Whirling Meditation

 

 

The meditation is best done on an empty stomach, on bare feet and wearing loose clothing. It lasts one hour and there are two stages, whirling and resting.

 

Whirling is an ancient Sufi technique. While your whole body is moving you become aware of your very being, the watcher at the center, which is unmoving. You learn to be an unidentified witness at the center of the cyclone.

 

"Whirling is one of the most ancient techniques, one of the most forceful. It is so deep that even a single experience can make you totally different. Whirl with open eyes, just like small children go on twirling, as if your inner being has become a center and your whole body has become a wheel, moving, a potter’s wheel, moving. You are in the center, but the whole body is moving." 

 

- Osho

 

 

 

on Whirling Meditation Technique

 

 

The first meditation, which you will be doing in the morning, is related to the rising sun. It is a morning meditation. When the sleep is broken the whole of nature becomes alive. The night has gone, the darkness is no more, the sun is coming up, and everything becomes conscious and alert. So this first meditation is a meditation in which you have to be continuously alert, conscious, aware, whatsoever you do. The first step, breathing; the second step, catharsis; the third step, the mantra, the mahamantra: HOO.

 

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.

 

 

In the afternoon meditation -- kirtan, dancing, singing -- another inner work has to be done. In the morning you have to be fully conscious; in the afternoon meditation you have to be half conscious, half unconscious. It is a noontide meditation -- when you are alert, but you feel sleepy. It is just like a man who is under the influence of some intoxicant. He walks, but cannot walk rightly; he knows where he is going, but everything is dim. He is conscious and not conscious.

 

He knows he has taken alcohol, he knows his feet are wavering, but he knows this half-asleep, half-awake. So in the afternoon meditation remember this -- act as if you are intoxicated, drunk, ecstatic. Sometimes you will forget yourself completely like a drunkard, sometimes you will remember, but don't try to be conscious just like the morning, no. Move with the day -- half-half in the noon. Then you are in tune with nature.

 

In the night, just the opposite of the morning -- be completely unconscious; don't bother at all. The night has come, the sun has set, now everything is moving into unconsciousness. Move into unconsciousness.

 

This whirling, Sufi whirling, is one of the most ancient techniques, one of the most forceful. It is so deep that even a single experience can make you totally different. You have to whirl with open eyes, just like small children go on twirling, as if your inner being has become a center and your whole body has become like a wheel, moving- a potter's wheel, moving. You are in the center, but the whole body is moving.

 

Start slowly, clockwise. If somebody feels it is very difficult to move clockwise then anti-clockwise, but the rule is to move clockwise. If a few people are left-handed then they may feel it difficult; they can move anti-clockwise. And almost ten percent of people are left-handed, so if you find that clockwise you feel uneasy, move anti-clockwise; but start with clockwise, then feel. Music will be there, slow, just to help you. In the beginning move very slowly; don't go fast, but very slowly, enjoying.

 

And then, by and by, go faster. The first fifteen minutes, go slowly; the second fifteen minutes, fast; the third fifteen minutes, faster; the fourth fifteen minutes, just completely mad. And then your total energy, you, become a whirlpool, an energy whirlpool, lost completely in it: no witnessing, no effort to observe. Don't try to see; be the whirlpool, be the whirling. One hour.

 

In the beginning you may not be able to stand so long, but remember one thing, don't stop by yourself, don't stop the whirling. If you feel it is impossible the body will fall down automatically, but don't you stop. If you fall down in the middle of the hour there is no problem; the process is complete. But don't play tricks with yourself, don't deceive; don't think that now you are tired so it is better to stop.

 

No, don't make it a decision on your part. If you are tired, how can you go on? You will fall automatically. So don't stop yourself; let the whirling itself come to a point where you fall down. When you fall down, fall down on your stomach; and it will be good if your stomach is in direct touch with the earth. Then close the eyes. Lie down on the earth as if lying down on the breast of your mother, a small child lying down on the breast of the mother. Become completely unconscious. And this whirling will help.

 

Whirling gives intoxication to the body. It is a chemical thing, it gives you intoxication, to be exact. That's why sometimes you may feel giddy just like a drunkard. What is happening to the drunkard? Hidden behind your ears is a sixth sense, the sense of balance. When you take any drink, any alcoholic thing, any intoxicating drug, it goes directly to the center of balance in the ear and disturbs it. That's why a drunkard cannot walk, feels dizzy. The same happens in whirling.

 

If you whirl, really, the effect will be the same: you will feel intoxicated, drunk. But enjoy this drunkenness is worth something. This being in a drunken state is what Sufis have been calling ecstasy, masti. In the beginning you may feel giddy, in the beginning sometimes you may feel nausea, but within two, three days, these feelings will disappear and by the fourth day you will feel a new energy in you that you have never known before. Then giddiness will disappear, and just a smooth feeling of drunkenness will be there. So don't try to be alert about what is happening. Let it happen and become one with the happening.

 

In the morning, alert; in the afternoon, half alert, half unalert; in the night, completely unalert. The circle is complete. And then fall down on the ground on your stomach. If anybody feels any sort of pain in the navel center lying down on the ground, then he can turn on the back, otherwise not. If you feel something, a very deep painful sensation in the stomach, then turn on your back, otherwise not. The navel in contact with the earth will give you such a blissful feeling -- just the same as once you had, but now you have forgotten, when you were a child lying down on your mother's breast, completely unaware of any worry, any anxiety, so one with the mother, your heart beating with her heart, your breath in tune with her breath.

