The majority consists of fools, utter fools. Beware of the majority. If so many people are following, that is enough a proof that something is wrong. Truth happens to individuals, not to crowds.

Osho

When you have emptied all the content — thoughts, desires, memories, projections, hopes — when all is gone, for the first time you find yourself, because you are nothing but that pure space, that virgin space within you. Unburdened by anything, that contentless consciousness, that´s what you are! Seeing it, realizing it, one is free. One is freedom, one is joy, one is bliss.

Osho

If the child sees that the parents are very happy because he has become knowledgeable, he starts gathering more and more knowledge. He starts forgetting the knack that he had brought with his life, that was inborn. By the time he comes out of the university he has completely forgotten one of the most beautiful things that was given by God to him: the capacity to wonder, the capacity to see without thinking, the capacity to contact reality without the mind continuously interfering, distorting.

Osho

"The lover who wholly loves, can reach reality, comprehending the unattainable man...." Love is the path of the Baul; love, and nothing else -- wholly in love, totally in love, total trust.

To find nectar,

stir the cauldron on the fire,

and unite the act of loving

with the feeling for love.

ORDINARILY people love, but they don't have a FEELING for love. They exploit love. They even act like lovers, but their love is in the service of gratification. They don't have a feeling for love. They don't love love. They don't have respect, reverence for love. Love

remains a lust; it never becomes worship, prayer.

TO FIND NECTAR,

STIR THE CAULDRON ON THE FIRE,

AND UNITE THE ACT OF LOVING

WITH THE FEELING FOR LOVE.

DISTILL THE SWEETNESS

OF THE HEART

AND REACH THE TREASURES,

DEVOTING YOURSELF

TO THOSE WHOLLY DEVOTED.

If you can find a person who is wholly devoted to God, then devote yourself to that person -- because love cannot be taught, it can only be caught. Nobody can teach you the ways of love; you will have to live in close vicinity of a lover. Nobody can teach you how to pray: you will have to live in close vicinity of one who is in prayer. Watching him, feeling him, moving around him, tasting the flavor of his being, will teach you what prayer is. Then prayer will not become a ritual. Then prayer will be a flowering within you, a spontaneous arising of a new vision.

Distill the sweetness

of the heart and reach the treasures,

devoting yourself

to those wholly devoted.

Osho: The Beloved_Volume 2

You may be the last generation who has the possibility to rebel. 
And if you don´t rebel, there may be no more chances: humanity can be reduced to a robot-like existence. So rebel while the time is still there!

Osho


 Love Unites 

A LOVER is capable of creating life out of death; he can do the miracle. He can make the moon rise in the darkest night. That's why there is a fear about love. I have observed thousands of people trembling whenever they are on the threshold of love, afraid. Why does so much fear come out of love. 

Erich Fromm has written a beautiful book in which he says that love seems to be one of the most risky things, one of the most dangerous. And there is tremendous fear in humanity about love. People talk about love; they may be talking just to deceive

themselves. Their talk may be just a substitute to give them a feeling that they are lovers. But people are afraid of love. It gives fear, because love is death. Your ego has to be dropped completely, utterly effaced. It is suicide. Fear is natural, but if you are courageous enough and you can pass through it, if you can carry the cross of love on your shoulders, resurrection is certain. The moment ego is dropped, you are born. 

He who knows

the essence of love,

fears none.

Devoted only

to love's own form,

alive before his eyes,

his home is in

happiness itself.

Lulling lust

by lust alone

he raids the heart of the God

that churns all hearts,

finding himself

in perennial love.

Let your heart be a caring home

for the man of your heart.

Focus your vision

through the eye-black of loving.

He will be floating

on the mercurial mirror.

Hours wither like broken games

on the playground of the earth.

Abandon search

and join the carnival of love.

Abandon search

and join the carnival of love....

The Bauls say just intellectual search, seeking, is not going to help. "Join the carnival of love": that is what prayer is, that-is what worship is. Be ecstatic, joyful, celebrating, singing, dancing. Let God be allowed to be playful through you. Let playfulness be your only prayer. Let joy be your only worship.

Osho: The Beloved_Volume 2

Reality Check

I feel I don’t allow my heart to open. When I was very young I rejected my parents. I felt good about being a bad little boy. Now I feel that everything that I thought was love was nothing.

