In the past the majority of the religious people proved to be uncreative. That was a calamity, a curse. Saints were simply sitting doing nothing. That is not real religion. When real religion explodes into people’s lives, suddenly much creativity explodes also.
When Buddha was here a great creativity exploded. When Zen Masters were alive they created really many new dimensions — out of small things, but very creative.
If you are uncreative it simply means that you must have practised your religion, you must have forced yourself into a certain pattern, and you have got blocked, frozen in that pattern. A religious person is flowing, streaming, river-like; seeking, exploring, always seeking and exploring the unknown, always dropping the known and going into the unknown, always choosing the unknown for the known, sacrificing the known for the unknown. And always ready. A religious man is a wanderer, a vagabond; into the innermost world he goes on wandering moving from one place to another. He wants to know all the spaces that are involved in his being.
Be more creative. Dance, and don’t bother whether somebody likes your dance or not — that is not the question. If you can get dissolved into it, you are a dancer. Write poetry. There is no need even to show it to anybody. If you enjoy it, write it and burn it. Play on your flute or guitar or sitar. You must see our tabla-player, Bodhi. How meditatively he plays on his tabla! That’s his meditation. He is growing: going into it, dissolving, melting.
The subjective is the realm of all art and creativity. These are the two ordinary realms of being.
The really religious, is the transcendental. First is the objective — the objective is the world of science, second is the subjective — the subjective is the world of art; and third is the transcendental — that which goes beyond both; is neither objective or subjective; is neither out nor in. In it both are implied, in it both are involved but yet it is higher than both, bigger than both, beyond both. The subjective is closer to the transcendental than the objective, but remember, just by being subjective, you don’t become religious. You have taken a step towards being religious, a very important step, but just by being subjective you don’t become religious. You can find poets who are not religious, you can find painters who are not religious…religion is more than art, more than songs.
First, you start looking into your thoughts. Drop the public world and move into the private: look into your dreams, your thoughts, your desires, your emotions, your moods and the climates that go on changing inside you, year in, year out. Look into it. This is the subjective.
Then the last and the ultimate jump: by and by, by looking into thoughts, start looking into the looker, the witness, the one who is watching the thoughts.
First move from things to thoughts, then from thoughts to the thinker. Things are the world of science, thought is the world of art and the thinker is the world of religion. Just go on moving inwards. The first circumference around you is of things, the second of thoughts, and the third, the centre, your very being, is nothing but consciousness. It is nothing but a witnessing.
Drop things and go into thoughts; then one day thoughts also have to be dropped and then you are left alone in your purity, then you are left absolutely alone. In that aloneness is God, in that aloneness is liberation, moksha, in that aloneness is nirvana, in that aloneness for the first time you are in the real.
The objective and subjective are divided; there is a duality, a conflict, a struggle, a division. The person who is objective will miss something — he will miss the subjective. And the person who is subjective will miss something — he will miss the objective. Both will be incomplete. The scientist and the poet both are incomplete. Only the holy man is complete; only the holy man is whole. And because he is whole I call him holy.
By ‘holy’ I don’t mean that he is virtuous, by ‘holy’ I mean that he is whole. Nothing is left, everything is involved. His richness is whole: the subjective and the objective both have dissolved into him. But he is not just the total of subjective and objective, he is more. The objective is without, the subjective is within and the religious is beyond. The beyond comprehends both without and within and yet is beyond.
This vision is what I call spirituality: the vision of the beyond.
A few more things. In the world of the objective, action is very important. One has to be active because only action is relevant in the world of things. If you do something, only then can you have more things; if you do something, only then can you change in the world of objectivity.
In the world of subjectivity…inaction. Doing is not important, feeling is. That’s why poets become lazy. And painters — even great painters and great poets and great singers, they have bouts of activity and then again they relapse into laziness. The subjective person is more sleepy, dreamy, lazy; the objective person is active, obsessed with action. The objective person always needs to do something or other, he cannot sit alone, he cannot rest. He can fall asleep — but once he is awake he has to do something. The subjective person is inactive. It is very difficult for him to move into action. He enjoys the world of fantasy — and that is available without action. He does not have to go anywhere, he has just to close his eyes and the world of dreams opens.
The religious person is the meeting of the opposites: action in inaction, inaction in action. He does things but he does them in such a way that he never becomes the doer. He remains a vehicle of God, the passage — what the Chinese call wu-wei, inaction in action. Even if he is doing, he is not doing it. His doing is very playful, there is no tension in it, no anxiety, no obsession about it. And even when he is inactive he is not dull; even when he is sitting, or Lying down and resting, he is full of energy. He is not lethargic, he is radiant with energy. Because both the opposites have come to a meeting and to a higher synthesis in him, he can act as if he is in a non-doing state and he can remain in a non-doing state but still you can feel the energy, you can feel a vibe of tremendous activity around his being. Wherever he moves, he brings life to people. Just by his presence dead people become alive; just by his touch dead people are called back to life.
A religious person is active — not because he is doer, a religious person is active because he has infinite energy available. A religious person is active — not because he has to do something, because he has an obsession to do, not because he cannot relax, but because he is such a pool of energy that he has to overflow; the energy is too much and he cannot contain it.
In ordinary life with the ordinary mind everything is divided into its opposites, and there is a great attraction for meeting with the opposite: the man seeks the woman, the woman seeks the man — the yin-yang circle. In a religious man all search has stopped — the man has found the woman, the woman has found the man. In his innermost core the energy has come to a point where everything has dissolved into oneness, into non-duality, ADVAIT.
All opposites become complementaries; all conflicts dissolve and become co-operation. Then you have come home, then there is no need to go anywhere, then there is nothing to be sought, nothing to be desired. This state is the state of God. God is a state, God is not an object. And God is not even a person, because God is neither objective nor subjective. God is transcendental.
If you are in the objective I will say, ‘Seek the subjective — there is the God.’ If you are in the subjective, I will say, ‘Now go beyond. There is no God in the subjective. God is beyond.’ By and by one has to go on eliminating, by and by one has to go on dropping. God is when there is no object and no subject, when there is no thing and no thought, when there is no this world and no that world. When there is no matter and no mind, God is; God is neither matter nor mind. In God both exist. God is a tremendous paradox, absolutely illogical, beyond logic. You cannot make an image of God in wood or in stone and you cannot make an image of God in concepts and ideas. When you dissolve all images — when you have dissolved all in/out, man/woman, life/death, all dualities — then that which is left is God.
OSHO
