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After working with the cathartic techniques for a few years, I feel that a deep inner harmony, balance and centering is happening to me. But you said that before entering into the final stage of samadhi, one passes through a great chaos. How do I know if I am finished with the chaotic stage?
First, for hundreds of lives you have lived in a chaos. It is nothing new. It is very old. Secondly, the dynamic methods of meditation which have catharsis as
their foundation allow all chaos within you to be thrown out. That is the beauty of these techniques. You cannot sit silently, but you can do the dynamic or the chaotic meditations very easily. Once the chaos is thrown out, a silence starts happening to you. Then you can sit silently. If rightly done, continuously done, then the cathartic techniques of meditation will simply dissolve all your chaos into the outside world. You will not need to pass through a mad stage. That’s the beauty of these techniques. The madness is being thrown out already. It is in- built in the technique.
But if you sit silently as Patanjali suggests…Patanjali had no cathartic
methods; it seems they were not needed in his time. People were naturally very silent, peaceful, primitive. The mind was not yet functioning too much. People slept well, lived like animals. They were not very much thinking, logical, rational, they were more centered in the heart, as primitive people are even now. And life was such that it allowed many catharses automatically.
For example, a woodcutter: he need not have any catharsis because just by cutting wood, all his murderous instincts are thrown out. Cutting wood is like murdering a tree. A stone-breaker need not do cathartic meditation. He is doing it the whole day. But for modern man things have changed. Now you live in such comfort that there is no possibility of any catharsis in your life, except that you can drive in a mad way.
That’s why in the West more people die every year through car accidents than by anything else. That is the greatest disease. Neither cancer nor tuberculosis nor any other disease takes such a toll of lives as car driving. In one year of the second world war, millions of people died; more people die every year around the earth just because of mad automobile drivers.
You may have observed, if you are a driver, that whenever you are angry you go fast. You go on pushing the accelerator, you simply forget about the brake.
When you are very hateful, irritated, the car becomes a medium of expression. Otherwise you live in such comfort, doing less and less with the body, living more and more in the mind.
Those who know about the deeper centers of the brain say that people who work with their hands have less anxiety, less tension; they sleep well because hands are connected with the deepest mind, the deepest center of the brain— your right hand with the left brain, your left hand with the right brain. When you work with the hands, energy is flowing from the head into the hands and being released. People who are working with their hands don’t need catharsis. But people who work with their heads need much catharsis because they accumulate
much energy, and there is no way in their body, no opening for it to go out. It goes on and on inside the mind; the mind goes mad.
In our culture and society—in the office, in the factory, in the market— people who work with heads are known as heads: head clerk, or head superintendent, and people who work with hands are known as hands. It is condemnatory. The very word ‘hands’ has become condemnatory.
When Patanjali was working on these sutras, the world was totally different. People were ‘hands.’ There was no need for catharsis specifically; life was itself a catharsis. Then they could sit silently very easily, but you cannot sit. Hence, I have been inventing cathartic methods. Only after them can you sit silently, not before.
“After working with the cathartic techniques for a few years, I feel that a deep inner harmony, balance, and centering is happening to me.”
Now don’t create trouble; let it happen. Now the mind is poking in its nose. The mind says, “How can it happen? First I must pass through chaos.” This idea can create chaos.
This has been my observation: people hanker for silence, and when it starts happening, they can’t believe it. It is too good to be true, and particularly people who have always condemned themselves cannot believe that it is happening to them: “Impossible! It may have happened to a Buddha or a Jesus, but to me? No, it is not possible.” They come to me; they are so disturbed by silence, that it is happening: “Is it true, or am I imagining it?” Why bother? Even if it is imagination, it is better than imagining anger, it is better than imagining sex, lust.
And I tell you, nobody can imagine silence. Imagination needs some form; silence has no form. Imagination means thinking in images, and silence has no image. You cannot imagine it. There is no possibility. You cannot imagine enlightenment, you cannot imagine satori, samadhi, silence, no. Imagination needs some base, some form, and silence is formless, indefinable. Nobody has ever painted a picture of it; nobody can paint one. Nobody has carved an image of it; nobody could do it.
You cannot imagine silence. The mind is playing tricks. The mind will say, “It must be imagination. How can it be possible for you, such a stupid man as you, and silence happening to you?—must be you are imagining,” or, “This guy Osho has hypnotized you. You must be deceived somehow.”
Don’t create such problems. Life has enough problems. When silence is happening, enjoy it, celebrate it. It means the chaotic forces have been thrown
out. The mind is playing its last game. It plays to the very end; to the very, very end it goes on playing. At the last moment, when enlightenment is just about to happen, then too the mind plays the last game, because it is the last battle.
