Birthday of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky

11^th November is the birthday of the renowned Russian writer and philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky. Known for books like Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot, Dostoevsky’s work gives a penetrating insight into the socio-political and spiritual climate of Tzarist Russia.

Osho has spoken extensively on Dostoevsky in His discourses. Osho says Just a single man, Fyodor Dostoevsky, is enough to defeat all the creative novelists of the world. If one has to decide on 10 great novels in all the languages of the world, one will have to choose at least 3 novels of Dostoevsky in those 10. Dostoevsky’s insight into human beings and their problems is greater than your so-called psychoanalysts, and there are moments where he reaches the heights of great mystics. His book BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is so great in its insights that no BIBLE or KORAN or GITA comes close.

In another masterpiece of Dostoevsky, THE IDIOT, the main character is called ‘idiot’ by the people because they can’t understand his simplicity, his humbleness, his purity, his trust, his love. You can cheat him, you can deceive him, and he will still trust you. He is really one of the most beautiful characters ever created by any novelist. The idiot is a sage. The novel could just as well have been called THE SAGE. Dostoevsky’s idiot is not an idiot; he is one of the sanest men amongst an insane humanity. If you can become the idiot of Fyodor Dostoevsky, it is perfectly beautiful. It is better than being cunning priest or politician. Humbleness has such a blessing. Simplicity has such benediction.

Osho Says…..

ISN’T IT THAT EVERY PIECE OF ART, AND ALL POETRY, ARISES OUT OF A CONTRADICTION, OUT OF THE BATTLE BETWEEN YES AND NO? DOESN’T THE END OF THIS FIGHT IN US MEAN SILENCE?

Not all poetry, not all painting, not all music, not all art, arises out of contradiction. But ninety-nine percent arises out of contradiction. That’s why ninety-nine percent of art is a little pathological. Picasso is pathological, so is Vincent van Gogh. You will always find your poets, your painters, a little ill somewhat eccentric, bizarre, nuts. Now psychologists say that if you get nuts to paint, that helps them to become normal. It has been tried all over the world — ‘therapy through art’ they call it. If a madman is given paints to paint with, by painting he throws his madness out. If he goes on painting, after a few weeks you will find he is turning to normal. Something has been catharted out of him through art.

Sigmund Freud had this attitude, that all art is pathology. Not all — I will not agree with him to that extent — but ninety-nine percent of it is. It is out of contradiction, it is out of conflict, friction. All great artists have suffered much. A Dostoevsky is a very ill person. Out of his illness, contradiction, out of his inner conflict, comes a great piece like BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. So is Van Gogh very insane. But out of his insanity come great paintings.

In fact, it may be that because he was painting it kept him closer to the normal. If he had not been allowed to paint he would have gone mad sooner. If Dostoevsky had not been allowed to write he might have committed suicide, he might have gone mad sooner. These are like vomits.

And I am not saying that there is something condemnable in it, I am simply stating a fact: ninety-nine percent of art is pathology. So if man becomes healthy, if man becomes normal, if man becomes more meditative, this kind of art will disappear.

Hence there is a fear in the artists’ minds that if people are REALLY meditative then what will happen to art? There will be no good poetry and there will be no good novels and there will be no good paintings and no good music. No, they need not be afraid — one percent of art does not come out of pathology, it comes out of silence. The Ajanta, the Ellora, Khajuraho, they come out of an inner meditative consciousness, they come out of meditation. The great statues of Buddha have not come out of pathology, they have come out of a great inner experience. The great temples of the world, the great cathedrals of the world, have not come out of pathology. They are great aspirations, rising higher and higher towards the sky — towards the superconscious, towards God.

Jesus’ sermons are not out of pathology — that is one percent. Freud will not count even that; he thinks even Jesus is neurotic. Freud will not count even Buddha — even Buddha’s assertions are neurotic. That is going too far; in that way Freud himself proves to be neurotic. Then what about his own psychology? What about his own creation? It is a great work of art — what about it? Is it neurotic? And if you ask me, I will count Freud and Adler and Jung in the ninety-nine percent. But, one percent has happened, and that one percent can grow more. Yes, this kind of art will disappear, the Picasso type of art will disappear, if people are more meditative. But nothing is lost. More art of that one-percent quality will enter into the world.

What is the difference? How will you know the difference? If you stand before a Buddha-statue and meditate over it for half an hour, you will see the difference. And then go and meditate half an hour on a Picasso painting, and you will see the difference immediately. Half an hour, and the painting will start driving you mad. You will feel very uneasy, you will start feeling very very restless. You cannot look at Picasso’s painting for half an hour. In fact Picasso never had any paintings in his own room — even his own paintings. Once it happened, somebody asked, ‘All people who can afford to, have your paintings in their drawing-rooms, in their bedrooms — why don’t you have?’ He laughed. Jokingly he said, ‘Because I can’t afford to.’ But that is not the real thing. To have a Picasso painting in your bedroom means sure nightmares — it is dangerous. And Picasso must know. He is already suffering from those paintings; now more of them are not needed.

A new kind of art will enter into the world if a great majority of people become meditative, that will have grace, silence, that will have the quality of something transcendental. Watching it, looking at it, you will start evaporating into the skies. It will bring you the message of God; it will bring you the message of your own infinite possibilities. Go and see the Taj Mahal — that is of that quality. The beauty is not just in its architecture, the beauty is something transcendental. In a full-moon night, just sitting by the Taj Mahal, you are transported to another world. You will come back calmer, quieter; you will feel a tranquility arising in you. It is a music in marble, it is poetry in marble — and poetry of the quality of the Upanishads, Gita, Dhammapada, Sermon on the Mount, Tao Te Ching. That one-percent art will grow, if you grow in silence. But the neurotic, the pathological art will disappear. And it is good that it disappears.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 2

Chapter #8

Chapter title: There is No Back of this Book

28 June 1977

References:

Osho has spoken on prominent writers and philosophers like Albert Camus, Aristotle, Byron, Descartes, Fyodor Dostoevsky, D.H. Lawrence, H.G. Wells, Hegel, Huxley, John Milton, Kahlil Gibran, Kalidas, Kant, Leo Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Rabindranath Tagore, Shakespeare and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Come Come Yet Again Come
2. Beyond Psychology
3. The Dhammapada: the way of the Buddha Vol.1,3,7,9,10,12
4. The Transmission of The Lamp
5. I am That
6. The Perfect Master
7. The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here
8. Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind
9. God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth
10. The Golden Future
11. The Guest
12. Light on the Path
13. Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance