H
ineedtomeditate,
the creative people -- whether painters, musicians,
poets or dancers -- reach to a place once in a while
that can be called "a glimpse of enlightenment" but it
is only a glimpse. It is not a realization. They have
not prepared themselves for it. It has come
accidentally.
The painter was absorbed in painting. He was so
absorbed in painting that he forgot himself, forgot the
ego, forgot his thoughts, and without knowing it he was
in a state of meditation, and accidentally a door
opened and he saw the beauty of the beyond.
But because he is not prepared, he cannot remain in
meditation. He does not even know the ABC of
meditation; he may never have heard the word. He was
doing something else. It was just because he got lost
in his work -- in dance, in music, in singing -- he
fulfilled the condition for a glimpse.
Soon he will be back -- when the dance is over, when
the painting is complete, he will be back in the desert
of daily life. And he will be worse than the ordinary
man because he has known something which the ordinary
man has not even dreamt of. His misery is more. He has
seen the door open, he has seen the door closed, and he
feels utterly helpless.
Now a great problem has arisen for him, that there is
something far more beautiful than any painting, far
more musical than any music, far more poetic than any
poetry. There is a dance beyond dance, but how to reach
there? All that he can manage is his ordinary dance. In
his ordinary dance, if he becomes conscious that he's
doing it to get the glimpse back, he will not get the
glimpse because the condition will not be fulfilled, he
will not be lost in the dance. Technically he will be
doing the dance but his ego will remain watching for
the window to open; it will not open. It will open only
when he forgets himself.
The problem is that this situation has been only in
the West, not in the East.
The East is poor, immensely poor, but in a way
tremendously rich. In the East if the poet or the
painter or the musician had the glimpse, he would not
bother about the dance or the painting, he would look
for a master, because it is understood -- it is in the
atmosphere, and it has been there for thousands of
years -- that creativity can give you a glimpse but not
more than that. If you want something that becomes part
and parcel of you, then you have to find a master, a
path; you have to change yourself, your ways of living.
You have to bring awareness to everything that you do,
and you need somebody to tell you -- not only to tell
you, but somebody whose presence becomes a proof that
you are not chasing some shadow, some hallucination.