This is a good insight. To understand that whatsoever you have called love up to now was not love, is one of the most meaningful insights. When it happens much becomes possible.

People go on thinking that they love, and that becomes their greatest illusion — and the sooner they are disillusioned the better. Love is such a rare thing that it cannot be so easily available to all. It is not; it is as rare as buddhahood, not less than that.

This insight is good but it will make you sad, very morose, and give you a certain gloom. But don’t be worried, because out of a dark night the morning is born. When the night is darkest the morning is closest. You will be very very morose and sad because whatsoever you were thinking was love was not, and you have lived in dreams and have been missing reality. When this insight dawns on you, you become very sad, almost dead.

Don’t try to escape from this state. Relax into it, let yourself be drowned in this sadness, and soon you will come out of it completely new. I can see even in your voice, in your eyes, in your very body, that a tremendous sadness is settling, allow it. The human tendency is not to allow it, to escape from it — to go to a hotel, to a cinema, to friends to talk nonsense, to do something to be occupied so that you can escape from this state. But if you escape you again miss something that was going to happen. Relax into it.

Osho, Above All, Don’t Wobble

It is the stretched soul that makes music. And souls are stretched by the pull of opposites — opposite points, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity, where energies flow smoothly in one direction, there will be much doing but no music, much noise but no music. The music is created by the meeting of silence and sound, the music is created by the polar opposites.

Osho

Life as Dance

 

Start with meditation, and things will go on growing in you — silence, serenity, blissfulness, sensitivity. And whatever comes out of meditation, try to bring it out in life. Share it, because everything shared grows fast. And when you have reached the point of death, you will know there is no death. You can say goodbye, there is no need for any tears of sadness — maybe tears of joy, but not of sadness. But you have to begin from being innocent.

So first, throw out all crap that you are carrying. Everybody is carrying so much crap, and one wonders, for what? Just because people have been telling you that these are great ideas, principles.... You have not been intelligent with yourself. Be intelligent with yourself.

Life is very simple; it is a joyful dance. The whole earth can be full of joy and dance, but there are people who are seriously vested in their interest that nobody should enjoy life, that nobody should smile, that nobody should laugh, that life is a sin, that it is a punishment. How can you enjoy when the climate is such that you have been told continuously that it is a punishment? — that you are suffering because you have done wrong things and it is a kind of jail where you have been thrown to suffer?

I say to you life is not a jail, it is not a punishment. It is a reward, and it is given only to those who have earned it, who deserve it. Now it is your right to enjoy; it will be a sin if you don’t enjoy.

It will be against existence if you don’t beautify it, if you leave it just as you have found it. No, leave it a little happier, a little more beautiful, a little more fragrant.

Osho, Beyond Enlightenment

Unconditional love or sick relationships

Osho,

You have talked about the superiority/inferiority dialectic as the basis of authoritarian and fascist relationships. It is one of the miracles of being with you that in spite of having been constantly persuaded of our unworthiness by our parents, teachers and priests, you are able to shed light on all our unconscious habits without ever making us feel bad about it. You allow us to be aware of our potential for enlightenment in a way that does not make us feel superior, and yet simultaneously you never make us feel inferior because we are not enlightened. In groups, too, while you are present, we can reveal our notions of inferiority but because you are there and simply not part of the egotistic inferiority/superiority game, dependency and spiritual slavery cannot happen. But what happens in groups where you are absent? Surely, if the therapist has a trace of ego, then doesn't this kind of psychological fascism inevitably emerge? 

You have seen something so significant that everybody must be made aware of it.

There is only one possibility for sanity to exist in relationships so they don't turn into inferiority and superiority games, so they don't become sado-masochistic tortures. And that only possibility is in the presence of an unconditional love. Love is the greatest alchemy.

It transforms base metals into gold. Your ingredients are the same – the murderer and the Gautam Buddha are not different as far as their ingredients, their intrinsic potentialities are concerned. It is just that man is not a one dimensional machine.

Man is not one-dimensional; otherwise, his whole world would be sheer boredom.

And man's search is basically to be one with existence – separation hurts.

