Choosing a Meditation (Content Needed)

SECOND STAGE Now we have to enter the second stage. Continue deep breathing, and let go of the body. Leave the body to do what it wishes to do. Let go of it. Let it take whatever asanas or postures it wants to take; let it form whatever mudras or gestures it likes. Leave it free to move and shake and whirl as it likes. If it wants to weep let it. Let go of the body completely. Continue deep breathing and let go of the body. Let the body fall down if it wants to fall down. And let it rise again if it wants to rise. And if it wants to dance allow it wholly. Let go of the body absolutely. Let it do whatever it wants to do. Leave it free. Don't impede it even in the least. Cooperate with the body. If it spins, let it.

In 1969 followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi invited Osho to talk to them. This was the first occasion on which Osho addressed a western audience, and the first time he talked publicly at length in English. The discourse has been published in OTI January 1 & 16, 1991; and February 1, 1991. Osho: Really, there can be no method as far as meditation is concerned. Meditation is not a method. Through technique, through method, you cannot go beyond mind. When you leave all methods, all techniques, you transcend mind. So meditation itself is not a method. Truth cannot be achieved through method. Method is our own invention. We, who are ignorant, have achieved knowledge through methods constructed, created, projected, in our ignorance. Through method you can achieve a sort of self-hypnosis, a sort of auto-hypnosis. Any method, whatsoever it's name, can only give you an illusory kind of peace.

You have talked of four stages of meditation. Would you please explain them fully?

Firstly, there are thousands of tensions stored in your body and you are not aware of them, although these are your collections. Civilization has made our lives so unnatural that even when you are angry with someone you keep smiling before him. Your body is not aware of your manners; it feels like strangling the person concerned. Your fists clench by themselves, but you wear a false smile and you don't allow the fists to clench, you suppress them. Then the bodily nerves which had readied themselves for the clenched fists find themselves in a great difficulty. They simply fail to understand what it is all about. And a state of restlessness is created in the body. The fists should have clenched. People who study and understand anger in depth say -- and I say the same -- that whenever you are so angry you do just one thing. Don't…

Beloved Osho, if I look at my death, or your death, one thing I could never forgive myself for is to miss you. I used to think: if life has a purpose, you are the purpose -- and if there is a destiny, you are my destiny. Now I see things a little differently. The most beautiful gift my life can give to you is not to worship you or help your work on this earth. It is not even to love you. Out of your compassion, as I understand it, the most beautiful gift my life can give to you is my own enlightenment. Please, Osho, give me a technique to prepare my meditation.

Raso, the way your understanding has been growing is perfectly the right way and the right direction. The only thing you should think of is enlightenment. Yes, that is the only gift you can give to me: your enlightenment. Everything else is trivia. So your conclusion has my absolute, categorical approval. Once you are committed, once you have decided wholeheartedly that enlightenment is the only purpose of being here in the world, of being alive, then a single pointed awareness -- just like an arrow moving towards its target -- begins in you. You are asking for the right meditation. Meditation is a beautiful word; hiding behind it is a very dangerous reality. The dangerous reality is: if you want to be deeply in meditation, you will have to pass through almost a death -- the death of the old, the death of all that you used to be, a…

What is dynamic meditation?

In the second step so many things are possible -- something different will happen to each individual. One person will begin to dance, another person will begin to cry. One will become naked, another will begin to jump and yet another will begin to laugh. Anything is possible. Move from within, move totally, and then you can proceed to the third stage. The third stage is reached as a result of an inherent sequence. In the first stage, the body electricity, or you can call it Kundalini, is awakened. It begins to revolve and move. Only then can the body be in a total letgo, not before. Only when the inner movement has begun are outer movements possible. When the catharsis of the second stage is brought to a peak, to a climax, the third ten-minute stage begins. Begin to repeat vigorously the Sufi mantra: Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! The energy…