Painting from no-mind / Tourists profaning sacred sites

Darshans

Osho talks in darshan to an art professor: about Objective Art and about banning tourists from sacred places, unless they meditate first.

Osho in darshan

I like your paintings very much. Meditate and do a few groups. Something new will arise out of the meditations… because painting can come out of the mind, can be beautiful, but cannot have that depth which it will have if it comes through meditation, when it comes from no-mind. When it doesn’t come from you, when you are just a vehicle, a hollow bamboo, just an instrument in the hands of the divine or the whole, then painting has a totally different dimension to it.

Gurdjieff used to call it ‘objective art’, because it will not have any impact from your mind, from your subjectivity; it will be free of you. It will not be a projection of your desires, memories, imagination, conditioning. It will be completely free of you, and then it has tremendous beauty.

There are still a few things in the world which belong to the dimension of the objective art. Just seeing the piece of objective art, whatsoever it is – sculpture, architecture, painting, poetry, a parable – whatsoever it is, just by seeing it, listening to it, being with it, you start disappearing into the no-mind.

For example, the Taj Mahal is an example of objective art. When the moon is full just meditate on it. Just sit silently and look at it, and something starts disappearing in you. A moment comes soon when you are not and the observer has become the observed. It is a piece of Sufi art. Tourists will never understand it because they will not give time to it. The whole day people are passing in the Taj Mahal, coming and going — the whole day. If it was in my hands I would prevent these people entering the Taj Mahal unless they are prepared to meditate for a few hours. That should be the entry fee; otherwise they should not be allowed. It is profaning something sacred. It has to be approached in a certain attitude, in a prayerful attitude, at a certain time.

When the moon is full – the full-moon night is the night for the Taj Mahal – exactly in the middle of the night when the moon is just on the top of the Taj Mahal, sit for one hour looking at it and you will disappear, and you will never be the same person again.

So are the caves of Ajanta and Ellora, and the temples of Khajuraho and Konarak and the pyramids of Egypt. They were not just mind things; they were created by people for posterity to meditate on. Music is perfect when the listener reaches the same state of mind or no-mind as was the state of the musician when he created it. Only then is it successful; otherwise it is not successful.

Much potential is in you. Much more is to come; what you have done is just a preface. And always remember that – that whatsoever one has done is always a preface, because there is no end to our potential; it is inexhaustible. And the more you share it with the world, the more you will be given.

Osho, Hallelujah! Ch 30

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