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Dhammapada-Buddhism-Buddha

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 1

Chapter 8: The beginning of a new phase

Question 1

 

Energy Enhancement         Enlightened Texts         Dhammapada         The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 1

 

The first question:

Question 1

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?

Nirgun, yes, it is true: in the name of aesthetics, there is much garbage. But when I use the word 'aesthetics' I don't mean the garbage collected in the museums and art galleries.

When I use the word 'aesthetics' I mean a quality in you. It has nothing to do with objects -- paintings, music, poetry -- it has something to do with a quality in your being, a sensitivity, a love for beauty, a sensitivity for the texture and taste of things, for the eternal dance that goes on all around, an awareness of it, a silence to hear this cuckoo calling from the distance....

It is not garbage: it is the very core of existence.

But I can understand that you must be getting bored with the so-called classical music and paintings collected in the art galleries. And you must be a little bit puzzled why people go on talking so much about all this nonsense.

Aesthetics is just an artistic approach towards life, a poetic vision. Seeing colors so totally that each tree becomes a painting, that each cloud brings the presence of God, that colors are more colorful, that you don't go on ignoring the radiance of things, that you remain alert, aware, loving, that you remain receptive, welcoming, open. That's what I mean by the aesthetic attitude, the aesthetic approach.

Music has to be in your heart, your very being has to be musical, it has to become a harmony. A man can exist as a chaos or as a cosmos. Music is the way from chaos to cosmos. A man can exist as a disorder, a discord, just noise, a market place, or a man can exist as a temple, a sacred silence, where celestial music is heard on its own, uncreated music is heard on its own.

The Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping. In India, for centuries mystics have been talking about anahat nad -- the unstruck sound. It is there in your very being; you need not go anywhere to listen to it. It is the ancientmost music, and the latest too. It is both the oldest and the newest. And it is the music of your own being, the hum of your own existence. And if you can't hear it, you are deaf.

And there is no way, Nirgun, to bypass it. Museums you can bypass, art galleries you can bypass -- in fact, you should bypass them. You need not be worried about art and art criticism -- forget all about it. But you have to become an artist of life itself.

I say Buddha is a poet, although he never composed a single poem. Still I insist that he is one of the greatest poets who has ever lived. He was not a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Kalidas, a Rabindranath -- no, not at all. But still I say: Shakespeare, Milton, Kalidas, Rabindranath, are nothing compared to his poetry. His life was his poetry -- the way he walked, the way he looked at things....

Just the other night I came across one of the most beautiful statements of Saint Teresa of Avila. She says: All that you need is to look. Her whole message is contained in this simple statement: All that you need is to look. The capacity to look -- and you will find God. The capacity to hear -- and you will find his music. The capacity to touch -- and every texture becomes his texture. Touch the rock and you find God.

It is not a question of objects of art: it is a question of an inner approach, a vision -- of seeing things artistically. And, Nirgun, you have that quality! In fact, because of that quality you were bored by classical music and you were bored by galleries -- because in an unconscious way, in a groping way, you feel something far superior inside you. But you are not yet fully aware of it.

Bypass the art galleries and you will not be losing anything. But you cannot bypass the aesthetic layer of your being: you have to go through it. Otherwise you will always remain impoverished; something will be missing, something of immense value. Your enlightenment will never be total. A part of your being will remain unenlightened; a corner of your soul will remain dark -- and that corner will remain heavy on you. One has to become totally enlightened. Nothing should be bypassed, no shortcuts are to be invented. One has to move very naturally through all the layers, because all those layers are opportunities to grow.

Remember it: whenever I use the words 'music' or 'poetry' or 'painting' or 'sculpture', I have my own meaning.

When Helen Keller, the blind woman, came to India, she visited Jawaharlal Nehru. She was blind, deaf. She touched Nehru's face; with both her hands she felt Nehru's face, and she was immensely delighted. She expressed her great joy. She stated, "I have felt the same quality in Nehru's face as I felt when I touched beautiful Roman statues -- the same coolness and the same proportion and the same form."

Now this woman has a heart of a sculptor -- blind, deaf, but she has the genius of a great artist. Because she was deaf and blind, she had to find new ways to feel life. And sometimes curses prove blessings. She would touch water, she would feel its coolness, its flow, its life, its vibe. You will never feel it, because you can see the water; you can say, "What is there?" Because she could not see, she could only feel the texture of a rock...you can see and you will miss -- you will not feel the texture of it.

