Meditation: The Art Of Ecstasy (On Meditation and Meditation Techniques)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Osho inspires millions of people worldwide in their individual search for joy, fulfillment, depth, and silence. All his talks address the question of how we can live each moment of our daily lives in awareness, relaxation and totality.

“Osho advocated meditation for everyone, but his technique was revolutionary, beginning not with stillness and silence but with activity to release pent- up energy and emotions, leading to a state of calmness in which meditation can flourish.

Osho clears up misconceptions about what meditation is playful, and what it is not serious. He answers fundamental questions about meditation and gives a detailed description of each stage of his most revolutionary meditation technique, the Osho Dynamic Meditation.

Part III contains descriptions of many more techniques and ancient meditations are given a 21st century context.

Meditation is not work it is a play. Meditation is not something to be done to achieve some goal peace bliss but something to be enjoyed as an end in itself.

The festive dimension is the most important thing to be understood and we have lost it totally. By festive I mean the capacity to enjoy moment to moment all that comes to you.

All my meditation techniques that I have given to you are not dependent on me my presence or absence will not make any difference they are dependent on you.

It is not my presence but your to work. It is not my being here but your being here, being in the present your being alert and aware that is going to help.

Osho defies categorization. His thousands of talks cover everything from the individual quest for meaning to the roost urgent social arid political issues facing society today. Osho’s books are not written hut are transcribed from audio and video recordings of his extemporaneous talks to international audiences. As he puts it, “S0 remember: whatever I am saying is not just for you... I am talking also for the future generations.

Osho has been described by The Sunday Times in London or one of the “1000 Makers of the 20th Century” and by American author Tom Rohbins as “the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ.” Sunday Mid-Day (India) has selected Osho as one of ten people along with Gandhi, Nehru and Buddha who have changed the destiny of India.

About his own work Osho has said that he is helping to create the conditions for the birth of a new kind of human being. He often characterizes this new human being as “Zorba the Buddha” capable both of enjoying the earthy pleasures of a Zorha the Greek and the silent serenity of a Gautama the Buddha, Running like a thread through all aspects of Osho’s talks and meditations is a vision that encompasses both the timeless wisdom of all ages past and the highest potential of today’s (and tomorrow’s) science and technology.

Osho is known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, with an approach to meditation that acknowledges the accelerated pace of contemporary life, His unique Osho Active Meditations are designed to first release the accumulated stresses of body and mind, so that it is then easier to take an experience of stillness and thought-free relaxation into daily life.

We train a child to focus his mind, to concentrate, because without concentration he will not be able to cope with life. Life requires it; the mind must be able to concentrate. But the moment the mind becomes able to concentrate, it becomes less aware. Awareness means a mind that is conscious but not focused. Awareness is a consciousness of all that is happening.

Concentration is a choice. It excludes all except its object of concentration; it is a narrowing. if you are walking on the street, you will have to narrow your consciousness in order to walk. You cannot ordinarily be aware of all that is happening because if you are aware of everything that is happening you will become unfocused. So concentration is a need. Concentration of the mind is a need in order to live — to survive and exist. That is why every culture, in its own way, tries to narrow the mind of the child.

Children, as they are, are never focused; their consciousness is open from all sides. Everything is coming in, nothing is being excluded. The child is open to every sensation, every sensation is included in his consciousness. And so much is coming in! That is why he is so wavering, so unstable. A child’s unconditioned mind is a flux a flux of sensations hut he will not he able to survive with this type of mind. He must learn how to narrow his mind, to concentrate.

The moment you narrow the mind you become particularly conscious of one thing and simultaneously unconscious of so many other things. The more narrowed the mind is, the mote successful it will he. You will become a specialist, you will become an expert, hut the whole thing will consist of knowing more and more about less and less.

The narrowing is an existential necessity; no one is responsible for it. As life exists, it is needed, but it is not enough. ft is utilitarian, but just to survive is not enough; just to he utilitarian is not enough. So when you become utilitarian and the consciousness is narrowed, you deny your mind much of which it was capable. You are not using the total mind, you are using a very small part of it. And the remaining the major portion will become unconscious.

In fact, there is no boundary between conscious and unconscious. These are not two minds. “Conscious mind” means that part of the mind that has been used in the narrowing process. “Unconscious mind” means that portion that has been neglected, ignored, closed. This creates a division, a split. The greater portion of your mind becomes alien to you. You become alienated from your own self; you become a stranger to your own totality.

A small part is being identified as your self and the rest is lost. But the remaining unconscious part is always there as unused potentiality, unused possibilities, unlived adventures. This unconscious mind this potential, this unused mind will always he in a fight with the conscious mind; that is why there is always a conflict within. Everyone is in conflict because of this split between the unconscious and the conscious. But only if the potential, the unconscious, is allowed to flower can you feel the bliss of existence; otherwise not.

If the major portion of your potentialities remains unfulfilled, your life will he a frustration. That is why the more utilitarian a person is, the less he is fulfilled, the less he is blissful. The more utilitarian the approach the more one is in business life the less he is living, the less he is ecstatic. The part of the mind that cannot he made useful in the utilitarian world has been denied.

The utilitarian life is necessary but at a great cost: you have lost the festivity of life. Life becomes a festivity, a celebration, if all your potentialities come to a flowering; then life is a festivity. That is why I always say that religion means transforming life into a celebration. The dimension of religion is the dimension of the festive, the non utilitarian.

The utilitarian mind must not be taken as the whole. The remaining, the greater the whole mind should not he sacrificed to it. The utilitarian mind must not become the end. It will have to remain there, hut as a means. The other— the remaining, the greater, the potential must become the end. That is what I mean by a religious approach.

With a nonreligious approach, the businesslike mind, the utilitarian, becomes the end. When this becomes the end, there is no possibility of the unconscious actualizing the potential; the unconscious will he denied. If the utilitarian becomes the end, it means that the servant is playing the role of the master.

Intelligence, the narrowing of the mind, is a means toward survival, but not toward life. Survival is not life. Survival is a necessity to exist in the material world is a necessity hut the end is always to come to a flowering of the potential, of all that is meant by you. If you are fulfilled completely, if nothing remains inside in seed form, if everything becomes actual, if you are a flowering, then and only then can you feel the bliss, the ecstasy of life.

The denied part of you, the unconscious part, can become active and creative only if you add a new dimension to your life the dimension of the festive, the dimension of play. So meditation is not a work, it is a play. Praying is not a business, it is a play. Meditation is not something to be done to achieve some goal peace, bliss but something to be enjoyed as an end in itself.

The festive dimension is the most important thing to be understood and we have lost it totally. By festive, I mean the capacity to enjoy, moment to moment, all that comes to you.

We have become so conditioned and habits have become so mechanical that even when there is no business to be done, out minds ate businesslike, When no narrowing is needed, you are narrowed. Even when you are playing, you are not playing, you are not enjoying it. Even when you are playing cards, you are not enjoying it. You play for the victory and then the play becomes a work; then what is going on is not important, only the result.

In business the result is important. In festivity, the act is important. If you can make any act significant in itself, then you become festive and you can celebrate it. Whenever you are in celebration, the limits, the narrowing limits are broken. They are not needed, they are thrown. You come out of your straitjacket, the narrowing jacket of concentration. Now you are not choosing; everything that comes, you allow. And the moment you allow the total existence to come in, you become one with it. There is a communion.

**Sample Pages**