The OSHO MYSTIC ROSE MEDITATION

The symbol of the mystic rose is that if a man takes care of the seed he is born with, gives it the right soil, gives it the right atmosphere and the right vibrations, moves on a right path where the seed can start growing, then the ultimate growth is symbolized as the mystic rose—when your being blossoms and opens all its petals and releases its beautiful fragrance.

The Mystic Rose Meditative Therapy is a three-hour-a-day process which lasts for three weeks. It is offered monthly as a part of the Multiversity program at the Osho Meditation Resort in Pune, India, and in many Osho Meditation Centers throughout the world. At Osho’s request, the meditative therapies are always led by a facilitator who has been trained in the process at the Meditation Resort. Three months of OSHO Dynamic Meditation are recommended before embarking on The Mystic Rose meditative therapy.

The following instructions are for the Mystic Rose Meditation, which can be done by individuals after they have participated in the Mystic Rose Meditative

Therapy.

Instructions

This meditation in three parts, lasting for 21 days, can be done by anyone who has already participated in The Mystic Rose Meditative Therapy. It can be done alone or with friends.

1. Instructions for Laughter

The authentic laughter is not about anything. It is simply arising in you as a flower blossoms in a tree. It has no reason, no rational explanation. It is mysterious; hence the symbol of the mystic rose.

For seven days, begin by shouting “Yaa-Hoo!” a few times, then just laugh for no reason at all for 45 minutes. You can sit or lie down. Some people find lying on their back helps to relax the stomach muscles and allows energy to move more easily. Some people find that covering themselves with a sheet, or holding their legs in the air helps to bring out the laughing, giggling child in them. The emphasis is on finding your inner laughter, laughter for no reason at all, so your eyes are generally closed. However, some eye contact with your friends to spark off laughter is also fine.

Let your body roll about in a light, playful way, with the innocence of the child within you, and allow yourself to laugh with totality.

At times, you may come up against blocks, which have been there for centuries, preventing your laughter. When this happens, shout “Yaa-Hoo!” or do gibberish (nonsense sounds) until laughter arises again.

Let-go: At the end of the laughing stage, sit perfectly still, with eyes closed, for a few minutes. The body is frozen, like a statue, gathering all the energy within. Then let go: relax your body completely and allow it to fall without any effort or control. When you feel ready, sit up again and sit silently, watching for 15 minutes.

2. Instructions for Tears

Once the laughter is over you will find yourself flooded with tears, agony. But that too will be a great unburdening phenomenon. Many lives of pain and suffering will disappear. If you can get rid of those two layers you have found yourself.

For the second week, begin by saying “Yaa-Boo” softly a few times, then just allow yourself to cry for 45 minutes. You may want to have the room slightly darkened to help you move into your sadness. You can sit or lie down. Close your eyes and move deeply into all the feelings that make you cry.

Allow yourself to cry really deeply, cleansing and unburdening the heart.

Feel that the dam of all your pent-up hurts and sufferings is breaking open—let the tears flood out. If you feel blocked or feel sleepy after crying for a while, do gibberish. Rock your body back and forth a little, or say “Yaa-Boo” again a few times. The tears are there, just don’t prevent them.

Let-go: At the end of the crying stage each day, sit perfectly still for a few minutes and then move into let-go, the same as you did after the laughter.

During this week of tears, be open to any situation which might bring tears.

Allow yourself to be vulnerable.

3. Instructions for The Watcher on the Hills

For the third week, sit in silence for 45 minutes, or for longer if it feels comfortable for you, and then dance to light, heartful music for 15 minutes. You may sit on the floor or use a chair. Your head and back should be as straight as possible, your eyes closed and your breathing natural.

Relax, be aware, become like a watcher on the hills, just witnessing whatever passes by. It is the process of watching which is the meditation; what you are watching is not important. Remember not to become identified with or lost in whatever comes by: thoughts, feelings, body sensations, judgments.

After sitting, play some gentle music of your own choice and dance. Allow the body to find its own movement, and continue watching as you are moving; do not get lost in the music.

