WHY ACTIVE MEDITATION
?
Modern man is a very new phenomenon. No
traditional method can be used exactly as it exists because modern man never
existed before. So, in a way, all traditional methods have become irrelevant.
For example, the body has changed so much. It
is so drugged that no traditional method can be helpful. The whole atmosphere
is artificial now: the air, the water, society, living conditions. Nothing is
natural. You are born in artificiality; you develop in it. So traditional
methods will prove harmful today. They will have to be changed according to the
modern situation.
Another thing: the quality of the mind has
basically changed. In Patanjali's [the most famous commentator on Yoga] days,
the center of the human personality was not the brain; it was the heart. Before
that, it was not even the heart. It was still lower, near the navel. The center
has gone even further from the navel. Now, the center is the brain. That is why
teachings like those of Krishnamurti have appeal. No method is needed, no
technique is needed – only understanding. But if it is just a verbal
understanding, just intellectual, nothing changes, nothing is transformed. It
again becomes an accumulation of knowledge.
I use chaotic methods rather than systematic
ones because a chaotic method is very helpful in pushing the center down from
the brain. The center cannot be pushed down through any systematic method
because systemization is brainwork. Through a systematic method, the brain will
be strengthened; more energy will be added to it. Through chaotic methods the
brain is nullified. It has nothing to do. The method is so chaotic that the
center is automatically pushed from the brain to the heart. If you do my method
of Dynamic Meditation vigorously, unsystematically, chaotically, your center
moves to the heart. Then there is a catharsis.
A catharsis is needed because your heart is so
suppressed, due to your brain. Your brain has taken over so much of your being
that it dominates you. There is no place for the heart, so the longings of the
heart are suppressed. You have never laughed heartily, never lived heartily,
never done anything heartily. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make
things mathematical, and the heart is suppressed. So firstly, a chaotic method
is needed to push the center of consciousness from the brain toward the heart.
Then catharsis is needed to unburden the
heart, to throw off suppressions, to make the heart open. If the heart becomes
light and unburdened, then the center of consciousness is pushed still lower;
it comes to the navel. The navel is the source of vitality, the seed source
from which everything else comes: the body and the mind and everything.
I use this chaotic method very considerately.
Systematic methodology will not help now, because the brain will use it as its
own instrument. Nor can just the chanting of bhajans help now, because the
heart is so burdened that it cannot flower into real chanting. Consciousness
must be pushed down to the source, to the roots. Only then is there the possibility
of transformation. So I use chaotic methods to push the consciousness downward
from the brain.
Whenever you are in chaos, the brain stops
working. For example, if you are driving a car and suddenly someone runs in
front of you, you react so suddenly that it cannot be the work of the brain.
The brain takes time. It thinks about what to do and what not to do. So
whenever there is a possibility of an accident and you push the brake, you feel
a sensation near your navel, as if it were your stomach that is reacting. Your
consciousness is pushed down to the navel because of the accident. If the
accident could be calculated beforehand, the brain would be able to deal with
it; but when you are in an accident, something unknown happens. Then you notice
that your consciousness has moved to the navel.
If you ask a Zen monk, "From where do you
think?" he puts his hands on his belly. When Westerners came into contact
with Japanese monks for the first time they could not understand. "What
nonsense! How can you think from your belly?
But the Zen reply is meaningful. Consciousness
can use any center of the body, and the center that is nearest to the original
source is the navel. The brain is furthest away from the original source, so if
life energy is moving outward, the center of consciousness will become the
brain. And if life energy is moving inward, ultimately the navel will become
the center.
Chaotic methods are needed to push the
consciousness to its roots, because only from the roots is transformation possible.
Otherwise you will go on verbalizing and there will be no transformation. It is
not enough just to know what is right. You have to transform the roots;
otherwise you will not change.
When a person knows the right thing and cannot
do anything about it, he becomes doubly tense. He understands, but he cannot do
anything. Understanding is meaningful only when it comes from the navel, from
the roots. If you understand from the brain, it is not transforming.
The ultimate cannot be known through the brain,
because when you are functioning through the brain you are in conflict with the
roots from which you have come. Your whole problem is that you have moved away
from the navel. You have come from the navel and you will die through it. One
has to come back to the roots. But coming back is difficult, arduous.
Traditional methods have an appeal because
they are so ancient and so many people have achieved through them in the past.
They may have become irrelevant to us, but they were not irrelevant to Buddha,
Mahavira, Patanjali or Krishna. They were meaningful, helpful. The old methods
may be meaningless now, but because Buddha achieved through them they have an
appeal. The traditionalist feels: "If Buddha achieved through these
methods, why can't I?”
But we are in an altogether different
situation now. The whole atmosphere, the whole thought-sphere, has changed.
Every method is organic to a particular situation, to a particular mind, to a
particular man. The fact that the old methods don't work doesn't mean that no
method is useful. It only means that the methods themselves must change. As I
see the situation, modern man has changed so much that he needs new methods,
new techniques.
Osho: The Psychology of the Esoteric, #4
