What is dynamic meditation?

What is dynamic meditation?

The first thing to be understood about Dynamic Meditation is that it is a method of creating a situation through tension in which meditation can happen. If your total being is completely tense, the only possibility that remains is relaxation. Ordinarily one cannot go directly into relaxation, but if your whole being is at a peak of total tension then the second step comes automatically, spontaneously: silence is created. The first three stages of the technique are done in order to achieve this climax of tension throughout all the layers of your being. The first layer is the physical body. Beyond that is the prana sharir, the vital body: this is your second body, the etheric body. Beyond it is the third body, the astral body. Your vital body takes in breath as its food. If the normal intake of oxygen is changed, the vital body is bound to change.…

Question: in hatha yoga there is an exercise in which one tenses every muscle in the body and then releases the tension and becomes relaxed. Is this similar to what happens in dynamic meditation?

You are not aware of the spiritual because you have so much tension in the body, so much tension in the mind. But if you are not tense in the physical and mental realms, you will automatically know the bliss of the spiritual, the relaxation of the spiritual. It comes to you; it has been waiting for you. Your whole attention is so absorbed by the physical and the mental that there is no attention left to divert to the spiritual. Only if the body and the mind are not tense can you delve into the spiritual, can you know the bliss of it. The spiritual is never tense; it cannot be. There is no spiritual tension, only bodily tension, only mental tension. Bodily tension has been created by those who, in the name of religion, have been preaching anti-body attitudes. In the West, Christianity has been emphatically antagonistic toward…

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…

Beloved Osho, in relation to what you've just said, zen has a saying: effortless effort. Would you talk to us about that, and how it applies to your dynamic meditation?

Meditation is an energy phenomenon. One very basic thing has to be understood about all types of energies. This is the basic law: energy moves in a dual polarity. That is the only way it moves; there is no other way for its movement. It moves in a dual polarity. For any energy to become dynamic, the anti-pole is needed. It is just like electricity moving with negative and positive polarities. If there is only negative polarity, electricity will not happen; or if there is only positive polarity, electricity will not happen. Both the poles are needed. And when both the poles meet, they create electricity. Then the spark comes up. And this is so for all types of phenomena. Life goes on...between man and woman, the polarity. The woman is the negative life-energy; man is the positive pole. They are electrical, hence so much attraction. With man alone, life…

Beloved Osho, who was the master who discovered or invented the latihan meditation technique? Would you like explain this meditation technique?

And by chance, the time to read it came very soon, just after fifteen days. The neighboring country invaded. They had been invaded by this king many times, defeated many times. They were boiling with anger and violence and humiliation and insult. For ten years, they had been training their people and this time they were determined: "Either we take over the kingdom of the enemy or we are not going to come back home alive." And when somebody, even if he is beaten, has such an idea in the mind, he's no longer weak. He is far stronger than your strongest people. They fought as the king had never seen anybody fight... because the king and his soldiers were just fighting to defend, but the enemy was fighting to gain self-respect. They had lost their integrity, and even at the cost of life it had to be regained --…