Sometimes it is tremendously significant to close your eyes and just touch the rock, and feel as if you are blind and you have only hands and you have to use the hands as your eyes. And you will be surprised -- you are in for a surprise. For the first time you will see that the texture has its own dimension.

Because she had no eyes and no ears, her sense of smell was just at the optimum. She could feel the perfume of things, of people. She could discriminate between one tree and another tree just by the fragrance of it. She could even distinguish persons just by their smell.

Now she is as aesthetic as any Picasso, Dali, Van Gogh -- or even more so.

Nirgun, the aesthetic garbage is certainly there, because whatsoever man creates in his unconsciousness is bound to be garbage. The paintings of Picasso represent the mind of Picasso. Now this man seems to be insane somewhere deep down. In fact, his paintings are a way to remain sane; his paintings are cathartic. What you do in your Dynamic Meditation he is doing through his paintings: throwing out tensions, nightmares, all the ugliness that is in the mind. It has to be thrown out of the system, and it can be done through painting very easily.

Carl Gustav Jung used to tell his patients to paint. And many insane people have painted really beautiful paintings. But, certainly, those paintings are insane! How can an insane person paint a sane painting? It may have a certain beauty of its own -- the beauty of insanity -- it may have a certain proportion, a certain arrangement of colors, or it may even have a certain vision, but something of his insanity is bound to be lurking there around it. And Jung became aware, slowly slowly, that through painting insane people can be helped tremendously -- painting can become a therapy. And, certainly, he is right. If you can paint your nightmares, you will be getting free from them. It is an expression! Expression always brings freedom. Repression brings bondage, expression brings freedom. And this is one of the beautiful ways to express, to paint.

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 repressed in the unconscious to the conscious. It can be done in many ways. Psychoanalysis is the longest route; it takes three years, six years, even ten. Then too the analysis is never complete. There is not a single person in the whole world whose psychoanalysis is complete and finished.

It cannot be finished, because the process is slow. Twice a week or thrice a week you see your psychoanalyst; lying on the psychoanalyst's couch you throw out your garbage for one hour. He listens patiently -- at least he pretends that he is listening patiently. And because he is listening you go on bringing it out. He gives you encouragement, so you go on digging deeper and deeper, and you bring things from the unconscious to the conscious. His presence, his expertise, his name, his authority, make you courageous. You are not afraid of bringing things up which would scare you if you brought them up when you were alone -- because you would see yourself on the verge of going mad. But his authority and his presence...and that may be only in your belief, because he himself may be more insane than you are. But you can have just the belief that he knows that he will be able to help, that he is there, so you need not be afraid; you can go and dig deep into your unconscious.

The more you bring to the conscious, the more you are freed -- it is very unburdening. But once, twice or thrice a week you unburden, and the whole week you go on gathering again. The three hours' doing is undone; you remain the same. It becomes a vicious circle. In the society, in the family, you again accumulate repressions, and you go to the analyst and you express those suppressions. A little bit unburdened, you are back in the society -- the same society, the same people. You listen to the same priest, you read the same newspaper, you go to the same political rally. You remain a communist or you remain a Catholic. The same wife, the same husband, the same children, the same people to associate with.... Again repression happens.

This is a very temporary relief.

Many other ways are being found. Painting is one of the ways -- far more significant, because the unconscious knows the language of pictures and not the language of words. The unconscious expresses itself in pictures. That's why in your dreams your unconscious expresses itself more adequately. Hence the psychoanalyst wants to know about your dreams more and more. Dreams are a pictorial, primitive language, unsophisticated, more innocent. And that's exactly what happens when you paint.

Painting is bringing your dreams out into the light -- it can help tremendously. My own feeling is that if Picasso had been prevented from painting he would have gone mad. It was his painting that saved him -- although he was unaware that it was his painting that was saving him. But his painting has the quality of madness in it.

If you look at a Picasso painting and meditate over it you will feel dizzy, you will feel uneasy, you will feel tense, you will not feel relaxed. And if you live in a room where on all the walls are Picasso paintings, there is every danger that you will have nightmares, or you may go mad. Those paintings will provoke your insanity.