Don’t worry about it, whether it is real or unreal, or whether chaos will come after it or not, because by thinking in this way you have already brought the chaos. It is your idea which can create chaos, and when it is created, the mind will say, “Now listen, I told you so.”
Mind is very self-fulfilling. First it gives you a seed, and when it sprouts the mind says, “Look, I was telling you beforehand that you are deceived.” The chaos has come, and it has been brought by the idea. So why bother about whether the chaos is still to come in the future or not, or whether it has passed or not? Right this moment, you are silent—why not celebrate it? And I tell you, if you celebrate, it grows.
In this world of consciousness, nothing is so helpful as celebration.
Celebration is like watering a plant. Worry is just the opposite of celebration, it is just like cutting the roots. Feel happy! Dance with your silence. This moment is there—enough. Why ask for more? Tomorrow will take care of itself. This moment is too much; why not live it, celebrate it, share it, enjoy it? Let it become a song, a dance, a poetry; let it be creative. Let your silence be creative; do something with it.
Millions of things are possible because nothing is more creative than silence: no need to become a very great painter, world famous, a Picasso; no need to become a Henry Moore; no need to become a great poet. Those ambitions of being great are of the mind, not of the silence.
In your own way, howsoever small, paint. In your own way, howsoever small, make a haiku. In your own way, howsoever small, sing a song, dance a little, celebrate, and you will find the next moment brings more silence. Once you know that the more you celebrate, the more is given to you; the more you share, the more you become capable of receiving it, each moment it goes on growing, growing. The next moment is always born out of this moment, so why worry about it? If this moment is silent, how can the next moment be chaos?
From where will it come? It is going to be born out of this moment. If I am happy this moment, how can I be unhappy in the next moment?
If you want the next moment to be unhappy, you will have to become unhappy in this moment, because out of unhappiness, unhappiness is born; out of happiness, happiness is born. Whatsoever you want to reap in the next moment, you will have to sow right now. Once the worry is allowed and you start thinking
that chaos will come, it will come; you have already brought it. Now you will have to reap it; it has already come. No need to wait for the next moment; it is already there.
Remember this, and this is really something strange: when you are sad you never think that it may be imaginary. Never have I come across a man who is sad and who says to me that maybe it is just imaginary. Sadness is perfectly real. But happiness? Immediately something goes wrong and you start thinking, “Maybe it is imaginary.” Whenever you are tense, you never think it is imaginary. If you can think that your tension and anguish are imaginary, they will disappear. And if you think your silence and happiness are imaginary, they will disappear.
Whatsoever is taken as real, becomes real. Whatsoever is taken as unreal, becomes unreal. You are the creator of your whole world around you; remember this. It is so rare to achieve a moment of happiness, bliss—don’t waste it in thinking. But if you don’t do anything, the possibility of worry is there. If you don’t do anything—if you don’t dance, if you don’t sing, if you don’t share—the possibility is there. The very energy that could have been creative will create the worry. It will start creating new tensions inside.
Energy has to be creative. If you don’t use it for happiness, the same energy will be used for unhappiness. And for unhappiness you have such deep-rooted habits that the energy flow is very loose and natural. For happiness it is an uphill task.
So the first few days you will have to be constantly aware. Whenever there is a happy moment, let it grip you, possess you. Enjoy it so totally; how could the next moment be different? From where would it be different? From where would it come?
Your time is created within you. Your time is not my time. There exist as many parallel times as there are minds. There is no one time. If there were one time, then there would be difficulty. Then amidst the whole miserable humankind, nobody could become a buddha because we belong to the same time. No, it is not the same. My time comes from me—it is my creativity. If this moment is beautiful, the next moment is born more beautiful—this is my time. If this moment is sad for you, then a sadder moment is born out of you—that is your time. Millions of parallel lines of time exist. And there are a few people who exist without time—those who have attained to no-mind. They have no time because they don’t think about the past; it is gone, so only fools think about it.
When something is gone, it is gone.
There is a Buddhist mantra: Gate gate, para gate—swaha; “Gone, gone,
absolutely gone; let it go to the fire.” The past is gone, the future has not yet come. Why worry about it? When it comes, we will see. You will be there to encounter it, so why worry about it?
The gone is gone, the not-come has not come yet. Only this moment is left, pure, intense with energy. Live it! If it is silence, be grateful. If it is blissful, thank God, trust it. And if you can trust, it will grow. If you distrust, you have already poisoned it. 7
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