MEDITATION : THE ART OF ECSTASY ; DYNAMIC OR SILENT MEDITATION (4-5)

                                                 DYNAMIC or SILENT MEDITATION

The Art of Ecstasy

 Chapter #4

 Chapter title: Dynamic Meditation or, Silent Meditation 

Question 1

 QUESTION: DYNAMIC MEDITATION IS VERY ACTIVE, VERY STRENUOUS.CAN ONE NOT GO INTO MEDITATION JUST BY SITTING SILENTLY? 

You can go into meditation just by sitting, but then be just sitting; do not do anything else. If you can be just sitting, it becomes meditation. Be completely in the sitting; nonmovement should be your only movement. In fact, the word zen comes from the word zazen, which means, just sitting, doing nothing. If you can just sit, doing nothing with your body and nothing with your mind, it becomes meditation; but it is difficult. You can sit very easily when you are doing something else but the moment you are just sitting and doing nothing, it becomes a problem. Every fiber of the body begins to move inside; every vein, every muscle, begins to move. You will begin to feel a subtle trembling; you will be aware of many points in the body of which you have never been aware before. And the more you try to just sit, the more movement you will feel inside you. So sitting can be used only if you have done other things first. You can just walk, that is easier. You can just dance, that is even easier. And after you have been doing other things that are easier, then you can sit. Sitting in a buddha posture is the last thing to do really; it should never be done in the beginning. Only after you have begun to feel identified totally with movement can you begin to feel totally identified with nonmovement. So I never tell people to begin with just sitting. Begin from where beginning is easy, otherwise you will begin to feel many things unnecessarily -- things that are not there. If you begin with sitting, you will feel much disturbance inside. The more you try to just sit, the more disturbance will be felt; you will become aware only of your insane mind and nothing else. It will create depression, you will feel frustrated. You will not feel blissful; rather, you will begin to feel that you are insane. And sometimes you may really go insane. If you make a sincere effort to "just sit," you may really go insane. Only because people do not really try sincerely does insanity not happen more often. With a sitting posture you begin to know so much madness inside you that if you are sincere and continue it, you may really go insane. It has happened before, so many times; so I never suggest anything that can create frustration, depression, sadness -- anything that will allow you to be too aware of your insanity. You may not be ready to be aware of all the insanity that is inside you; you must be allowed to get to know certain things gradually. Knowledge is not always good; it must unfold itself slowly as your capacity to absorb it grows. I begin with your insanity, not with a sitting posture; I allow your insanity. If you dance madly, the opposite happens within you. With a mad dance, you begin to be aware of a silent point within you; with sitting silently, you begin to be aware of madness. The opposite is always the point of awareness. With your dancing madly, chaotically, with crying, with chaotic breathing, I allow your madness. Then you begin to be aware of a subtle point, a deep point inside you which is silent and still, in contrast to the madness on the periphery. You will feel very blissful; at your center there is an inner silence. But if you are just sitting, then the inner one is the mad one; you are silent on the outside, but inside you are mad. If you begin with something active -- something positive, alive, moving -- it will be better; then you will begin to feel an inner stillness growing. The more it grows, the more it will be possible for you to use a sitting posture or a lying posture -- the more silent meditation will be possible. But by then things will be different, totally different. A meditation technique that begins with movement, action, helps you in other ways, also. It becomes a catharsis. When you are just sitting, you are frustrated; your mind wants to move and you are just sitting. Every muscle turns, every nerve turns. You are trying to force something upon yourself that is not natural for you; then you have divided yourself into the one who is forcing and the one who is being forced. And really, the part that is being forced and suppressed is the more authentic part; it is a more major part of your mind than the part that is suppressing, and the major part is bound to win. That which you are suppressing is really to be thrown, not suppressed. It has become an accumulation within you because you have been constantly suppressing it. The whole upbringing, the civilization, the education, is suppressive. You have been suppressing much that could have been thrown very easily with a different education, with a more conscious education, with a more aware parenthood. With a better awareness of the inner mechanism of the mind, the culture could have allowed you to throw many things. For example, when a child is angry we tell him, "Do not be angry." He begins to suppress anger. By and by, what was a momentary happening becomes permanent. Now he will not act angry, but he will remain angry. We have accumulated so much anger from what were just momentary things; no one can be angry continuously unless anger has been suppressed. Anger is a momentary thing that comes and goes: if it is expressed, then you are no longer angry. So with me, I would allow the child to be angry more authentically. Be angry, but be deep in it; do not suppress it. Of course, there will be problems. If we say, "Be angry," then you are going to be angry at someone. But a child can be molded; he can be given a pillow and told, "Be angry with the pillow. Be violent with the pillow." From the very beginning, a child can be brought