 

The same will happen with the earth because earth is the mother. That's why Hindus have been calling earth the mother and sky the father. Be rooted in it. Feel a merger as if you have dissolved. The body has become one with the earth; the form is there no more. Only earth exists; you are not there. This is what I mean when I say break the cup completely: forget that you are. The earth is, and dissolve in it.

 

During the one hour of whirling the music will continue. Many will fall before the hour but everybody has to fall by the time the music stops. So if you feel that you are still not in the state of falling then go faster and faster. After forty-five minutes go completely mad, so by the time the hour is complete you have fallen. And the feeling if falling is beautiful, so don't manipulate it. Fall, and when you have fallen then turn on your stomach, be merged, close your eyes. This merger has to be there for one hour.

 

So the night meditation will be of two hours, from seven o'clock to nine o'clock. Don't eat anything before it. At nine o'clock the suggestion will be given to come out of this deep drunkenness, this ecstasy. Even out of it you may not be able to walk correctly, but don't be disturbed, enjoy it. Then take your food and go to sleep.

 

Another new thing, I will not be there; only my empty chair will be there. But don't miss me because in a sense I will be there, and in a sense there has always been an empty chair before you. Right now the chair is empty because there is no one sitting in it. I am talking to you but there is no one who is talking to you. It is difficult to understand, but when the ego disappears processes can continue. Talking can continue, sitting and walking and eating can continue, but the center has disappeared.

 

Even now, the chair is empty. But I was always with you up till now in all the camps because you were not ready. Now I feel you are ready. And you must be helped to get more ready to work in my absence, because feeling that I am there you may feel a certain enthusiasm that is false. Just feeling that I am present you may do things which you never wanted to do; just to impress me you may exert more. That is not of much help, because only that can be helpful which comes out of your being. My chair will be there, I will be watching you, but you feel completely free. And don't think that I am not there because that may depress you, and then that depression will disturb your meditation.

 

I will be there, and if you meditate rightly whenever your meditation is exactly tuned, you will see me. So that will be the criterion of whether you are really meditating or not. Many of you will be able to see me more intensely than you can see me right now, and whenever you see me, you can be certain that things are happening in a right direction. So this will be the criterion. By the end of this camp I hope ninety percent of you will have seen me. Ten percent may miss because of their minds.

 

So if you see me don't start thinking about it, what is happening, don't start thinking whether it is imagination or a projection or am I really there. Don't think, because if you think immediately I will disappear; thinking will become a barrier. The dust will come on the mirror and there will be no reflection. Whenever the dust is not there, suddenly you will become aware of me more than you can be aware here right now. To be aware of the physical body is not much awareness; to be aware of the nonphysical being is real awareness.

 

You must learn to work without me. You cannot be here always, you will have to go far away; you cannot hang around me forever, you have other works to do. You have come from different countries all over the world; you will have to go. For a few days you will be here with me, but if you become addicted to my physical presence then rather than being a help it may become a disturbance, because then when you go away, you will miss me. Your meditation should be such here that it can happen without my presence, then wherever you go the meditation will not be in any way affected.

 

And this too has to be remembered: I cannot always be in this physical body with you; one day or another the physical vehicle has to be dropped. My work is complete as far as I am concerned. If I am carrying this physical vehicle, it is just for you; some day, it has to be dropped. Before it happens you must be ready to work in my absence, or in my nonphysical presence which means the same. And once you can feel me in my absence you are free of me, and then even if I am not here in this body the contact will not be lost.

 

It always happens when a Buddha is there: his physical presence becomes so meaningful. and then he dies. Everything is shattered. Even a disciple like Ananda, his most intimate disciple, started crying and weeping when Buddha said, "Now I have to leave this body." For forty years Ananda was with Buddha, twenty-four hours, just like a shadow. He started crying and weeping like a child; suddenly he had become an orphan. Buddha asked," What are you doing?"

 

Ananda said, "It will be impossible now for me to grow. I couldn't grow when you were there so how can I grow now? It may be now millions of lives before I come across a buddha again, so I am lost."

 

Buddha said, "My understanding is different, Ananda. When I am not there you may become enlightened immediately, because this has been my feeling -- you have become too much attached to me, and that attachment is working like a block. You have become too much attached to me; that very attachment is working like a barrier."

 

And this happened as Buddha said. The day Buddha died, Ananda became enlightened. There was nothing to cling to then. But why wait? When I die, then you will become enlightened? Why wait?

 

My chair can be empty; you can feel my absence. And remember, only when you can feel my absence can you feel my presence. If you cannot see me while my physical vehicle is not there, you have not seen me at all. This is my promise: I will be there in the empty chair, the empty chair will not really be empty. So behave! The chair will not be empty, but it is better that you learn to be in contact with my nonphysical being. That is a deeper, more intimate touch and contact.

 

That is why I say a new phase of my work starts with this camp, and I am calling it a Samadhi Sadhana Shibir. It is not only meditation, it is absolute ecstasy that I am going to teach to you. It is not only the first step, it is the last. Only no mind on your part is needed and everything is ready. Just be alert not to think much. The remaining time between these three meditations, remain more and more silent, don't talk. If you want to do something, laugh, dance: do something intense and physical but not mental.

 

Go for a long walk, go jogging on the grounds, jump under the sun, lie down on the earth, look at the sky, enjoy, but don't allow the mind to function much. Laugh, cry, weep, but don't think. If you can be without thinking for these three meditations and the time between them, then after three, four days you will feel suddenly a burden has disappeared. The heart has become light, the body weightless and you are ready to take a jump into the unknown.

 

Anything more?

 

-Osho, “A Bird on the Wing, #1”