According to Osho, no: the periphery need not—and cannot—be made still. Nature is flux. Liberation comes not by stopping change but by disidentifying from it: witness the moving body-mind and reestablish awareness in the unmoving center. Allow everything to move without clinging or trying to fix it; sustained witnessing reveals ‘I am the stillness,’ so the world continues but not within you.
You don’t have to stop life’s waves; just sit inside as a watcher and you’ll feel the quiet center that never moves.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, in days past, sufis had to whirl in order to become aware of their unmoving center. In this rapidly changing world, can the modern man simply stand still and achieve exactly the same effect?
No, it won't do, because you cannot stand still. You don't know how to be still. It is not just a matter of standing. The world is moving, but that movement is invisible. The earth is moving, but you don't feel its movement because you are also moving with it. The earth is making a double movement: first, on its own axis -- it is moving round and round; and second, it is going around the sun. So a double movement is there, but you are not aware of either. You can stand still, but the earth goes on moving and you are moving with it. In twenty-four hours it makes one round of itself, and in three hundred and sixty-five days it makes another round of the sun. You will be moving. You cannot stand still. There is no place where you can stand still. Everything is movement. Stillness…
Osho, to abide in oneself beyond the knower, knowledge, and the known—can one live in that state for an entire lifetime? Just as a lake is sometimes calm, sometimes playful, and sometimes stormy, does the self-realized one remain unaffected by worldly circumstances in the same way? Osho, dispel my ignorance!
Spring means harmony between season and mood. Meditation means harmony between you and the whole. You become harmonious. Whatever is, is perfectly okay—accepted. Nowhere any refusal, nowhere any opposition. Whatever is happening is auspicious. That is trust; that is meditation. Such meditation naturally takes you into an altogether new experience. Storms will rise; they will not stop because you meditate. Diseases will not stop coming to the body because you meditate. They will come. A thorn will sometimes pierce the foot. Raman had cancer; so did Ramakrishna—great storms came! Ramakrishna got cancer of the throat; he could neither eat nor drink. Vivekananda said to him, “What is not in your power! Why don’t you pray to the Lord at least to allow food and water to pass? We suffer watching you writhe.” Ramakrishna said, “Ah, it never even occurred to me to pray. How could it occur—to one whose prayer…
1. Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop.
2. WHEN SOME DESIRE COMES, CONSIDER IT. THEN, SUDDENLY, QUIT IT. 3. ROAM ABOUT UNTIL EXHAUSTED AND THEN, DROPPING TO THE GROUND, IN THIS DROPPING BE WHOLE. This is a different dimension of the same technique. WHEN SOME DESIRE COMES, CONSIDER IT. THEN, SUDDENLY, QUIT IT. You feel a desire -- a desire for sex, a desire for love, a desire for food, anything. You feel a desire: consider it. When the sutra says consider it, it means do not think for or against it, just consider the desire, what it is. A sexual desire comes to the mind. You say, "This is bad." This is not consideration. You have been taught that this is bad, so you are not considering this desire, you are consulting the scriptures, you are consulting the past -- the past teachers, the RISHIS -- sages. You are not considering the desire itself, you are…
"you said last night that the periphery is always changing, whereas the innermost center is eternally unmoving. To realize the center is it necessary that the peripheral movement must cease? Can that be? How and when?"
You have missed the whole point. The whole point was not to make any effort to change the periphery. Allow the periphery to be as it is. And you cannot change it. It is the nature of the periphery to move and change. You cannot make it static. Nature is a flux. It is so; you cannot make it static. And don't waste your time and opportunity of life trying to make it static. Just know it as change. Be the witness of it, and you will come to feel the innermost center which is not change. The world is change, your personality is change, your body-mind is change, but you are not; you are not the change. What is the use of struggling with change? No need! Tantra says please be reestablished in your center, be aware of the center which is unmoving, and allow the whole existence to…
Nischalatwam pradakshinam "stillness is pradakshina, the movement around that for worship."
Accept your anger. It is there: accept it and be aware of it. These are two things: acceptance and awareness. And you can be aware only if you accept totally. If you do not accept me, you cannot look at my face. If you do not accept me, you will try to avoid me in subtle ways. Even if I am present in the room, you will look in some other direction, you will think of something else. If you do not accept me, if you reject me, your whole mind will try to avoid me. If you reject anger, you cannot be aware. You cannot encounter it face to face. And when anger is encountered face to face, it dissolves. When sex is encountered face to face, the energy is released into a different dimension. Encounter your mind and accept it. The negative teachings, the condemnatory teachings, teachings which…