Osho on Music

 

 

 

“To the ordinary musician the sound is important. To the master musician the silence is important: he uses sound only to create silence. He raises sound to a high pitch and then drops it so suddenly that you fall into a deep silence. In the East the classical music is absolutely devoted to meditation. It has not forgotten its origin. But the origin must have been thousands of years back. There is no written record about it, so whatever I am saying is according to my inner experience. I have felt it, that I use language also in the same way... words to create moments of wordlessness. Basically it is the same technique. So it is possible: listening to music you may remember me. You may feel close to me, although I am not a musician. There is no superficial connection between me and music, but there is something deeply connected. The musician is using notes of music to create periods of silence. I am using words to create gaps.”

 

- Osho, "Light on the Path, #38"

 

 

 

“When for the first time you fall in love, you meet the opposite. Immediately, it is as if you have got wings, you can fly; poetry arises in your heart. What is happening? The opposite has created something in you. Silence alone is not very beautiful, sound alone is not very beautiful, but the meeting of sound and silence is very, very beautiful -- that is music. The meeting of silence and sound is music.”

 

- Osho, "The Hidden Harmony, #8"

 

 

 

“Music comes next to silence, but the difference is very big. And it is not that all music necessarily comes close to it. In the name of music, contemporary idiots are doing something which goes even farther away from silence -- from Beatles to jazz to Talking Heads. It is not music; it is simply making noise! It is simply disturbing the silence. In the East, music has been always accepted as a spiritual phenomenon. If your music cannot create silence in the people who are listening, it is not music. If your music does not become an unmoving no-mind in the people of your audience, it is not music. It is just making noise.”

 

- Osho, "The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, #18"

 

 

 

“A musician can easily become a meditator, he is very close. There is nothing closer to meditation than music -- wordless, meaningless, but tremendously significant. It says nothing but shows much, expresses nothing but brings to you a great splendor. From musician move towards the mystic. The day your music consists only of silence, you have arrived home.”

 

- Osho, "The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, #21"

 

 

 

“Even a man like Picasso is not sane -- very intelligent but not sane. The paintings show his mind. They are nightmarish. They don't have the beauty of the classical art. It is just like jazz music, which is insane and cannot be compared to classical music. Classical music has tremendous sanity. It can make even an insane person sane. Just listening to classical music, he may calm down. But jazz -- even a sane person may start feeling a jerk.”

 

- Osho, "The Last Testament, Vol 3, #30"

 

 

 

“Compared to classical music, jazz music is in the lowest category, because rather than creating a spirituality in you it simply activates your sexuality. The great classical music takes you higher, beyond your mind, to silences which can give you a taste of meditation, a taste of existence.”

 

- Osho, "Hari Om Tat Sat, #9"

 

 

 

“Music can be understood only by those who have a musical ear. And those who have a musical ear should think themselves fortunate because beyond music, just one step more, they enter the world of meditation, silence. Silence is the ultimate music.”

 

- Osho, "The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, #18"

 

 

 

“If you want to enjoy classical Indian music you will have to learn. You cannot just go and enjoy it, it needs a certain preparation in you, it needs a certain receptivity in you. It is not vulgar. It needs a certain understanding in you... a deep understanding of sounds and silence -- because music consists of sound and silence. It is not only sound, it contains silence in it.”

 

- Osho, "The Diamond Sutra, #8"

 

 

 

“I am not teaching you anything at all. I am simply preparing you to listen to my silence. Certainly teaching can be used to create silence, just as sound can be used to create silence. But the sound is not the real music... the real music is between the sounds, the gaps, the intervals.”

 

- Osho, "The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, #5"

 

 

 

“When the dancer disappears and only the dance remains, it is meditation. If the dancer is there then it is only dance, not meditation. When the singer disappears and only the song remains, it is meditation. When the musician is not found and only music remains, then it is meditation.”

