Sankirtan

Osho, please clarify further what dancing and singing have to do with this Gita Jnana Yajna. And please also make it clear why the dancing in this sankirtan is chaotic, “disorderly,” and arbitrary. Naturally, the same thought arose in friends too. They also asked me: what has kirtan, melody, and dance to do with a Gita jnana-yajna? And even if there is dance, shouldn’t it be orderly, rhythmic? What is the meaning of it being disorderly, unstructured, anarchic, chaotic?

The festive dimension of human enthusiasm and elation—the celebrative dimension of consciousness—must open. Religion has become too serious. The more serious it is, the more sickly it becomes. Banish solemn faces from the temples. Let temples be places of dance and celebration of life—then we can bring religion back. Grim, sick, frightened faces, harassed and afflicted by life—these have robbed the temples of their radiance. The temple is a moment for life’s dance. One should leave all life’s gravities in the marketplace and enter there. One should go dancing. One should dance for a while, forgetting everything—public opinion, propriety, shame. Yesterday a woman informed me that an old lady at the back was saying, “What sin is this! Men and women dancing together!” Such a mind will never understand Krishna. If even in dance and kirtan the thought of man versus woman persists, better not to dance or chant. If…

A friend has asked, Osho, why should we be religious when neither the beginning nor the end is known, and there is no trace of God or soul? The enlightened ones speak of truth—if that truth is real, why can’t they make everyone experience it?

No one is telling you to be religious—at least Lao Tzu would not. The so-called religious people have created so much disturbance that it is better you do not become one of them. Lao Tzu does not say, “Be religious.” He simply says: be what you are. You may ask, why should I be what I am? Because that is the only thing you can be. There is no way to be anything else. Yes, you can try to be something else—and in that trying your life can be wasted. You may then say, why not waste life? No one can stop you. And precisely for this reason even the enlightened ones are defeated and cannot give you the knowledge of truth—because you say, why should we know the truth? What can the enlightened do? They can speak. They can try to awaken in you the thirst for the joy…

Question: Third question: Osho, please explain a little about kirtan-meditation. Kirtan is not for understanding—it is for doing. The secret is hidden in the very word: do! Do it and you will know. Understanding has nothing to do with kirtan. In fact, only when you set understanding aside will kirtan happen. If you try to do kirtan by figuring it out, it will not happen. If you do it through cleverness, you will miss. Drop the concern to understand. If you truly want to understand, do—understanding will come from behind. Dive! Kirtan-meditation is the name of total absorption. It is the expression of ahobhava—the “Ah!” of wonder—of blessedness. The wonder that I am! The wonder that the Divine has created me! The wonder that for a little while the eyes opened and I saw light, saw flowers, heard birdsong, beheld the dance of sun, moon, and stars!

A friend has asked, “Osho, don’t ask him anything about the Gita. But he has a big objection to the kirtan that happens here!”

He says not to ask him about the Gita—because he must have already understood the Gita! Then why he comes here, who knows. There is no purpose in coming here. If he has understood the Gita, what is the purpose of coming! He should climb some temple and shout, “Come, whoever wishes to attain. I have attained!” His trouble is with kirtan. Have you ever done kirtan? If you have, there cannot be an objection. And if you haven’t, you shouldn’t be raising the question. We must not ask about what we haven’t tasted. The discomfort, of course, will be: “What is this—people start dancing, they lose their senses!” Or: “Men and women are dancing together!” If you can’t be so “unmindful” as to even forget man and woman, then what on earth will you forget! If you’re still keeping the alertness that “I am a man, and the one…