Dynamic Meditation : सक्रिय ध्यान

एक घंटे की अवधि के सक्रिय ध्यान के पांच चरण हैं। यह अकेले भी किया जा सकता है। और यदि इसे समूह में किया जाये तो यह और भी सशक्त हो जाता है। यह आपका निजी अनुभव है अत: आप अपने आस-पास दूसरे व्यक्तियों को भूल जायें और पूरा समय आँखें बंद रखें। बेहतर होगा यदि आप आँख पर पट्टी बांध लें। इसे खाली पेट व ढीले वस्त्रों में करना श्रेयस्कर होगा। 

“इस ध्यान में आपको पूरा समय सजग, होशपूर्ण व सचेत रहना होगा। साक्षी बनें रहें। भटक मत जायें। जब आप तीव्र श्वास ले रहे हैं तो संभव है आप भूल जायें - श्वास के साथ इतना तादात्मय कर लें कि साक्षी होना भूल जायें। तब आप चूक गये। 

“तीव्र से तीव्र श्वास लें, गहरे से गहरा; अपने पूरे प्राण लगा दें। जो भी घट रहा है उसे ऐसे देखें जैसे आप मात्र दर्शक हैं, जैसे यह सब किसी और को घट रहा हो, जैसे यह सब शरीर में घट रहा हो। चेतना के केंद्र पर साक्षी बनें रहें। 

“साक्षी को तीनों चरणों तक लेकर जाना है और जब सब रुक जाता है तो चौथे चरण में आप पूर्णतया शिथिल हो जाते हैं, थम जाते हैं और आपकी सजगता अपने चरम शिखर को छू लेती है।” 

प्रथम चरण : 10 मिनट

नाक से अराजक श्वास लें और ज़ोर हमेशा श्वास बाहर फेंकने पर हो। शरीर स्वयं श्वास भीतर लेने की चिंता ले लेगा। श्वास फेफड़ों तक गहरी जानी चाहिये। श्वास जितनी शीघ्रता से ले सकें, लें और ध्यान रहे कि श्वास गहरी रहे। इसे यथाशक्ति अपनी अधिकतम समग्रता से करें - और फिर थोड़ी और शक्ति लगायें, जब तक कि आप वस्तुत: श्वास ही न हो जाएं। ऊर्जा को ऊपर ले जाने के लिये अपनी स्वाभाविक दैहिक क्रियाओं को प्रयोग में लायें। ऊर्जा को बढ़ता हुआ अनुभव करें परंतु पहले चरण में अपने को ढीला मत छोड़ें।

दूसरा चरण : 10 मिनट

विस्फोट हो जाएं! उस सब को अभिव्यक्त करें जो बाहर फेंकने जैसा है। पूर्णतया पागल हो जायें। चीखें, चिल्लाएं, रोएं, कूदें, शरीर हिलायें-डुलायें, नाचें, गाएं, हंसें; स्वयं को खुला छोड़ दें। कुछ भी न बचाएं; अपने पूरे शरीर को प्रवाहमान होने दें। कई बार थोड़ा सा अभिनय भी आपको खुलने में सहायता देता है। जो भी हो रहा है उसमें मन को हस्तक्षेप करने की अनुमति न दें। समग्र हो रहें, पूरे प्राण लगा दें, जान लगा दें।

तीसरा चरण: 10 मिनट

पूरा समय अपने बाजू ऊपर उठा कर रखें और जितनी गहराई से संभव हो "हू! हू! हू!" की ध्वनि करते हुए ऊपर नीचे कूदें । प्रत्येक बार जब आपके पांव धरती पर आयें तो पूरे पांव के तलवे को धरती को छूने दें, ताकि ध्वनि आपके काम-केंद्र पर गहराई से चोट कर सके। आप अपना सर्वस्व लगा दें, कुछ भी पीछे बचायें नहीं।

चौथा चरण: 15 मिनट

रुक जायें! जहाँ भी, जिस स्थिति में भी स्वयं को पायें, उसी में स्थिर हो रहें। शरीर को किसी तरह से भी संभालें नहीं। खांसी अथवा कोई भी क्रिया - कुछ भी, आपकी ऊर्जा की गति में बिखराव ले आयेगा और आपका अब तक का पूर्ण प्रयास व्यर्थ चला जायेगा। जो भी आपके साथ घट रहा है उसके प्रति साक्षी रहें।

