Osho on Jalaluddin Rumi Whirling Meditation

 

 

Jalaluddin Rumi is one of the greatest Sufi mystics. He is the only mystic whom Sufis have called Mevlana. Mevlana means, our Beloved Master. A few people I love immensely. Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi is one of them, and the reason I love him is that he was not life-negative, but life-affirmative. And the meditation that he has found and which has continued for seven hundred years among a small stream of mystics was the meditation of a certain kind of dance. His followers are called whirling sufis.

 

You must have seen small children -- they like to whirl; and everybody stops them, because the fear of the parents is that the child may fall, may have a fracture, may get hurt. But in spite of all prohibitions, children love to whirl. And nobody has inquired why children love, all over the world, irrespective of race, nation, religion, why children love to whirl.

 

Jalaluddin Rumi, seeing children whirl, thought that there must be something that the children feel but they cannot express, and perhaps they are not fully aware what it is. So he tried whirling himself, and he was amazed that if you go on whirling there comes a moment when the center of your being remains static and your whole body, mind, brain, everything, whirls.

 

And that center which does not whirl, is you, the center of the cyclone. The whirling is almost like a cyclone, but exactly in the middle of the cyclone you will find a point which has not moved at all. Every wheel needs a center on which to turn, and the center has to remain unturning. You see in bicycles, in bullock carts, wherever there is a wheel, there is something in the center which is unmoving.

 

Once Jalaluddin became aware that you can find the unmoving center of your being, he tried for thirty-six hours non-stop, without eating, without drinking -- he was determined to whirl to his absolute capacity, not to hold back anything... unless he falls, he is not going to stop. Thirty-six hours he whirled, a great crowd watched. The crowd went on changing; people had to go to eat and then they came again. People had to do their work and then they came again; thirty-six hours is a long period. And after thirty-six hours he fell down. And people heard a great laughter.

 

Jalaluddin was laughing loudly, and he said, "You think you have seen me falling, I have also seen myself falling. These thirty-six hours I have not moved a single inch. Now I don't have to go to Mecca in search of God, I have found him. In the unmoving center of my own being, he is."

 

The followers of Rumi don't have great scriptures, don't have any rituals, except whirling, and a few beautiful poems by Jalaluddin Rumi, which he used to sing after whirling and falling. He will get up and he will be so drunk -- in that drunkenness he will sing a song, and those songs have been collected. That is the only literature the followers of Rumi have.

These lines are also from one of the poems of Rumi. Each sentence is impeccable -- not only true, but also utterly beautiful.

We are the mirror, that's what I have been saying to you again and again; that we are not the doer, we are only the mirror. Don't get identified with your doings, with your actions; remain a witness, just a watcher. But we are not taught the most essential things of life, we are taught all kinds of stupid things.

The most essential is the art of watchfulness.

 

- Osho, "The Rebellious Spirit, #23, Q2"