 

- Osho, "The Guest, #6"

 

 

 

“To understand classical music is possible only if you learn -- and it is a long learning. It is not like jazz music, for which no learning is needed. Even monkeys can understand jazz -- in fact, only monkeys understand it. It is not music, just a few crackpots making all kinds of noises, and you think it is music. You will find better music in a waterfall, or when the wind blows through the pine trees, or simply when you walk in the forest in autumn on dry leaves, and sounds are created. But to understand that, you will need to be free from hunger, free from poverty, free from all kinds of prejudices.”

 

- Osho, "From Death to Deathlessness, #22"

 

 

 

“First the bodily needs have to be fulfilled. If they are not fulfilled you will not have higher needs arising -- impossible. The hungry person cannot think of music. If you start playing on the guitar before a hungry person, there is every possibility that he may retaliate in anger. He may throw your guitar, he may break your guitar, because it is insulting, it is humiliating.”

 

- Osho, "The Guest, #12"

 

 

 

“Remaining uncreative is almost a sin, because you exist and you don't contribute. You eat, you occupy space, and you don't contribute anything. My sannyasins have to be creators. And when you are in deep creativity you are close to God. That's what prayer really is, that's what meditation is. God is the creator, and if you are not creators you will be far away from God. God knows only one language, the language of creativity. That's why when you compose music, when you are utterly lost in it, something of the divine starts filtering out of your being. That is the joy of creativity, that's the ecstasy — svaha! 

 

- Osho, "The Heart Sutra, #10"

 

 

 

“Music is not property; it is art, it is love. It is devotion, it is prayer. You cannot possess it.”

 

- Osho, "The Hidden Splendor, #23"

 

 

 

“You cannot taste food the way I taste. I can say it because once I was also a camel like you, so I know both kinds of taste. When I see a sunset you may be standing by my side, but you cannot see it; your eyes have lost their sensitivity. Listening to Mozart you may fall asleep, but listening to jazz music you start jumping, shouting, screaming. Jazz is simply crazy! It is not music. These Beatles are really beetles, not human beings, but they appeal to you. To understand the classical music of the East you will need very sensuous ears, very trained, disciplined; the music is so subtle.”

 

- Osho, "From Death to Deathlessness, #10"

 

 

 

“In fact, the greatest music in the world is nothing but an echo of the inner music. Whenever a musician comes closer to that music, great music is born. Only very few have reached close to it: a Tansen, a Baiju Bawara, a Beethoven, a Mozart, a Wagner. Only very few have come close to it, but whenever some music comes close to it, resembles it, it has something great in it. The modern trends in music are far away from it: they are more noisy, less musical. Jazz and other music is more sexual, less spiritual. They are loud. They keep your mind occupied, certainly; they are so loud that you have to remain occupied.

 

People go on listening to the radio, to the television, at full volume, as loud as possible, blaring, so that they need not think, so that they need not be worried, so that they remain occupied. The noise is so much, you cannot think -- and they are tired of thinking, tired of worrying. People are glued to their chairs for hours listening to just stupid noise; it is not music at all. Music, to be worthy of being called music, has to be meditative. If it brings meditation to you, if it brings silence; if it fills you with silence, if it reminds you of the soundless sound inside you, then only is it real music. Otherwise it is a false coin.”

 

- Osho, "The Guest, #13"

 

 

 

“You can try one beautiful experiment: just put some sand on a plate and then when somebody is playing music, put your plate with the sand on top of it. You will be surprised to see that every sound makes a change in the pattern of the sand on the plate. It goes on changing with every sound. Classical music will put all the sand in a very silent, very harmonious state; it will create a pattern of harmony. The same sand, the same plate and any stupid kind of modern music -- from jazz to the skinheads -- and you will be surprised that your sand is in a chaos. It loses all harmony, it loses all peacefulness, and patterns are created which show immediately to anybody disharmony, discord. A man of silence moves with a certain field of energy around him, and if you are receptive, his vibe starts touching your heart.”

