Osho on Tantra Temples in Khajuraho

 

 

The ancient art was not only art; it was, deep down, mysticism. Deep down, it was out of meditation. It was objective, in Gurdjieff's terminology. It was made so that if somebody meditates over it, he starts falling into those depths where God lives.

 

Khajuraho or Konarak -- if you meditate there, you will know what the Tantra masters were doing. They were creating in stone something that is felt in the ultimate orgasmic joy. It was the most difficult thing to do, to bring ecstasy into the stone. And if the stone can show the ecstasy, then everybody can move into that ecstasy easily.

 

But people who go to Khajuraho are foolish people. They look either at Khajuraho sculpture as obscene -- then they miss the whole point, then they are seeing something which is within their own unconscious; or they are too moralistic -- then they don't meditate on any statues, they are in a hurry to get out of the temple somehow, they just throw glances.

 

Khajuraho sculpture is not just to see, it is for meditation. Sit silently and meditate for hours. If one goes to Khajuraho, one should live at least for three months there, so he can meditate on each possible inner posture of orgasmic joy. And then, slowly slowly, the at-onement, slowly slowly, the harmony; then suddenly you are transported into another world -- the world of those mystics who created this temple. This is objective art.

 

So too is the Taj Mahal. On a fullmoon night, if you sit silently by the side of it, not being bothered about the history of the Taj Mahal and who created it and why -- those are all nonsense, irrelevant facts, they don't matter: Shah Jahan and his beloved, and his memory of his beloved, he created it.... Don't be bothered by the guides; tip them before they start torturing you, and get rid of them!

Shah Jahan has nothing to do with the Taj Mahal, in fact. Yes, he created it, he created it as a memorial for his wife, but he is not the essential source of it. The essential source is in the Sufi way of life, it is in Sufism. Basically it was created by Sufi masters; Shah Jahan was just instrumental. The Sufi masters have created something of immense value. If you silently sit in the full moon night just looking at the Taj Mahal, sometimes with open eyes and sometimes with closed eyes, slowly slowly you will feel something that you have never felt before. Sufis called it zikr, remembrance of God.

The beauty of the Taj Mahal will remind you of those realms from where all beauty, all benediction comes. You will become attuned with the Sufi way of remembering God: beauty is God.

Sarjano, don't try to repress this urge. Create in any way that suits you. My message has to be delivered in all possible mediums.

 

-Osho, "The Book of Wisdom, #24, Q1"

 

 

 

 

Do not be a lover standing aloof, outside. Become loving and move into eternity. When you are loving someone, are you there as the lover? If you are there, then you are in time and love is just false, just pseudo. If you are still there and you can say, "I am," then you can be physically near but spiritually you are poles apart.

While in love, YOU must not be -- only love, only loving. Become loving. While caressing your lover or beloved become the caress. While kissing, do not be the kisser or the kissed -- be the kiss. Forget the ego completely, dissolve it into the act. Move into the act so deeply that the actor is no more. And if you cannot move into love, it is difficult to move into eating or walking -- very difficult, because love is the easiest approach for dissolving the ego. That is why those who are egoists cannot love. They may talk about it, they may sing about it, they may write about it, but they cannot love. The ego cannot love!

Shiva says, become loving. When you are in the embrace, become the embrace, become the kiss.

Forget yourself so totally that you can say, ”I am no more. Only love exists.” Then the heart is not beating but love is beating. Then the blood is not circulating, love is circulating. And eyes are not seeing, love is seeing. Then hands are not moving to touch, love is moving to touch.

Become love and enter everlasting life. Love suddenly changes your dimension. You are thrown out of time and you are facing eternity. Love can become a deep meditation – the deepest possible.

Lovers have known sometimes what saints have not known. And lovers have touched that center which many yogis have missed. But it will be just a glimpse unless you transform your love into meditation. Tantra means this: the transformation of love into meditation. And now you can understand why tantra talks so much about love and sex. Why? Because love is the easiest natural door from where you can transcend this world, this horizontal dimension.

Look at Shiva with his consort, Devi. Look at them! They don’t seem to be two – they are one.

