Question 1

Osho,

The other night you were like a master musician playing a beautiful melody on the strings of my heart. beloved master, is this your secret in letting me sing my song more and more?

 

 

Music is the only language that comes very close to silence, the only sound which is able to create the soundless. It has to be understood that music has no meaning. It is sheer joy, celebration. It is the only art that can somehow impart the inexpressible.

 

The ancientmost tradition of music is that it was born out of meditation. The people who meditated could not find any way to impart their experiences. They invented different instruments so that something can be said without creating a meaning in you but certainly a joy, a dance.

 

It must have been a tremendously valuable revelation for those who in the beginning discovered a language which is not a language. Sounds in themselves have no meaning. Meaning is man's imposition on sounds. Sounds are natural. The wind blowing through the pine trees has a sound and a music of its own. Or a river, descending from the mountain through the rocks, has its own sound and its own music.

 

It is my assumption that meditators, listening to the inner silence, must have felt the tremendous difficulty of how to share it. It was in those beginning days that music was discovered. The discovery is simple: take away the meaning from the sounds and instead of meaning, give the sounds harmony, a rhythm which penetrates to the very heart. It says nothing, but it says the unsayable too.

 

The ordinary idea of music is that it consists of sounds, but that is only half the truth -- and of lesser importance. As the music becomes deeper and deeper, it consists of silences between two sounds.

 

An ancient proverb in China is, "When the musician becomes perfect he throws away his instruments" because instruments can only create sound. The silence is created by the musician. But at the perfection, the same sounds that were creating small pieces of silence start becoming a disturbance. A strange idea, but perfectly meaningful, significant. It applies to every art. When the archer becomes perfect he throws away his bow and his arrows; just his eyes are enough to look at a flying bird and the bird will fall down. The bow and arrows were only a preparation.

 

The same applies to music, to painting, to all the arts which man has discovered. At the ultimate peak, you don't need the steps, the ladder which has helped you to reach the peak. It becomes irrelevant.

 

The classical music was devoted to silence and to meditation. A beautiful story is told about a Nabob of Lucknow. Lucknow remained for centuries the most cultured, sophisticated city in this country. Arts were respected, wisdom was highly prized. [....]

 

There are two possibilities, looking at this story: either meditators found music, or musicians found meditation. But they are so immensely and deeply connected with each other... my own experience is that because meditation is a far higher, far deeper experience, music must have been found by the meditators -- as a language to bring something from their inner dance, inner silence, to the people they loved.

 

The ancient music in the East needs not only the training for the musician, it needs immense training for the listener. Everybody cannot understand the ancient classical music. You have to be capable of falling in tune with the harmony. In a certain way you have to disappear and let only the music remain.

 

It has been the experience of all great musicians, dancers, painters, sculptors, that while they are deepest in their creativity, they are no more. Their very creativity gives them the taste of disappearing into the universal. That becomes their first acquaintance with meditation. So both are possibilities: either music has led people to the point of meditation, or meditation has tried to find a means to express the inexpressible. But in any case, music is the highest creation that man is capable of.

 

Meditation happens.

 

Music is your creativity.

 

But we have lost contact with the authentic music. And slowly slowly, as humanity has become less and less interested in the inner world, its music has become lower and lower. The contemporary music is absolutely the lowest that has ever existed. It touches you, but it touches you at your lowest center of sexuality. The contemporary music is sexual, and the classical music was spiritual. I would like my people to create music on the path of meditation -- or create music if you have found meditation, as a language to express the silence of it. [....]

 

So if you can feel in my words the sound of silence, my purpose is fulfilled. Because my words are not being used in the same way they have been used by everybody. I am using words just as instruments of music. I am not a musician, but I can create the same situation with words and the silences in between. Those who cling to my words, miss me. Because they start interpreting. They start finding contradictions, they start an agreement or disagreement, but certainly a process of judgment starts in their being. That was not my purpose. My purpose was to start a silence, a music, a fragrance in you.

 

You have to change the gestalt. From words -- which is the ordinary way humanity has used words forever, and nobody has insisted on changing the gestalt -- listen to the silences. Read between the lines and you will find a tremendous explosion of silence, music, celebration. And flowers go on growing in your being.

