In honor of our 21-day dynamic challenge I thought to share this early discourse from Osho instructing on the first three stages of Dynamic meditation – very helpful and illuminating! We hope you can join us for our 21 day challenge – life changing to be sure and a gift to yourself and this world…
“The morning meditation is in four stages. For the first ten minutes you are to do fast breathing. Enter into existence through breathing, give totality and energy to breathing. Put your very life into breathing, so much so that when the breath goes out your very soul goes out with it, and when the breath comes in the whole existence comes in with it. Breathe so intensely that you forget everything else, only the breathing remains, as if you have become the breathing.
This intense breathing for ten minutes will awaken all the energies that are asleep within you. It will arouse and activate energies which you have never even touched. But miserliness won’t do. Don’t think, “I will breathe slowly —after all, if not much, at least some energy will awaken.” No, it is not this way at all, because the process of awakening begins only after you have reached a certain limit. It is the same as when you heat water: it heats up to one hundred degrees and then becomes steam. Don’t think that at thirty degrees the water will change a little into steam or that some of it will become steam. No, mathematics will not work here. Water becomes steam only at one hundred degrees. Don’t think that at fifty degrees at least half of it will turn into steam, no: none of it will turn into steam. It will begin to turn into steam only at one hundred degrees. And what is that one hundred degrees?
For water, it is the same everywhere. Wherever you heat water, in any corner of the world, it will become steam at one hundred degrees. Whether it is water from a pond, a river, a tap, or rainwater from the sky; it does not matter from where. The water will not say, “I am from a well, or from a river,” it will just become steam at a certain degree of heat because water has no personality.
With man, there is difficulty because he has a personality. Each individual will become steam at individual temperatures —in other words, the one-hundred-degree point for each person is different. Man will also become steam only at one hundred degrees, but each man’s one hundred degrees is different. So it is a slightly difficult matter – how to tell you at what point you will become steam? One thing is certain: you can find your own one-hundred-degree point. The criterion is that if you have not withheld yourself at all, then you are at your one hundred degrees. If you put yourself totally into your effort, if you are completely certain that you are not withholding yourself at all…. And other people have nothing to do with it, it is your own thing. Hence, others may or may not know about your intensity —that is not the question. Only you have to know that you are not withholding yourself and that you are putting yourself totally into it. If you are putting yourself totally into it, you are at one hundred degrees. Then there is nothing to worry about.
This too is possible: that your neighbor may be making more effort than you and yet may not be at his own one hundred degrees; he may still be withholding something of himself. And it is also possible that someone else may be making less effort than you and may be at one hundred degrees because he has put himself completely on the line. Hence, don’t be concerned about others. You be clear within yourself whether you are putting yourself completely into it or not.
Meditation is a gamble. In all other ways of gambling we put some thing at stake, and in meditation we put ourselves at stake. Meditation is certainly for the gambler, not for the businessman, because a businessman’s concern is that there be the least risk possible, even if the profits are small. A gambler’s concern is for total profit even if there is a risk of losing everything. This is the difference between a businessman and a gambler.
Meditation is not something for the businessman; meditation is absolutely for the gambler. He puts himself totally at stake, come what may.
But there is certainly one difference: in the outer gambling, perhaps a gain rarely happens. I say “perhaps” because you continue to hope that it will happen – although it doesn’t happen, it never happens. In outer gambling, even if you win, it is only the beginning of a greater loss. Even if you win, it is only to tempt you towards a bigger defeat. Hence, a gambler never wins; no matter how many times he wins, he is still not a winner because finally he will only lose.
The inner gambling is completely the opposite: in it, even a loss is only the beginning of some approaching win. And a meditator never loses. He loses many times, but finally he wins. Don’t think that a Mahavira wins on the very first day, or a Buddha wins on the very first day, or a Mohammed or a Christ wins the very first day. No, nobody wins on the first day. They lose badly – but finally, they win. So breathe intensely for ten minutes, with total energy.
Then after ten minutes of intense breathing, when the energy has been awakened, it is to be thrown out in whatever way it wants to come out. Your body may jump, leap, dance, weep, shout, make sounds. You may look as though you have gone completely mad, but don’t stop. Give it a totally free hand and support it.
If your body wants to go completely mad, let it. Why? —because there is so much madness accumulated within you. I am telling you this for the morning, not for now. In the morning you are to go completely mad. Completely mad means that you don’t carry any fear about what you are doing: “Me, shouting? I’m a professor in the col l e g e . What am I doi ng ? ” or , “ I ’m a doctor, and I am doing this jumping and hopping! What am I doing? What if one of my patients sees me?”
A doctor is afraid of his patient, a teacher is afraid of his student and a shopkeeper is afraid of his customer. Whatsoever your fears are, to go mad means that you drop each of those fears no matter what the fear is about. The husband is afraid of the wife and the wife is afraid of the husband. The father is afraid of the son and the son is afraid of the father: whatever your fear is, to go mad means that now you let go of all fears. You will have to fearlessly allow whatsoever wants to happen, to happen. Why? —because there is so much madness accumulated inside you.
You accumulate madnesses. The world as it is does not allow you to throw them out, so they go on accumulating every day. It is as if there is rubbish in your house and you go on hiding it and piling it up in a corner – this will make your whole house dirty. One day the house will start stinking! One day the situation will be such that there will be nothing else in your house except rubbish. Up to now this is what you are all doing with yourselves: whatever rubbish is in the mind, you go on accumulating it. Whether it is anger, dishonesty, hatred, laughter or weeping, you go on piling everything up.
Slowly, slowly this accumulation of madness will become so big that your life will be spent only in somehow controlling it to make sure that it doesn’t come out; if it is exposed someone will see it. Then you become so afraid o f it that you stop looking within yourself com pletely. The pile of rubbish grows so much that you remain very much in fear that it will be exposed.
Only those who are ready to throw out all this rubbish can enter into meditation. As you throw it out, everything becomes light in you.
The second stage is catharsis, throwing everything out so that a cleanliness can descend within you. Unless you gather courage, you won’t be able to throw the rubbish out. But once you are able to do it you will be a totally different person. So the second stage is to go completely mad.
The third stage is to make the sound “hoo.”You have to make this sound “hoo” as you continuously jump up and down for ten minutes. The sound “hoo” is like a hammer; you have to use it like a hammer. In your body there is energy that sits right near your sex center; yoga calls it kundalini.You can give it any other name you want —scientists now call it bio-electricity. It is sitting there, and if you make the sound “hoo” deeply and strongly, it will hit that dorm ant energy; that sleep ing energy will be activated.
The metaphor that the ancient sages have used for it is of a coiled cobra, and when it is hit it will rise with an open hood and its coil will disappear. If the snake is totally aroused it will stand almost on its tail. Exactly in this way, this energy is lying dorm ant within you, and if it is hit it will start rising upwards. But this hitting must be done only after you have thrown out your inner madness. Otherwise, if it rises into the middle of all your madness, you can actually go mad. This is why many times seekers go mad. The reason for it is that they start arousing their kundalini without doing any deep cleaning. These people often go mad, and the reason for their madness is that they don’t have a scientific attitude.
First, this cleansing is needed. So the first two stages are for a deep cleansing. The first stage is to arouse all the energies in you and the second stage is to throw out all the garbage which is in conflict with the aroused energies.
Then the third stage is to arouse the kundalini which is lying dormant within you. So for ten minutes you have to make the sound “hoo” with your total intensity.”
Osho excerpt from Flight of the Alone to the Alone, 1972