Aesthetics of Consciousness

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;…

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…

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…

Beloved master, a friend told us that she once heard you say that you want us to become enlightened in the most aesthetic way possible. Will you speak on the aesthetics of consciousness? Have you ever spoken of anything else?

Vadan and Iti, you have raised a very significant question. All the religions that have existed on the earth have been very unaesthetic, because they denied life, they denied all the beauties, all the flowers, all creativity, sensitivity. They killed millions of people's possibility of attaining to enlightenment through aesthetic creativity. They simply closed the door, and for centuries nobody has even asked the question, "Is it possible that just to be a musician is enough to become enlightened?" I say yes. Nobody will agree with me -- neither Mahavira nor Gautam Buddha nor Mohammed nor Jesus. Knowing it well, that the whole history will stand against me, I am absolutely certain that music can become meditation, that sculpture can become meditation, that dancing can become meditation, that painting can become meditation. These doors have simply been closed. It is one of the greatest crimes committed against man. And people…