up in a way in which the anger is just deviated. Some object can be given to him: he can go on throwing the object until his anger goes. Within minutes, within seconds, he will have dissipated his anger and there will be no accumulation of it. You have accumulated anger, sex, violence, greed, everything! Now this accumulation is a madness within you. It is there, inside you. If you begin with any suppressive meditation -- for example, with just sitting -- you are suppressing all of this, you are not allowing it to be released. So I begin with a catharsis. First, let the suppressions be thrown into the air; and when you can throw your anger into the air, you have become mature. If I cannot be loving alone, if I can be loving only with someone I love, then, really, I am not mature yet. Then I am depending on someone even to be loving; someone must be there, then I can be loving. Then that loving can only be a very superficial thing; it is not my nature. If I am alone in the room I am not loving at all, so the loving quality has not gone deep; it has not become a part of my being. You become more and more mature when you are less and less dependent. If you can be angry alone, you are more mature. You do not need any object to be angry. So I make a catharsis in the beginning a must. You must throw everything into the sky, into the open space, without being conscious of any object. Be angry without the person with whom you would like to be angry. Weep without finding any cause; laugh, just laugh, without anything to laugh at. Then you can just throw the whole accumulated thing -- you can just throw it. And once you know the way, you are unburdened of the whole past. Within moments you can be unburdened of the whole life -- of lives even. If you are ready to throw everything, if you can allow your madness to come out, within moments there is a deep cleansing. Now you are cleansed: fresh, innocent -- you are a child again. Now, in your innocence, sitting meditation can be done -- just sitting, or just lying or anything -- because now there is no mad one inside to disturb the sitting. Cleansing must be the first thing -- a catharsis -- otherwise, with breathing exercises, with just sitting, with practicing asanas, yogic postures, you are just suppressing something. And a very strange thing happens: when you have allowed everything to be thrown out, sitting will just happen, asanas will just happen -- it will be spontaneous. You may not have known anything about yoga asanas but you begin to do them. Now these postures are authentic, real. They bring much transformation inside your body because now the body itself is doing them, you are not forcing them. For example, when someone has thrown many things out, he may begin to try to stand on his head. He may have never learned to do shirshasan, the headstand, but now his whole body is trying to do it. This is a very inner thing now; it comes from his inner body wisdom, not from his mind's intellectual, cerebral information. If his body insists, "Go and stand on your head!" and he allows it, he will feel very refreshed, very changed by it. You may do any posture, but I allow these postures only when they come by themselves. Someone can sit down and be silent in siddhasan or in any other posture, but this siddhasan is something quite different; the quality differs. He is trying to be silent in sitting -- but this is a happening, there is no suppression, there is no effort; it is just how your body feels. Your total being feels to sit. In this sitting there is no divided mind, no suppression. This sitting becomes a flowering. You must have seen statues of Buddha sitting on a flower, a lotus flower. The lotus is just symbolic; it is symbolic of what is happening inside Buddha. When "just sitting" happens from the inside, you feel just like the opening of a flower. Nothing is being suppressed from the outside; rather, there is a growth, an opening from the inside; something inside opens and flowers. You can imitate Buddha's posture, but you cannot imitate the flower. You can sit completely buddhalike -- even more buddhalike than Buddha -- but the inside flowering will not be there. It cannot be imitated. You can use tricks. You can use breathing rhythms that can force you to be still, to suppress your mind. Breath can be used very suppressively because with every rhythm of breath a particular mood arises in your mind. Not that other moods disappear; they just go into hiding. You can force anything on yourself. If you want to be angry, just breathe the rhythm that happens in anger. Actors do it, when they want to express anger they change their breathing rhythm; the breathing rhythm must become the same as when there is anger. By making the rhythm fast they begin to feel anger, the anger part of the mind comes up. So breathing rhythm can be used to suppress the mind, to suppress anything in the mind. But it is not good, it is not a flowering. The other way is better; when your mind changes and then, as a consequence, your breath changes; the change comes first from the mind. So I use breathing rhythm as a sign. A person who remains at ease with himself constantly remains in the same breathing rhythm; it never changes because of the mind. It will change because of the body -- if you are running it will change -- but it never changes because of the mind. So tantra has used many, many breathing rhythms as secret keys. They even allow sexual intercourse as a meditation, but they allow it only when your breathing rhythm remains constant in intercourse, otherwise not. If the mind is involved, then the breathing rhythm cannot remain the same, and if the breathing rhythm remains the same, the mind is not involved at all. If the mind is not involved even in such a deep biological thing as sexual intercourse, then the mind will not be involved in anything else. But you can force. You can sit and force a particular rhythm on your body,

