According to Osho, dance is worship and meditation - the most effortless door to samadhi. True dance happens when you let your life-energy flow, melt the ego, and vanish into movement with a full heart. In that self-forgetfulness, sadness dissolves into bliss. Because existence itself is a cosmic dance, you dance whenever you participate in its flow rather than remain a stagnant, closed pond.
Let your body and energy move freely until you forget yourself and feel joy, joining the big dance that all of life is already doing.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
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.
Dance is a rhythmic movement. Dance represents god more than anything else. In my observation, dance is the most prayerful activity possible. When your body is in a dance and you are utterly lost in the rhythm of it, you start coming closer to god. The indian story is beautiful... in India the story of creation starts with a dance. God started dancing and out of his rhythm and movement the world arose. The Christian idea, that god said 'Let there be light,' looks very intellectual... a kind of commandment, an order. The Hindu idea looks more in tune with existence: god wanted to create so he started dancing. His first step is the beginning of creation, his first movement... he started moving. He must have remained stagnant, he must have remained dormant, he must have been fast asleep, unmoving until then. He started moving.
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.
[In a previous darshan (See "God Is Not For Sale", October 25th, Osho had told a sannyasin to make dance and music his meditation. Now the sannyasin reports: Much has happened.] It has -- and much that is going to happen is on the way. The more you have, the more is given to you. The rich become richer, because each experience creates a new receptivity, a new trust. And with each experience you are ready to take a bigger jump, and so on and so forth. So continue to dance. There is nothing like dancing, because dancing seems to be the only activity when the doer can be easily lost, and the only activity in which body, mind, soul -- all can participate in a harmony. Otherwise there are activities that the body can do, there are activities that the mind can do -- the body is not needed.