Question 1

In hatha yoga there is an exercise in which one tenses every muscle in the body and then releases the tension and becomes relaxed. is this similar to what happens in dynamic meditation?

 

 

Relaxation is basically existential. You cannot relax if, existentially, your attitude toward life is tense. Then, even if you try to relax, it is impossible. In fact, to try to relax is absurd; effort, as such, is inimical to relaxation. You cannot relax; you can only be relaxed.

 

Your very presence is inimical to relaxation. Relaxation means that you are absent, and through no effort on your part can you be absent. Each and every effort will strengthen your presence; it is bound to strengthen it. Whatever you do will be your act, you will be strengthened through it, you will be more condensed through it, you will be more crystallized.

 

In this sense, you cannot relax. Relaxation can come to you only when you are not. Your very doing will become a part of the ego, your very effort will be a continuity of yourself.

 

You are relaxed in the moment when you are not. Your very being is the tension; you cannot exist without tension -- you are the tension.

 

Tension begins with a desire for that which is not. It is a tension between the past and the future. You are like a bridge between two things, and whenever two things are connected, tension will be there. Man is a bridge -- a bridge of desires -- but it is a rainbow bridge, not a steel bridge; it can evaporate.

 

When I say relaxation is existential, I mean by this: understand the tension; don't do anything with it, just understand it.

 

You can understand tension, but you cannot understand relaxation; that is impossible. You can only understand tension, so understand what it is, how it is, from where it comes; how it exists, by what means it exists. Understand tension totally, and the minute you understand it, a moment is created in which there is no tension. Then it is not only the body which is relaxed, the whole being is relaxed.

 

To relax the body is really not very difficult, but it has become more difficult with the advance of civilization because the contact with the body is lost. We do not exist in the body; our existence has become basically cerebral, mental.

 

You do not even love with your body, you love with your mind; the body follows just like a dead weight. When you touch someone, it is not the body you touch; the sensitivity is not there. The mind touches, but since minds cannot really touch, two bodies meet, but there is no communion. The bodies are dead, so you can embrace, but it is only two dead bodies embracing. They come near, but they are not really near. Nearness can only be there if you exist in the body, if you are inside the body.

 

We are outside our bodies, just like ghosts; around and around, but never inside. The more man has become civilized, the less he is in contact with his own body. The contact is lost; that is why the body is tense.

 

Body has its own automatic mechanism to relax. The body is tired, it is on the bed, but because you are not there, it cannot relax. You must be in it, otherwise, the automatic mechanism becomes ineffective; it cannot work without your presence. It needs you; it cannot go to sleep by itself. Sleep is lost, relaxation is lost, because the contact with the body is lost.

 

You are not in your body, so your body cannot function adequately; it cannot function with its own wisdom. It has a genetic, inborn wisdom of centuries, but because you are not in it, there is tension. Otherwise, the physical body is basically automatic, it works automatically. You only have to be there; your presence is needed, then it starts working.

 

Our minds are also full of tension. They need not be; the mind is tense because you are always creating confusion. For example, a person who is thinking about sex is creating confusion because sex is not something to be thought about; the mind center is not made for that. Sex has its own center, but you are doing the work of the sex center through your mind. Even when you are in love you think about it, you do not feel it; the feeling center is not working.

 

The more civilized man is, the more the center of the intellect is overburdened; other centers are not working, not functioning. This, too, creates a tension because a center that should work, and has a particular energy to work with, is left without anything to do. It then creates its own tensions, it becomes overburdened by its own unused energy.

 

The mind center is overburdened by work. It is being made to feel, which it cannot do. Mind cannot feel; it can only think. The categories of thinking are quite different from the categories of feeling, and not only different, but diametrically opposite. The logic of the heart is not the logic of the mind.

 

Love has its own way of thinking, but it is not a mental way, so mind has to do things that it is not meant to do. It becomes overburdened and there is tension. The situation is like this: the father is doing the work of the child, and the child is doing the work of the father. This is the sort of confusion that is created by a mental existence. If every center does its own work, there is relaxation.

