ACTIVE & DYNAMIC MEDITATION
Why Active Meditations?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.
Dynamic Meditation
If you love your body; you become relaxed, you care about it. It is not wrong, it is not narcissistic to be in love with your own body….
That is why Dynamic Meditation begins with the body. Through vigorous breathing the mind expands, the consciousness expands; the whole body becomes a vibrating, living existence. Now the jump will be easier. Now you can jump; thinking will be less of a barrier. You have become a child again: jumping, vibrating, alive. The conditioning, the mental conditioning, is not there.
Your body is not so conditioned as your mind. Remember this: your mind is conditioned, but your body is still a part of nature. All religions and religious thinkers -- who have been basically cerebral -- are against the body because with the body, with the senses, the mind and its conditioning are lost. That is why they have all been afraid of sex. With sex, the conditioned mind is lost; you again become part of the greater biological sphere, the biosphere; you become one with it.
Mind is always against sex, because sex is the only thing in ordinary life that can rebel against the mind. You have controlled the whole thing; only one thing remains uncontrolled. So mind is very much against sex because it is the only remaining link between the body and you. If it can be denied completely, then you can become totally cerebral and you are not a body at all.
The fear of sex is basically the fear of the body, because with sex the whole body becomes vibrating, vital, living. The moment sex takes over the body, the whole mind is pushed back; it is not there. Breathing takes it over; the breathing becomes vigorous, vital.
That is why I begin my meditation with breathing. With breathing, you begin to feel your whole body, every corner of it; the body is flooded; you become one with it. Now it is possible for you to take a jump.
The jump that is taken in sex is a very small jump, while the jump that is taken in meditation is a very great jump. In sex, you "jump" into someone else. Before that jump you need to be one with your body, and in that jump you need to expand still more -- to another's body. Your consciousness spreads beyond your body. In meditation you jump from your body to the whole body of the universe; you become one with it.
The second step of Dynamic Meditation is cathartic. Not only will you be one with your body, but all the tensions that have been accumulated in the body must be thrown out. The body must become light, unburdened, so the movements are to be vigorous, as vigorous as possible. Then the same thing that is possible in dervish dancing, in Sufi dancing, becomes possible. If your movements are vital and vigorous, a moment will come when you will lose control. And that moment is needed. You must not be in control because your control is the barrier, you are the barrier. Your controlling faculty -- your mind -- is the barrier.
Go on moving. Of course, you will have to begin, but a moment will come when you will be taken over; you will feel that the control is lost. You are on the brink, now you can take the jump. Now you have again become a child. You have come back; all the conditioning is thrown. You do not care for anything; you do not care for what others think. Now everything that has been put into you by society is thrown; you have become just a dancing particle in the universe.
When you have thrown everything in the second stage of Dynamic Meditation, only then is the third stage possible. Your identity will be lost, your image will be broken, because whatever you know about yourself is not about yourself but only a labeling. You have been told you are this or that, and you have become identified with it. But with vigorous movement, with the cosmic dance, all identifications will be lost. You will be, for the first time, as you must have been when you were born. And with this new birth you will be a new person.
posted by omigosh @ 4:47 AM
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