Osho Born Again Meditation Therapy

 

 

Born Again is a process that takes place for two hours a day, over seven days. For the first hour, participants take the space and freedom to behave as children. For the second hour, they sit silently, doing nothing. Osho has this to say about the first part of the process:

 

 

 

People go on asking, "Where is God?" You cannot find him because he is a player and you are serious. Hindus have been saying for centuries that this existence is God's play, and you are so work-oriented, so serious, that you cannot meet him. Of course! Obviously! There is no possibility of your meeting him. You move in different dimensions. He moves into play. The whole existence is just a play. It is not a work; it is not serious.

Put aside your seriousness, and for eight days become godlike, playful. Again it will be difficult because you feel you are very mature. You are not! You have not gained maturity. Of course you have lost your childhood but just losing childhood is not synonymous with being mature. You can lose childhood without becoming mature. Maturity is not old age, maturity is not concerned with age at all. Maturity is a growth, and the growth must be through childhood, not against it, remember.

Your maturity is false because it has been against the child. The child was born; maturity has been created. The child was natural; you are artificial, cultivated. You will have to go back to the child to regain the source from where growth is possible.

My insistence on being playful is because of this: I want you to go back to the very point from where you stopped growing. There has been a point in your childhood when you stopped growing and when you started being false. You may have been angry, a small child in a tantrum, angry, and your father or your mother said, "Don't be angry! This is not good!" You were natural but a division was created and a choice was there for you. If you were to remain natural then you would not have got the love of your parents.

Of course, you wanted the love; that was the only security for you, you could not have existed without it. So you opted, you surrendered. You pushed your nature aside. You started laughing and smiling; you became a good boy or good girl. The day you became the good boy or a good girl was the day of catastrophe. From that moment you have never been natural. From that moment you have been serious, never playful. From that moment you have been dying, not alive. From that moment you have been aging, not maturing.

In these eight days I want to throw you back to the point where you started being 'good' as against being natural. Be playful so your childhood is regained. It will be difficult because you will have to put aside your masks, your faces; you will have to put aside your personality. But remember, the essence can assert itself only when your personality is not there, because your personality has become an imprisonment. Put it aside. It will be painful, but it is worth it because you are going to be reborn out of it. And no rebirth is possible without pain. If you are really determined to be reborn, then take the risk.

For these eight days be small children again. Do not criticize anybody, do not condemn anybody. That type of nonsense belongs to so-called mature people, not to children. What children do, do. They enjoy. And they enjoy such simple things that for us so-called mature people it looks absurd. The whole world is filled with beauty, truth, love, but you cannot enjoy anything.

When we are meditating from tomorrow morning, enjoy it! Remember this: regain your childhood. Everyone longs for it but no one is doing anything to regain it. Everyone longs for it! People go on saying that childhood is paradise and poets go on writing poems about the beauty of childhood. Who is preventing you from regaining it? I give you this opportunity to regain it.

 

Poetry will not help, and just remembering that it was paradise is not of much use. Why not move into it again? Why not be a child again? I say to you that if you can be a child again you will start growing in a new way. For the first time you will be really alive again. And the moment you have the eyes of a child, the senses of a child -- young, vibrating with life -- the whole of life vibrates with you.

 

Remember, it is your vibration that needs transformation. The world is already always vibrating in ecstasy; only you are not tuned. The problem is not with the world, it is with you: you are not tuned to it. The world is dancing, always celebrating, every moment it is in a festivity. The festival goes on from eternity to eternity, only you are not tuned to it. You have fallen apart from it, and you are very serious, very knowing, very mature. You are closed.

 

Throw this enclosure! Move again into the current of life. When the storm comes, the trees will be dancing, you also dance. When the night comes and everything is dark, you also be dark. And in the morning when the sun rises, let it rise in you also. Be childlike and enjoying, not thinking of the past."

 

A child never thinks of the past. Really, he has no past to think about. A child is not worried about the future; he has no time consciousness. He lives totally unworried. He moves in the moment; he never carries any hangover. If he is angry then he is angry and in his anger he will say to his mother, "I hate you." And this is not just words, this is a reality. Really, in that moment he is in total hate. The next moment he will come out of it and he will be laughing and he will give a kiss to his mother and he will say, "I love you." There is no contradiction. These are two different moments. He was total hate and now he is total love. He moves just like a river goes on moving, zigzag. But wherever he is -- wherever the river is -- he is total, flowing.

 

For these days be like a child -- total. If you hate, hate; if you love, love; if you are angry, then be angry; and if you are festive, then be festive and dance. Do not carry anything over from the past. Remain true to the moment; do not hanker for the future. For these eight days drop out of time. Drop out of time!

 

That is why I say do not be serious: because the more serious you are, the more time conscious you are. A child lives in eternity; there is no time for him. He is not even aware of it. These eight days will be real meditation if you drop out of time. Live the moment and be true to it.

 

Be playful. It will be difficult, because you are so much structured. You have an armor around you and it is so difficult to loosen it, to relax it. You cannot dance, you cannot sing, you cannot just jump, you cannot just scream and laugh and smile. Even if you want to laugh you first want something there to be laughed at. You cannot simply laugh. There must be some cause: only then can you laugh. There must be some cause: only then can you cry and weep.

 

Put aside knowledge, put aside seriousness; be absolutely playful for eight days. You have nothing to lose. If you do not gain anything, you will not lose anything either. What can you lose in being playful? But I say to you: you will never be the same again.

 

My insistence on being playful is because of this: I want you to go back to the very point from where you stopped growing. There has been a point in your childhood when you stopped growing and when you started being false. You may have been angry, a small child in a tantrum, angry, and your father or your mother said, "Don't be angry! This is not good!" You were natural but a division was created and a choice was there for you. If you were to remain natural then you would not have got the love of your parents.

 

In these days I want to throw you back to the point where you started being 'good' as against being natural. Be playful so your childhood is regained. It will be difficult because you will have to put aside your masks, your faces; you will have to put aside your personality. But remember, the essence can assert itself only when your personality is not there, because your personality has become an imprisonment. Put it aside. It will be painful, but it is worth it because you are going to be reborn out of it. And no rebirth is possible without pain. If you are really determined to be reborn, then take the risk."

 

-Osho, "The Supreme Doctrine, #1"