Can meditation happen without dancing and jumping?

Another friend has asked: Osho, can this meditation not happen without dancing and jumping?

Those who have only come to watch, please kindly go to the chairs. Not a single onlooker should remain inside. And those who want to participate, leave the chairs and come into the open space. Spread out at a distance from one another so that you can dance properly. Spread out, keep distance, don’t talk. And those who have come to watch, please sit quietly—that is my one request. While the meditation is on, do not talk; just watch silently. If you feel like it, sitting there you may join the kirtan, but silently. You may clap, you may sing the kirtan, but you will not converse among yourselves. And please be seated; if you keep standing you will get tired in an hour—please sit on the chairs. And those who are standing for the meditation, spread out at a distance. Women, please keep a little space, otherwise you won’t…

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.

Question: dynamic meditation is very active, very strenuous.can one not go into meditation just by sitting silently?

You can go into meditation just by sitting, but then be just sitting; do not do anything else. If you can be just sitting, it becomes meditation. Be completely in the sitting; nonmovement should be your only movement. In fact, the word zen comes from the word zazen, which means, just sitting, doing nothing. If you can just sit, doing nothing with your body and nothing with your mind, it becomes meditation; but it is difficult. You can sit very easily when you are doing something else but the moment you are just sitting and doing nothing, it becomes a problem. Every fiber of the body begins to move inside; every vein, every muscle, begins to move. You will begin to feel a subtle trembling; you will be aware of many points in the body of which you have never been aware before. And the more you try to just…

You begin, but if the end is also yours then the dancing was just ordinary dancing. But if you begin and by the end you feel as if somewhere in between the dancing was taken over by a nonvoluntary mechanism, then it has become a dervish dance. You move so fast that the body shakes and becomes nonvoluntary. That is the point where you can go crazy or you can jump. You may go mad, because a nonvoluntary mechanism has taken over your body movement. It is beyond your control: you cannot do anything. You may just go mad and never be able to come back again from this nonvoluntary movement. This is the point where there is either madness or, if you know the technique to jump, meditation. That is why Sufis have always been known as mad people. They have been known as mad! Ordinarily, they are mad.

My understanding is that dance, in the beginning, was born out of meditation. And I think all that is significant in life has had its origin in meditation. Meera did not have to go anywhere to learn dancing. People are mistaken if they think that Meera found God through dancing. Meera burst into dancing when she found God. The fact is otherwise: no one finds God through dancing, but one can dance if he finds God. What can a drop do but dance when a whole ocean enters into it? What can a beggar do but dance when he suddenly comes upon a treasure of infinite wealth? But man has been so much crushed and crippled by civilization that he cannot dance.