Art of Revision

  1. Relax your body.
    With your mind’s eye go slowly from your head to to your feet and relax all the parts of your body.
  2. Revise your day, the last 24 hours. Change whatever you want. If you have experienced something unpleasant, re-write it and replay it again in your imagination.

  3. Afterglow: Now come back into your body.
    Feel how your are sitting. Take three deep respirations. Slowly open your eyes. Thank your imagination by letting these words vibrate into your soul: “Isn’t it wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.”
    Simply rest in silence for a few moments.
    You may remember this meditation as you continue to go through your day. Whenever your encounter an unpleasant situation, stop and rewrite the situation so it will be pleasant to you right away. You are the Creator.

Osho Dynamic Meditation

The dynamic meditation is an excellent way to get rid of accumulated fear, anger and other negative emotions. The meditation lasts one hour and is in five stages.

You can watch a video with instructions following this link. To download the meditation music, follow this link

from Osho: The Orange Book

‘I have devised a means’

MIND is very serious, and meditation is absolutely nonserious. When I say this you may be bewildered, because people go on talking about meditation very seriously. But meditation is not a serious thing. It is just like play – nonserious. Sincere, but nonserious. It is not something like work; it is more like play. Play is not an activity. Even when it is active, it is not an activity. Play is just pleasure. The activity is not going anywhere; it is not motivated. Rather, it is just pure, flowing energy.

But it is difficult, because we are so involved in activity. We have always been so active that activity has become a deep-rooted obsession. Even while asleep we are active. Even when we are thinking about relaxing we are active. We even make relaxation an activity; we make an effort to relax. This is absurd! But it happens because of the robotlike habits of the mind.

I have devised a means. And the means is to be active to such an extreme that activity simply ceases; to be so madly active that the mind that is hankering to be active is thrown out of your system. Only then, after a deep catharsis, can you fall down into inactivity and have a glimpse of the world that is not the world of effort.

So what to do? Only nonactivity leads you to your inner centre, but the mind cannot conceive of how to be nonactive. So what to do?

Once you know this world, you can move into it without any effort. Once you have the feeling of it – how to be just here and now, without doing anything – you can move into it at any moment; you can remain in it anywhere. Ultimately, you can be outwardly active and inwardly deeply inactive.

Cathartic methods are modern inventions. In Buddha’s time they were not needed because people were not so repressed. People were natural, people lived primitive lives – uncivilised, spontaneous lives. So Vipassana – vipassana means insight – was given by Buddha directly to people. But now you cannot go into Vipassana directly. And the teachers who go on teaching Vipassana directly don’t belong to this century; they are two thousand years backward. Y es, sometimes they may help one or two persons out of one hundred persons, but that can’t do much. I am introducing cathartic methods, so that first what the civilisation has done to you can be undone, so that you become primitive again. From that primitiveness, from primal innocence, insight becomes easily available.

Dynamic Meditation – the daily morning meditation at the ashram

WHEN the sleep is broken, the whole nature becomes alive; the night has gone, the darkness is no more, the sun is coming up, and everything becomes conscious and alert. This is a meditation in which you have to be continuously alert, conscious, aware, whatsoever you do. Remain a witness. Don’t get lost.

It is easy to get lost. While you are breathing you can forget. You can become one with the breathing so much that you can forget the witness. But then you miss the point. Breathe as fast, as deep as possible, bring your total energy to it, but still remain a witness. Observe what is happening, as if you are just a spectator, as if the whole thing is happening to somebody else, as if the whole thing is happening in the body and the consciousness is just centered and looking. This witnessing has to be carried in all the three steps. And when everything stops, and in the fourth step you have become completely inactive, frozen, then this alertness will come to its peak.

The Dynamic Meditation lasts one hour and is in five stages. It can be done alone, but the energy will be more powerful if it is done in a group. It is an individual experience so you should remain oblivious of others around you and keep your eyes closed throughout, preferably using a blindfold. It is best to have an empty stomach and wear loose, comfortable clothing.

