meditation has the priority then it is a non-doing. Just a small change makes such a tremendous change - so mysterious, so beautiful, so delicious. You have given yourself into the hands of eternity. It is a deep offering.

This is the only prayer I know of. All your other prayers are just rubbish coming from the mind.

"I notice the difference when sitting in vipassana." It it good that you have noticed the difference, that meditation is a totally different thing. "Must art and sculpture even, fade away into non-doing?" They don't fade away, they simply go through a transformation. They start having a sacredness about them; something of the divine enters in them.

"Can creativity on the material plane be truly meditative?" The question of material plane or immaterial plane does not matter. What matters is that whatever you do should be born out of meditation. It can be material - a painting is going to be material, a statue is going to be material.

If it is coming from deep meditation it will have that radiation for centuries. And anybody who knows how to sit silently a little bit and just to watch it, will receive your message. The gap of centuries will disappear - he will start feeling the same meditation in which the sculpture or the painting was created.

"Will my art remain solely subjective until the ego agrees to commit suicide?"

The ego never agrees to commit suicide.

The ego is suicide.

Because of ego you have forgotten your authentic being. Don't be concerned with the ego, be concerned with searching for your authentic being. The moment you find your real being, the ego will disappear. There is no question of suicide, because the ego is not a reality; it is only an absence of your being. Because you have not entered into your being, the shadow of the being has been misunderstood as the being itself.

So don't be worried about suicide, and don't be worried about what will happen to your ego. I can understand that every artist, every creative person has a very strong ego. Painters, poets, singers, dancers, actors - all have very strong egos. But they are unaware that their egos are not allowing their genius its total actualization. They are not friends; they are your enemies. And because you are identified with them you will never look for the real one.

To be identified with anything false is very dangerous, because then the search for the real stops.

The false has to be dropped. The false has to be understood at least as false, so that a process of search is triggered in you for the real. The real belongs to existence. You have come with it at your birth.

Ego is your nurture, not your nature. Ego has been produced by your family, by your friends, by your education, by your talents. It is just a false creation, and if you become identified - as almost everyone is identified with it - this is the greatest barrier. Disidentification with the ego will immediately give you a new insight to enter into your own being - that which is a gift of nature.

Finding it, who cares about old junk? - your ego, your thoughts, your personality; you have found the real diamonds.

And because vipassana has given you a sense of what meditation is, don't miss this opportunity.

Use that sensitivity to go even deeper. At the deepest you can go, something of immense beauty and grace will be created by your hands, but not by you.

As far as the suicide is concerned, I will take care of it - you just.... I have seen so many suicides.

My whole business is to help people to commit suicide, because unless you commit suicide as an ego, you will never find your soul.

A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his test. "I have some bad news and some worse news," says the doctor. "The bad news is that you only have twenty-four hours to live." "Oh no," says the patient. "What could possibly be worse than that?"

The doctor answers, "I have been trying to reach you since yesterday."

Don't be worried. The worst will also happen. Perhaps it has started happening, because even a small experience of the real, just a small candle in the dark night is enough to dispel all darkness.

Question 2:

Dhyan Kavish, whatever you are feeling in this moment, trust that the next moment is going to be born out of it. If it is beautiful, the next moment is going to be more beautiful. If it is nourishing, the next moment is going to be more nourishing. I have been watching you, I have been seeing in your eyes that the German is dead. You need not worry about it.

You have become a pure human being. German or Indian or Chinese or Japanese, all this is nonsense. The simple reality is that you are a human being with no adjective attached to you. I know the German glue is a little stronger, but I have been destroying so many Germans that you can call me almost an expert in killing Germans! Even the parliament of Germany is afraid.

I have not applied for any visa to enter Germany - I don't have to. Whoever wants to die comes here. This way it is easier; otherwise how am I going to find out who from all over Germany is ready to die, disappear, become a nobody? The chosen ones travel themselves.

But the German parliament must have been afraid. Their problem is that any German who comes to me never returns. And naturally, the parliament is worried - what is happening? Their young people, men and women, educated people, suddenly disappear. And even if they come back they are no longer German; they have dropped all that idiocy.

Kavish, you are sayng, "Being here with you I feel so fresh and light like a newborn child." This freshness, this lightness, this feeling of being newborn will remain with you. It is not going to disappear; it has come forever. These are qualities that once you become aware of them, you cannot lose them. They have always been within you, just you never looked at them. They are not coming from outside; they are growing within you.

