God Is The Musician and We Are his Music 

 

 

 

“Man's heart is a musical instrument, it contains great music. It is asleep but it is there, waiting for the right moment to be struck, to be expressed, to be sung, to be danced. And it is through love that that moment arrives. A man without love will never know what music he has been carrying within his heart. It is only through love that that music starts becoming alive, awakened, from the potential starts becoming an actuality. Love triggers the process, love is a catalytic agent." 

 

- Osho, "Let Go!, #9"

 

 

 

 

"We are made of music. Hence if we move into anything totally, only the music is left and everything else disappears because music is the stuff we are made of; all else is arbitrary, artificial, invented. Only the music hidden in our souls is not invented; it is part of God. God is the musician and we are his music. He is the dancer and we are his dance. He is the poet and we are his poetry. He is the singer and we are his song. This is the meaning of AUM."

 

-Osho "Philosophia Ultima, #1"

 

 

 

 

Creativity

 

 

"To be creativity means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty. you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it. You love life so much that you would like to leave it a little better than you found it."

 

- Osho, "Eighty Four Thousand Poems, #23"

 

 

 

 

Sharing

 

 

"Before death knocks on your door, share - whatsoever you have. You can sing a beautiful song? - sing it, share it. You can paint a picture? - paint, share it. You can dance? - go and dance, share it. Whatsoever you have - and I have never come across a man who has not much to share. If you want to share, you have too much to share. If you don't want to share, you may have enough, more than enough, but you are poor, you don't have anything. "

 

- Osho, "A Sudden Clash of Thunder, #9"

 

 

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 Music is a device; it was invented by the buddhas 

 

 

Question 2

Osho,

I am a musician and i have come across many music teachers over the years. but now it seems that i have not only found a master but also the ultimate music teacher. is it perhaps the same thing? and could you please say something to us about music and meditation?

 

 

Music comes closest to meditation. Music is a way towards meditation and the most beautiful way. Meditation is the art of hearing the soundless sound, the art of hearing the music of silence -- what the Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping. When you are utterly silent, not a single thought passes your mind, there is not even a ripple of any feeling in your heart. Then you start, for the first time, hearing silence.

 

Silence has a music of its own. It is not dead, it is very much alive, it is tremendously alive. In fact, nothing is more alive than silence.

 

Music helps you from the outside to fall in tune with the inner. Music is a device; it was invented by the buddhas. All that is beautiful in the world, all that is valuable in the world has always been discovered by the buddhas. Only they can discover because they have traveled the inner country, the inner, immeasurable universe. Whatsoever they have found in the inner world, whatsoever they have experienced in the inner world, they have tried to make something similar on the outside for those who can only understand that which is objective, who are not yet able to enter the interiority of their own being, who are not yet even aware that there is an inner world. Devices can be created on the outside which can help.

 

Listening to great music you suddenly become silent -- with no effort. Falling in tune with the music you lose your ego with no effort. You become relaxed, you fall into a deep rest. You are alert, awake, and yet in a subtle way drunk.

 

Once it happened:

 

A great musician came to the court of a king. The musician must have been an awakened master, must have been a buddha. He said to the king, "I will play on my instruments, but you will have to fulfill one of my conditions. Unless this condition is fulfilled I cannot play."

 

The king said, "Whatsoever the condition is, it will be fulfilled. You say it." He had never thought what the condition could be: "Maybe he will ask for much money -- that can be given easily -- or for some other favor which can be given easily." The king had been waiting a long time for this man.

 

But the condition was very eccentric. The condition was: "While I am playing nobody should move his head. If anybody moves his head, his head has to be cut off. So the audience has to be informed beforehand that people should come knowing that they are playing with fire. If they start moving their heads in tune with the music, then they will lose their heads -- make it clear to everyone who comes. And surrounding the audience let at least one thousand soldiers stand with naked swords so everybody remains aware and never forgets."

 

The king was so interested in hearing the musician -- he had heard about him for years and he was not ready to lose this opportunity even at this cost. Of course, whatsoever he was demanding was simply insane, but the king had to agree. He said, "Okay, your condition will be fulfilled."

 

The whole capital was informed. Thousands of people would have come, but now they were afraid -- only one thousand people came to listen to the musician. Even seeing one thousand people come, the king was surprised: "So many lovers who are risking their lives!" And one thousand soldiers were standing with naked swords. Again it was declared, "You have to remember and go on looking at the swords -- they are standing for you. Nobody can escape." And there were people standing who would take notes -- whoever shook his head, moved his head, would not reach home alive.

 

The musician started playing, and he was such a master! After only a few minutes, a few heads started moving in tune with the master's music. The king was very much afraid. He saw heads moving, swaying -- people were getting drunk. He himself was afraid for his own head! But a tremendous desire arose in him too, he could not resist it. He himself started moving his head, he forgot all about it. What to say about the audience? The people who were standing with naked swords, many of them started moving their heads and their swords were swaying!

 

The queen was very much worried. She saw that there were going to be hundreds of people unnecessarily murdered. But sooner or later almost everybody was drunk with his music.

 

When he finished in the middle of the night, the people who had to report, they reported that "Not a single soul has remained without swaying, and we are sorry to say that we are also on the list!"

 

The king said, "Now, Master, what do you want? -- all these people butchered, murdered? I am also on the list, my wife is also on the list, my whole court is on the list!"