In our other loving relationships, in small measures we are searching for the same unity. In love with a woman, in love with a man, in love with a friend, in love with some creative activity – dance, music, poetry – we are trying to have a certain synchronicity with existence.

Our situation is that of a small child in the forest who has lost his mother and is searching in the forest, not knowing where to go. This situation allows many exploiters... this helplessness is used by those who are in power, by those who have money. The helplessness is used to convert you into a slave, into dependence.

Hence, all the religions have developed particular programs. They begin with God – and with God, your relationship cannot be anything else but that which exists between a puppet and a puppeteer, between the slave and the owner. With God, you cannot expect more than that, because he is the creator; he has made you – he can at any moment destroy you too. Neither did he ask you whether you wanted to enter into life, nor will he ask you whether you are in favor of destroying the world.

All the gods of all the religions are dictatorial. They are fascist.

I don't have any God; hence I don't have any program for you in which you will be transformed slowly into a slave. 

I am fulfilled – nothing more can be added to my experience. That's why the people who are with me will not feel in any way inferior.

Nobody is inferior. People may be in different spaces, but nobody is inferior and nobody is superior. They are all made of the same stuff you call God. How can somebody be superior and somebody be inferior? We belong to the same existence, our roots are nourished by the same existence.

Existence makes no distinctions, no discriminations between the sinners and the saints. My approach is existential. 

Hence, nobody is superior and nobody is inferior here. Naturally, by destroying this complex of inferiority and superiority, we are removing the very possibility of any kind of fascist mentality, fascist personality – because to me, it is inconceivable that a fascist can ever be religious.

And your so-called religious people are more or less all fascist fanatics. They are not in search of truth; they think they have found it already – in their scriptures which are dead, in the old superstitions which even they know have no basis in reality.

Just a clarity of vision dispels all darkness out of which all the monsters are born.

Here with me, whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are white or black, it does not matter; nobody even takes note of it. It is enough that you are a human being. And it is your freedom to choose your own lifestyle; it is your basic right how you want to blossom. Those who love you can help in taking care of the garden in which you are growing – watering your roots, showering their warmth.

It has now been scientifically proved that even the plants know who are their friends and who are their enemies. They have developed something like a cardiogram which is attached to the tree, and if a man comes with the idea to cut a branch of the tree or to uproot the tree – he just has the idea – suddenly the graph that is being made by the cardiogram on the tree starts trembling. It loses the rhythm it had... now you can see how fear is felt by the tree.

And remember that the tree has telepathic sensitivity; otherwise she could not know the thought in the man's mind. He has not done anything – visibly, nothing has happened. And when the gardener comes – with his warmth, with his love – suddenly the graph becomes the most harmonious. Now the tree is no longer afraid, the tree is immensely blissful.

Loving warmth is not only a poetic phenomenon. It is a reality of great importance.

Now the flowers will be bigger, the fruits will be juicier; the tree will respond. Except for man, perhaps there is no ingratitude in this whole existence. The tree cannot give anything more – she cannot give money, she cannot give gold – but she can give beautiful flowers, as big as possible, to a loving heart. She can give juicier fruits.

Love has never been thought of as food, but it is a very subtle kind of food. And now psychologists have concluded that if a child gets everything necessary – all chemicals, all hormones, food, exercise, fresh air, rest, everything that is necessary for life – still he will die in three to six months unless there is someone to pour love. He will not feel that life is worth living without love; he will simply shrink and die. And in thousands of labs around the world, many animals have died in these experiments.

Ordinarily, it is understood that these experiments are being done on animals first and that unless we have found safe principles we do not apply them to human beings – this has been the idea prevalent in the masses. Even the medical professionals – doctors, physicians – also believe in it. But the truth is something very different.

Just a few days ago.... For almost two years, a group of senators in America were investigating about a certain amount of money... not a small amount of money; two hundred million dollars is there in the books, but where has it been spent, where has it gone? The cabinet went on denying any knowledge of it, the president went on denying. The suspicion was that the government of America today is the greatest terrorist. And the money is going to the terrorists in a small country in the middle portion of the Americas, between South America and North America.

