First thing in the morning stretch your body like a cat so you can feel energy, move like a cat, and then laugh, and only then get out of the bed. Then the whole day is going to be different. Then we will be doing three meditations in the day. In the morning a meditation of four steps, the last really not a step but a jump.

 

The first step: ten minutes of fast chaotic breathing. This breathing is used just like a hammer to hammer your energies, particularly energies which are hidden in the sex center. And you exist right now as a sex center, because your whole energy moves into that center. Your contact with the world is through that center, you are related to the world through that center. And unless energy erupts upwards, flows upwards to other centers which are there, nonfunctioning, you cannot change, you cannot be transformed.

 

The higher the energy moves, through higher centers you are related to the world. When from the highest center you relate to the world, you have become divine and the whole world is divine; from the lowest center, sex, you are an animal and the whole world is also animal. Darwins and Huxleys and others who have worked hard to prove that man has evolved out of animals are right, their research is right, but they have not studied a buddha; they have studied the ordinary human being.

 

 

The ordinary human being is related with the animal kingdom. He remains an animal, just a little more sophisticated. Mark Twain writes somewhere that the cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education. That’s the only difference between animal and man – a little more sophisticated animal with a college education, with a culture. But he remains an animal, and because he is educated he becomes more dangerous. The higher your energy moves, the more new realms of existence will be revealed to you.

 

And if the Upanishads... if Vedantins, Buddha and Jesus and people like them have declared that everyone is divine, they could say so only because they were related to the universe from their highest center. Your energy has to be moved from the sex center to the sahasrar, that which is hidden in your head. This chaotic breathing, the first step, is just to be used as a hammer. It works, it is not a theory; you can do it and you can know it, and you will know it.

 

The second step for ten minutes will be of catharsis. You have to bring out, act out, whatsoever you have been suppressing up to now. Whatsoever you have suppressed has to be thrown out, because only then can you become flowerlike, weightless, and only then can you fly, only then can you rise upwards. All the burden has to be dropped down.

 

I have heard one story about Hotei, a Zen master. One day he was passing through a village. On his shoulders he always carried a very big bag full of many toys, chocolates and sweets for children. Somebody asked him, ”Hotei, we have heard that you are just playing a role, acting. We have heard that you are a Zen master, so why do you go on wasting your time just giving toys to children? And if you are really a Zen master then show us what Zen is.” Zen means the real spirit of religion.

 

Hotei dropped his bag, immediately he dropped his bag. They couldn’t follow, so they said, ”What do you mean?” He said, ”This is all. If you drop the burden, this is all.”

 

They asked, ”Okay, then what is the next step?”

 

So he put his bag again on his shoulders and started walking. ”This is the next step. But now I am not carrying. I know now that the burden is not me. Now the whole burden has become just toys for children and they will enjoy it.”

 

The second step is to drop the bag that you are carrying, and carry it again only when you are not carrying it. Then you can carry the whole world; then there is no problem – you are not identified with it. The second step is to drop the bag. So be Hotei, and drop whatsoever you have been carrying so long. And it is just ugly, whatsoever you are carrying. Sadness, ugliness, hatred, suffering, anger, jealousy – things like this you are carrying. And if you have become a big wound it is no surprise, it is what you are carrying.

 

So in the second step you have to throw down whatsoever there is in it. You will look mad, because madness is there. You have been suppressing it up to now. Your sanity is false, it is just on the surface, not even skin-deep. You can be made insane immediately. Someone hits you and the sanity is gone, someone insults you and the sanity is gone. It is not even skin-deep, it is just there boiling. You are carrying yourself somehow. You are a miracle. How do you go on with so many madnesses within? How do you manage it?

 

In the second step don’t manage, just throw it out. Become mad, go mad. Remember, when you become mad consciously you remain a witness. Madness is beautiful if you are conscious – you enjoy it. The more you throw it out the less burdened you are, and you feel that your energy is purified. You feel that now you can fly in the sky. Now there are no boundaries to you, you have become weightless. Now the whole gravitation of the earth cannot pull you down to the earth, you have become greater.