you can create a fallacious buddhalike posture, but you will just be dead. You will become dull, stupid. It has happened to so many monks, so many sadhus; they just become stupid. Their eyes have no light of intelligence; their faces are just idiotic, with no inner light, no inner flame. Because they are so afraid of any inner movement, they have suppressed everything -- including intelligence. Intelligence is a movement, one of the most subtle movements, so if all inner movement is suppressed, intelligence will be affected. Awareness is not a static thing. Awareness, too, is movement -- a dynamic flow. So if you start from the outside, if you force yourself to sit like a statue, you are killing much. First be concerned with catharsis, with cleaning out your mind, throwing everything out, so that you become empty and vacant -- just a passage for something from the beyond to enter. Then sitting becomes helpful, silence becomes helpful, but not before. To me, silence in itself is not something worthwhile. You can create a silence that is a dead silence. Silence must be alive, dynamic. If you "create" silence, you will become more stupid, more dull, more dead; but this is easier in a way, and so many people are doing it now. The whole culture is so suppressive that it is easier to suppress yourself still more. Then you do not have to take any risks, then you do not have to take a jump. People come to me and say, "Tell us a meditation technique that we can practice silently." Why this fear? Everyone has a madhouse inside and still they say, "Tell us a technique that we can do silently." With a silent technique you can only become more and more mad -- silently -- and nothing else. The doors of your madhouse must be opened! Don't be afraid of what others will say. A person who is concerned about what others think can never go inward. He will be too busy worrying about what others are saying, what they are thinking. If you just sit silently, closing your eyes, everything will be okay; your wife or your husband will say that you have become a very good person. Everyone wants you to be dead; even mothers want their children to be dead -- obedient, silent. The whole society wants you to be dead. So-called good men are really dead men. So don't be concerned with what others think, don't be concerned about the image that others may have of you. Begin with catharsis and then something good can flower within you. It will have a different quality, a different beauty, altogether different; it will be authentic. When silence comes to you, when it descends on you, it is not a false thing. You have not been cultivating it; it comes to you; it happens to you. You begin to feel it growing inside you just like a mother begins to feel a child growing. A deep silence is growing inside you; you become pregnant with it. Only then is there transformation; otherwise it is just self-deception. And one can deceive oneself for lives and lives -- the capacity to do so is infinite. 

Question 2 

QUESTION: BUT DOESN'T MEDITATION MEAN AKARMA, NO ACTIVITY? 

The fourth stage of Dynamic Meditation is just akarma, no activity, but the first three stages are active. The first, second, and third stages are of intense activity. In the first stage, your vital body, your breathing, is in intense movement, in extreme activity. By being in extreme activity in your vital body, in your prana-sharira, in your breathing, the second step becomes possible: you become intensely active in your physical body. And in the third stage, after being totally active physiologically, it becomes possible to be active in the mental body. So in three bodies -- the physical, vital, and mental -- you create a climax of activity, a climax of tension. You become more and more tense. Your whole existence becomes a whirlwind, a whirlpool. The more intense it becomes, the greater the possibility of being relaxed in the fourth stage. The fourth stage is total relaxation. It is not a practiced relaxation because, really, no one can practice relaxation. Relaxation can come only as a byproduct, as a shadow of intense activity. To practice relaxation is a contradiction in terms; every practice is a practice of tension. Relaxation means nondoing -- and you cannot practice nondoing, you can only come to it, you can only arrive at it. Only by intense activity is a situation created within you that takes you into a "letting go." So the fourth stage is akarma. You are not doing anything: now you are. You just exist in it; there is nothing that you are doing. If something is going on it has just happened. If there is something going on it is through nature, it is not done by you. As far as you are concerned, activity has ceased completely; there is no activity. In this no-action state, in this akarmic state, the cosmic and the individual come nearer. They become intimate, they lose their identities, they overlap each other. Something penetrates you from the cosmic and something of you penetrates into the cosmic; the boundaries become flexible and liquid. Sometimes there is no boundary and you feel an absence of consciousness -- there are no limits, no end and no beginning. And sometimes the boundaries begin to crystallize around you. This situation goes on flickering back and forth. Sometimes there are boundaries and sometimes there are not. But the more relaxation is there, the more the boundaries will be lost. Then a moment comes that can never be predicted; a moment comes that is a moment of happening, uncaused and unconditioned. Finally a moment comes when you have lost the boundaries and you never regain them again. Then there begins to exist a human being without boundaries, a mind without frontiers, a consciousness without any limitations. That is the cosmic, that is the divine, that is wholeness.

