According to Osho, rasa—the ‘juice’ of aesthetic rapture—can suspend thought and ego for a moment, but it is not Brahma/ultimate reality. It is a fleeting, non-transformative flash, whereas enlightenment (Brahma) is a qualitative, radical transformation of being. Rasa may resemble a glimpse, yet it lacks permanence and the capacity to change who you are.
Art can give a sweet, timeless taste, but it isn’t the same as waking up forever inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, I've read a translation of the indian aesthetician, abhinava gupta, in which he says the taste of rasa is the same as the taste of brahma. His meaning, if I understand correctly, is that the aesthetic experience is of the same order as the experience of god. Sometimes, especially with art and music, I find a spontaneous joy arising. Is this a small taste of what it's like to be egoless?
The great philosopher, Abhinava Gupta, knows exactly what rasa is. There is no exact word in English to translate the Sanskrit word `rasa'. In Western aesthetics, the concept has not been evolved at all. The only word that can give you a little hint is `juice'. Literally, rasa means juice. There are moments of aesthetic experience when you are drowned in a juice: you have a certain taste of spontaneous joy, a feeling of timelessness, a moment when your thoughts have stopped. It can happen seeing a painting, or a beautiful piece of sculpture, or listening to music, or seeing a great dancer, or dancing yourself. All these are aesthetic activities. You can be drowned into some juice which is not of this world. It happens spontaneously; you cannot manage it to happen. If you make an effort to make it happen then there is no possibility of its happening;…
Osho, on the journey of awakening, are rasa, virasa, and sva-rasa merely waystations? Kindly explain.
Such a moment comes now and then in your life—at moments of love, or of prayer, or of meditation. If you have a deep love with someone, sometimes such an exalted peak arises within that neither the lover remains nor the beloved remains. Then Rasa ripens. Then Rasa showers. That Rasa is the Rasa of the Divine. Hence in love the first ray of the experience of God descends; or in some deep absorption of meditation, where the distinction of self and other dissolves and the sky of nonduality opens—there too, God showers. The questioner has asked rightly, but about rasa… He asks: Are rasa, virasa, and sva-rasa merely stages? Rasa is not a stage. Rasa is the source—and the final destination as well. For the ultimate destination can only be that which has also been the source. In the end we return to the source. The circle of life…
Osho, you say that whatever has rasa, one should relish it completely. But rasa makes one blind.
How can rasa make you blind? The Upanishads say, the divine’s very form is rasa: “Raso vai sah.” He is the embodiment of rasa. How can rasa make you blind? No, it must be something else. You are blind. You go on hunting for excuses about who made you blind. No one is making you blind. You are sitting there with your eyes closed. Neither rasa is making you blind, nor money is making you blind, nor the world is making you blind. No one is making you blind. How could anyone? You are blind—eyes shut tight. But even to admit this you don’t have the courage: “I am sitting with my eyes closed.” So you search for excuses. You say, What to do—lust has blinded me. What to do—greed for wealth has blinded me. What to do—we are entangled in the world; this is making us blind. The truth…
Osho, with reference to “Raso Vai Sah,” can taste too be made a means to the experience of the Divine?
Brahman means “the expanding one”—that which keeps spreading, which is ever extending. That which does not stand still anywhere, which never makes any boundary into a boundary, which always flows beyond. If you would know the Divine, then—even on a small scale—do not make boundaries. Expand, keep expanding! If you have fragrance, share it with the winds! If you have light, give it to the paths! If you have awareness, give it to others! Whatever you have! And who is there who has nothing? There is no such human being. The Divine is within everyone; therefore something or other will surely be there. Search. You cannot be without purpose. Through you he wishes to sing some song. Through you he wishes to dance some dance. Through you he wishes to bloom some flower. You cannot be in vain. You have a destiny. There is a secret hidden within you. Open…
Osho, just a small question. If truth is non-dual, then what is the point of calling apara and para different? And are apara and para interchangeable?
In the Vigyan Bhairava, Shiva tells Parvati: “Ask no more. The more will hinder. Let me tell you in little. In this Om—A-U-M—forget A, forget M; what remains in the middle—U—dive into that. Then I will be attained.” This is technique. If you can dive into U… If you utter U with force, you will feel the navel contract within. The more forcefully you intone U, the more pressure on the navel. And the navel is the root source of life-energy. One who can tap it rightly—Om is the hammer, the device to strike there. If one strikes rightly, the life-energy begins to rise; kundalini awakens; the journey upward begins. I have heard: In a small town a huge factory installed a new machine. For a month it ran well; then suddenly it stopped. No fault was found. The factory engineers tried and failed. A specialist was called from the…