"All the German heaviness is gone." That's great! "Sitting in front of You I feel totally drunk." Inform the German parliament!

"No more thoughts and worries about the future and the past. Never before was being with You so strong and fulfilling." One never knows when the right time comes. And by the right time I mean the vulnerability, the openness, when you are ready to receive, when you are not afraid, when you drop all your defenses.

"But the other night when you were talking about aloneness, a shadow came over me - the fear to be without you." Don't be worried about it. If you are open, alive, fresh, I am within you. You may be alone, but if you close your eyes you will find me there, more real than you can see with your eyes open, more real than you can see me now. There is no question of any anxiety.

"... the fear of getting stuck again in all my old worries." Once you have experienced something of the beyond, you cannot fall back. Nature has a certain law: you can go only forward, not backward.

Nature has not put any reverse gear in your consciousness.

When Ford made his first car he forgot to put in a reverse gear; so it was a very troublesome job.

Even if you had passed your house by ten feet, you had to go round for miles to come back again and stop exactly before your house. People said, "This takes more time; walking seems to be easier - at least you can go back." And then he added the reverse gear.

God has also forgotten to put in a reverse gear. You cannot go back; you cannot go back in time, in consciousness. If you are young you cannot become a child, if you are old you cannot become young. God thought He had completed the creation. And after six days He could not be found. So perhaps He does not know that man is living without a reverse gear. Perhaps He Himself does not have the reverse gear, so He cannot come back! He must be going on and on, trying to find out, "Where is my creation?"

In this vast emptiness, to find this small earth is very difficult. The earth is really very small. Our sun is thousands of times bigger than this earth, and our sun in comparison to the stars is a very mediocre sun. Those stars are thousands of times bigger. Our earth is just a small place. If you have missed it, there is not much possibility to find it again.

Kavish, I am certain you will remain fresh, light, innocent like a small child, whether you are here or in Germany.

"This shadow falls on me again and again." Don't be worried about shadows. That is just the old German which is trying again to catch hold of you. But I have not seen any sannyasin again being caught by the German ghost. That shadow is a ghost, a German ghost!

You just enjoy your innocence, your lightness, and don't take any note of these worries. They happen to everybody in the beginning. Just old companions... they don't know that you are changed, and they go on knocking on your doors. They don't know that you are no longer interested in them, that you are not going to be a host to them. But slowly, slowly they will understand.

Right now you enjoy, dance and sing as madly as possible. Seeing you dance and sing madly, all those German shadows will go back to Germany to find some member of the parliament, to tell them, "You were right to decide that this man is dangerous and should not be allowed on German land."

The German parliament is so afraid - I have never thought that Adolf Hitler has left such weaklings.

They have decided that my jet airplane cannot even land at any German airport just for refueling.

They must be really afraid!

And just two days ago I received a letter from a sannyasin who had written to the German parliament saying, "Now it is almost one year since you passed an order that Osho cannot enter in the country.

And he had not even asked you; there was no need to pass an order. You could have denied him a visa any moment. Now it is time that you should withdraw your order - it looks stupid."

But the committee that receives any appeals against the parliament has stated, "The order should remain.... the man is dangerous; he corrupts the minds of people."

But the German parliament cannot prevent me from corrupting the minds of the people. They don't know the exact word: I destroy the minds of people, so that they become simply heart - because all that is beautiful happens in the heart and all that is eternal happens in your being. Mind is just a wastepaper basket. Anything of no use you go on throwing in the mind. It has a tremendous capacity to collect... a great computer.

Kavish, you enjoy, laugh, and laugh totally. And that laughter will help you. Whenever in Germany you feel something of the German disease is entering in you, just dance and laugh and the disease will escape from you.

Germany has forgotten laughter; it has forgotten rejoicing, it has become so hard. Just for your laugh:

A man and a married woman are making love when her husband comes home unexpectedly. The poor man has no choice - the husband can come in any moment - so, naked as he is, he jumps out of the bedroom window. Outside it is cold and raining, and a group of joggers are running by.

Having nothing better to do, he joins in.

After a while a man running next to him asks, "Hey, do you always run naked?" "Yes," says the man as he keeps jogging along. "And do you always wear a condom when you run?" asked the other man.

"No," he answers, "only when it is raining."

Question 3:

Anand Trinda, it is a significant question you have asked: "A therapist once told me that we can get stuck in our feelings just as much as in the mind and that feelings too have to be dropped or gone beyond. I often wonder about this as my feelings are usually my guide in life and I feel things very intensely."

