According to Osho, your unexpected dance means love and religion have awakened in you—you’ve turned back toward your source, the divine. As the current of life reverses, sorrow fades and natural ecstasy arises. True dance isn’t a ritual or technique; it’s an unavoidable celebration when you draw near the center of existence. Don’t be miserly—let the inner upsurge express itself.
You’re dancing because you’re getting closer to your true home (the divine), and joy is bubbling up by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I am dancing here. I, who never danced. Far from dancing—I had never even thought I would dance. I am astonished at myself. I ask: what has happened to me?
Love has happened to you; religion has happened to you. You have begun to come toward your home. You have turned back. You have set out toward your source. The Ganges has started flowing back toward Gangotri. The current has reversed. Your first steps have begun to fall in the direction from which you came. And when the first steps fall that way, dance is born. The farther you go from the divine, the more dance is lost; gloom, frustration, melancholy spread through life. When you are very miserable, understand that you are very far from the divine. The rishis have described the divine as sat-chit-ananda—being, consciousness, bliss. Saraha says, Tilopa says: it is mahāsukha, the great bliss. That means the more you are in sorrow, the farther you are from it. The proportion of your sorrow is the proportion of your distance. The measure of your sorrow is the…
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.
Osho, when does dance happen? You are always speaking of dance—what dance? And when does this dance happen?
Certainly I speak of dance, because for me dance itself is worship. Dance itself is meditation. There is no method more effortless than dance, no samadhi so natural. Dance is the most effortless, the simplest. For nowhere else can you melt your ego as easily as you can in dancing. If you can dance with a full heart, you will vanish. You will be effaced in the dance. Dance is a wondrous path of self-forgetfulness, a miraculous alchemy. And dance has another beauty: as you dance, your life-energy begins to flow. You have become inert. You were born to be a river; you have become a stagnant pond. You were born to flow; you have become blocked. Your life-energy must flow again, must gush forth again. Let the waves rise again. For a river one day reaches the ocean; a pond never does. A pond remains closed within itself. That…
Beloved Osho, last night after dancing with you, my feeling was that I have missed my whole life up to now in hesitation, and that I should do something. But what to do?
When death is so close, who feels hungry? Who feels thirsty? The question was to get as far away as he could reach by sunset -- the further the better. And by sunset he had ridden hundreds of miles away. As the sun was setting, he tied his horse to a tree in a garden outside some unknown city, and he patted his horse and said, "You are really great! You ran so fast -- I have never seen you running so fast. I am immensely grateful to you." Just at that moment the black shadow appeared behind him. The king looked back; the shadow laughed and said, "Your horse is really fast. I was worried whether he was going to reach the right place or not, but he managed! This is the tree, and this is the time. The sun is setting and I am immensely grateful, just as…
Osho, something inside has become suspended, and the whole body is in a dance all the time; please say something.
And therefore within, a rhythm of dance is sounding; within, a dance is on. Only when the mind halts does the dance awaken. Only when the mind halts do unfamiliar, ever-new songs arise. When the mind halts, windows open; new breezes, fresh winds of existence begin to ripple through your very life-breath. No sooner do you “die” here than life begins to descend there. Your death is the beginning of the supreme life. Your crucifixion on one side, and on the other side you sit enthroned. The cross and the throne are two sides of the same coin. My senses were lost before Your coming; we ourselves were lost before attaining You. So it will be. The mind will be lost—who will be left to keep awareness? The mind will break—where will the ego remain? The ego is only a construct of the mind, a mirage of the mind. The…