According to Osho, music, poetry, and beauty are one continuum: cultivate inner music—the unstruck sound (anahata nada)—and poetry and beauty arise by themselves. Music is the practice; poetry is its body, the expression of that inner rhythm; beauty is its soul, the awakened sensitivity. External technique is secondary; when the inner vina resounds, life itself moves in poetic grace and perceives inherent beauty.
Listen to the quiet song inside you, and your life naturally speaks like poetry and sees everything as beautiful.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, in a letter to Sohanbai you once wrote—“Make your life musical so that poetry can be born. And then there is beauty and only beauty, and beauty is the very form of the Divine.” Would you speak on music, poetry, and beauty? Ultimately, for everything to become divine, are these three the practices?
Taru! The practice is one; the other two come of their own accord. The other two are outcomes. You sow only one seed; from that, many leaves and many branches appear—fruits and flowers too. The seed is one. There is a single practice: ik sādhē sab sadhē; sab sadhē sab jāe—master the one and all is mastered; try to master everything and everything is lost. If you try to practice all three, you will get entangled, because they are not separate. They are interrelated, beads on the same thread. Music is the practice. From the practice of music, poetry arises by itself. Poetry is the expression of music; poetry is music’s body. And the very moment music is born, the sense of beauty awakens. What sensitivity in music experiences of existence—that experience is what we call beauty. Poetry is the body of music; beauty is music’s soul. Cultivate the one—music—and…
Poetry should be the central force of your life. Celebration, not calculation, should be the most important thing. And calculation should serve your celebration, mm? then you are on the right track, then you are moving towards god. And then things are no more upside-down; everything is in harmony. Your name is an indication, it contains a message for you -- to move from syllogism to song. Dance more, sing more, play. Love music and love trees and rocks and mountains and stars and people.... And then slowly slowly you will see a totally new fragrance arising out of your life, which fulfils. Prem nado.... It means love music. Love has its own music. It is not produced on any instrument; it arises out of a silent heart of its own accord.
Question: First question: Osho, one more song I must sing, one more stanza I must hum. The true song is the one our own throats have sung in swelling joy; the true feeling is the one that surges up from our very life-breath. What use are others’ harmonies? I must come to my own scale. Beloved—your songs are very dear, these nectar-soaked songs of yours; I lay myself at their feet, but my songs are still virginal— their wedding too must now be arranged. Only the instrument of my life-breath has to be played. Until that Guest arrives I will wave the lamp of my tears. Until I meet the ocean, I will call out, as the pain of my own stream, to my very own. I have to smoulder in my own fire, I must awaken love in my depths.
Bliss is poetry. It is not science, it is not logic, it is not mind, it is not prose. It is art, it is dance, it is music, it is love: it is poetry. And one has to learn the ways of being poetic; they are totally different. In the world mathematics is needed, not music; logic is needed, not love. So the world teaches you to be logical, but logic destroys your love, which is far more valuable because it is through love that you will know god. It is through being poetic that there is a possibility of knowing the beauty of existence. It is tremendously beautiful, but we need a different perspective to see the beauty, a different vision, a different approach, a different context altogether. Ordinarily, what we have been taught is not poetry. We have been brought up in a very calculative way.
Beloved master, please tell us more about what you mean by the dimension of music.
Yoga Chinmaya, life can be lived in two ways -- either as calculation or as poetry. Man has two sides to his inner being: the calculative side that creates science, business, politics; and the noncalculative side, which creates poetry, sculpture, music. These two sides have not yet been bridged, they have separate existences. Because of this man is immensely impoverished, remains unnecessarily lopsided -- they have to be bridged. In scientific language it is said that your brain has two hemispheres. The left-side hemisphere calculates, is mathematical, is prose; and the right-side hemisphere of the brain is poetry, is love, is song. One side is logic, the other side is love. One side is syllogism, the other side is song. And they are not really bridged, hence man lives in a kind of split. My effort here is to bridge these two hemispheres. Man should be as scientific as possible,…