Nov 24, 2009, 12.00am IST
OSHO.
All creativity is a deep suffering, unless your creativity does not come out of the mind, but out of meditation.
French painter Paul Gaugin lived the last few years of his life on an island in the South Pacific. Shortly before his death, he finished his last masterpiece, entitled Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? He wrote: “I have put all my energies into this work before dying - a passion so painful, a vision so clear.” Osho, is there any more you can say about the role of creativity?
Paul Gaugin had to suffer just the way every creator suffers. Creativity is almost like pregnancy. The mother goes for nine months into deep troubled waters, and even after the birth of the child she is not free of responsibility. All creativity is a deep suffering, unless your creativity does not come out of the mind, but out of meditation. When it comes out of meditation, creativity is sharing the joy, sharing the blissfulness that you have.
Mind has no joy it is really a wound, very painful.
Gaugin had no idea of any meditation, but he had a tremendous passion, almost a madness to create. And just to create, he dropped out of society, forgot all about his wife and children and responsibilities. He was possessed by the idea of creating. The possession was so total that he could brook no distraction. But when you are possessed by something, you are working almost as a slave, and slavery cannot bring blissfulness.
All the creators in the West have passed through long years of suffering. Many of them have been forced to live in madhouses, and many of them have committed suicide. But still the western creator, either of meditation or of music, of painting or of dance, has not become aware of why he has to suffer.
In the East, the situation is totally different - not a single creator has suffered. In fact only the creators have enjoyed life to its fullest. Not a single creator has been put into a madhouse, not a single creator has committed suicide; but creators have moved deeper into meditation, and many of them have become mystics. From painting, from music, from dance, they have moved deeper into their own being.
So learn to be more meditative, and let your creativity be secondary to your meditativeness. Then you will have a totally different state of being - that of ecstasy; and out of ecstasy, whatever is created has also some flavour of it.
In the West, perhaps Gurdjieff is the only man who has divided art into two sections: objective and subjective art. Subjective art is from the mind, and is out of anguish. Objective art - the Taj Mahal, the caves of Ellora and Ajanta, the temples of Khajuraho - has come from meditative people. Out of their love, out of their silence, they wanted to share; it is their contribution to the world.
The western artist has lived under a heavy burden. It is time to be aware that there is something more beyond mind. First reach that beyond, and then you can create stars; and they will not only be a great joy to you, they will also be a great joy for those who see them.
An objective piece of art like the Taj Mahal is not just to be seen, but to be lived - and then you will be in a certain way connected with the creators of that beautiful architecture. It was created by Sufi masters. Its very shape somehow creates within you a new blissful space. One has to meditate on it - it may be that thousands of years have passed between the creator of that piece and you. Suddenly that distance disappears; you become part of that creative joy, of that creative dance.
Excerpted from The Golden Future. Courtesy: Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com
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