There are three centers from which all your actions come: the head, the heart, and the being. The head is the most superficial. It has to think about things - even if you fall in love the head thinks about it, am I really in love? And if it decides that yes, it seems you are in love, the head is going to propose to the woman, "I think I am in love with you."

But thinking is base. Man functions from the head. It has its utilities - it has created all the sciences, and all the technologies, and all the nuclear bombs; and perhaps is bringing a global suicide soon.

The woman functions from the heart. She cannot say, "I think I love you." It has never been heard in the whole history of humanity. She simply says, "I love you." Thinking plays no part. The heart is enough unto itself; it does not need any help from the head.

If one has to choose between the head and the heart, one should choose the heart, because all the beautiful values of life belong to the heart. The head is a good mechanic, technician, but you cannot live your life joyously just by being a mechanic, a technician, a scientist. The head has no qualities, capacities for joy, for blissfulness, for silence, for innocence, for beauty, for love, for all that makes the life rich - it is the heart.

But the therapist who told you was not wrong. You can get stuck in your heart, in your feelings too, just as people get stuck in their thoughts. But perhaps the therapist was himself not aware that there is a deeper center than heart, and that is the being - which has all the qualities of the heart and still more qualities, more riches, more treasures: blissfulness, silence, serenity, centeredness, rootedness, sensitivity, awareness... a certain insight into the godliness of existence.

First drop from your head to your heart. But don't stop there; it is only an overnight stay, a caravanserai. You can have a little rest there, but it is not the goal. Drop from the heart into the being.

And this is the secret of meditation, that wherever you are - in the head, in the heart - it doesn't matter, meditation brings you from the head, from the heart, to the being. Meditation is the way to your own center of existence, where there is no question of getting stuck. You are it. Who is going to get stuck in what? There are not two things, only you - you and your absolute glory.

But Trinda, you are a woman, and naturally afraid that your feelings are your guide in life, and you feel things very intensely. But it is easier to reach to he being from the heart than from the head. You will not lose guidance; in fact you will not need it at all. You will be so full of light, so full of clarity....

Guidance is needed by the blind. You will have new eyes to see - to see even that which is not visible to your ordinary eyes. And you will be able to feel new experiences which are not available even to the heart.

So there is nothing to be worried about. Your worry is simply that of a woman, a natural concern that feelings are your guide and you feel intensely; if you drop them then who will guide you? Then how willyou feel things intensely? You don't know there is still a deeper center in you where guidance is not needed at all, where you are the guide, and where intensity becomes total, one hundred percent.

And not only about those things that you have felt in the heart, but about universal experiences of enlightenment, of awakening, of divineness. You will not be a loser; you need not worry at all.

But a woman, after all, is a woman.

I have heard, a group of Jewish women decided to improve their intellectual level. No more talk of mates or children or sons-in-law, but only politics and social questions: Poland, El Salvador, Afghanistan, the bomb. Then one said, "And what about Red China?"

"I love it, I love it!" said Sarah, "Especially on a nice white tablecloth!"

They were trying to be very intellectual about great problems of the world, but when the words "red china" came, immediately the woman asserted - forget all about intellectuality! To a woman, red china means not the Red China that is a problem, but Sarah said, "I love it, I love it! Especially on a nice white tablecloth!"

A man was reading in the newspaper that amongst every five people in the world, one is Chinese.

The wife said, "Then we have to be very alert now. We already have four children, and I don't want any Chinese to be born to me."

The woman has her own way of feeling and thinking and looking at things. You became worried, how can you drop your feelings? You need not drop them; you simply learn the art of meditation and they will drop by themselves, just like dry leaves are dropping from the trees. When the wind blows strong... just yesterday I was sitting and the wind was blowing strong, and the dry leaves were showering like rain.

When meditation deepens in you, your thoughts, your feelings, all start disappearing. Meditation makes you a silent pool without any ripples - so silent that it looks like a mirror; you can see your face. And it takes nothing from your intelligence or from your feelings; it only makes everything more authentic, more real, more total, more pure. Intelligence reaches to its highest peak, just as love reaches to its highest peak.

To know your being and to be centered in your being you have found the meaning of life, you have found the purpose for which you have come here on this planet. The intention of existence is revealed to you.

Socrates has said, "Know thyself." In those two words are contained all the scriptures of the world.

Okay Vimal?

Yes, Osho