Osho is fantastic. At the moment I'm listening and committing to memory a number of string quartets, a most rewarding and energizing experience. What is required in doing this is not reason or logic but intuition, which reminded me of this inspirational book by Osho. I started to reread and couldn't stop. I wanted to share a few of my reflections.

“To know means to be silent, utterly silent, so you can hear the still, small voice within. To know means to drop the mind. When you are absolutely still, unmoving, nothing wavers in you, the doors open. You are part of this mysterious existence. You know it by becoming part of it, by becoming a participant in it. That is knowing.” ---------- Reminds me of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra urging us to flee from the flies of the marketplace; “You’ve been deafened by the noise of the great men and stung but the stings of the little men. Flee into your silence and solitude.” There comes a time when we have to turn off the TV and all the gadgets and simply rest in silence. There are few practices more refreshing.

“Intellect is your mind. Instinct is your body. And just as instinct functions perfectly on behalf of the body, intuition functions perfectly as far as your consciousness is concerned. Intellect is just between these two—a passage to be passed, a bridge to be crossed. ----------- This is a critical point that many people just don’t get: intuition is not a denial of reason or the opposite of reason, intuition transcends reason as, for example, when we look out at the ocean and feel a deep peace and oneness with the world or when we listen to a deeply moving piece of music.

“If the left hemisphere of the brain goes on dominating you, you will live a successful life—so successful that by the time you are forty you will have ulcers; by the time you are forty-five, you will have had at least one or two heart attacks. ---------- I vividly recall a friend of mine telling me he took everyone around him - friends, family, associates, people he met on the street - for granted and was focused on making money and being a great success in business. He then had a massive heart attack. He said when he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, he appreciated people for the first time. Changed his life completely.

“Reason is an effort to know the unknown and intuition is the happening of the unknowable. To penetrate the unknowable is possible, but to explain it is not. The feeling is possible, the explanation is not.” ---------- Case in point: aesthetic experience. When creating in writing, music or the visual arts, we can’t be too conceptual since too much thinking can hold us back. I recall that quote from Louis Armstrong: “If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.”

“Because of the unknowable, life means something. When everything is known, then everything is flat. You will be fed up, bored.” ---------- Joseph Campbell reflected how the meaning of life is overemphasized, that is, figuring out the meaning of life isn’t really our prime question. The prime question we face is how we are going to live in a way that we feel completely alive. What I personally enjoy above Joseph Campbell’s words are the emphasis on ‘the way we feel’. In our modern world there is much too much disregard and disrespect for feelings and sensations. If we can relax into feelings and ongoing sensations, a rich, creamy many-textured world opens up.

Osho Art - Osho created a vivid work of art out of his own signature.