Just like Cuba, another small country has become communist. It is their right, whether they are right or wrong. Nobody else has to decide it. If they want to live a wrong kind of life, then too, they have the absolute freedom to live it; only they should not harm anybody else. They should not interfere in the lives of others.

Two hundred million dollars had been given to guerrillas, terrorists, to destroy that small Central American country because it had gone into the hands of the communists. And after two years of continuous struggle, only now has the president accepted that, "Yes, that money has gone to the terrorists."

And the whole world is silent, nobody has criticized it!

Governments are to save people from terrorism, and here governments are supplying money and arms and food to terrorists. And then they go on lying....

I have looked into the scriptures of all the religions, I have looked into the ideological literature of all the political parties and I am amazed: they go on piling up lies upon lies. And the whole of humanity is asleep – not only does nobody object, but nobody even suspects.

Here with me, you are gathered for a special purpose: the search for the truth, the search for the purest kind of love, the search for a life which is a dance of sheer joy.

Nowhere else in the world are people gathering for the same reasons. They are gathering for the purpose of creating more hatred; they are gathering to create more wars; they are gathering to create more destructive activities in human life. Naturally, we have a sick world, an insane world.

Here, it is impossible to feel any superiority or inferiority.

I have tried my best to convince you of only one thing: that enlightenment is your nature; that it is not something achieved, you bring it with your birth. All that you have to do is not to create it but just to open the hidden secret of your life.

The moment you start feeling your inner light, your whole perspective starts changing. You will feel compassionate towards human beings even if they are doing stupid things. And you will feel immensely joyous, celebrating, even though you don't have anything to celebrate. Nothing is needed to celebrate – only excuses... my birthday is just an excuse! But if you want to celebrate, you will find a thousand and one excuses.

It is your life, and whatever becomes of it is your creation.

Remember, there are hidden signatures on it. You cannot disassociate yourself from what you create, from the way you live, the way you respond.

Once you are overflowing with love and blissfulness, you cannot, even in your dreams, act in a way which is humiliating to another. Because the other is not really the other, it is just part of us.

We are one consciousness filling the whole universe.

But a little experience will help... and you will start seeing the same light in others. And to see light within yourself and light within others is to live the whole year round surrounded with a festival of lights.

In the outside world, there are people who want to dominate and there are people who want to be dominated. The responsibility is not one-sided. There are people who want to be enslaved, because slavery has one thing about it: it takes all responsibility away from you. Then the responsibility is of your owner. You are just instrumental – whatever he says, you do, but you don't feel any burden. So most human beings deep down want to remain slaves.

Slavery in religion means you remain a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. And you are afraid also, because your slavery is based only on beliefs. So everybody is trying to protect his flock from coming in contact with others.

Just the other day I received a message from friends in Germany. The German parliament has passed a resolution that I cannot enter Germany. Sannyasins are protesting it because it is absolutely against the German constitution, against German law. There is not a single precedent! Not only in Germany but all over the world, there is not a single incident prohibiting a man who has never before entered your country. How can you judge that he is going to be dangerous?

So they asked five hundred world-famous, prominent intelligentsia from different fields – professors, scientists, poets, painters, dancers, actors. Up to now they have received one hundred and fifty letters of strong support, an absolute protest against the government.

They have also received a few letters which are in support of the government. A few points in those letters were so hilarious that they have sent me those few points. One point was: One Protestant high priest has supported the government because he thinks I am a Catholic, and Germany has to be saved from the Catholic religion.

Such fear shows deep doubts. You are not certain about your Protestant theology; you are afraid somebody may make punctures in the balloon of your faith.

Here with me, there is a religious fragrance but no religion as such. That gives you total freedom. That makes you proud of yourself and grateful for all that existence has done for you. Remember, pride is not ego.

Ego is something without content. For example, a man who cannot even draw a straight line thinks himself a great painter – that is ego, there is no content. But if Picasso thinks he is a great painter, that is simply a fact, and if he is proud of his genius there is nothing wrong in it. In fact, people should be helped to find some pride in their individuality because that pride will make their eyes shine, their faces luminous; that pride will make them unique individuals, with no more question of inferiority and superiority.

