Question 2

Sometimes in the second stage of Dynamic Meditation I start doing Asanas. I can’t tell whether I’m doing them because I want to practice them or whether they are coming of their own accord. How is one to know the difference?

 

 

Don’t think about the difference; just let them come. When they come by themselves in meditation, let them come, and then they will go by themselves. But if they are coming because you are practicing them, then they will never go. When the need is over, when the need is fulfilled, they will wither away by themselves. So don’t think about it. You cannot know beforehand whether they are coming out of habit or not. If they are authentic, then when the need is fulfilled they will go. You will not know this while you are doing the asanas – you will not be able to tell the difference – but by and by the difference will be felt.

 

When you practice a particular asana it is very different from when it comes to you spontaneously. The distinction is subtle but it is always there. When you are doing it, it will be a disciplined act following a particular routine, a form, an order. When it comes by itself there will be no discipline in it, there will be no order in it, it will be a chaotic act. And only when it is chaotic is it helpful. A disciplined act is not helpful because it is always a function of the conscious mind; it never goes deep. Only when an act is chaotic does it become deep, and only then can it reach the unconscious, because the unconscious mind is a chaos, a great chaos.

 

The unconscious is just like the beginning of the world. Everything exists in a potential form in the unconscious, but it has not as yet taken form and shape; everything is hazy, cloudy, uncertain. If you try to impose some set pattern on it, you will not achieve anything. You will only go on circling around your conscious mind, because the conscious can be forced into discipline while the unconscious can never be forced into discipline. But the unconscious is the root, the unconscious is the source.

 

Meditation means going into the unconscious: diving into it, being in it. It is to be chaotic in the chaos. It is to be without form within the formless. It is to let go of oneself, to float in the clouds, untethered; to let oneself move into an unmapped territory, an uncharted sea. Don’t go into it with a disciplined mind or you will never go. You move in circles in your conscious mind: you go on repeating and it becomes a habit; you have just aligned yourself with your conscious mind. A disciplined mind is always a poor mind because it will never greet chaos. It has never been outside the limits of the conscious, it never transcends the conscious; it is not concerned with the infinite.

 

A man with a disciplined mind may be a great man, like Gandhi, but he will have a small mind because his total concern is with the conscious mind and with discipline. He will never move into the undisciplined – he will never touch it. The conscious mind is just like a garden growing beside your house, it is never like a forest. And the unconscious is like a dense forest that has no boundary. You can never know the boundaries of the unconscious, so there is every possibility of being lost. To remain in the conscious mind is safe; there is no risk. To move into the unconscious is risky. Courage is needed.

 

So do not discipline your body and do not discipline your mind. Live with the undisciplined, live with the chaotic, live with danger. That is what meditation means to me: to live in insecurity, to live in chaos, to live in the limitless. But that does not mean that a discipline will not come to you. It will come, but it will come as freedom. It will be an alive discipline from within: always touching the unlimited, always potentially chaotic, always explosive, always in the unknown – a moment-to-moment discipline. It will seem very inconsistent without but it will have its own consistency, there will be an inner consistency running through it.

 

If you discipline yourself from without, there is every possibility that you will never come to know the unconscious. And the conscious mind is no mind at all, it is not life at all. It is just a utilitarian instrument developed because of society; it is not you. But because we have to live with others, we need certain things that can be known about us and can be relied upon: discipline, a particular character. The conscious mind exists because of the relationship between you and others. It is just a link between you and all those with whom you are related, but it does not help you in relating to yourself, in knowing yourself.

 

I remember a story. King Ashoka sent his son to Ceylon to take them the message of Buddha. He met the king of Ceylon and asked him a question: ”There are people in the world to whom you are related and others to whom you are not related. These are the two categories. Is anyone left who is not in one of these two categories?”

 

The king said, ”I am left.”

 

Ashoka’s son said, ”Now the message can be delivered to you. You are an intelligent person, so something can be said to you. I asked this question to find out if you know that there is something else besides the related and the unrelated or whether you think everything belongs to one of these two categories.”

 

This third – which is neither related to you nor unrelated to you – is the unconscious part of your existence; it is the realm of meditation. The conscious mind is a help as far as your relationship or non-relationship to the world is concerned, but it can never be a help as far as you are concerned. Meditation does not mean a conscious implementation; it means an effortless jump into yourself. With discipline you can go step by step, but you can never discipline a jump. The first three steps of Dynamic Meditation are not steps of meditation at all, but steps that lead you to the place where you can jump.

 

Real meditation is a jump – a jump into the unknown. So do not discipline your body; let it go where it wants to go. Allow yourself to move into the unknown. Things will happen, asanas will be there, but only those which are required by you. Now asanas may come to you – asanas which are not normally depicted, which have not been described so far – because the possibilities are infinite and the asana descriptions we have are only of the more commonly experienced postures. There are also infinite mudras. They too will follow.