 

The master laughed and he said, "I was waiting for these people. These are the right people for whom I can play. Forget all about the condition! It was just a strategy to prevent those who were not ready to risk their lives, it was to prevent the cowards. These are the people for whom I will play. And not only today -- I am going to stay in this town for months together because these are MY people. They have forgotten about their lives, or even if they had remembered they could not resist. The joy was so tremendous that they were ready to go, even with the risk; they were perfectly aware. These are the people for whom I exist because these are the people who can be turned inwards. They were fully aware and yet drunk."

 

And that is the whole secret of meditation. The paradox disappears -- the paradox between drunkenness and awareness. And its first experience can happen in music more easily than in any other place, than in anything else. Music, dance... all these are devices, discovered by great awakened masters.

 

They have fallen into wrong hands.

 

To be a teacher of music is one thing -- he can teach you the technique. I am not a teacher of music -- I cannot teach you the technique -- but I can help you to listen to the inner music, and that is real music.

 

In China they have the saying: "When the musician becomes perfect he throws away his instruments" -- because they are no more needed. He can close his eyes, he can turn himself inwards and he can listen to the music that is already there and always there. And when the archer becomes perfect he throws away his bow and his arrows; there is no need for them.

 

Whenever any art is perfect it ends in meditation -- it HAS to end in meditation. If it is not leading you towards meditation then something has gone wrong.

 

That's why much of the modern art is not art, it is insanity. Much modern music is not music; it simply makes you sexually excited. It is just the opposite of real music. Real music helps you to transcend your biology, your physiology, your psychology. Real music takes you to the world of the beyond -- what Buddha calls the farther shore, even beyond the beyond.

 

Gurdjieff used to call real art "objective art." Modern art is not, in that sense, objective art. In the past the awakened masters have used all kinds of devices: painting, sculpture, music, dance, drama. Every kind of device has been used to help you, because there are different types of people who can be helped in different ways: somebody through music, somebody through painting, somebody through poetry.

 

And that's my function here: to create a buddhafield, a commune where all kinds of devices are used. But the purpose is one, the purpose is single, one-pointed. All these paths are leading you to the same goal -- to your own inner being.

 

Harisharan, you have come to the right place. I am not a teacher of music because I don't teach you the technique of music, but I am certainly the master of the inner music. I have heard it and I can help you to hear it -- not only to hear it but to be it.

 

And to be it is to be for the first time. To be it is to be reborn. To be it is to know what bliss is and benediction is.

 

- Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 12, #4"

 

 

 

Deuter(Chaitanya Hari), Image Courtesy: oshonews.com

 

 

 

 Music is nothing but a play between sound and silence. 

 

 

 

The first thing to understand is that music is a by-product of meditation. The first musicians, the pioneers, were really not trying to create music; they were trying to find some way to convey the silence, the beauty, the calmness, the soothingness that they had felt in meditation. They have worked in many ways; in fact all the arts have their origin in meditation, but music comes the closest, because music is nothing but a play between sound and silence.

 

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.

 

Those gaps are more real, closer to my experience than the words. But it is difficult for people to understand the gaps -- they can understand only words. So I have to trick them into the gaps. They come to listen to the words, but slowly, slowly they start slipping into the gaps. And finally they will find that they have been tricked: the words were irrelevant. What was really relevant was the gap between two words.

 

It has been a problem with the television people, because they have a limited time -- ten minutes, fifteen minutes at the most. And they have been asking me, "You speak so slowly, and you give so many gaps, that our fifteen minutes are just equal to five minutes. You speak only five minutes, and ten minutes is going into the gaps. Can't you speak more usually and not give so many gaps?"

 

And I had to tell them, "It is impossible, because my message is in the gaps. Words I can leave, and be silent; but gaps I cannot leave. Then there is no point in saying anything. What I am saying is those gaps; what you are listening to are the words."

 

So because I am using the same technique... not being a musician, I cannot play any instrument; there has not been time for me to learn to play any instrument. I have been involved so much with consciousness that whatever time was available to me, I have given to consciousness. So I am the most unskilled person. I cannot sculpt, I cannot write poetry, I cannot play music -- all that I can do is in some way create the same technique through words.

 

And that's why listening to music -- particularly classical music -- you may feel closer to me. You may feel very close. It does not matter what technique is used; the basis is the same.

 

All the arts have their origin in meditation, and all the arts have moved far away from meditation -- and this is a calamity. Otherwise every artist, whatever his special art, should find a way towards meditation. But it doesn't seem so.

 

On the contrary, most of the modern artists, musicians, dancers, poets, painters, sculptors, rather than reaching to meditation, end up in madness -- that is the other extreme of meditation. And the reason is because in the original sources the gaps were important, not the words. But as time passed words became more important than the gaps.

 

If you are going to print a book exactly the way I speak, it will become too lengthy and people will not be able to understand -- what is the matter, why so many gaps? So in printing you will have to bring the words closer and drop the gaps.

 

The same happened in music, the same happened in dancing. The dancer was trying to express his inner experience. He would go into a certain movement and then there would be a sudden stop, and he would become just like a statue. And that was the moment to understand.

 

-Osho, "Light on the Path, #38, Q3"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Osho on Music 

 

 

 

“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"

 

 

Are you ready to Dance and Love ?