पांचवां चरण: 15 मिनट

अस्तित्व के प्रति अपना अनुग्रह प्रगट करते हुए नृत्य करें, उत्सव मनायें। इस अनुभव को दिन भर की अपनी चर्या में फैलने दें।

यदि उस स्थान पर जहाँ आप ध्यान कर रहे हैं, शोर करना मना है तो इसे चुपचाप करने का विकल्प इस प्रकार है: आवाजों को बाहर फेंकने की बजाय दूसरे चरण में अपना रेचन शारीरिक मुद्राओं द्वारा करें। तीसरे चरण में “हू” ध्वनि की चोट अपने भीतर ही करें। 

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Meditation Techniques: Chanting The Mantra 'aum'

Aum is one of the most popular chants in India. From time to time Osho has suggested many ways of doing it; if done properly, it can be a door to silence.

A caution from Osho: A mantra has to be chanted and then dropped. A mantra is complete only when you can drop it. Do not cling to it!

Here we discuss one of the ways of chanting the Aum mantra.

First stage

Sit down relaxed, either in a temple or in your room and repeat AUM as loudly as possible, for one hour. Use the whole body to repeat it, as if thousands of people are listening to you without amicrophone, and you have to be very loud so that the whole body trembles, shakes with it. Let the body be saturated with the sound of Aum.

For almost three months, you should not bother about anything else, and only practice this first stage. The first stage is very important because it gives the foundation.

Second stage

After three months, when you feel your body is completely saturated, when you can feel deep down inside you that the word has entered into the body cells, as if your whole body can repeat it; then you are ready for the second step. The second step is to close your mouth and repeat and chant the word Aum mentally. The throat, the tongue, the lips, everything should be closed, the whole body locked, and this chanting should only be in the mind -- but as loudly as possible: with the same loudness you were using with the body. Now allow the mind too to be saturated with Aum.

Third stage

When the mind feels saturated... it is just like eating: you feel full, when it is enough; so also the mind will feel full when it is enough. Then starts the third step. Neither the body has to be used nor the mind has to be used at this stage. Just listen, and you will hear a sound coming to you from your own heart of hearts. The Aum will be there inside you, as if somebody else is chanting; and you are just the listener.

This is the completion of the chant mantra. 

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Meditation Techniques: Osho Gourishankar Meditation

This meditation is a unique combination of breathing, looking, letting go and witnessing. Looking at the light with soft gaze is so relaxing, your fragmented energies are integrated.

This technique, for the night time, consists of four stages of fifteen minutes each. The first two stages are a preparation for the spontaneous Latihan (Latihan is a name of eastern meditation which means moving the body effortlessly in a "let go " state) of the third stage.

If the breathing is done correctly in the first stage, the carbon dioxide formed in the bloodstream will make you feel as high as the Himalayan peak, Gourishankar.

First Stage: 15 minutes

Sit with closed eyes. Inhale deeply through the nose, filling the lungs. Hold the breath for as long as possible; then exhale gently through the mouth and keep the lungs empty for as long as possible. Continue this breathing cycle throughout this stage.

Second Stage: 15 minutes

Return to normal breathing and with a gentle gaze look at a candle flame or a flashing blue light. Keep your body still.

Third Stage: 15 minutes

With closed eyes, stand up and let your body be loose and receptive. Allow your body to move gently in whichever way it wants. Don't do the moving, just allow it to happen gently and gracefully.

Its function is to bring you into a state where you surrender yourself totally to existence and let your body energy move, not according to your mind but according to the universal spirit. Latihan is a let-go. Your bodily energy falls in tune with the universal energy and things start happening in your body.

Fourth Stage: 15 minutes

Lie down with closed eyes, silent and still.

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Meditation Techniques: Osho Nadabrahma Meditation

Osho Nadabrahma Meditation is a sitting method, in which humming and hand movements create an inner balance, a harmony between mind and body. Suitable for any time of the day, have an empty stomach and remain inactive for at least fifteen minutes afterward.

First Stage: 30 minutes

Sit in a relaxed position with eyes closed. With lips together, start humming, loud enough so that if you are doing it with others, you can be heard by them. This will create a vibration in your body. You can visualize a hollow tube or vessel filled only with the vibrations of the humming. A point will come when the humming continues by itself and you become the listener. There is no special breathing, and you can alter the pitch, and move your body smoothly and slowly.

Second Stage: 15 minutes

This stage is divided into two segments, of seven and a half minutes each. For the first part, move the hands, palms upwards, in an outward, circular motion. Starting at the navel, both hands move forward and then divide to make two large circles mirroring each other left and right.

