Osho – Paul Gaugin had to suffer just the way every creator suffers. Creativity is almost like pregnancy. The mother goes for nine months into deep troubled waters, and even after the birth of the child she is not free of responsibility. All creativity is a deep suffering, unless your creativity does not come out of the mind, but out of meditation. When it comes out of meditation, creativity is sharing the joy, sharing the blissfulness that you have.
Mind has no joy — it is really a wound, very painful. Paul Gaugin had no idea of any meditation, but he had a tremendous passion, almost a madness to create. And just to create, he dropped out of society, forgot all about his wife and children and responsibilities. He was possessed by the idea of creating. The possession was so total that he could not allow any distraction. But when you are possessed by something, you are working almost as a slave, and slavery cannot bring blissfulness.
All the creators in the West have passed through long years of suffering. Many of them have been forced to live in madhouses, and many of them have committed suicide. The suffering became too much, unbearable; they had to end their own life. But still the Western creator, either of meditation or of music, of painting or of dance, has not become aware of why he has to suffer.
In the East, the situation is totally different — not a single creator has suffered. In fact only the creators have enjoyed life to its fullest. Not a single creator has been put into a madhouse, not a single creator has committed suicide; but creators have moved deeper into meditation, and many of them have become mystics. From painting, from music, from dance, they have moved deeper into their own being.
Western society lives under an affliction — their ignorance about meditation; hence, whatever they do is out of the mind. And mind is not the source of joy. It can only create agony, but never ecstasy. Mind is your hell.
So learn to be more meditative, and let your creativity be secondary to your meditativeness. Then you will have a totally different state of being — that of ecstasy; and out of ecstasy, whatever is created has also some flavor of it.
In the West, perhaps Gurdjieff is the only man who has divided art into two sections: the objective art and the subjective art. Subjective art is from the mind, and is out of anguish. Objective art — the Taj Mahal, the caves of Ellora and Ajanta, the temples of Khajuraho — has come from meditative people. Out of their love, out of their silence, they wanted to share; it is their contribution to the world.
The Western artist has lived under a very heavy burden. It is time that he should be made aware that there is something more beyond mind. First reach to that beyond, and then you can create stars; and they will not only be a great joy to you, they will also be a great joy for those who see them. Just on a full-moon night, sit by the side of the Taj Mahal — don’t do anything, just look at it — and you will find suddenly a silence descending on you, a peace filling your heart. The mind is stopping its constant chattering.
An objective piece of art like the Taj Mahal is not just to be seen, but to be lived — and then you will be in a certain way connected with the creators of that beautiful architecture. It was created by Sufi masters. Its very shape somehow creates within you a new blissful space. But the Western tourist comes with the camera, takes a few shots from here and there and runs away to some other place. He does not know how to appreciate an objective art. One has to meditate on it — it may be that thousands of years have passed between the creator of that piece and you. Suddenly that distance disappears; you become part of that creative joy, of that creative dance.
Milarepa, creativity is secondary, meditation is basic and fundamental; everything should come out of your meditation. Then it will give you a beatitude, your being a new song, and it will help others to experience something of it. It will depend on their meditativeness.
I would like to make one very strange statement: that a great meditator will find more joy, more peace, more blissfulness, than even the creator himself. If a Gautam Buddha sits by the side of the Taj Mahal, then what those Sufi Masters had experienced by creating it will be left far behind. Gautam Buddha will experience something far deeper, far more truthful, far more beautiful.
Whether you create, or you observe an objective piece of creativity, meditation should be the key. Without it, mind can only spread on the canvas its nightmares. Most of the paintings of the great painters like Paul Gaugin or Picasso are almost like vomit. They could not contain their agony and suffering — it was so much they threw it on the canvas to get relief. The real objective art is not a relief; it is not a sickness that you want to get rid of. It is a blissfulness that you want to share. And by sharing, it grows; you have more of it, the more it is shared.
Source – Osho Book “The Golden Future”