And secondly, anybody who is proud is always grateful. Because the genius of Picasso or Yehudi Menuhin is not their own; they are only vehicles. It is the beyond that comes through them – in music, in dance, in painting, in scientific research, in poetry, in thousands of ways, but the real genius will know it for sure, that it is coming from the beyond.

He is proud that he has been chosen, he is not proud in comparison to you. Ego is a comparison: you are higher, you are superior, but there is comparison. You cannot be superior living alone in a forest – superior to whom? You cannot even be inferior – inferior to whom?

The man of pride has a deep feeling of gratitude that existence has chosen him, although he is not worthy. It is a strange phenomenon. The more worthy you are, the more you feel you are not worthy enough. You have been given so much and you cannot do anything in return.

Here, there will be people with pride. I would like my sannyasins to be proud, even of the fact that they are sannyasins, that they have been courageous enough to move against all orthodoxies, traditions, conventions, all that is rotten, and come out into the fresh, into the young, into the new. You are blessed. But your blessedness will be full of gratitude.

That is the distinction to be remembered between ego and pride.

I destroy the ego and I create the pride. Ego is something like a cancer that simply eats you and eats others. Pride, self-respect is a creative phenomenon. It fulfills your own potential and it also shares with the world all the treasures that you have brought into the world. So here the situation is totally different.

I would like it to be so in the whole world, but they are so afraid. Their fear that I can destroy their morality, their religion, their past, is a clear-cut indication that they are already uprooted from the past. They are just hoping against hope that somehow all this old garbage can be carried. Because we have respected it as golden for centuries. Now, to suddenly drop it as garbage by the side of the road hurts the ego, because it means the ego has been wrong for centuries.

A sannyasin needs the courage to drop the fear – because unless he drops the fear, the ego cannot be dropped. And without dropping the ego, the whole load, the whole luggage, all rotten, has to be carried. Your whole energy is wasted in carrying the dead.

Just think of yourself carrying your father, your grandfather, your forefathers, all on your back and going towards Marine Drive. Do you think you will ever reach Marine Drive? Because the people lined up on your back is going to be endless; all your skyscrapers will look like pygmies. The load is going to be so tremendous that you will not be able to carry it without the help of Suraj Prakash – you will need trucks, transport vehicles. And your whole life will be simply wasted carrying these dead people.

And we are all carrying them. That's why life becomes serious, burdensome, heavy, juiceless, dry. Otherwise, there is no reason. You can be lush green with red flowers.

And there is no need for any comparison. Why not have all the people of the planet be emperors? What is the problem? It is a question of understanding the world – and if you understand yourself, to understand the world is not difficult, it is the simplest thing.

And once you have understood that to be an emperor or to be a slave is your decision, who is going to choose to be a slave? When you can put your whole energy into creating something that will give you satisfaction, that will give you a deep sense of fulfillment, a sense that you have not been here unnecessarily, you have contributed something; you have made the world a little more beautiful – a few more flowers you have added to it.

If everybody is adding a few more flowers, this whole world can again become a garden.

There is no need to fight. There is no need for you to be superior to anybody, because I am giving you something which is far higher than superiority. I am making you unique individuals.

Osho, Sermons in Stones

One birth has been given to you by your parents, the other birth is waiting. It has to be given to you by yourself. You have to father and mother yourself. Then your whole energy is turning in, it becomes an inner circle.

Osho

Therapy is basically love and meditation – because without love no healing is possible.

Osho

When you are sharing your joy, you don´t create a prison for anybody — you simply give. You don´t even expect gratitude or thankfulness, because you are giving, not to get anything, not even gratitude. You are giving because you are so full, you have to give.

Osho

Driving Madness Up the Wall 

By Dr. Wilfried Nelles

Driving Madness Up the Wall To the modern mind, hyped up by CNN, cellular phones and cyberspace, the idea of sitting in silent meditation as Buddha's disciples did 2500 years ago seems a remote possibility. Recognizing this, Osho has created active meditations. A former sociology professor describes how Dynamic Meditation revitalizes modern man -- and 20th century society.