 

You can transcend this pull now; this pull works because you carry so much burden. The second step is to go mad consciously. Those who are intelligent will go mad consciously, those who are stupid will go on holding. So don’t be stupid; be a man of understanding and try it.

 

The third step is a Sufi mantra, hoo; not w-h-o, just h-o-o – hoo without meaning. This is just a sound with no meaning at all; it has a significance but no meaning. It is just a technique. This sound hoo goes deepest in you, hits your deepest center, releases energy. Your whole body becomes aflame with a new energy that you have not known because you have never hit it. You are so afraid of yourself that you never hit your sources of energy, because you don’t know what you will do if much energy comes to you, and you are also afraid you may do something wrong if energy comes to you.

 

So people remain consciously weak. If you are afraid of sex you will be afraid of energy, because if energy comes it will start moving in the sex center. Then what to do? So these so-called saints go on starving their bodies just to remain weak; their whole saintliness is nothing but a sort of weakness, a sort of impotence. And an impotent person can never be holy – because you don’t have energy to be holy. If you don’t have energy to be unholy, how can you have energy to be holy? The same energy moves from unholiness to holiness.

 

The third is just a technique, a sound which hits your hidden sources of energy which you are scared to hit. Your whole body will become aflame with new life, new energy, new heat, new electricity, and when your whole body has become vital, every cell of it, only then the jump can be taken, never before it. Religion is not for weak people. Of course, if you go looking in temples, mosques and churches you will find weak persons there, kneeling down, praying – just weak.

 

They are there because they are weak and they are in search of some help: somebody to protect them, somebody to give them security, safety. But I say to you, religion is not for the weak, it is only for the strong, because it is such a jump. It is a total jump from the known to the unknown. The weak cannot take it. They can travel step by step, but they can never take a jump. And remember, if you travel step by step, gradually, you are never transformed; you are at the most modified. You remain the same.

 

A little refined, modified, a little change here and there, but you remain the same. A little better looking, but all ugliness hidden inside, just colored. Only those who are strong enough, who are erupting with energy, exploding with energy, can take the jump. And this is the greatest jump and the greatest challenge – from the known into the unknown. Whatsoever you are you know, and where I am trying to indicate is the unknown. In all these days the abyss will be just near you. Any moment you can jump, but you will have to create energy.

 

This third step is to create energy, to make a volcano – and then I will leave it to you. When I see that now you are boiling, exploding, I will say, ”Stop.” And when I say stop, don’t go on doing things. Whatsoever you were doing, stop immediately, go dead, because if you go on doing you will lose energy and the jump will not be possible. When I say stop, stop exactly at that moment. When you hear me say stop after the third step, you stop as you are. Even if the posture is uncomfortable don’t change it, don’t make it comfortable, because here we are not in search of comfort.

 

And don’t deceive, because you are not deceiving anybody except yourself. When I say stop, it is meaningful that I am saying it at that particular moment. It is when I feel that now you have worked up, you have created the energy; now the right peak has been reached. When I say stop, stop immediately. Become a statue, a stone, a rock – no movement. Don’t allow the energy to be expressed in any way, so the energy becomes integrated within and it comes with such a force that you can take the jump. The jump will happen by itself; you just create the energy. When I say stop, you stop.

 

The fourth step is a jump. You remain silent, just like a rock. In that moment of silence and stoppage, energy will be there – so much you cannot hold it; it will have to explode. And it will move from the sex center upwards. As it moves upwards you will feel a transformation, a change. You are not the same; moment to moment something else is coming into being. When this energy touches the head center, the last center, sahasrar... Hindus have said it is as if a lotus of one thousand petals has opened suddenly. You are filled with benediction, bliss, beatitude. This for the morning.

 

-Osho, "Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, #1”