First Stage: 10 minutes.

Breathe chaotically through the nose, concentrating always on the exhalation. The body will take care of the inhalation. Do this as fast and as hard as you possibly can – and then a little harder, until you literally become the breathing. Use your natural body movements to help you to build up your energy. Feel it building up, but don’t let go during the first stage.

Second Stage: 10 minutes.

Explode! Let go of everything that needs to be thrown out. Go totally mad, scream, shout, cry, jump, shake, dance, sing, laugh, throw yourself around. Hold nothing back, keep your whole body moving. A little acting often helps to get you started. Never allow your mind to interfere with what is happening. Be total.

Third Stage: 10 minutes.

With raised arms, jump up and down shouting the mantra ‘HOO! HOO! HOO!’ as deeply as possible. Each time you land, on the flats of your feet, let the sound hammer deep into the sex centre. Give all you have, exhaust yourself totally.

Fourth Stage: 15 minutes.

Stop! Freeze where you are in whatever position you find yourself. Don’t arrange the body in any way. A cough, a movement, anything will dissipate the energy flow and the effort will be lost. Be a witness to everything that is happening to you.

Fifth Stage: 15 minutes.

Celebrate and rejoice with music and dance, expressing your gratitude towards the whole. Carry your happiness with you throughout the day.

Notes

If your meditation space prevents you from making a noise, you can do this silent alternative: Rather than throwing out the sounds, let the catharsis in the second stage take place entirely through bodily movements. In the third stage the sound ‘HOO’ can be hammered silently inside and the fifth stage can become an expressive dance.

Someone has said that the meditation we are doing here seems to be sheer madness. It is. And it is that way for a purpose. It is madness with a method; it is consciously chosen.

Remember, you cannot go mad voluntarily. Madness takes possession of you. Only then can you go mad. If you go mad voluntarily, that’s a totally different thing. You are basically in control, and one who can control even his madness will never go mad.

Possible Reactions of the body

Osho talks about some of the reactions that can happen in the body as a result of the deep catharsis of the Dynamic Meditation.

If you feel pain, be attentive to it, don’t do anything. Attention is the great sword – it cuts everything. You simply pay attention to the pain.

For example, you are sitting silently in the last part of the meditation, unmoving, and you feel many problems in the body. You feel that the leg is going dead, there is some itching in the hand, you feel that ants are creeping on the body. Many times you have looked and there are no ants. The creeping is inside, not outside. What should you do? You feel the leg is going dead? – be watchful, just give your total attention to it. You feel itching? – don’t scratch. That will not help. You just give your attention. Don’t even open your eyes. Just give your attention inwardly, and just wait and watch. Within seconds, the itching will have disappeared. Whatsoever happens – even if you feel pain, severe pain in the stomach or in the head. It happens because in meditation the whole body changes. It changes its chemistry. New things start happening and the body is in a chaos. Sometimes the stomach will be affected, because in the stomach you have suppressed many emotions, and they are all stirred. Sometimes you will feel like vomiting, nauseous. Sometimes you will feel a severe pain in the head because the meditation is changing the inner structure of your brain. Passing through meditation, you are really in a chaos. Soon, things will settle. But for the time being, everything will be unsettled.

So what are you to do? You simply see the pain in the head, watch it. You be a watcher. You just forget that you are a doer, and by and by, everything will subside, and will subside so beautifully and so gracefully that you cannot believe unless you know it. Not only does the pain disappear from the head – because the energy which was creating pain, if watched, disappears – the same energy becomes pleasure. The energy is the same.

Pain or pleasure are two dimensions of the same energy. If you can remain silently sitting and paying attention to distractions, all distractions disappear. And when all distractions disappear, you will suddenly become aware that the whole body has disappeared.

Osho has warned against turning this witnessing approach to pain into another fanaticism. If unpleasant physical symptoms – aches and pains or nausea – persist beyond three or four days of daily meditation, there is no need to be a masochist – seek medical advice. This applies to all Osho’ s meditation techniques. Have fun!