According to Osho, you can’t master music and simultaneously maintain deliberate self-awareness: total absorption dissolves the watcher, while watching shatters the music. Choose one horse. For musical mastery, disappear into sound—let the doer drop, and the divine plays through you. If you choose awareness, treat music as an object of witnessing, but accept it won’t reach music’s deepest heights.
You can’t be lost in music and also watch yourself; for great music, forget yourself—if you prefer awareness, just observe the music and accept less artistic peak.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
The second question you have asked is: You are a musician—how to master music while remaining aware? Or, how to develop awareness and music side by side?
This is a slightly intricate matter. Because when you lose yourself in music, awareness will be forgotten. When you become totally absorbed in music, who will be left to be aware? And when you are aware, the music will shatter and fall apart. In trying to join two opposing things, you will land yourself in difficulty. There will be a lot of strain and inner tug-of-war. Choose any one thing; it is enough. Riding two boats is not good; riding two horses is not good. Try all you want—there will be danger. Music is enough; dive in utterly. Dive in so totally that you no longer even know there is a musician—only music remains. And the doors of the divine will open. It has many doors. It is a good fortune that it doesn’t have only one big gate; otherwise there would be a great crowd. It would be a…
Osho, say something about our music so that we can do some good work. Although the effort in this direction is a bit lacking...
The effort is very little—and in truth, all things, all arts, once carried a message behind them. Now there is no message. Now the concern is only this: how can man be exploited through the medium? For the first time everything has been put up in the marketplace—everything. There were a few things that always stood outside the market, and for thousands of years many people labored to keep some things outside. In this life at least, there should be something beyond the market; if everything is for sale, life becomes pitiable. With great effort, people tried for centuries to keep some things completely outside the market. But in these last hundred years, everything has been dragged into it—everything! Naturally, when you bring things into the market, they lose those heights that are possible only outside the market. And for the first time… until now, art never worried whether you…
Beloved master, 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?
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…
15. Intone a sound, as aum, slowly. As sound enters soundfulness, so do you.
16. IN THE BEGINNING AND GRADUAL REFINEMENT OF THE SOUND OF ANY LETTER, AWAKE. 17. WHILE LISTENING TO STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, HEAR THEIR COMPOSITE CENTRAL SOUND; THUS OMNIPRESENCE. Sankya philosophy says that mind cannot be used: just understand this and take a jump. But yoga says this is impossible. Even this understanding is to be done by mind. Even with this understanding -- that you cannot use mind, that no technique will be of help, that every technique will become a hindrance and whatsoever you do will create a new conditioning -- you will still be using mind, you will move within mind. This too has to be understood by mind. So yoga says there is no way in which mind is not used; mind will have to be used. It should not be used positively, it should be used negatively. It should not be used in such a way that…
Beloved master, the other night you were like a master musician playing a beautiful melody on the strings of my heart. Beloved master, is this your secret in letting me sing my song more and more?
The Jesse James Gang holds up a train in the Wild West. When they have overpowered the guards, Jesse and the gang burst into the passenger compartment. "Okay!" says Jesse. "You folks had better get ready, we are going to rob all the men and rape all the women." "Look here, you outlaw," says a pretty young woman, "you can go ahead and try to rape me, but you'd better not lay a finger on my old aunt Sally." "You hold your tongue, young lady," says old Sally. "Jesse knows what he's doing." Alvin Pimpleburger turns sixteen years old, so his proud father gives him twenty dollars and sends him off to the local whorehouse. On his way into town, Alvin passes his grandmother's house and she calls him in. He explains where he is going, and his granny insists that he saves the twenty dollars and makes love to…