"I have seen the same nothingness that he has seen, and, certainly, I have seen it in my own way. Buddha has his own way, I have my own way - of seeing, of being. Both ways reach the same peak, but the ways are different. My way has a little difference - little, but of profound import, remember.

These ten days were not only of silent meditation - these ten days were of music, silence, and meditation. Music is my contribution to it. Buddha would not have allowed it. On that point we would have quarreled. He would not have allowed music; he would have said that music is a disturbance. He would have insisted on pure silence, he would have said that is enough. But that is where we agree to disagree.

To me, music and meditation are two aspects of the same phenomenon. And without music, meditation lacks something; without music, meditation is a little dull, unalive.

Without meditation, music is simply noise - harmonious, but noise. Without meditation, music is an entertainment. And without music, meditation becomes more and more negative, tends to be death-oriented.

Hence my insistence that music and meditation should go together. That adds a new dimension - to both. Both are enriched by it.

Remember three M's just as you remember three R's. The first M is mathematics; mathematics is the purest science. The second M is music; music is pure art. And the third M is meditation; meditation is pure religion. Where all these three meet, you attain the trinity.

My approach is scientific. Even if I make illogical statements, I make them very very logically. Even if I assert paradoxes, they are asserted in a logical way. Whatsoever I am saying has a mathematics behind it, a method, a certain scientific approach. I am not an unscientific person. My science serves my religion; the science is not the end but it is a beautiful beginning.

And my approach is artistic, aesthetic. I cannot help you unless this energy field becomes musical. Music is pure art. And if it is joined with mathematics, it becomes a tremendously powerful instrument to penetrate into your interiority. Of course, it will not be complete unless meditation is the highest peak, the purest religion.

And we are trying to create the ultimate synthesis. This is my trinity: mathematics, music, meditation. This is my trimurti - three faces of God. You can attain to God through one face, but then your experience of God will not be so rich as it will be when you attain two faces. But it will still lack something unless you attain all the three faces.

When you know God as a trinity, when you have come through all the three dimensions, your experience, your nirvana, your enlightenment, will be the richest.

Buddha insists on meditation alone; that is one face of God. Mohammed insists on prayer, music, singing; hence the Koran has the quality of music in it. No other scripture has so much music in it as the Koran. The very word koran simply means "Recite! Sing!" That was the first revelation to Mohammed. Something from the beyond called forth and said, "Recite! Recite! Sing!"

Islam is another face of God. And there are religions which have approached God through the third M: mathematics. Jainism is the purest representative of the third approach. Mahavira speaks like Albert Einstein. It is not an accident that Mahavira was the first person in human history to talk about the theory of relativity. After twenty-five centuries, Albert Einstein was able to prove it scientifically, but Mahavira saw it in his vision.

If you read Mahavira, his statements are absolutely logical, mathematical. Jaina scriptures have no juice in them - dry, arithmetical. That is another face of God. And only three kinds of religion have existed in the world: the religions of mathematics, represented by Jainism; the religions of music, represented by Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism; and the religions of meditation, represented by Buddhism, Taoism.

My effort here is to give you a total religion, which contains all the three M's in it. It is a very ambitious adventure. It has never been tried before; hence I am going to be opposed as nobody has ever been opposed before. You are moving with a dangerous person, but the journey is going to be of tremendous beauty. Dangers, hazards don't make a journey ugly; on the contrary, they make it tremendously beautiful. All the dangers that you will have to face with me are going to give you a thrill. The journey is not going to be dull, it is going to be very alive. We are going to move towards God in such a multidimensional way that each moment of the journey is going to be precious.

I started these Buddha lectures with a ten-day silence deliberately. It was a device to start with silence - Buddha would have been very happy. He must have shrugged his shoulders a little bit because of the music, but what can I do? It can't be helped.

My religion has to be a religion of dance, love, laughter. It has to be life-oriented, it has to be life-affirmative. It has to be a love affair with life. It is not a renunciation but a rejoicing."

-Osho, “Dhammapada Vol 1, #2”

 Music born out of meditation 

Question 1

Osho,

Sex seems to be dropping me. Is music next?

Milarepa, sex is dropping so many people that the problem is not that sex is dropping you also, the problem is that many others may start picking it up! Dropping is okay; avoid picking up.

And I can understand your worry. You are asking, "Sex seems to be dropping me. Is music next?"

Music is not something biological; it is not something concerned with your chemistry or physiology. Music is not even of the mind. Music is something... a space between mind and meditation. It is one of the most mysterious phenomena. To conceive of it in intellectual terms is almost impossible for the simple reason that it is beyond mind -- but it is not yet meditation.

Music can become meditation -- it has both possibilities -- it can come down and become mind. Then you are only a technician, not a musician. You may be playing perfectly on the instruments, without any faults, but still you are only a technician. You know the technique perfectly and entirely, but it is not your heart and it is not your being; it is just your knowledge.

Music can go higher and further away from mind, and then it starts becoming closer and closer to peace and silence. One is a musician only when he understands the sound of silence, and one who understands the sound of silence is capable of creating sounds which are synonymous with silence. That is the most miraculous thing. Then the musician has come to his full flowering. Beyond this music starts the world of meditation.

In fact, as far as the East is concerned, the ancientmost sources say one thing definitively about music, and that is that it was born out of meditation. People who went deep into meditation enjoyed the silence of it, loved the peace that seems to be unfathomable. They wanted to convey that you are far more than you think you are, far bigger than you think you are; you are as big as the whole universe -- but how to say it? Words are very poor philosophical concepts, almost like beggars.

The ancient meditators tried to find some way to convey their peace, their silence, their joy, and those were the people who discovered music. Music is a by-product of meditation.

But you can go both ways: either from meditation you can come to music as an expression, a creative expression of your experience; or you can go from music to meditation, because music brings you closer and closer to meditation as music becomes immense silence, sounds merging into silence, sounds creating deeper silences than you have ever known. Then you are very close to the boundary of your meditation.

You need not be worried about music. Music is not in the same category as sex, although in the West the modern music has fallen so low that it has come very close to the category of sex. Only that music is appreciated in the West which provokes sexuality in you. Sex is the lowest point of your life energy, and if music is used to provoke sexuality, then naturally it has to fall to the same category.

Superconsciousness is the highest point of your life energy. When music reaches superconsciousness, it provokes within you unknown territories, unexplored skies. It can become a door to the divine. Just as it can become a door to the animal on the lowest, on the highest it can become the door to the divine.

Man is only a bridge to be passed. Man is only a bridge between the animal and the divine. You should not make your house on the bridge -- bridges are not for making houses on -- you have to pass on, from this shore to that further shore.

Your fear that perhaps music is going to be the next to be dropped comes from your Western conditioning, because in the West only that music is appreciated which is sexual. The West has completely forgotten its own great musicians who have almost touched the superconscious. But even the greatest musicians in the West could not go beyond life energies, they could not reach to the cosmic energies. [....]

Milarepa, when music becomes perfect it does not drop; you become music itself. Your every gesture, your eyes, your hands, your feet, your whole being starts throbbing into a music which is in tune with the universal music. Don't be worried about it.

-Osho, “Satyam Shivam Sundram, #22, Q1”