 

Mind is not the only center. Because we function as if it is, we have destroyed the whole silence, the whole relaxed attitude, the whole tuning of humanity with the universe. Mind has to work. It has a function, but a very limited one; it is overburdened. Your whole education is concerned with only one center. You are being educated as if you have only one center: the mind, the mathematical, the rational.

 

Life is not only rational; on the contrary, the greater part of life is irrational. Reason is just like a small lighted island in the vast, dark, and mysterious ocean of irrationality. And this island is rooted in the ocean of mystery -- the great ocean of mystery.

 

This lighted part is just a part. It is not the whole and must not be taken as the whole, otherwise tension will be the result. The mysterious will take its revenge; the irrational will take its revenge.

 

You can see the results of this in the West. The West has overdone, overworked, one center -- the rational -- and now the irrational is taking revenge. Revenge is there; it is disrupting the whole order -- the anarchic, the undisciplined, the rebellious, the illogical, are erupting. It may be in music, painting, or anything. The irrational is taking its revenge and the established order is being put in its place.

 

Reason is not the totality. When it is made to be so, the whole culture becomes tense. The same laws that apply to the individual apply to the whole culture, to the whole society. These laws must be understood, and the very understanding will begin to effect a change in you: the very understanding will become a transformation.

 

Body has become tense because you are not in it, and mind has become tense because you have overburdened it. But your spiritual being is never tense. I divide you into body, mind and spirit as a method only. You are not divided -- these boundaries do not, in fact, exist -- but in order to help you to understand things, the division will be useful.

 

The spiritual realm is never tense, but you are not in contact with it. A person who is not even in contact with his body can never be in contact with the spirit because it is a deeper realm. If you are not even in contact with your outer boundaries, you cannot be in contact with your inner centers.

 

The third realm, the spiritual, is relaxed; even this minute it is relaxed. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that the spiritual realm is the realm of relaxation. There is no tension there because the reasons for tension cannot exist in the third realm. You cannot exist without the third realm. You can be forgetful of it, but you can never be without it because you are it. It is your being; it is pure existence.

 

You are not aware of the spiritual because you have so much tension in the body, so much tension in the mind. But if you are not tense in the physical and mental realms, you will automatically know the bliss of the spiritual, the relaxation of the spiritual. It comes to you; it has been waiting for you. Your whole attention is so absorbed by the physical and the mental that there is no attention left to divert to the spiritual. Only if the body and the mind are not tense can you delve into the spiritual, can you know the bliss of it. The spiritual is never tense; it cannot be. There is no spiritual tension, only bodily tension, only mental tension.

 

Bodily tension has been created by those who, in the name of religion, have been preaching anti-body attitudes. In the West, Christianity has been emphatically antagonistic toward the body. A false division, a gulf, has been created between you and your body; then your total attitude becomes tension creating. You cannot eat in a relaxed way, you cannot sleep in a relaxed way; every bodily act becomes a tension. The body is the enemy, but you cannot exist without it. You must remain with it, you must live with your enemy, so there is constant tension; you can never relax.

 

Body is not your enemy, nor is it in any way unfriendly or even indifferent to you. The very existence of the body is bliss. And the moment you take the body as a gift, as a divine gift, you will come back to the body. You will love it, you will feel it -- and subtle are the ways of its feeling.

 

You cannot feel another's body if you have not felt your own, you cannot love another's body if you have not loved your own; it is impossible. You cannot care for another person's body if you have not cared for your own -- and no one cares! You may say that you care, but I insist: no one cares. Even if you seem to care, you do not really care. You are caring for some other reason -- for the opinion of others, for the look in someone else's eyes; you never care for your body for yourself. You do not love your body, and if you cannot love it, you cannot be in it.

 

Love your body and you will feel a relaxation such as you have never felt before. Love is relaxing. When there is love, there is relaxation. If you love someone -- if, between you and him or you and her, there is love -- then with love comes the music of relaxation. Then relaxation is there.

 

When you are relaxed with someone, that is the only sign of love. If you cannot be relaxed with someone, you are not in love; the other, the enemy, is always there. That is why Sartre has said, "The other is hell." Hell is there for Sartre, it is bound to be. When there is no love flowing between the two, the other is hell, but if there is love flowing in between, the other is heaven. So whether the other is heaven or hell depends on whether there is love flowing in between.