 Meditation:

 The Art of Ecstasy 

Chapter #5

 Chapter title: Moving Deeply into the Known 

I do not believe in fixed methods. I use methods just to push you into a very chaotic consciousness, because the first thing to be done with you, as you are, is to disturb your whole pattern. You have become solid, rigid; you must become more and more liquid and flowing. And unless you become flowing, riverlike, you can never know the divine, because it is not a thing, it is an event. You cannot seek the divine, it cannot be sought after, because you can seek only that which you know already. Seeking means desiring and you cannot seek something that is unknown. How can you seek something that you have not known at all? The very urge to seek comes only after you have tasted something, known something -- even a glimpse. So the divine cannot be sought. But when I say the divine cannot be sought, I do not mean that it cannot be found. It cannot be sought, but it can be found. The more you seek it, the less will be the possibility to find it. Seek, and you will not find at all, because the very seeking, the very seeking, becomes the barrier. So do not seek something that is not known to you; rather, go deep into that which is known to you. Do not long for the unknown; go deep into the known. And if you go deep into the known, you will stumble upon the doors to the unknown, because the known is really the door to the unknown. So go deep. For example, you cannot seek the divine, but if you have loved, then you have known love; so go deep into love. And as you go deep into love, somewhere, the lover and the beloved are not there and the divine appears. So rather than seek the divine, it is better to go into that which is actual to you, that which is known to you, near to you. Do not go far; begin from the near. We are so anxious to go far that we never take the first step, which can be taken from the near. We ask for the last step first, but you cannot take the last step in the beginning. The first must be taken first; the first is here and now, but we are concerned with there and then. Seeking means seeking in time. Seeking is a postponement, a deep postponement, because seeking is always in the future; it can never be in the present. How can you seek here and now? There is no space. You can be here and now, but you cannot seek. So the very mind that seeks creates time, because time is needed; only then can you seek. That is why those who are seeking moksha, liberation, absolute liberation, have had to create the concept of transmigration. More time is needed. One life is not enough, many lives are needed. Only then, within this expanse of time, this space that time creates, can you move. If you have to find the absolute, one moment is not enough; and of course, one life is also not enough. Time is really a byproduct of desiring. The more you desire, the more time you need. You can deal with this in two ways: one is to conceive of life after life, time not ending at all. This is one way, the Eastern way, to create more space for the desire. Another is the Western way: to be more conscious of time and to do many things in the allotted time period. There is one life: there is no possibility of further lives, this life is all, so you have to do many things -- many, many things. You have to accommodate so many desires in the allotted period. And this is why the West has become so conscious of time; in fact, time consciousness is one of the most common aspects of the Western mind. But either way, whenever you desire, you create time. Time is a fourth dimension of space, it is a sort of space. Without time your desires cannot move, so any desire creates time and future; and then you can postpone the present moment, which is not really time but existence. So it is better to go deep into what is known to you, what is life to you. Go deep in it; whatever it may be, go deep in it. Do not be on the surface, go into it to its ultimate depth. And the moment you begin to go deep, fall deep, you come to a different dimension. It is not a going into the future, it is going deep into the present, into this very moment. For example, you are hearing me. You can hear very superficially, then only your ears are involved; that is the first layer of hearing. You can say, "Of course I am listening," but only the ears are hearing, only the body mechanism; your mind may be somewhere else. But if you can go deep, you can listen very intently and the mind is also involved; then you are going deeper into this very moment. But even if your mind is involved, your being may not be involved. If you are thinking about what I am saying, the mind is involved, but there are still deeper depths. Your being may not be here at all; there may be unconscious currents because of which you are not here. You can go even deeper; that means that the being is involved. Then you are just vacant, not even thinking about it. Your mechanism is here, your mind is here, your being is here -- all focused. Then you go deep. So whatever you are doing at the moment, go deep in it. The more deep you are in it, the nearer you will be to the unknown. And the unknown is not something opposite to the known; it is something hidden in the known. The known is just a screen. So do not go into the future; do not seek. Just be here -- and be. In seeking you spread yourself out, but in being you are intense, and that intensity, that total intensity in the moment, brings you to a certain crystallization. In that total, intense moment, you are. That being, that happening of being, becomes the door; and you have found it without seeking; you can get it without even seeking. So I say: Do not seek it, and find! All the devices and all the methods I use are just to make you more and more intense here and now, to help you to forget the past and the future. Any movement of your body or mind can be used as a jumping board: the emphasis is that you jump in the here and now. Even dancing can be used, but then be just the dancing, not the dancer. The moment the dancer comes in, dancing is destroyed. The seeker has come in, the time-oriented has come in; now the movement is divided, dancing has become superficial, and you have gone far away. When you are dancing, then be dancing, do not be the dancer, and the moment comes when you are just the movement, when there is no division. This nondivided consciousness is meditation. And you can use anything. If you are eating then eating can become a meditation -- if there is no eater. If you are walking then walking can become a meditation -- if there is no walker. If you are loving then love can become a deep meditation -- if there is no lover, the lover disappears. Love with a lover becomes poisonous, but love without the lover becomes divine and something of the unknown suddenly opens. We are divided and then we act. The actor is there: that is the problem. Why is the actor there? He is there because of desiring, expectations, past memories, future longing. The actor is there -- he is the whole accumulated past and the whole projected future. The actor misses only one thing: the moment, the present. And everything is there in the moment -- everything of the past, everything of the future. This very moment is just wasted, and this very moment is life. Everything else is just an action of the past or a dream of the future -- it is nothing but dreams. You have a very big, very great accumulation, but it is dead. The actor is the dead point in you. It is rich with many ornaments of the past, much longing for the future; it looks very rich, but it is dead. And the present moment is just a naked, atomic thing, very poor, poor in the sense that there is no accumulation of the past and no projecting into the future. It is just a naked, bare existential moment. It looks poor, but it is the only life possible. It is alive! And to be alive and poor is the only richness, while to be dead and rich is the only poverty.