It is seven o'clock. My son leaves for school, and I change out of my pajamas into gym shorts and a T-shirt. More is not needed, soon I will feel warm enough. For I am about to meditate -- meditate dynamically, that is. Dynamic is a very curious meditation, particularly if seen from the outside. Is has little to do with images of bald-shaven monks sitting for hours on cold stone floors, even less with the chanting of sacred mantras, or contemplations on holy matters. Its time is the early morning, and its message is simple: wake up! because that is easier said than done, as it meets with so much resistance within ourselves, it employs massive, energetic, and strenuous means to shake us awake. We live in fortunate-unfortunate times. Everything has gone topsy-turvy. 

We no longer know why we live, what we are living for, what we are doing, whether we really want what we want. We have lost our bearings and are rapidly losing our ultimate dreams. Some of us are conscious of it, many sense it more or less, but the majority don't want to know anything about it. We throw ourselves into work, pleasure, all sort of activities, or turn to alcohol or drugs to avoid the obvious. Counselors are in greater demand than ever, the more traditional one like astrologers, card reader or soothsayers as well as the modern variation you can dial during a TV show or consult in a book. They tell you how to eat, how to walk, what to wear where and when, in which direction to have your head while you sleep, how to get rich, how to get or stay healthy, and , last but not least, how to love. 

But the more good counsel we get, the more knowledge we collect about "how to", the more we feel lost, the more we feel left behind. Our so-called modern enlightened consciousness is, it seems, a very unhappy consciousness. The more developed a civilization is, the more neurotic, the more psychologically ill, the more addicted, the more suicidal are its members. After all the great social visions of our age have popped like soap bubbles -- the latest being the breakdown of socialism -- life seems to have fizzled down to something we simply must get through, or, to use a phrase coined by Max Weber "to bear like a man". Which is OK if you are on the side of the fence where the fleshpots are full. But the flesh in the pots is getting putrid, even affluence doesn't hold what it once promised -- and deep down we all know it, however much we are dying to have it. 

We love our dreams and it hurts when they are broken. But that's how it is and we have no say in it. All we can do is repress the pain, close our eyes and hearts in order to avoid it. But one day it catches up with us, when some unforeseen event- an illness, an accident, a war, a natural catastrophe, a human encounter, even our own end -- rips a gap in our personal preoccupations and we ask ourselves in anguish: "Was that it? Was that really it?" Every time a dream is destroyed, is reveals as just a dream and shattered to pieces, we are on the point of awakening. 

But the question is: Do we want to wake up? Do we really want to be disillusioned? Or do we prefer to hold on to our illusions until the bitter end? Basically, we have no alternative. Anybody who just pauses a moment and takes an unblinkered look at the state of the world, sees this huge nightmare for what it really is, knows that that this nightmare will explode sooner rather than later -- and all our private little dreams will explode along with it. 

Do we, do you, do I want to wake up? While the tape with the music that accompanies Dynamic Meditation is being rewound on my tape deck, I mechanically do my preparations: I pull a foam rubber mattress in place so that I won't hurt myself in case I feel like throwing a fit, and I blow my nose as thoroughly as I can. For the nose must be free, otherwise nothing is possible. Then I start the tape.: a loud gong resounds, and already the drums start. I stand there -- feet firmly on the ground, but otherwise as loose as possible,' and breathe as fast and deep and chaotically as possible, through the nose. The mouth is closed firmly, and so are the eyes. That's anyway what the instructions say. Today I feel better than during the last few days, but the breathing doesn't come particularly fast, let alone deep. My nostrils are blown wide open, but hardly any air seems to come in. 

The left nostril is -- like it always is in the first few minutes -- almost shut, and the right one also feels pretty narrow. True, I usually take it easy at first, allowing myself approximately one minute warming-up time before really getting into the huffing and puffing, but this time I feel more low than loose. But didn't I feel particularly fit just now? Ah, that's it! I am feeling well enough, and precisely because of it I'm afraid that this small amount of well-being might get disturbed if I really get going; I would like to cling to it a little longer and not enter into the shit right away. 

Often enough we don't want to really wake up. Yes, we want to get rid off the bad dreams, the nightmares, but the beautiful ones? Many of us -- are hankering after the good old times. We complain about the present and seek solutions that were long ago obsolete. Specters from the Nazi past raise their ugly heads here and there, skinheads with a skull as an emblem. True, their ideas are stupid and dull, but what alternative has our society to offer them? Caviar instead of Big Macs, champagne instead of Coke, career instead of sex 'n drugs 'n rock 'n roll? And on top of that a few arid (and phony) sermons on the glories of reason? 

