Sometimes in the second stage I start doing asanas. I can't tell whether I am doing them because I want to practice them or whether they are coming of their own accord. How is one to know the difference?

     Don't think about the difference; just let them come. When they come by themselves in meditation, let them come, and then they will go by themselves. But if they are coming because you are practicing them, then they will never go.
     When the need is over, when the need is fulfilled, they will wither away by themselves. So don't think about it. You cannot know beforehand whether they are coming out of habit or not. If they are authentic, then when the need is fulfilled they will go. You will not know this while you are doing the asanas – you will not be able to tell the difference – but by and by the difference will be felt.

     When you practice a particular asana it is very different from when it comes to you spontaneously. The distinction is subtle but it is always there. When you are doing it, it will be a disciplined act following a particular routine, a form, an order. When it comes by itself there will be no discipline in it, there will be no order in it, it will be a chaotic act. And only when it is chaotic is it helpful.

     A disciplined act is not helpful because it is always a function of the conscious mind; it never goes deep. Only when an act is chaotic does it become deep, and only then can it reach the unconscious, because the unconscious mind is a chaos, a great chaos.

     The unconscious is just like the beginning of the world. Everything exists in a potential form in the unconscious, but it has not as yet taken form and shape; everything is hazy, cloudy, uncertain. If you try to impose some set pattern on it, you will not achieve anything. You will only go on circling around your conscious mind, because the conscious can be forced into discipline while the unconscious can never be forced into discipline. But the unconscious is the root; the unconscious is the source.
     Meditation means going into the unconscious...diving into it, being in it.
     It is to be chaotic in the chaos.
     It is to be without form within the formless.
     It is to let go of oneself, to float in the clouds, untethered; to let oneself move into an unmapped territory, an uncharted sea.
     Don't go into it with a disciplined mind or you will never go.

     You move in circles in your conscious mind: you go on repeating and it becomes a habit; you have just aligned yourself with your conscious mind.
     A disciplined mind is always a poor mind because it will never greet chaos.
     It has never been outside the limits of the conscious, it never transcends the conscious; it is not concerned with the infinite.
     A man with a disciplined mind may be a great man, like Gandhi, but he will have a small mind because his total concern is with the conscious mind and with discipline. He will never move into the undisciplined – he will never touch it.
     The conscious mind is just like a garden growing beside your house; it is never like a forest. And the unconscious is like a dense forest that has no boundary. You can never know the boundaries of the unconscious, so there is every possibility of being lost. To remain in the conscious mind is safe; there is no risk. To move into the unconscious is risky. Courage is needed.
     So do not discipline your body and do not discipline your mind. Live with the undisciplined, live with the chaotic, live with danger. That is what meditation means to me: to live in insecurity, to live in chaos, to live in the limitless.

     But that does not mean that a discipline will not come to you.
     It will come, but it will come as freedom. It will be an alive discipline from within: always touching the unlimited, always potentially chaotic, always explosive, always in the unknown...a moment-to-moment discipline. It will seem very inconsistent without but it will have its own consistency, there will be an inner consistency running through it.

     Meditation does not mean a conscious implementation; it means an effortless jump into yourself. With discipline you can go step by step, but you can never discipline a jump. The first three steps of Osho Dynamic Meditation are not steps of meditation at all, but steps that lead you to the place where you can jump.
     Real meditation is a jump...a jump into the unknown.

     So do not discipline your body; let it go where it wants to go. Allow yourself to move into the unknown. Things will happen, asanas will be there, but only those which are required by you. Now asanas may come to you – asanas which are not normally depicted, which have not been described so far – because the possibilities are infinite and the asana descriptions we have are only of the more commonly experienced postures.There are also infinite mudras. They too will follow.
     Let the asanas come and go; don't practice them and don't cling to them. Let them come by themselves, let them go by themselves; don't be concerned with them at all. That is what I mean when I say I am against all asanas: you should not be concerned with them at all.
     One thing more: asanas have a cathartic value. Real asanas and mudras are a catharsis, an expression, an overflowing.
     The more they overflow, the more weightless you begin to be. Then a day comes when you are completely weightless; a moment comes when you are not bound by gravity. Weightless! Only in this weightlessness does the flight of the alone to the alone take place.
     If you practice asanas there will be no catharsis, only suppression. That is the basic difference: if you practice asanas they will be suppressive, but if they come to you spontaneously they will be expressive, there will be a catharsis.

Osho: "The Great Challenge"

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