Subjective Art and Objective Art
A poet is not in search of truth. His search is for beauty, and through the search for beauty nobody has ever become enlightened. One can become a great poet, a great painter, a great singer, a great dancer; but on the path of beauty, enlightenment is not possible.
The seeker of truth, and only the seeker of truth, attains to enlightenment. And this is the miracle of enlightenment, that once you have discovered truth, then beauty, the good, and all that is valuable simply become available to you.
Beauty cannot lead to enlightenment, but enlightenment opens your eyes to all dimensions and all directions.
Rabindranath was remarkably close to enlightenment, but his search was not for enlightenment - he was searching for the beautiful. And the search for the beautiful, deep down, is the search for expressing beauty - in words, in music, in dance, in any kind of creativity.
The seeker of beauty is really seeking a vision which he can reproduce in his poetry, in his song, in his painting. Always the search is inner, but the goal is somewhere outside.
And that is the problem for all great creative people: they come to know, but then expression becomes difficult; they come to experience beauty, but how to share it? You may see a rose flower and be suddenly overwhelmed by its beauty, but how to share it? How to express it?
The concern of the artist is expression; the concern of the seeker is experience. The artist also comes to know what he is seeking, but his problem is that basically, his interest in seeking beauty is for expression - and expression is almost impossible.
At the most you can stutter a little bit - all your songs are stuttering of great poets. They look beautiful to you, immensely meaningful and significant, but to the poet... he knows he has failed. All artists, they have tried their best, and they have produced great pieces of art - for us they are great pieces of art, but for them they are faraway echoes of their experience.
When the Taj Mahal was created... it was not the work of great architects, but it is the most beautiful architecture in existence. Shahjehan, the emperor who was creating it as a memorial grave for his beautiful wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The emperor searched for years for Sufi mystics, who have no concern for beauty. He asked the Sufi mystics, "Although it is something lower, and you are not interested in it - just for my sake, you design the Taj Mahal. The architects will make it, but the design should come from those who have known beauty in its fullness, from a height."
George Gurdjieff (a mystic, philosopher, spiritual teacher) used to say that there are two kinds of art. One is subjective art - ninety-nine percent of art in the world is subjective: you are simply pouring your feelings, your desires, your longings, your dreams, into whatever you are making.
But once in a while, there is objective art - only one percent. What he calls objective art is art created by those who were not artists, who were realized people. They created music to help meditation - it was not for entertainment. They created poetry to convey that which cannot be conveyed by prose. They sang, they danced, to give you just a glimpse of their ecstasy, of their inner dance, of their joy, their blissfulness.
But once in a while, there is objective art - only one percent. What he calls objective art is art created by those who were not artists, who were realized people. They created music to help meditation - it was not for entertainment. They created poetry to convey that which cannot be conveyed by prose. They sang, they danced, to give you just a glimpse of their ecstasy, of their inner dance, of their joy, their blissfulness.
Indian classical music is not just for entertainment. Listening to it, you start going deep into yourself.
It is not for all; it is only for those who are ready for an inner pilgrimage.
He mentioned the Taj Mahal, too. On the full moon night, when the moon comes just in the middle of the sky, the Taj Mahal becomes the greatest object of meditation that man has created. You just sit silently and look at it, and just looking at it your thoughts will subside. The beauty of it is so enormous that your mind simply feels at a loss. It cannot grasp it, so it becomes silent.
The caves of Ajanta and Ellora, the temples of Khajuraho, Puri, and Konarak... all these he mentions as objective art - objective because they are not an effort to express feelings or ideas, they are devices, so that for centuries to come people will be able to have the same taste, the same feeling, the same joy.
The pyramids in Egypt are part of objective art. The particular shape of the pyramid is tremendously capable of preserving things as they are. Even if you put a dead body inside, it will be preserved. Nothing else is needed because the shape of the pyramid changes the direction of the rays of the sun, and in that change of direction, the miracle happens.
The same is applicable to beauty. One feels a great loss...Remember, in those moments when you realize the truth that a great responsibility has fallen on your shoulders: you have to change the ordinary morality into a spiritual code, and you have to change subjective art into objective art. This will be the new expression of the contemporary mystic, and it will make a new breakthrough for the future.
Let your search be for the truth, and only on the margin go on practicing your music, composing your songs; so, when you reach to your enlightenment you are articulate enough to bring beauty to expression. Then you can go laughing, fulfilled, without any tears.
Osho