Trimurti of Maths, Music, Meditation

20 January 2002, 12:09am IST
Osho, TNN.

Music comes closest to meditation. music is a way towards meditation and the most beautiful way. meditation is the art of hearing the soundless sound, the art of hearing the music of silence — what the zen people call the sound of one hand clapping. when you are utterly silent, not a single thought passes your mind, there is not even a ripple of any feeling in your heart. then you start, for the first time, hearing silence. silence has a music of its own. it is not dead; it is tremendously alive. in fact, nothing is more alive than silence. music helps you from the outside to fall in tune with the inner. music is a device; it was invented by the buddhas. all that is beautiful in the world, all that is valuable in the world has always been discovered by the buddhas. only they can discover because they have travelled the inner country — the inner, immeasurable universe. whatsoever they have found and experienced in the inner world, they have tried to make something similar on the outside for those who can only understand that which is objective, who are not yet able to enter the interior of their own being, who are not yet even aware that there is an inner world. devices can be created on the outside which can help. listening to great music you suddenly become silent — with no effort. falling in tune with the music you lose your ego with no effort. you become relaxed, you fall into a deep rest. you are alert, awake, and yet in a subtle way drunk. whenever any art is perfect it ends in meditation — it has to end in meditation. if it is not leading you towards meditation then something has gone wrong. that’s why much of modern art is not art. much modern music is not music; it simply makes you sexually excited. it is just the opposite of real music. real music helps you to transcend your biology, your physiology, your psychology. real music takes you to the world of the beyond — what buddha calls the farther shore, even beyond the beyond. to me, music and meditation are two aspects of the same phenomenon. and without music, meditation lacks something; without music, meditation is a little dull, unalive. without meditation, music is simply noise — harmonious, but noise. without meditation, music is an entertainment. and without music, meditation becomes more and more negative, tends to be death-oriented. hence my insistence that music and meditation should go together. that adds a new dimension — to both. both are enriched by it. remember the three ms just as you remember the three rs. the first m is mathematics, the purest science. the second m is music, pure art. and the third m is meditation, pure religion. where all these three meet, you attain the trinity. my approach is scientific. even if i make illogical statements, i make them very logically. even if i assert paradoxes, they are asserted in a logical way. whatsoever i am saying has a mathematics behind it, a method, a certain scientific approach. i am not an unscientific person. my science serves my religion; the science is not the end but it is a beautiful beginning. and my approach is artistic, aesthetic. i cannot help you unless this energy field becomes musical. music is pure art. and if it is joined with mathematics, it becomes a tremendously powerful instrument to penetrate into your interior. of course, it will not be complete unless meditation is the highest peak, the purest religion. and we are trying to create the ultimate synthesis. this is my trinity: mathematics, music, meditation. this is my trimurti — three faces of god. you can attain to god through one face, but then your experience of god will not be so rich as it will be when you attain two faces. but it will still lack something unless you attain all the three faces. when you know god as a trinity, when you have come through all the three dimensions, your experience, your nirvana, your enlightenment, will be the richest. my effort here is to give you a total religion, which contains all the three ms in it...the journey is not going to be dull, it is going to be very alive. we are going to move towards god in such a multidimensional way that each moment of the journey is going to be precious.

(sourced from the dhammapada: the way of the buddha, vol 1 chapter 2 and vol 12 chapter 4, courtesy: osho world foundation).