Osho,
As the world is progressing along a rational path, in less than a hundred years hence people will begin to wonder why you were not being heard and accepted now. Having successfully laid down the foundations of the religion of the future, how does it feel to be persecuted in your own time?

There are many implications in your question. First, the world is not moving rationally. It was moving rationally up to Albert Einstein; after Albert Einstein, the rational approach has become invalid. The irrational has exploded in every field of experimentation.

Now paintings are no longer rational. If you see the old paintings, you can understand reasonably well what they are; but the same is not true about Picasso.

I have heard that in one of the exhibitions of his paintings, a critic was almost obsessed with one painting. He would go around to other paintings, but would come again and again to the same painting. Picasso was watching. Finally he went to the man and asked, “Why are you interested in this painting so much?”

The man said, “I am a critic, and this is the only painting for the future.”

Picasso looked at the painting and said, “My God! It is hanging upside down.”

But even that does not make any difference; you cannot rationally understand the meaning of the paintings of Picasso. But you can be enchanted, thrilled. You can fall in love. You can see the beauty of the colors, you can see the harmony. It can leave a tremendously deep impact on you, but there is no meaning. If somebody asks you what this painting means you will not be able to answer – because even Picasso is not able to answer it.

He has written to a friend, “I am very angry at people who ask the meaning of my paintings because they make me feel embarrassed. Nobody asks the roses: What is your meaning? Nobody asks the sunset: What is your meaning? Nobody asks the sky full of stars: What is your meaning? Why is everybody asking poor Picasso the meaning of his paintings? Existence has no meaning. As far as reason is concerned, there is no rationality in existence; it is irrational.”

In my words, it is mystical.

The world is not progressing towards more rationality. Rationality is already out of date. The genius has already transcended it.

In poetry… You cannot ask Ezra Pound, “What is the meaning?” Ezra Pound will say, “It is poetry, and what does poetry have to do with meaning?” Poetry is something that triggers joy in you, ecstasy, silence, peace – for no reason at all.

The words of the poetry are not the poetry – the poetry is somewhere between the words, between the lines. So those who only read words never come to know what poetry is; they remain hung up with prose. Prose is rational, poetry is irrational – that is the difference. Prose has a logic. Poetry has a mystery.