According to Osho, Yaa-Hoo! has no dictionary meaning; it is an existential sound-key: Hoo (from Sufi practice) strikes the very center, silencing mind and time, while Yaa adds joy, laughter, and dance. Together they invoke a celebrative, centered awareness—the laughing, dancing being—and serve as a powerful meditative trigger to cleanse repression and open inner space.
It’s a happy shout that quiets your mind and wakes up your joyful self so you feel like laughing and dancing.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I'm sure there is more to "yaa-hoo!" than meets the eye. Are we ready to understand the real meaning of "yaa-hoo!"?
Maneesha, no word has a meaning of itself; meanings are given, they are arbitrary. Otherwise every word is just a sound, meaningless. But we can give meaning to any sound, and the sound becomes a word when we give a meaning to it. Sometimes the meaning is very relevant and sometimes it is not relevant. Most of the time it is not relevant -- it is arbitrary, useful; utilitarian but not existential. Hence, languages don't consist of existential words. For example OM has no meaning, it is not part of any alphabet, but it has some existential purpose: it provokes in you the sound of the eternal. It is something similar to the sound of existence itself -- not exactly the same, a faraway echo, but still very representative. In the same way is the word `Yaa-Hoo!' HOO is an ancient practice of the Sufis. They have discovered that rather…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THE RAISED HAND AND "YAA-HOO"? Neelam, you must have seen that today I have raised both my hands, because the German idiots have made a law in Germany that raising one hand is a criminal act. And what about all the dogs? They are not just raising one hand, they are raising one leg all over the Fatherland and pissing! They are the real followers of Adolf Hitler. I had not been aware that Germany will never become intelligent. It is unfortunate that they have banned me from entering Germany; otherwise I would have been in jail by now, another deportation... I have missed a great experience! Because if you have seen a German jail the American jail is nothing you have seen the very hell. But the Germans themselves have prevented me; otherwise I would have raised one hand, without fail!
Aum, may my speech be rooted in my mind, and my mind rooted in my speech. O self-illumined brahman, be manifest unto me. Speech and mind form the basis of my knowledge, so please do not undo my pursuit of knowledge. Day and night I spend in this pursuit. I shall speak the law; I shall speak the truth. May brahman protect me; may he protect the speaker, protect the speaker. Aum, shanti, shanti, shanti.
But there are problems; theologicians have created them. The first problem they have created, and because of which this remembering becomes impossible -- to remember that you are already divine becomes impossible -- is a very deep condemnatory attitude. You go on condemning yourself: you are the sinner. They have created guilt in you. So how can a sinner be, right this very moment, the divine? He will have to get rid of the sin; he will have to suffer for his sins, and time will be needed. He will have to pass through purifications, and only when he has become holy, a saint, will he have a glimpse of the divine. Particularly in the West, Christianity has given everybody a deep guilt complex. Everybody is guilty -- not only about your own sins that you have committed, but also about the sin that Adam committed in the very beginning.…
Maneesha has asked: beloved Osho, we were told that our total participation in the yaa-hoo is needed for your work on us. Is it that a crescendo of sound in the yaa-hoo, and the intense experience of silence in the last stage of meditation, lead to exactly the same space -- the "sea of consciousness"?
Yes, Maneesha, Yaa-Hoo can lead even deeper because Yaa-Hoo can become more intense, one-pointed. It can hit, deep down. You just watch when you make the sound Yaa-Hoo. It is not a word, it means nothing. It is simply my finding, amongst many sounds which have been used by different mystics in different times. I have found that Yaa-Hoo goes the deepest. It has never been used. HOO has been used; it has been used as part of ALLAH-HOO. If you repeat "Allah," which is the name Sufis give to God -- if you repeat it continuously, ALLAH, ALLAH, ALLAH, soon you will find it is becoming "Allah-hoo, Allah-hoo, Allah-hoo Allah-hoo." Then Sufis dropped the "Allah." There is no need, you can just shout "Hoo" and it hits at the very center of your being. But my finding is that "Hoo" only touches your being and immediately comes back. It…
Before, you used to talk about the mantra hoo. Then why you are emphasizing now the mantra aum?
I am not emphasizing. I am simply explaining to you Patanjali. My emphasis remains for Hoo. And whatsoever I am saying about Aum, the same is applicable to Hoo. But my emphasis remains with Hoo. As I told you, Patanjali existed five thousand years before. People were simple -- very simple, innocent. They could trust easily; they had not much of the mind. They were not head oriented: they were heart oriented. Aum is a mild sound -- soothing, non-violent, non-aggressive. If you chant Aum, it goes from the throat to the heart, never below it. Those were heart people -- Aum was enough for them: a mild dose, a homeopathic dose. was enough for them. For you, it wont help much For you, Hoo will be more helpful. Hoo is a Sufi mantra. Just like Aum is a Hindu mantra, Hoo is a Mohammedan, Sufi mantra. Hoo was developed…