So, Nirgun, you can avoid the art galleries, you can bypass Picassos, but you cannot bypass the aesthetic layer of your being. You cannot bypass the aesthetic dimension; otherwise you will remain impoverished, lopsided, something will be missing in you. And I would not like anything to be missing in my sannyasins. They have to be as scientific as possible. I don't mean -- again remember -- that you have to become a physicist or a chemist or a biologist or a physiologist. I don't mean that! When I say you have to be a scientist, I mean you have to be scientific -- it is a metaphor. Always remember: I am talking in metaphors and similes and parables.

You have to be scientific. To approach the world, the objective world, rightly, the only way is science. If the Bible says that the earth is not round but flat, don't believe in it -- be scientific. The earth is round and not flat. The Bible has no right to say anything about something objective. The Bible is a religious book; it has its own dimension. Don't confuse these dimensions.

Because of this confusion there has arisen a great conflict between science and religion. There is no need at all. Science has its own realm, its own territory. First the priests started interfering with science; now, the whole story is again being repeated in the opposite order. Now scientists are trying to interfere in the world of religion.

Don't ask a scientist whether God exists or not -- that is none of his business. What does he know about God? That is not his dimension. And whatsoever he says about God is stupid; whatsoever he says is going to be wrong.

It is like asking a great doctor about poetry -- he may be a great doctor, a great physician, but asking him about poetry just because he is a great physician is foolish. Or asking a great poet about your illness because he is a great poet...you can see the stupidity of it. You will not go to a great poet to be diagnosed just because he is a great poet. You will go to a doctor -- he may not be a poet at all.

The scientist has no right to say anything about the interiority of humanity -- that is not his world. But now he is interfering. He is doing the same wrong that the priests have been doing for centuries.

Galileo was called by the pope, forced in his old age to apologize because he had said that it is not the sun that goes round the earth, but the earth that goes round the sun. Now, it is against the Bible. The priests were very much annoyed: "How can you deny the Bible? Who are you?" In his old age -- he was seventy, ill, bed-ridden -- he was forced to go to the court, he was forced to kneel down before the pope, and he was asked to apologize.

He must have been a man of humor, he must have had a great sense of humor. He said, "Yes, sir, I apologize. I declare that the Bible is right, that the earth does not go round the sun but the sun goes round the earth. Are you satisfied, sir?"

And they were all happy. They said, "We are satisfied."

And then Galileo laughed. He said, "But whatsoever I say, it makes no difference -- the earth goes round the sun. My statements, what do they mean? What can they do? What can I do? My saying it won't help -- the earth won't listen. But I apologize, I am wrong and the Bible is right. But remember well: the earth goes round the sun -- it has no obligation to fulfill my desire. I would like it to go according to the Bible and according to you, but I am helpless, utterly helpless."

The Bible has many unscientific statements, the Vedas have many unscientific statements. All old scriptures have many unscientific statements, for a certain reason: because in those days there was no science as a separate phenomenon. The religious scripture was the only scripture available. So it used to collect everything; whatever knowledge was available was collected in the scripture. It contains art, it contains mathematics, it contains geography, it contains history, it contains science -- it contains everything that was available. And the knowledge was so small that it could be contained in a single scripture.

But now, centuries have passed, man has grown, has come of age. Now, science has its own world. We should drop all that is scientific from the religious scriptures -- they have nothing to do with it. Neither does science have anything to do with religious scriptures or the religious dimension. But this is how stupid minds go on quarreling.

I would like you to be scientific -- as far as the world is concerned, be scientific. As far as your inner reality is concerned, be religious. And there is a world between the two, the world of in-between, the twilight world, where the objective and the subjective meet. That is the world of aesthetics. About that, be an artist, be a poet, be a musician.

All these dimensions fulfilled and you will become spiritual; all these dimensions enriched will make you the fourth man, the spiritual man. My sannyasins have to be the fourth -- integrated, whole. Nothing has to be bypassed, Nirgun. Everything has to be lived, loved, experienced. Everything has to be absorbed, so that you become as rich as it is possible to become.

Next: Chapter 8: The beginning of a new phase, Question 2

    Energy Enhancement         Enlightened Texts         Dhammapada         The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 1     

 

ENERGY

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