The oneness is so deep that it has even gone into symbols. We all have seen the Shivalinga. It is a phallic symbol – Shiva’s sex organ – but it is not alone, it is based in Devi’s vagina. The Hindus of the old days were very daring. Now when you see a Shivalinga you never remember that it is a phallic symbol. We have forgotten; we have tried to forget it completely.

Jung remembers in his autobiography, in his memoirs, a very beautiful and funny incident. He came to India and went to see Konark, and in the temple of Konark there are many, many Shivalingas,

many phallic symbols. The pundit who was taking him around explained everything to him except the Shivalingas. And they were so many, it was difficult to escape this. Jung was well aware, but just to tease the pundit he went on asking, ”But what are these?” So the pundit at last said into his ear,
in Jung’s ear, ”Do not ask me here, I will tell you afterwards. This is a private thing.”

Jung must have laughed inside – these are the Hindus of today. Then outside the temple the pundit came near and said, ”It was not good of you to ask before others. I will tell you now. It is a secret.”

And then again in Jung’s ear he said, ”They are our private parts.”

When Jung went back, he met one great scholar – a scholar of oriental thought, mythology, philosophy – Heinrich Zimmer. He related this anecdote to Zimmer. Zimmer was one of the most gifted minds who ever tried to penetrate Indian thought and he was a lover of India and of its ways of thinking – of the oriental non-logical, mystic approach toward life. When he heard this from Jung, he laughed and said, ”This is good for a change. I have always heard about great Indians – Buddha, Krishna, Mahavir. What you relate says something not about any great Indians, but about Indians.”

Love for Shiva is the great gate. And for him sex is not something to be condemned. For him sex is the seed and love is the flowering of it, and if you condemn the seed you condemn the flower. Sex can become love. If it never becomes love then it is crippled. Condemn the crippledness, not the sex. Love must flower, sex must become love. If it is not becoming it is not the fault of sex, it is your fault.

 

Sex must not remain sex; that is the tantra teaching. It must be transformed into love. And love also must not remain love. It must be transformed into light, into meditative experience, into the last, ultimate mystic peak. How to transform love? Be the act and forget the actor. While loving, be love -- simply love. Then it is not your love or my love or anybody else's -- it is simply LOVE. When you are not there, when you are in the hands of the ultimate source, or current, when you are in love, it is not you who is in love. When the love has engulfed you, you have disappeared; you have just become a flowing energy.

 

-Osho, "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1,  #7, Q1"

 

 

 

 

My own analysis of Indian history is that in the past India w as not sexually repressed. Those were the days when temples like Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri, were built -- India was not sexually repressed. In spite of the few so-called mahatmas, the greater part of the country was sexually satisfied; there was a softness, a loving quality, a grace. It was difficult for India to fight. For what? Just think of yourself: if you want to fight, you will have to starve yourself sexually for a few days. You can ask Mohammed Ali and other boxers: before they fight, for a few days they have to become celibates. That's a must! You can ask the Olympic competitors: before they participate in Olympic competitions, for a few days they have to starve themselves sexually. It gives a thrust, it gives great violence -- it makes you capable of fighting. You run faster, you attack faster, because the energy is boiling within. Hence the soldier has been repressed.

 

-Osho, "The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty, #13"
 

 

 

 

A man who cannot love cannot be creative in any sense. Why should he make a beautiful statue of a woman or a man? Why should he make beautiful statues of women in Khajuraho in India?

I am aware of all the best sculptures around the world: nothing is comparable to Khajuraho. Thousands of beautiful women in one temple… and there are thirty temples still in perfect shape. There used to be one hundred temples. Seventy temples are in ruins, but in those ruins also you can find beautiful pieces.

 

In one temple, thousands of women, men, loving each other, hugging each other…. You can see that the stones have become alive, you can see that the stones can speak. You can see that nature has not been able to create such beautiful women as those unknown artists have done.

 

But if stone can be made so beautiful, so alive that it seems the woman is just going to come out, that she is just going to start breathing again, then why can't we improve on humanity? There is no need for ugly people. It is our fault and our responsibility.