Reason has become a dead tree without fruits, a tree that says: "Sorry, no fruits anymore, you have to understand, you have to live with that." If we were prepared to really look, we would see in these drifting youngsters the mirrors of our own lack of perspective and vision. And the same goes for the dead junkies, for the battered babies, for the sexually abused children, for the sick relationships, for those infinitely sad dead-end sidings called "old people's homes", for those dehumanized life-prolonging and dying wards in our health-repair garages, for all those alcohol wrecks, cancer heart failure and AIDS patients. 

Whoever has the guts to speak the truth can only have something like this to say: "Those of you who believe in fortifying sand castles, who want more out of life than just another kick from food or sex, but also more than just defying adversity, more than just a `reasonable` acquiescence with what cannot be changed... if you want life, all of it, then you will have to create it yourselves, find your answers from your own inner selves without any chart. There are no other goals than those. That's why you are here. You are unique. You yourself are the goal, the answer, the meaning. Yes, you." There is little more to be said about this. In Europe, the legacy of the 19th century is defunct, finished for good, even if occasionally nationalism still rises from its grave. 

The final sellout and fall of communism is much more than just the collapse of a certain social system or empire. It is also the death of Marxism as a religion, and that has far wider implications. "The children of Marx and Coca-Cola"- as a famous French cin*aste of the sixties, Jean-Luc Godard, summed up the student rebels of the time -- are dying out. Now there is only Coca-Cola left. That is the revolution, or perhaps even more: a spiritual landslide, comparable to Galileo's discoveries putting an end to the Middle Ages, and with it all the certainty of a universally shared cosmology, a common Weltanschauung. For what went down the drain along with Marxism is the last of the great Western attempts to find a common answer to the burning question about the meaning of life. 

We now know: there is none. Unless you accept it's Coca Cola- for that's the bottom line of what society has to offer. Or unless you accept it's in yourself. But who are you? That's the only question the remains: Who am I? Here I am getting up early in the morning and breathing like crazy through my nose. Is that a way to find the answer? Really, it looks more like losing your marbles than finding your senses. But is it really less sensible than say, for argument's sake, what the philosopher Immanuel Kant was doing? He spent all his life in his Ksnigsberg ivory tower, torturing his brain and churning out long-winded sentences nobody can understand, replacing the Ten Commandments with Kantian Imperative intended to guide man in his moral action. But, in fact, it didn't change him one iota. Or is it less sensible than what Marx was doing when he was planning the salvation of man in the Reading Room of the British Museum? 

These tinkers may have done the most sensible and best thing possible in their time, but now it is high time to have a good look at ourselves -- in person, not in theory. After all, it is the sum total of all of us that's creating our history. And for that no books are needed. In books, all we can find are other people's thoughts. rehashing the thoughts of yet other people. What is needed is a mirror that helps us look within ourselves. And Dynamic Meditation is just such a mirror. And that's why I stand here, huffing and puffing like an express train. 

When I note my halfheartedness, I change to a higher gear. My nose is still damned narrow, but I know this will change soon. Within minutes I have reached a speed that leaves my thoughts painting behind. That is one of the purposes of the exercise: the mind is blown away- fear nothing, it will come back! All I hear now is a staccato of massive outbreaths, driven on by frenzied drums. I realize that even more is possible (more is always possible), and breathe even more deeply. I think nothing, there is only breathing -- deeper, faster, madder. It's totally far out. When a pang of pain shoots up somewhere. I just take note of it, and then I am back with the breathing. From a certain speed limit, a certain speed limit, a certain intensity on, I a simply in it, and it is fun to go for the maximum. The drums build up to a climax. Then the gong -- end of phase one. 

The first phase of Dynamic Meditation is the awakening to a new life. "Wake up, man!" it seems to be shouting at us. "Come out of your ancient sleep, step out of the maze of your dreams, be they sweet or nightmarish. Stop letting yourself be trapped by these dreams, drop your limitations and live! Breathe! Breathe and live! Open yourself for the Breath of Life, take in as much of it as you can possibly take! Stop philosophizing about life, stop losing yourself in the dreams of others, stop dreaming of Day x when you will really start living! Do it yourself, do it now! LIVE." Breath is life. The first and the lest breath are the two extremes between which our human existence moves. God, it is said, put his breath into Adam fashioned of clay, making him come to life. 

