If you are seeing for the first time, Osho active meditations might look strange.
You don’t sit in a stiff lotus posture. You don’t chant any mantra. You don’t even try to concentrate.
In fact, most of the time in Osho active meditations you might be dancing, laughing or even shouting meaninglessly.
For the uninitiated, it’s bound to look strange and doesn’t fit with the traditional idea of meditation.
But trust me, Osho active meditations are the best for a modern man like us.
For us, it’s the most difficult job on earth is to sit quietly. The moment we close our eyes and try to sit in silently, our heads go wild. Lots of thoughts rush in and it’s simply impossible to enter meditation.
The modern man needs action. Osho active meditations are designed by Osho specifically for people like you and me.
In this blog, you’ll learn in-depth why Osho active meditations are designed the way they are and why they are best suited for you.
You will get to know certain fundamentals behind Osho meditations.
You will get to know certain fundamentals behind Osho meditations.
– How it’s different from the traditional forms of meditation.
– Osho’s insights on why we need new forms of meditation.
– And a brief note on some of the most important Osho meditations.
You’ll also get links to all these meditations if you wish to explore more.
Why chaotic & catharsis:
Osho’s active meditations are sometimes chaotic. Some of the stages involve catharsis. And you will be using lots of body movements.
For example, the first stage of Osho dynamic meditation involves chaotic breathing. You have to breath out deeply, fastly, and most importantly, chaotically. In the second stage, you have to express your emotions through body movements. You are even allowed to shout and cry.
You might wonder is this meditation at all? Is meditation not about silent sitting and watching?
I get you. Even I had the same doubts when I first experienced Osho meditations. My doubts were dispelled soon after I tasted the real silence Osho meditations allow us to experience.
But, wait. You don’t have to take my word. I give here Osho’s own words why he designed the new meditations for the modern man.
Osho says:
“The quality of the mind has changed. Basically in Patanjali’s days, in olden days, the center of the human personality was not the brain; it was the heart. And before that, it was not even the heart. It was still lower, near the navel.
“In the pre-Patanjali days, before Patanjali, it was the navel – the center of human personality. So hatha yoga developed methods which were useful, meaningful, to the person whose center of personality was the navel.”
I totally agree when Osho says the modern man’s center has moved to the heads. Even when we say we feel something, actually we mean what we think about it in our heads. We see and process everything via our heads.
And our heads are chaotic. Even when sitting in a movie hall, we can’t keep away from looking at our Instagram feed.
“Today’s mind is not fixed; it is in chaos. So all the old methods which were meant for fixed minds are out of date. For the chaotic mind, a chaotic method is needed,” says Osho.
He had after long experimentations designed a unique set of meditations that is best suited to release the accumulated stress in our body-mind and reach a real stillness inside. Not just stiff outer postures.
Let’s see in detail what Osho says about this:
“So I use chaotic methods because through chaotic methods the brain is nullified.
“It has nothing to do. There is no system to be made and no mathematical formula to be applied. It is so chaotic that the center from the brain is automatically pushed to the heart, and that is a great step – to push the center from the brain to the heart. So if you do my method vigorously, unsystematically, chaotically, your center is pushed lower. You come to the heart.
“When you come to the heart then I apply catharsis because your heart is so suppressed – because of your brain: the brain has taken up so much territory within you, so much domination of you, it has absorbed the whole.
“There is no space for the heart, so longings of the heart have been suppressed.
“You have never laughed heartily, never cried heartily, never done anything heartily. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make things mathematical. That brain calculates and concludes and comes in. The heart is suppressed.
“So first chaotic methods are used to push the center – the center of consciousness – from the brain toward the heart. Then catharsis is needed to unburden the heart, to throw off the suppressions, to make it light. If the heart becomes light and unburdened, then the center of consciousness is pushed still lower. It comes to the navel, and only when it comes to the navel I will ask you to inquire, “Who am I?” Otherwise it is meaningless.”