by Osho





     The first book today is Irving Stone's Lust for Life. It is a novel
based on the life of Vincent van Gogh. Stone has done such a tremendous work
that I don't remember anybody else doing the same. Nobody has written so
intimately about somebody else, as if he is writing from his very own being.

      Lust for Life is not just a novel, it is a spiritual book. It is
spiritual in my sense, because to me all dimensions of life have to be
incorporated into a single synthesis; only then one is spiritual. The book
is written so beautifully that the possibility that even Irving Stone will
be able to transcend it is remote.

      After that book he wrote many others, and my second book today is also
by Irving Stone. I count it second because it is secondary, not of the
quality of Lust for Life. It is The Agony and the Ecstasy, again based on
another life in the same way. Perhaps Stone was thinking that he would be
able to create another Lust for Life, but he failed. Although he failed, the
book stands second - not to any other but to his own. There are hundreds of
novels written on the lives of artists, poets, painters, but none of them
reaches even to the height of the second book, what to say of the first.
Both are beautiful, but the first is of transcendental beauty.

      The second book is a little lower, but it is not the fault of Irving
Stone. When you know that you have written a book like Lust for Life, the
ordinary human instinct is to imitate oneself, to create something of the
same order, but the moment you imitate it cannot be the same. When he wrote
Lust he was not imitating, he was a virgin island. When he wrote The Agony
and the Ecstasy he was imitating himself, and that is the worst imitation.
Everybody does it in their own bathroom, looking in the mirror.... That's
what one feels about his second book. But I say even though it is only a
reflection in the mirror, it reflects something of the real; hence I count
it.

      I was just asking Gudia whose life Irving Stone had written about in
The Agony and the Ecstasy, because as far as I am concerned I have
completely forgotten. That too is very rare; I don't forget easily. I
forgive easily but I don't forget easily. Whose life did he write about, do
you know, Devaraj? Was it Gauguin?
      "It was Michelangelo, Osho."

      Michelangelo? A great life. Then Stone has missed much. If it had been
Gauguin then it would have been okay, but if it is Michelangelo then I am
sorry; even I cannot forgive him. But he writes beautifully. His prose is
like poetry, although the second book is not of the same quality as Lust for
Life. It cannot be for the simple reason that there has never been a man
like Vincent van Gogh. That Dutch fellow was just inimitable! He stands
alone. In the whole sky full of stars he shines alone, separately, uniquely
in his own way. To write a great book on him is easy, and it would have been
so on Michelangelo, but Stone was trying to imitate himself; hence he
missed. Never be an imitator. Do not follow...not even yourself.

      Just be moment to moment, not knowing who you are...and where you are.
That's what it means to be my people.

      Poor Chetana, I have told her that my clothes have to be snow-white.
She is my washerwoman. She does whatsoever she can, whatsoever is possible.

      Today I am immeasurably happy finding myself again in the Himalayas. I
wanted to die in the Himalayas just as Lao Tzu did. It is wonderful to be
alive in the Himalayas, it is even more wonderful to die in the Himalayas.
The snow, wherever it is, represents the purity of the Himalayas, the
virginity.... Tomorrow never comes, so there is no need to worry. With me it
is always today, and this very moment we are in that world of the Himalayas.

      Michelangelo must have liked white marble; he has carved a statue of
Jesus out of it. No other man has carved such beautiful images, so it should
not have been difficult for Stone to write a beautiful story about
Michelangelo. But he missed the point only because he was imitating himself.
Alas, if he could have forgotten his first book, he would have produced
another Lust for Life.






Copyright