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     To the modern mind, hyped up by CNN, cellular phones and cyberspace, the idea of sitting in silent meditation, as Buddha's disciples did 2500 years ago, seems a remote possibility. Recognizing this, Osho has created active meditations.
     A former sociology professor describes how Dynamic Meditation revitalizes modern man and 21st century society.

     It is seven o'clock. My son leaves for school, and I change out of my pajamas into gym shorts and a T-shirt. More is not needed; soon I will feel warm enough. For I am about to meditate – meditate dynamically, that is.
     Osho Dynamic is a very curious meditation, particularly if seen from the outside. Is has little to do with images of bald-shaven monks sitting for hours on cold stone floors, even less with the chanting of sacred mantras, or contemplations on holy matters. Its time is the early morning, and its message is simple: wake up! Because that is easier said than done, as it meets with so much resistance within ourselves, it employs massive, energetic, and strenuous means to shake us awake.
     Our so-called modern enlightened consciousness is, it seems, a very unhappy consciousness. The more developed a civilization is, the more neurotic, the more psychologically ill, the more addicted, the more suicidal are its members. After all the great social visions of our age have popped like soap bubbles – the latest being the breakdown of socialism – life seems to have fizzled down to something we simply must get through, or, to use a phrase coined by Max Weber "to bear like a man." Which is OK if you are on the side of the fence where the fleshpots are full. But the flesh in the pots is getting putrid, even affluence doesn't hold what it once promised – and deep down we all know it, however much we are dying to have it.
     We love our dreams and it hurts when they are broken. But that's how it is and we have no say in it. All we can do is repress the pain, close our eyes and hearts in order to avoid it. But one day it catches up with us, when some unforeseen event – an illness, an accident, a war, a natural catastrophe, a human encounter, even our own end – rips a gap in our personal preoccupations and we ask ourselves in anguish: "Was that it? Was that really it?" Every time a dream is destroyed, it is revealed as just a dream and, shattered to pieces, we are on the point of awakening.
     But the question is: Do we want to wake up? Do we really want to be disillusioned? Or do we prefer to hold on to our illusions until the bitter end? Basically, we have no alternative. Anybody who just pauses a moment and takes an unblinkered look at the state of the world, sees this huge nightmare for what it really is, knows that that this nightmare will explode sooner rather than later – and all our private little dreams will explode along with it.
     Do we, do you, do I want to wake up?

     While the tape with the music that accompanies Dynamic Meditation is being rewound on my tape deck, I mechanically do my preparations: I pull a foam rubber mattress in place so that I won't hurt myself in case I feel like throwing a fit, and I blow my nose as thoroughly as I can. For the nose must be free, otherwise nothing is possible. Then I start the tape: a loud gong resounds, and already the drums start. I stand there – feet firmly on the ground, but otherwise as loose as possible, and breathe as fast and deep and chaotically as possible, through the nose. The mouth is closed firmly, and so are the eyes. Anyway, that's what the instructions say. Today I feel better than during the last few days, but the breathing doesn't come particularly fast, let alone deep. My nostrils are blown wide open, but hardly any air seems to come in.
     The left nostril is– like it always is in the first few minutes – almost shut, and the right one also feels pretty narrow. True, I usually take it easy at first, allowing myself approximately one minute warming-up time before really getting into the huffing and puffing, but this time I feel more low than loose. But didn't I feel particularly fit just now? Ah, that's it! I am feeling well enough, and precisely because of it I'm afraid that this small amount of well  being might get disturbed if I really get going; I would like to cling to it a little longer and not enter into the shit right away.
     Often enough we don't want to really wake up. Yes, we want to get rid off the bad dreams, the nightmares, but the beautiful ones?...

     ...Who are you? That's the only question the remains: Who am I?
     Here I am getting up early in the morning and breathing like crazy through my nose. Is that a way to find the answer? Really, it looks more like losing your marbles than finding your senses. But is it really less sensible than say, for argument's sake, what the philosopher Immanuel Kant was doing? He spent all his life in his Ksnigsberg ivory tower, torturing his brain and churning out long- winded sentences nobody can understand, replacing the Ten Commandments with Kantian Imperative intended to guide man in his moral action. But, in fact, it didn't change him one iota. Or is it less sensible than what Marx was doing when he was planning the salvation of man in the Reading Room of the British Museum?
     These thinkers may have done the most sensible and best thing possible in their time, but now it is high time to have a good look at ourselves: in person, not in theory. After all, it is the sum total of all of us that's creating our history. And for that no books are needed.
     In books, all we can find are other people's thoughts. rehashing the thoughts of yet other people. What is needed is a mirror that helps us look within ourselves...and Dynamic Meditation is just such a mirror. That's why I stand here, huffing and puffing like an express train.
     When I note my half-heartedness, I change to a higher gear. My nose is still damned narrow, but I know this will change soon. Within minutes I have reached a speed that leaves my thoughts painting behind. That is one of the purposes of the exercise: the mind is blown away – fear nothing, it will come back! All I hear now is a staccato of massive outbreaths, driven on by frenzied drums.
     I realize that even more is possible (more is always possible), and breathe even more deeply. I think nothing, there is only breathing: deeper, faster, madder. It's totally far out. When a pang of pain shoots up somewhere. I just take note of it, and then I am back with the breathing. From a certain speed limit, a certain speed limit, a certain intensity on, I a simply in it, and it is fun to go for the maximum. The drums build up to a climax. Then the gong: end of phase one.

     The first phase of Osho Dynamic Meditation is the awakening to a new life. "Wake up, man!" it seems to be shouting at us. "Come out of your ancient sleep, step out of the maze of your dreams, be they sweet or nightmarish. Stop letting yourself be trapped by these dreams, drop your limitations and live! Breathe! Breathe and live!
    
Open yourself for the breath of life; take in as much of it as you can possibly take! Stop philosophizing about life, stop losing yourself in the dreams of others, stop dreaming of Day X, when you will really, start living! Do it yourself, do it now! LIVE."
      Deep, fast breathing dissolves the cemented patterns of our psyche, makes everything move and tingle, and charges the body with oxygen and life energy, blowing apart our psychosomatic structure, the order that was created by the circumstances of our birth and our background conditioning. We are coming closer to life in is original wildness, unpredictability, power.
     We lost our innocence long ago, and we want to find it again. And we will to find it again if we want to enjoy, to really celebrate life and not go dragging on alone.
     Osho Dynamic Meditation is a shock therapy. All meditation techniques are tricks, attempts to put the mind to sleep without consciousness falling asleep with it... to allow a glimpse of no-mind, the dimension beyond the mind.
     Whether or not a technique works is a question of who uses it. But the people for whom the ancient techniques were developed are no more. We live in a totally different world today.
     Osho Dynamic Meditation is a method for modern man as he is: neurotic, speedy, confused. It helps to bring all the mess of the modern mind to a boil so that it can evaporate. With these methods, thanks to the ingenuity and genius of Osho who invented them, a new path to meditation has been hewn through the jungle of today's mind, which is thicker and more tangled than ever before in the evolution of man.

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