The Hindu word for breath, prana, is synonymous with life energy. A breath therapist can decode the way I live from the way I breathe. Each of us has our own breath patterns, each has subconscious tricks of how to avoid certain experiences that may be threatening to the unconscious, by simply changing the breathing rhythm. That's why ancient schools like yoga as well as modern psychotherapies use breath as a path to bring harmony back to body and soul, or to bring to light, and heal, traumatic experiences hidden deep in the unconscious. But this is not bringing harmony -- this is chaos! Deep, fast breathing dissolves the cemented patterns of our psyche, makes everything move and tingle, and charges the body with oxygen and life energy, blowing apart our psychosomatic structure, the order that was created by the circumstances of our birth and our background conditioning. 

We are coming closer to life in is original wildness, unpredictability, power. The onward march of rock music since the sixties is a sign of the human soul's need for the chaotic side of life, for expansions, for unfettered movement. It was expressed in frenetic solos on the guitar and drums. Every artist know this, and every child. For children that are granted a certain freedom, every day is new. That's why they have a different sense of time. Life is more intense, open for discoveries and surprises. That's what Jesus must have had in mind when he said: "Unless you become like children...." -- no molds, no pattern, simply vulnerable, curious and innocent. But we don't only have patterns, we are patterns. We have become so much one with them, that we are not even aware of the fact, we don't even notice them. We lost our innocence long ago, and we want to find it again. And we will to find it again if we want to enjoy, to really celebrate life and not go dragging on alone.

So my choice with this meditation is either to breathe as if all hell were let loose, or forget about ever coming alive again. The fear of what it means to come alive again is in every one of us, and it is understandable. We have no idea what's going to happen if our carefully maintained inner and outer mechanisms break down. Maybe there is an inner order, what Heraclitus called "the hidden harmony." But who knows- maybe not. Yes we may have an inkling, but we don't know. That's where a Master, an Awakened One, play such a central role in the spiritual search. In him-if he is not a pretender-this inner harmony, this being in tune with the innermost heartbeat of existence, has taken shape. In him we can feel it, in him it gets a voice and a face. In him, transcendence is not just an abstract term, but a palpable reality. 

We can also be mistaken, of course, but on the spiritual path there is no security, no guarantee anymore. The traditional meditation techniques created some 2,500 years ago aim at a gradual pacification of the mind over decades of patient practice, as in Japanese Zen or Tibetan Buddhism. Both traditions have become very popular in the West over the last few years. By contrast, Osho Dynamic meditation is more of a shock therapy. All meditation techniques are tricks, attempts to put the mind to sleep without consciousness falling asleep with it- to allow a glimpse of no-mind, the dimension beyond the mind. 

Whether or not a technique works is a question of who uses it. But the people for whom the ancient techniques were developed are no more. We live in a totally different world today. Dynamic Meditation is a method for modern man as he is -neurotic, speed, confused. It helps to bring all the mess of the modern mind to a boil so that it can evaporate. Whit these methods, tanks to the ingenuity and genius of Osho who invented them, a new path to meditation has been hewn through the jungle of today's mind, thicker and more tangled than ever before in the evolution of man.

If you can feel your inner music, inner truth, inner faith, inner love, inner hope, you will start recognizing it around you. The whole universe will change for you because you have changed. And whatsoever you feel within, now will be felt all around. The world remains the same; but when you change, everything changes. With you, your universe becomes different. If you are rooted in the divine, the whole existence is rooted in the divine. If you are rooted in evil, the whole universe is a hell. It depends on you. It is you, magnified.

Osho: The New Alchemy To Turn You On

Love is nearness, love is closeness. Distance in space, or nearness in space, is physical and meaningless. Wherever you are, it makes no difference. If you have a deep love for me, and if you can remember that love and surrender to me, I will be there working with you, within you. Remember this, and then you will never be lonely or alone.

Osho: The New Alchemy To Turn You On

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