 

-Osho, "From Bondage to Freedom, #11, Q2"

 

 

 

 

Art was inventing objectively, and the so-called religion was inventing subjectively. They could join together very easily because their game was the same. And they joined hands all over the world. Art served the so-called religion for centuries. The beautiful churches, synagogues, temples -- for thousands of years art was doing nothing but serving religion.

 

If you see the temples of Khajuraho in India…. Once there were one thousand temples in that place; now only ruins are there, but twenty or thirty temples are still intact, have survived. Just to see one temple you will need the whole day. It is so full of art, every nook and corner. It must have taken hundreds of years for thousands of sculptors to make one temple.

 

You cannot find a single inch of space in the whole temple which has not been artistically created. One temple has thousands of statues on the outside of the temple, and that is the same about the remaining other thirty, and the same must have been true about the ruins of one thousand temples. Even in the ruins you can find treasures of art. I don’t think there has ever been such beauty created out of stone anywhere else in the world.

 

The structure of every temple is almost the same. On the outer side of the temple, the outer wall, there are what are called mithun statues — men and women naked, loving, making love, in all the possible postures one can imagine or dream of. The only posture that is missing is known in India as the missionary posture — man on top of woman: only that is missing — that was brought by Christian missionaries.

 

Otherwise the whole idea, to the Indian mind, looked ugly — that the man should be on top of the woman. Seems to be unfair. The woman is more fragile, and this beast is on top of the beauty. No, Indians have never thought of that posture as human. In India it is known as the missionary posture because the first time they saw it, it was Christian missionaries in that posture; otherwise they had no idea that this could be done.

 

But, except that, you will find all kinds of postures, because in India sexology has existed at least for five thousand years. The oldest sexual scripture is five thousand years old — Vatsyayana’s Kamasutras. And in the time of Vatsyayana, writing sutras on sex — kama means sex — maxims for sex, guidelines for sex, was not thought to be a bad act; Vatsyayana is respected as one of the great seers of India, and it is said that only a seer like Vatsyayana could have given those beautiful sutras. They reveal the intricacies and the mysteries of the energy of sex, and how it can be transformed.

 

These temples in Khajuraho have, on the outer side, beautiful women, beautiful men, and all in love postures. Inside there are no love postures. Inside you will find the temple empty, not even a statue of God. The idea is that unless you pass through your sexuality with full awareness, in all its phases, in all its dimensions — unless you come to a point when sex has no meaning for you… only then you enter the temple. Otherwise you are outside the temple, your interest is there.

 

So that was a symbol that if you are still interested in sex, then the temple is not for you. But the message is not against sex; it is the outer wall of the temple, the temple is made of it, and you have to pass through the door and go beyond. And the beyond is nothing but utter emptiness.

 

How many artists, craftsmen, sculptors, were employed to create one thousand temples, a whole city of temples, how many years it took! -- and this is not only one place: there is Ajanta, a group of caves which Buddhists created. The whole mountain... for miles they have carved caves inside the mountain. And inside the caves you will find tremendous work of art, everything is beautiful. Buddha's whole life in stone.... The first cave you enter, you find the birth of Buddha. And those are not small caves; each cave is at least four times bigger than this room.

 

They have been carved in solid stone.

The whole life of Buddha slowly unfolds in each cave, and in the last cave Buddha is sleeping. The statue must be as long as this room. It is the last moment of his life, when he asked his disciples, "If you have to ask any questions, ask me; otherwise I am going into eternal sleep -- forever." He has not even a pillow, just his hand used as a pillow. But such a huge statue, and so beautiful!

There are the Ellora caves, again carved into the mountains. There are Hindu temples in Jagganath Puri, in Konarak. You cannot imagine for centuries what art has been doing. The beautiful cathedrals of Europe, and all the great artists... Michelangelo -- what were these people doing? They were serving religion.

There was never a conflict anywhere in the world between religion and art. To me that signifies that the religion was pseudo; both were fictitious. There was no intrinsic opposition, they were moving in the same line of invention. Of course the artist was doing a far more authentic job, far more sincere than the priest, because what he was inventing was absolute fiction. There was no ground for it. His God was fiction, his heaven and hell were fiction. And these fictions have to be according to different people, where the religion existed.

 

-Osho, "From Unconciousness to Consciousness, #19, Q1"