The movement should be so slow that at times there will appear to be no movement at all.

After seven and a half minutes, the music will change and you turn your hands palm downwards, and start moving them in the opposite direction. Now the hands will come together towards the navel and divide outwards towards the side of the body.

Third Stage: 15 minutes

Sit absolutely quiet and still.

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Meditation Techniques: Osho Kundalini Meditation

Shake Away the Stress : Osho Kundalini Meditation acts like an energetic shower, softly shaking you free of your day and leaving you refreshed and mellow.

It lasts for one hour and has four stages, three with music, and the last one without it. The first three stages are to be done standing and the last one, lying down

First Stage: 15 minutes

Be loose and let your whole body shake, feeling the energies moving up from your feet. Let go everywhere and become the shaking. Your eyes may be open or closed.

Osho says, "Allow the shaking; don't do it. Stand silently, feel it coming and when your body starts trembling, help it but don't do it. Enjoy it, feel blissful about it, allow it, but don't will it. If you force it will become an exercise. Then the shaking will be there but just on the surface; it will not penetrate you. You will remain solid, rock-like within. When I say shake, I mean your solidity, your rock-like being should shake to the very foundations so that it becomes liquid."

Second Stage: 15 minutes

Dance any way you feel, letting the whole body move as it wishes. Again, your eyes can be open or closed.

Third Stage: 15 minutes

Close your eyes and be still, sitting or standing, observing, witnessing, whatever is happening inside and out.

Fourth Stage: 15 minutes

Keeping your eyes closed, lie down and be still.

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Meditation Techniques: Meditation before sleep

Osho has used every opportunity for meditation, says Amrit Sadhana. According to him, the moments before going to sleep are crucial, as the last thoughts run through the sleeping state like an undercurrent.

This meditation is useful for those who feel a block inside.

First Stage

Before you go to sleep, sit on a chair or on your bed comfortably. Close your eyes and relax the whole body. If your body starts to slump forward, allow it to do so. So, keep a pillow in front of you and relax that way.

Second Stage

When you feel that the body has settled, enter into your being and go to your stomach, as if you have become very small and are going into your own stomach. In the stomach, you will feel very empty and dark. Accept that emptiness and darkness. If sometimes you forget about it, go in again. For 10 minutes, you have to make all efforts to go there and just be there.

If you have a block in the stomach, it will disappear slowly. You just have to bring your consciousness again and again to that block.

Consciousness functions like heat and any block can be dissolved by it; you just have to take the consciousness to it. It is just like a torch you take inside yourself.

After practising this meditation technique for a week, you will start feeling very cosy - it is like being under a very soothing light during dawn or on a full moon night.

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Meditation Techniques: Experiencing The Gap Between Two Breaths

This method is from The Book of Secrets , Osho's talks on Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. This technique is about using breath to calm the mind and for centering the energy. By practicing it regularly, you can find gaps between incoming and outgoing breaths which is the door to witnessing.

Sutra: This experience may dawn between two breaths. After breath comes in (down) and just before turning up (out) - the beneficence.

The method:

Sit in a relaxed position and start watching your breath when it touches your nostrils, feel it there. Then let the breath move in. Move with the breath fully consciously. When you are going down... down...down with the breath, do not miss the breath. Do not go ahead and do not follow behind, just go with it. Only then will it be possible to get the point which is between two breaths.

After breath comes in - that is, down - and just before turning out - that is, going up - be aware between these two points, and the happening. When your breath comes in, observe. For a single moment, there is no breathing . One breath comes in; then there is a certain point and breathing stops. Then the breathing goes out. When the breath goes out, then again for a single moment, or a part of a moment, breathing stops.

So with each breath you are dying and being reborn. The gap between the two is of a very short duration, but keen, sincere observation and attention will make you feel the gap. If you can feel the gap, you have got a glimpse of the witness, the sakshi within you. With practice you can expand the gap and experience profound silence.

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Meditation is Non-doing

When people come to me and they ask, "How to meditate?" I tell them, "There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that's all. That's the whole trick of meditation - how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower.

When you are not doing anything the energy moves towards the centre, it settles down towards the centre. When you are doing something the energy moves out. Doing is a way of moving out. Non-doing is a way of moving in. Occupation is an escape. You can read the Bible, you can make it an occupation. There is no difference between religious occupation and secular occupation: all occupations are occupations, and they help you to cling outside your being. They are excuses to remain outside. 

Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind, because to come inwards looks like entering a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos. You have to encounter it and go through it. Courage is needed - courage to be oneself, and courage to move inwards. I have not come across a greater courage than that - the courage to be meditative. 

But people who are engaged outside - with worldly things or nonworldly things, but occupied all the same, they think ....and they have created a rumor around it, they have their own philosophers. They say that if you are introvert you are somehow morbid, something is wrong with you. And they are in the majority. If you meditate, if you sit silently, they will joke about you: "What are you doing? - Gazing at your navel? What are you doing? - Opening the third eye? Where are you going? Are you morbid? Because what is there to do inside? There is nothing inside." 

Inside doesn't exist for the majority of people, only the outside exists. And just the opposite is the case - only inside is real; outside is nothing but a dream. But they call introverts morbid, they call meditators morbid. In the West they think that the East is little morbid. What is the point of sitting alone and looking inwards? What are you going to get there? There is nothing. 

David Hume, one of the great British philosophers, tried once... because he was studying the Upanishads and they go on saying: Go in, go in, go in - that is their only message. So he tried it. He closed his eyes one day - a totally secular man, very logical, empirical, but not meditative at all - he closed his eyes and he said, "It is so boring! It is a boredom to look in. Thoughts move, sometimes a few emotions, and they go on racing in the mind, and you go on looking at them - what is the point of it? It is useless. It has no utility." 

And this is the understanding of many people. Hume's standpoint is that of the majority: What are going to get inside? There is darkness, thoughts floating here and there. What will you do? What will come out of it? If Hume had waited a little longer - and that is difficult for such people - if he had been a little more patient, by and by thought disappear, emotions subside. But if it had happened to him he would have said, "That is even worse, because emptiness comes. At least first there were thoughts, something to be occupied with, to look at, to think about. Now even thoughts have disappeared; only emptiness....What to do with emptiness? It is absolutely useless." 

But if he had waited a little more, then darkness also disappears. It is just like when you come from the hot sun and you enter your house: everything looks dark because your eyes need a little attunement. They are fixed on the hot sun outside; comparatively, your house looks dark. You cannot see, you feel as if it is night. But you wait, you sit, you rest in a chair, and after few seconds the eyes get attuned. Now it is not dark, a little more light........ 

You rest for an hour, and everything is light, there is no darkness at all. 

If Hume had waited a little longer, then darkness also disappears. Because you have lived in the hot sun outside for many lives your eyes have become fixed, they have lost flexibility. They need tuning. When one comes inside the house it takes a little while, a little time, a patience. Don't be in a hurry. 

In haste nobody can come to know himself. It is a very very deep awaiting. Infinite patience is needed. By and by darkness disappears. There comes a light with no source there is no flame in it, no lamp is burning, no sun is there. A light, just like it is morning: the night has disappeared, and the sun has not risen.... Or in the evening - the twilight, when the sun has set and night has not yet descended. That's why Hindus call their prayer time sandhya. Sandhya means twilight, light without any source.When you move inwards you will come to the light without any source. In that light, for the first time you start understanding yourself, who you are, because you are that light. You are that twilight, that sandhya, that pure clarity, that perception, where the observer and the observed disappear, and only the light remains.

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Two Aspects of Consciousness

Osho discusses about the two aspects of consciousness as revealed through a metaphor or a story from the Upanishads.

A short story in the Upanishads has it that two two birds were perched on a tree, one on the topmost branch, with eyes closed, immersed in silence, sans movement and the other on the lower branches of tree scampering from one branch to another , totally in the realm of restlessness.

Growing tired of its restless attitude, hungry for this fruit and hankering for that flower, competing, quarreling and growing jealous, the bird looked up to see the other perched upon the highest branch, calm and composed. Drawn by its composure, the restless bird hops upwards, going closer to the other and ultimately becoming one with it.

Osho says that we live in two dimensions. The tree represents the three of life and the birds, the two aspects of the same consciousness. The bird perched on the highest branch, calm and composed, represents the Supreme Self ( outer manifestation of the Master) . The bird on the lowest branch getting drawn to it marks the beginning of disciple-hood. On reaching the top and merging with the other denotes the restless mind merging with the self.

Osho says that when one grows tired of life's ups and downs owing to directing the vision outwards, suddenly by the pull of the Master's Grace starts looking inwards to suddenly find the repository of silence. Slowly the restless mind merges with the silent, unmoving Self to bask in eternal bliss.

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