 

Let the asanas come and go; don’t practice them and don’t cling to them. Let them come by themselves, let them go by themselves; don’t be concerned with them at all. That is what I mean when I say I am against all asanas: you should not be concerned with them at all. One thing more: asanas have a cathartic value. Ordinarily, our mind works only in relation to someone or some situation. That means our mind only reacts to things, it never acts. And if a person begins to act without a stimulus we put him in a madhouse, because his actions seem absurd, nonsensical. If he begins to act, that means he is not acting in relation to any situation, he is acting from within.

 

So much is suppressed in us because we cannot act, we always have to wait for situations to react to. If you are angry, you cannot just be angry, you have to wait for the proper situation to arise – someone must create a situation which you can react to. If you begin to be angry without provocation, you will be called mad. Even when you are reacting you look mad, and if you are reacting to something that has happened, then you are justified to yourself and others. But if your action is not a reaction, then there seems to be no justification for it; you simply look mad.

 

So much inside you needs expression and is never expressed because no situation arises for it to be expressed. You go on suppressing what is inside you, fighting against it. You cannot express love to the empty air, so when the opportunity to love is not there, love is suppressed. Then a curious phenomenon begins to happen. You are full of love but you cannot express it to the air. Then someone comes along to whom you can be loving but with whom you are not in love and you begin to act. The real is suppressed and the unreal is acted upon. In this way your whole life becomes a confusion.

 

Catharsis is needed in meditation because of two things. One: your suppressed vibrations, attitudes, moods, actions, and mudras must be released – not as reactions but as autonomous actions; not related to anybody else but as overflowing energy. In Dynamic Meditation they can be released, unaddressed.... You begin to cry, you begin to laugh. Only when it is unaddressed can the expression be total. Then you do not need any justification for it: it is its own justification. Whatever you are expressing you can express totally; there is no need to suppress it. Now you are talking to the sky, loving the air; you are angry with the gods. Unrelated, unaddressed. Then you become totally expressive and the suppressed mind is lost. This is catharsis. You need to be able to express without situations, because the human mind is so suppressed that if you only express when there are situations for it you will never be rid of suppression.

 

Two: if catharsis is allowed you will stop acting, because acting is a substitute, part and parcel of suppression. Your circumstances and your needs do not coincide. When the need is there the circumstance is unfavorable, and when the circumstances are favorable your need has long since passed. You are forced to be inauthentic, forced to act. When catharsis takes place in meditation, you will begin to feel a new life surging within you. You will never be able to act again. Now you will be bold enough to laugh without reason and bold enough to be angry without there being any person, any situation, present. Then a second boldness will follow: you will be bold enough not to act. That is one of the greatest signs of courage: not to act. Then your personality begins to be authentic. And this authenticity can only come to you after catharsis.

 

Real asanas and mudras are a catharsis, an expression, an overflowing. And the more they overflow, the more weightless you begin to be. Then a day comes when you are completely weightless; a moment comes when you are not bound by gravity. Weightless! Only in this weightlessness does the flight of the alone to the alone take place. If you practice asanas there will be no catharsis, only suppression. That is the basic difference: if you practice asanas they will be suppressive, but if they come to you spontaneously they will be expressive, there will be a catharsis.

 

If you impose asanas on yourself, the action is just part and parcel of your total suppressive routine. If you impose asanas which your mind is not ready for, you will force your body into a particular posture and the body will have to follow your will. This type of exercise, if done to its logical conclusion, will create a split in the personality. Then you will become two: the one who is suppressed and the one who is suppressing.

 

Yoga, to me, means becoming one, not two. It is integration, not splitting. I call an asana yogasana only when it comes automatically. If it is imposed, then it is not concerned with Yoga at all. Yogic exercises are gymnastics, not Yoga. That is why I have not used the word Yoga but have been using the word asana.

 

Yogasana is an asana which has come to you, which has happened to you; otherwise an asana is no different from anything else that is imposed on you, any physical discipline. It may prove health giving but it can never prove spiritual; it can never help to integrate you. The health benefits that you derive will be at a very high cost because your personality will be splitting in two. The whole nature of the experience of those people who practice asanas begins to be less and less spiritual and more and more physical.

 

And this is a curious phenomenon: these asanas seem to be meditation-oriented – they are supposed to be – yet all over the world, wherever asanas are talked about, dhyana, meditation, is the least talked about subject. Now the whole thing has become topsy-turvy: they teach meditation along with asanas as if meditation were only another asana. It is not an asana at all. Meditation is the ground, it is the base, it is the seed. Everything must be meditation-oriented, because meditation is first, and everything else follows.

 

-Osho, "The Great Challenge, #3, Q2"