 

Anand Premartha, your question is, "The other night you were like a master musician, playing a beautiful melody on the strings of my heart." I am doing that every morning, every evening -- for thirty-five years. But the other night was special for you. I am a very stubborn person; I will go on hitting on your head till you get the point. Last night you got it -- now don't lose it. Because these are such subtle experiences, you can get them and you can lose them. Once you have got any insight, remember not to lose it.

 

Yes, whatever I am doing is closer to music than anything. It is not philosophy, it is not religion, it is not theology. What I am saying is not in my statements but just in those small spaces which remain utterly silent, empty.

 

But they are neither empty nor silent.

 

Once you have stumbled on those small pieces of silence and emptiness, you will be surprised that the silence is not silence; it is full of music, it is alive, it is a dance. And the emptiness is not emptiness; it is the only fullness that exists in the universe.

 

So there are two ways of listening: one is jumping from one word to another word and another is jumping from one silence to another silence. Those who are following the second way will be immensely rewarded by existence with great blissfulness, with tremendous ecstasy and with an immortality, an eternity. The treasures are incalculable. But if you are listening only to the words, you will end up at the most in a certain system of thought. This makes me sad, because I am not here to create systems of thought. Millions of people have done that and distracted people from their inwardness.

 

All thought systems exist in the mind, and all silences exist beyond the mind. My simple message to you is to transcend the mind, transcend the word.

 

In the Bible I have found so many places to argue against. From the very beginning, it does not appeal to me. The Bible says, "In the beginning there was the word, the word was with God and the word was God." I absolutely disagree with this stupid beginning. How can there be a word in the beginning? Because "word" means a sound with meaning, and meaning can be given only by someone else. The sound itself is meaningless. It would have been better if they had said, "In the beginning there was sound." But even that would not have been the perfect beginning, because even for sound to exist you need some ears. Without the ears, there are no sounds. The best and the most perfect would have been, "In the beginning there was silence." From that statement in the Bible it already starts in a wrong direction and goes on moving into that wrong direction.

 

Silence is the greatest spiritual experience.

 

And the universe consists only of silence. Silence can become expressive as sound if there is someone to listen to it, and the sound can become meaningful if someone is there to give meaning to it. But silence is absolutely and utterly pure, untouched by human hands.

 

Its purity is its godliness.

 

Its purity is what every meditator comes to know. Every meditator stands in the beginning of existence. It is not a question of time. Each moment can be transformed into the beginning of existence, if you can fall into silence. And silence does not divide people because it is not an ideology, it is an experience.

 

So whatever happened the other night to you, I have been hoping that it will happen sooner or later to everybody. I want you not to belong to any belief, not to belong to any idea, but simply to relax into the universal silence. And you will taste the sweetness of music and you will come to know that existence is not a misery but a mystery -- a mystery that can be lived, loved, but can never be made part of your knowledge. You can become part of it, but it cannot become part of you.

 

Anand Premartha, you are asking me, "Is this your secret?"

 

Yes, this is my secret.

 

This silence. [....]

 

Just be silent and you will discover an immense laughter that is going on all around the earth. Trees are laughing, birds are laughing. Except man, there seems to be nobody who is sad. This sadness is because of your clinging to the words.

 

Let your life be a life of a dancing and laughing silence, and you have entered into the only authentic temple of godliness.

 

I am not interested in what kind of ideologies you are carrying in your head. They are all bullshit. I want you to drop them all, irrespective of what they are. Let your whole being be filled with laughter. Let yourself be singing, let each fiber of your being be a part of the universal dance. To me, this is the only revolution, the only transformation which can bring this earth millions of joys.

 

It is our own stupidity that we have been listening to idiots of all kinds. And their whole purpose is to make us sad, because if they succeed in making humanity sad and serious, they have taken away the possibility of your being in tune with the tremendous festivity that surrounds you. And now that you are taken away from the universal festival, you can be exploited, enslaved, oppressed. Every kind of crime can be done to you, and you will not revolt.

 

Only laughter can be a revolt, a revolution, a transformation. Start laughing against your so-called religious pretenders, hypocrites. Start laughing about your politicians, who have been deceiving mankind for centuries. Don't pay any attention to this whole gang of criminals, and we can enter into an absolutely new era, where everybody is joyful, loving, laughing. And everybody is carrying his own guitar -- no need to carry any crosses. I want to change every cross into a guitar. Right?

 

-Osho, “Om Mani Padme Hum, #22, Q1“