Body-Based Meditation

 

“The spiritual is never tense; it cannot be. There is no spiritual tension, only bodily tension, only mental tension.

“Bodily tension has been created by those who, in the name of religion, have been preaching anti-body attitudes. In the West, Christianity has been emphatically antagonistic toward the body. A false division, a gulf, has been created between you and your body; then your total attitude becomes tension creating. You cannot eat in a relaxed way, you cannot sleep in a relaxed way; every bodily act becomes a tension. The body is the enemy, but you cannot exist without it. You must remain with it, you must live with your enemy, so there is constant tension; you can never relax.

“The body is not your enemy, nor is it in any way unfriendly or even indifferent to you. The very existence of the body is bliss. And the moment you take the body as a gift, as a divine gift, you will come back to the body. You will love it, you will feel it — and subtle are the ways of its feeling.

“You cannot feel another’s body if you have not felt your own, you cannot love another’s body if you have not loved your own; it is impossible. You cannot care for another person’s body if you have not cared for your own — and no one cares! You may say that you care, but I insist: no one cares. Even if you seem to care, you do not really care. You are caring for some other reason — for the opinion of others, for the look in someone else’s eyes; you never care for your body for yourself. You do not love your body, and if you cannot love it, you cannot be in it.

“Love your body and you will feel a relaxation such as you have never felt before. Love is relaxing. When there is love, there is relaxation. If you love someone — if, between you and him or you and her, there is love — then with love comes the music of relaxation. Then relaxation is there....

“This same phenomenon happens if you love your body; you become relaxed, you care about it. It is not wrong, it is not narcissistic to be in love with your own body. In fact, it is the first step toward spirituality.

“That is why Dynamic Meditation begins with the body. Through vigorous breathing the mind expands, the consciousness expands; the whole body becomes a vibrating, living existence. Now the jump will be easier. Now you can jump; thinking will be less of a barrier. You have become a child again: jumping, vibrating, alive. The conditioning, the mental conditioning, is not there.

“Your body is not so conditioned as your mind. Remember this: your mind is conditioned, but your body is still a part of nature. All religions and religious thinkers — who have been basically cerebral — are against the body because with the body, with the senses, the mind and its conditioning are lost.

“...With breathing, you begin to feel your whole body, every corner of it; the body is flooded; you become one with it. Now it is possible for you to take a jump.

The jump that is taken in sex is a very small jump, while the jump that is taken in meditation is a very great jump. In sex, you "“ump” into someone else. Before that jump you need to be one with your body, and in that jump you need to expand still more — to another’s body. Your consciousness spreads beyond your body. In meditation you jump from your body to the whole body of the universe; you become one with it.

“The second step of Dynamic Meditation is cathartic. Not only will you be one with your body but all the tensions that have been accumulated in the body must be thrown out. The body must become light, unburdened, so the movements are to be vigorous, as vigorous as possible. Then the same thing that is possible in dervish dancing, in Sufi dancing, becomes possible. If your movements are vital and vigorous, a moment will come when you will lose control. And that moment is needed. You must not be in control because your control is the barrier, you are the barrier. Your controlling faculty — your mind — is the barrier.

“Go on moving. Of course, you will have to begin, but a moment will come when you will be taken over; you will feel that the control is lost. You are on the brink, now you can take the jump. Now you have again become a child. You have come back; all the conditioning is thrown. You do not care for anything; you do not care for what others think. Now everything that has been put into you by society is thrown; you have become just a dancing particle in the universe.

“When you have thrown everything in the second stage of Dynamic Meditation, only then is the third stage possible. Your identity will be lost, your image will be broken, because whatever you know about yourself is not about yourself but only a labeling. You have been told you are this or that, and you have become identified with it. But with vigorous movement, with the cosmic dance, all identifications will be lost. You will be, for the first time, as you must have been when you were born. And with this new birth you will be a new person.”

Osho, Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy