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| | | Book Name: Yoga - The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4 | Previous Next | |
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Van Gogh, the great Dutch painter. He was the perfect masochist. If he had been born in India, he would have become a Mahatma Gandhi; but he became a painter. He had not much money. His brother used to give him only enough to survive. Out of the seven days of the week, he would eat only on three days, and the other four days of the week he would fast in order to paint.
He was in love with a woman, but the father of the woman wouldn't allow him to see her. So he forced his hand on a burning flame and he said, 'I will keep my hand on the burning flame until you allow me to see her.' He burnt his hand.
A prostitute told him, 'Your ears are very beautiful,' because there was nothing else to appreciate in his face. He was one of the ugliest men, he had ugly features. The prostitute must have been in a difficulty with this man, so she told him that his ears were very beautiful. He went back home, cut one of his ears off with a knife, packed it, went back to her with blood flowing all over, and presented the ear to the woman saying, 'You liked it so much that I would like to give it to you as a gift.'
He continued painting in the hottest part of France, Arles, in the summer when the sun was very hot. Everybody told him, 'You will get ill, the sun is too hot.' But the whole day, particularly when the sun was hottest, at full noontide, he would be standing in the fields and painting. Within twenty days he went mad. He was young, thirty three or thirty four when he killed himself, committed suicide.
But in the name of painting, art, beauty, you can torture yourself. In the name of God, in the name of prayer, in the name of sadhana, you can torture yourself. You will find this type very predominant in India: lying on a bed of nails, thorns, fasting for months. You will come across people who have not slept for ten years. They remain standing, fighting with sleep. There are people who have been standing for years, they have not taken any other posture; their legs are almost dead. There are people who are living with one hand raised towards the sky; the whole hand has gone dead, no more blood circulates in it, it is just bones. These people are ill;
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