Poetry may not be religion proper but it points in the right direction. When a poet is really in a creative state, he knows something of religion – a faraway distant music, because when he is in a creative state, he is no more himself. He participates – although in a very small measure, but he participates in God. Just a drop of divinity enters into him. That’s why great poets have always said, ’When we write poetry, we are not the creators of it. We become possessed. Some unknown energy enters, sings, dances in us. We don’t know what it is.’ When a painter is lost into his painting, he is utterly lost into his painting, his ego disappears. Maybe only for moments, but in those egoless moments God paints through him. If you participate in God, God participates in you. Art is an unconscious form of religion. Religion is conscious art. Art is as if you are religious in a dream, but it is pointing in the right direction. The artist is the nearest to the religious.
Osho
