|
The first step is ten minutes of chaotic breathing.
I say chaotic. No system is to be applied, no pranayama. Just chaotic breathing: breathing in and breathing out. Forget everything else but the breathing. Use breathing as a hammering and breathe so fast, so deep and so chaotically, that you become like a bellows: breathing in, breathing out.
This will work miracles. It will help you to release your repressed emotions. Breathing has helped you to repress them, so only through breathing can they be released.
Repression and Breath
You may not be aware of it, but the more repressed you are, the shallower your breathing will be.
A repressed man or woman cannot take deep breaths. He is afraid. His breath cannot go deep down to his navel; it is shallow. He takes it in and throws it out. It never goes to the very roots of his being. He is afraid of the roots. He is afraid of being total, because if he is total then he will have to release his repressions. He will have to act differently; he will not be able to control himself. He will be thrown into the deep river of existence. Existence will control him; he will not be able to control existence. We control our breathing in an effort to be in control.
Look at a child. He breathes differently. He is not yet cultured, civilized, that's why. But the whole society is working to cultivate him and, once he becomes aware of the society, his breathing will change.
The breathing changes at a particular moment. When the child becomes aware of his sex – or the society, his parents, his family makes him aware of his sex or her sex – the breathing changes. The breathing becomes shallow, because deep breathing massages your sex center from within. It excites the sex center; it goes deep down and helps the sex energy to move. Societies, religion, the so-called religions, are all afraid of sex. Families, cultures, civilizations are all afraid of sex. So the child.... Once the child is condemned for his sexuality, he will never again breathe naturally. His breathing will become shallow because if the breath goes deep down, the sex center will be excited. He cannot allow the breathing to go so deep. That's why everyone's breathing is shallow.
Undoing Society's Influence
So the first step of the technique is just to create the opposite situation to what the society has created.
You have to breathe so deeply that the sex center is hit from within, and hit so forcibly that the energy is released from there.
The sex center can be hit in two ways. It can be hit from without. When you are attracted to the opposite sex, it is hit from without; then the energy moves outward. If you take a deep breath and hit the center from within, the energy moves within – the same energy. Sex is both. It can move out; it can move in. It can move down; it can move up. Both avenues are there. In one direction or another, the energy has to be released. An inner system exists in which sex energy can move: we have called it kundalini. Kundalini is nothing but sex energy moving within.
So for ten minutes you have to fight with civilization, through shallow breathing, chaotic breathing! This will do another thing also. It will release your body energy, your body electricity. This is what is known as bioelectricity. Once the bioelectricity is released in the body you can use it as a vehicle to go beyond – to go beyond the body.
We are afraid of the body, so we don't allow it to be really alive. We have made it half dead. If it is half dead, it is controllable. If it is totally alive, it is not controllable.
We are afraid of it. The mind is always afraid, and afraid of only one thing: what will happen if the mind is not in control? The mind can control only a dead body or a half–dead body. If the body is fully alive, the mind becomes afraid. The energy is so much that the mind is thrown off.
These ten minutes of chaotic breathing will help your body energy to be released. Every cell of your body will become alive and dancing. And when these cells start dancing within, you will also have a feeling of dance yourself. Your whole body will start dancing and jumping. Allow it.
This is how one enters into the river of existence.
Osho: "The New Alchemy: To Turn You On"
Don't Lose Yourself!
The first meditation, which you will be doing in the morning, is related to the rising sun. It is a morning meditation. When the sleep is broken the whole of nature becomes alive. The night has gone, the darkness is no more, the sun is coming up, and everything becomes conscious and alert.
So this first meditation is a meditation in which you have to be continuously alert, conscious, aware, whatsoever you do. The first step, breathing; the second step, catharsis; the third step, the mantra, the mahamantra: "Hoo."
Remain a witness. Don't get lost. It is easy to get lost. While you are breathing you can forget; you can become one with the breathing so much that you can forget the witness. But then you miss the point.
Breathe as fast, as deep as possible, bring your total energy to it, but still remain a witness. Observe what is happening as if you are just a spectator, as if the whole thing is happening to somebody else, as if the whole thing is happening in the body and the consciousness is just centered and looking.
This witnessing has to be carried in all the three steps. And when everything stops and in the fourth step – you have become completely inactive, frozen – then this alertness will come to its peak.
Osho: "A Bird on the Wing"
The eyes should be closed and the technique should be done on an empty stomach.
You are not to relax even for a moment; continuous effort is to be there.
Osho: "The Great Challenge"
Wearing a Blindfold
While you are meditating, keep your eyes closed; have on a blindfold, so that you don't become spectators. Otherwise the tendency is there; it is so ingrained. Your whole culture has prepared you to become spectators. So even if meditation is happening to you, and you are moving into energy, suddenly the idea arises, "See what is happening to others" – and you miss.
If you open your eyes, a great change has happened: you have fallen from being a participant and you have become a spectator. And this is not a small distance; it is as far away as earth and sky. Then suddenly it is no longer flowing; you are no longer here.
If you want to be here, the only way to be here is to be a participant.
Osho: "Sufis: The People of the Path"
You will be surprised how much mental tension disappears when your eyes are kept closed.
A lot of mental tension enters through the eyes, and it is eye tension that causes tension in the brain tissues. If the eyes remained undisturbed, calm and relaxed, ninety-nine percent of mental diseases would disappear. So make a conscientious and full use of the device [of keeping your eyes closed throughout].
Osho: "The Heartbeat of the Absolute"
| |
