You can skip fancy art, but you must awaken your own sensitivity and inner music to truly grow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, I never did get turned on by classical music, and art galleries bored me silly. So, is it possible to go from the first layer, the head, to the third layer, the center, and sort of bypass all this aesthetic garbage?
If you are afraid of death, tortured by the idea of death, if you have nightmares about death, and you can paint many paintings of death, you will get rid of those ideas. You have brought them to the conscious from the unconscious. Anything that is brought to the conscious from the unconscious, you become free of it. But humanity has been doing just the opposite. We have been told for centuries to throw things from the conscious to the unconscious -- that's what repression is. Yes, in a way, you appear to have got free of them, but not really. In fact, they have gone deeper in you, they have sunk deeper in you. They will trouble you even more. Now they will control you from the unconscious and you will not even be aware of them. The whole approach of psychoanalysis is against repression: bring all that is…
What about art and enlightenment? When you are creating a poem, a painting sculpture, music, you can feel very close to the meditative state. Yet, it is not pure nothing-ness -- because it has an end, a goal. It also enhances the ego. Won't you ultimately have to transcend this kind of creativity?
ART DEPENDS ON YOU. If you are pathological, your art will be pathological. If you are enlightened, your art will be enlightened. The art carries your quality. If you go to Ajanta, Ellora or Khajuraho, you will find a totally different kind of art. If you listen to classical music, you will find a different quality of art. If you listen to modern music, a different kind of art will be found there. If you see Picasso's paintings, they ARE pathological. Something is ill -- something is ill in Picasso and something is ill in the world that Picasso is going to represent in those works of art. Never keep a Picasso painting in your bedroom, otherwise you will have nightmares. It is very representative of this society. The society is ill, neurotic, but the art depends on you. The art does not descend out of the blue, it comes…
Beloved Osho, when I'm not near you physically, music seems to be the easiest way to feel your love. Sometimes, listening to classical music, it touches me so deeply that there comes a moment when I feel I cannot take in more joy. Suddenly I remember you, and all the excitement falls into a greater depth, more calm, silent, soothing. Now there is no more boundary to joy... And so much gratitude.
"You have beautiful instruments and you have beautiful art, but your heart is not in the music; it is in defeating somebody. And unless you drop that idea you will never be equal to Tansen. He has no idea to defeat anybody, that's why he goes on winning." It was very difficult for Baiju Bawara to get rid of the desire, because that was the desire through which he had devoted his whole life to music. But if the master said so, then it was better to wait. He forgot all about Tansen, slowly slowly. And once, when Haridas became very old, be became sick; and he had a kind of paralysis of the legs, so he could not go from his small cottage to the nearby Krishna temple. And without seeing Krishna, he would not eat anything. Many physicians tried to treat him. They could not do anything. Baiju…
Beloved master, please share with us your vision of the benefits of the arts for our process of growing towards ourselves, in therapy, meditation, worship.
The arts can be immensely helpful in therapy, in spiritual growth, in your meditations. But it is taking a hard and long way unnecessarily. The shortcut is: first, meditation, and then out of meditation comes creativity of its own accord. Otherwise, it is a long journey; even one life may not be enough. For example, the paintings of Picasso are nothing but his nightmares, as if somebody is not painting but vomiting. It has helped him to relieve himself of his tensions, schizophrenia, paranoia and all kinds of mental repressions. But it is not of much use to you. In fact, if you go on looking at a Picasso painting for a long time, you will feel sick, because it is vomiting. You will start feeling nauseous. This is not real art. The people who created the Taj Mahal -- that is real art. They were Sufi mystics who knew…
An artist is an artist in so far as he creates. Is not creating doing? And are not most forms of art the result of doing, of achieving, of not being? If an artist was just being he would have no art. Is a world without art what you intend? Is this the end of creation?
The question has to be divided in parts. The first part: AN ARTIST IS AN ARTIST IN SO FAR AS HE CREATES. Then you don't understand rightly. An artist is an artist only in so far as he allows creation to happen. It is not that HE creates. If he creates he is not a creator. He may be composing things but he is not a creator. He may be a technician but he is not an artist. For example if you create some poetry, you can create absolutely according to the rules of the poetics, there may not be a single error in it -- but it will not be poetry. The grammar may be perfect, the language absolutely right, the rhythm, the metre -- and everything okay but it will be just like a dead body; everything perfect, but the body dead. No soul in it. You are…