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Main Index
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sense that "God exists, and I am needed by God," never feels worthless -- never. To the last moment, to the last breath of his life, he is functioning, serving something higher than himself. He has a context bigger than himself; in that context, meaning arises.
Meaning is always in a certain context. A single word is meaningless; when it is arranged in a poem it has tremendous meaning: now it has a context. The color in a tube is meaningless; once it is spread on the canvas and becomes part of a picture that is bigger than it, it has a context, suddenly meaning arises.
It is reported that once a very rich man asked Pablo Picasso to make a portrait of him, Picasso said, "It will be very costly." The man was so rich, he said, "Don't bother about it. You need not even talk about the cost, money doesn't matter. Make my portrait and whatsoever you demand, I will give."
After six months the portrait was ready. The rich man came, but the price that was asked was fantastic: one million dollars, just for a small canvas and a few colors! The rich man said, "Are you joking? Just for a few colors and a canvas?"
Picasso said, "Then okay, you can take an empty canvas and a few tubes full of color and you can pay as much as you want."
The rich man said, "But that is not the same."
Picasso aid, "That's what I am trying to point out to you. I have created a context, I have created a gestalt, a pattern. And nobody else can create it, hence the price. It is a Picasso painting: nobody else can do it the way I have done it, it has my signature on it. The harmony of the colors, the music of the colors, the poetry of the colors -- that is the thing. I am not asking the price for the colors but for something that has become expressed through the colors."
A real painting is not just the sum total of the colors, it is more -- and that "more" is the meaning. A real life is not the sum total of what you do; unless there is something more to it, you live an inauthentic life. That "more" is God. That poetry is God, that music is God, that surrounds you and floods you.
People come to me and ask, "Where is God?" It is not a question of asking
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