That is why it happens that a beggar such as a Buddha or a Christ was the richest possibility but a Midas is the poorest happening in the world. In meditation only happenings can help, not fake methods. That is why there has always been so much insistence on a living teacher. Books are bound to be fake; they cannot change you, they cannot be in touch with you, they cannot move you. Doctrines cannot be alive, they are bound to be dead, so the East has always insisted on the phenomenon of a teacher, of a master. And the insistence is really for this: that only a master can be liquid, he can change anything. With him, even methods can be no methods, while with scriptures, traditions, even no methods becomes methods, because the moment something is written, it is dead. Something is said: it is dead. A master is needed for continuously disturbing his own past assertions so that nowhere does "fixedness" come in. The liquidity of the phenomenon must be there; only then, happenings can happen. So to me, a group that is working in meditation is a group that is doing something in the present moment, not seeking anything. And the present doing may be just trivial. An onlooker, an outsider, may not even be aware of what is being done; he may even think that the meditators have gone mad. They may be jumping and crying, weeping and laughing; they may be doing anything. They may be just sitting silently, or they may be creating mad noises, but whatever they are doing, they are doing it without a doer. Really, they are allowing it to happen, not doing it; they are open to it. In the beginning it is difficult. You do not want anything to happen without you because you want to be the master. Nothing should happen of which you are not the master and the controller. So in the beginning it is difficult. But, by and by, the more you feel the freedom that comes with the death of your controlling mind -- the freshness that comes the moment you have relaxed controlling -- the more you can laugh. And then, at a particular point, you begin to feel that the mind is the destructive thing in you, that the owner -- the possessor, the controller -- is your bondage. You won't become aware of this by watching someone else but just by feeling it, step by step. Then, in a sudden explosion, you are not there: the doer has disappeared and the doing alone remains. With that comes freedom, with that comes awareness, with that you become totally aware. Rather, now you are only awareness. This is what I mean by meditation -- not seeking, not seeking for something, but just going deep inside, in the present. And anything can be used for it, anything is as good as anything else. If you understand it, then anything can be used as a meditational object or as meditation. That is why I tell you to do Dynamic Meditation and be in a deep silence, in the happening. 

Question 1

 QUESTION: 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.

AHOBHAV WORLD🙏