 

Whenever you are in love, a silence comes. Language is lost; words become meaningless. You have much to say and nothing to say at the same time. The silence will envelop you, and in that silence, love flowers. You are relaxed. There is no future in love, there is no past; only when love has died is there a past. You only remember a dead love, a living love is never remembered; it is living, there is no gap to remember it; there is no space to remember it. Love is in the present; there is no future and no past.

 

If you love someone, you do not have to pretend. Then you can be what you are. You can put off your mask and be relaxed. When you are not in love, you have to wear a mask. You are tense every moment because the other is there; you have to pretend, you have to be on guard. You have to be either aggressive or defensive: it is a fight, a battle -- you cannot be relaxed.

 

The bliss of love is more or less the bliss of relaxation. You feel relaxed, you can be what you are, you can be nude in a sense, as you are. You need not be bothered about yourself, you need not pretend. You can be open, vulnerable, and in that opening, you are relaxed.

 

This same phenomenon happens if you love your body; you become relaxed, you care about it. It is not wrong, it is not narcissistic to be in love with your own body. In fact, it is the first step toward spirituality.

 

That is why Dynamic Meditation begins with the body. Through vigorous breathing the mind expands, the consciousness expands; the whole body becomes a vibrating, living existence. Now the jump will be easier. Now you can jump; thinking will be less of a barrier. You have become a child again: jumping, vibrating, alive. The conditioning, the mental conditioning, is not there.

 

Your body is not so conditioned as your mind. Remember this: your mind is conditioned, but your body is still a part of nature. All religions and religious thinkers -- who have been basically cerebral -- are against the body because with the body, with the senses, the mind and its conditioning are lost. That is why they have all been afraid of sex. With sex, the conditioned mind is lost; you again become part of the greater biological sphere, the biosphere; you become one with it.

 

Mind is always against sex, because sex is the only thing in ordinary life that can rebel against the mind. You have controlled the whole thing; only one thing remains uncontrolled. So mind is very much against sex because it is the only remaining link between the body and you. If it can be denied completely, then you can become totally cerebral and you are not a body at all.

 

The fear of sex is basically the fear of the body, because with sex the whole body becomes vibrating, vital, living. The moment sex takes over the body, the whole mind is pushed back; it is not there. Breathing takes it over; the breathing becomes vigorous, vital.

 

That is why I begin my meditation with breathing. With breathing, you begin to feel your whole body, every corner of it; the body is flooded; you become one with it. Now it is possible for you to take a jump.

 

The jump that is taken in sex is a very small jump, while the jump that is taken in meditation is a very great jump. In sex, you "jump" into someone else. Before that jump you need to be one with your body, and in that jump you need to expand still more -- to another's body. Your consciousness spreads beyond your body. In meditation you jump from your body to the whole body of the universe; you become one with it.

 

The second step of Dynamic Meditation is cathartic. Not only will you be one with your body, but all the tensions that have been accumulated in the body must be thrown out. The body must become light, unburdened, so the movements are to be vigorous, as vigorous as possible. Then the same thing that is possible in dervish dancing, in sufi dancing, becomes possible. If your movements are vital and vigorous, a moment will come when you will lose control. And that moment is needed. You must not be in control because your control is the barrier, you are the barrier. Your controlling faculty -- your mind -- is the barrier.

 

Go on moving. Of course, you will have to begin, but a moment will come when you will be taken over; you will feel that the control is lost. You are on the brink, now you can take the jump. Now you have again become a child. You have come back; all the conditioning is thrown. You do not care for anything; you do not care for what others think. Now everything that has been put into you by society is thrown; you have become just a dancing particle in the universe.

 

When you have thrown everything in the second stage of Dynamic Meditation, only then is the third stage possible. Your identity will be lost, your image will be broken, because whatever you know about yourself is not about yourself but only a labeling. You have been told you are this or that, and you have become identified with it. But with vigorous movement, with the cosmic dance, all identifications will be lost. You will be, for the first time, as you must have been when you were born. And with this new birth you will be a new person.

 

-Osho, "Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, #5, Q1"