 

- Osho, "The Invitation, #14"

 

 

 

“AUM means exactly what Zen people call "the sound of one hand clapping". AUM is the innermost music of your being. When all the thoughts and desires and memories have gone, have disappeared, and the mind is absolutely quiet and silent, there is no noise inside, you start hearing a tremendously beautiful music which does not consist of any meaning. It is pure music without any meaning, gives you great joy, fills you with celebration, makes you dance. You would like to shout "Alleluia!" But the music itself has no meaning; it is pure music, not polluted by any meaning. AUM represents that inner music, that inner harmony, that inner humming sound which happens when your body, your mind, your soul are functioning together in deep accord, when the visible and the invisible, the manifest and the unmanifest are dancing together.”

 

- Osho, "I Am That, #1"

 

 

 

“AUM represents the music of existence, the soundless sound, the sound of silence, when your whole being hums with joy. Aum represents the ultimate harmony, what Heraclitus calls "the hidden harmony". To become one with this music of existence is to attain flowering, fulfillment.”

 

- Osho,  "I Am That, #5"

 

 

 

“This fact has to be meditated upon. A musician creates music, hence his sexual energy is used in a non-sexual way. A dancer creates dance, he need not create children. He becomes a creator of something higher -- what is the need to create the lower? Even animals can create children; that is nothing special to man. In fact, animals are far more productive -- even mosquitoes can defeat you! That is nothing special to you. Now there are two ways: either repress sex -- as has been done by all the so-called religious traditions of the world -- or transform it.

 

I am for transformation, hence I teach my sannyasins to be creative. Create music, create poetry, create painting, create pottery, sculpture -- create something! Whatsoever you do, do it with great creativeness, bring something new into existence, and your sex will be fulfilled on a higher plane and there will be no repression. Let your sex become more and more love and less and less lust. And then finally let your love also become a little higher -- that is prayer. Lust is the lowest form of sex, love higher than sex, and prayer is the ultimate transformation.”

 

- Osho, "I Am That, #14"

 

 

 

“Om is the silent sound, when the mind stops all chattering and you enter into the world of no-mind. The music of no-mind is something closer to Om. It is not exactly Om, but Om comes very close to that subtle sound.”

 

- Osho, "The Language of Existence, #8"

 

 

 

“Existence can sing any song that it wants; the flute does not interfere. The flute allows existence to commune with those who are capable of listening to the music that is flowing through it.”

 

- Osho, "The Language of Existence, #9"

 

 

 

“In Indian music there are ragas. A raga is a certain type of music for a certain period of time. For example, for the morning, one raga; for the evening, another; for the middle of the night, another. Around the clock those ragas are played, but each has its own time. And it is really strange, that if you play the raga that is meant to be played in the early morning, in the evening, it does not create the same climax within you. The same man is playing, but something is missing.

 

It is just like at sunrise when the birds start singing and the flowers open up. At sunset the birds stop singing, the flowers start closing. Existence is going into rest, so there is a different music for this moment which will be in tune with the whole existence. There is a different tune for the morning Because the sun is rising, your music should be harmonious with the rising energy, the wakening energy of existence.”

 

- Osho, "The Last Testament, Vol 1, #11"

 

 

 

“If a person is hungry, how can he understand music? It is sheer absurdity to ask him to listen to classical music when he is hungry. Or to tell him to meditate or to sit in zazen. He cannot think anything about Buddha, cannot think anything about God or Jesus. He cannot meditate, his mind will flicker and waver; it will go again and again to his empty stomach. No, he cannot love poetry and he cannot love music when the first needs are unfulfilled. Give him fulfillment in the first, primary needs -- food, shelter, love -- and then suddenly the energy is released from the lower world and he will start reading poetry, listening to music; he will enjoy dancing. Now higher needs are arising: he would like to paint or sculpt. These are luxuries. They only come into existence when lower needs are fulfilled. And when these higher needs are also fulfilled -- you have loved music, listened to music; you have loved poetry, enjoyed it; you have painted, danced -- one day you will see a new realm of needs is arising called the ultimate needs: meditation, God, prayer.”

 

- Osho, "Dang Dang Doko Dang, #10"

 

 

 

“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.”

 

- Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3, #9"