Nataraj Meditation

Deva means divine, nartan means dance.... Life is a dance... in many meanings life is a dance. First -- life is not constituted of matter but of energy. And energy is never static -- it is always dancing. Now the physicists also say that there is no rest in the world -- nothing like rest exists. Everything is moving, dancing. A tremendous dance is on. The electrons are dancing, the neutrons are dancing, and from those invisible electrons up to the greatest star, there is continuous dance. Only man has forgotten how to dance. Trees are dancing in the breeze, the birds and the animals are dancing. Only man has forgotten how to dance -- and by forgetting the language of dance, man has forgotten the language of religion. Dance is the basic language of religion. But the so-called religious people are almost dead people... far, far away from dancing.

Hence the blessing of the rishis had such value. People did not go to them to understand doctrine—but for grace. Let them bless—you need only extend your begging bowl, your heart; their blessings are already falling. What they say will be. What they think will be. Therefore Buddha made a rule for meditators: before entering dhyana, gain complete control over your thoughts. For it may happen that a little capacity for meditation comes; for a moment you begin to be silent; if your thoughts are not under full control and some wrong thought passes through your sky of mind at that time, it will come true. Wrong thoughts pass through your mind twenty‑four hours a day. Someone abuses you and you mutter, 'Die!'—now there is no harm, because no one dies by your saying so.

Deva means god, kabiro means great -- the great god, or, god is great. Everything else is just a part -- god is the whole. God is not a person but another name for the totality of all. To live as a part against the whole is to live in misery. To live as a part with the whole, as the whole, in the whole, is to be in bliss. Man's misery consists in his creating a separation; he creates a distance between himself and the whole that surrounds him. It is as foolish as a fish creating a distance between itself and the ocean. Hence so much misery. The fish can be happy only in the ocean, with the ocean, as the ocean, because basically it comes out of the ocean. It is a wave in the ocean, and one day it has to disappear into the ocean again.

[An indian visitor, who is a professional dancer, asked what meditation technique would be right for her, and then went on to ask about love and relationships.] There is no need to find any other meditation. Dance itself becomes a meditation if the dancer is lost. The whole point is how to lose oneself. How you do that, or where, is irrelevant. Just lose yourself. A point comes where you are not, and still things go on... as if you are possessed. Dance is one of the most beautiful things that can happen to a man. So don't think about meditation separately. Meditation is needed as something separate for people who don't have any very deep creative energy; no direction for their energy to get so deeply involved that they can be lost But a dancer, a painter, a sculptor, need not have any other meditation.

ABOUT THE AFTERNOON MEDITATION. KIRTAN, singing and dancing, is one of the secret doors, one of the deepest doors. The approach is very basic. The first thing to be understood is: don't take religion seriously. You can sing and dance in it; long faces are not needed. We have lived with long faces too long. If you see the old face of God it is sad. It creates boredom. Now -- and not only now, it has always been so, but more so today -- now. we need a dancing and laughing God. Seriousness has killed religion. Irreligious people have not killed religion. atheists have not destroyed religion -- seriousness has killed relig ion. The serious faces of the priests and prophets. Seriousness is a disease. Because of the serious face of religion.