4. A Few Points to Help

• During the entire twenty-one day period, it is best to avoid cathartic therapies like breath, emotional release and bioenergetics sessions. Dynamic and Kundalini meditations are optional during the first 2 weeks and recommended during the last week.

• If you are doing The Mystic Rose Meditation with friends, do not talk to each other during the meditation.

• Many people come to a layer of anger during the week of laughter or during the week of tears. There is no need to stay stuck there. Let it be expressed

with gibberish and body movements, then return to the laughter or tears.

• Celebrate your laughter, celebrate your tears, celebrate your moments of silent watching!

Laughter and Tears: A Cleansing of the Heart

For those who want to go deeper, I have chosen to create a new meditative therapy. The first part will be laughter—for three hours, people simply laugh for no reason at all. And whenever their laughter starts dying they again say “Yaa- Hoo!” and it will come back. Digging for three hours you will be surprised how many layers of dust have gathered upon your being. It will cut them like a sword in one blow. For seven days continuously, three hours every day…you cannot conceive how much transformation can come to your being.

And then the second part is tears. The first part removes everything that hinders your laughter—all the inhibitions of past humanity, all the repressions, it cuts them away. It brings a new space within you. But you still have to go a few steps more to reach the temple of your being, because you have suppressed so much sadness, so much despair, so much anxiety, so many tears—they are all there, covering you and destroying your beauty, your grace, your joy.

In old Mongolia they had an ancient idea that every life, whatever pain is suppressed…and pain is suppressed, because nobody wants it. You don’t want to be painful, so you suppress it, you avoid, you look somewhere else. But it remains.

And the Mongolian idea was—and I agree with it—that life after life it goes on accumulating in you; it becomes almost a hard shell of pain. If you go in you will find both laughter and tears. That’s why sometimes it happens that by laughing, suddenly you find tears also start coming together with it—very confusing, because ordinarily we think they are contrary. When you are full of tears it is not a time to laugh, or when you are laughing it is not the right season for tears. But existence does not believe in your concepts, ideologies; existence transcends all your concepts, which are dualistic, which are based on duality.

Day and night, laughter and tears, pain and blissfulness, they both come together.

When a man reaches into his innermost being he will find the first layer is of laughter and the second layer is of agony, tears.

So for seven days you have to allow yourself to weep, cry, for no reason at all—just the tears are ready to come. You are preventing them; just don’t prevent. And whenever you feel they are not coming, just say, “Yaa-Boo!” These

are pure sounds, used as a technique to bring all your laughter and all your tears and clean you completely, so that you can become an innocent child.

Finally, the third part is witnessing—the watcher on the hills. Finally, after

the laughter and the tears, there is only a witnessing silence. Witnessing on its own is automatically suppressive. Weeping stops when you witness it, it becomes dormant. This meditation gets rid of the laughter and tears beforehand, so that there is nothing to suppress in your witnessing. Then the witnessing simply opens a pure sky. So for seven days you experience simply a clarity.

This is absolutely my meditation.

You will be surprised that no meditation can give you so much as this small strategy. This is my experience of many meditations, that what has to be done is to break two layers in you. Your laughter has been repressed; you have been told, “Don’t laugh, it is a serious matter.” You are not allowed to laugh in a church, or in a university class….

So the first layer is of laughter, but once laughter is over you will suddenly find yourself flooded with tears, agony. But that too will be a great unburdening phenomenon. Many lives of pain and suffering will disappear. If you can get rid of these two layers you have found yourself.

There is no meaning in the words ‘Yaa-Hoo’ or ‘Yaa-Boo’. These are simply techniques, sounds which can be used for a certain purpose to enter into your own being.

I have invented many meditations, but perhaps this will be the most essential and fundamental one. It can take over the whole world….

Every society has done so much harm by preventing your joys and your tears. If an old man starts crying you will say, “What are you doing? You should feel ashamed; you are not a child, that somebody has taken your banana and you are crying. Have another banana, but don’t cry.”

Just see—stand on the street and start crying and a crowd will gather to console you: “Don’t cry! Whatever has happened forget all about it, it has happened.” Nobody knows what has happened, nobody can help you, but everybody will try—“Don’t cry!” And the reason is that if you go on crying, then they will start crying, because they are also flooded with tears. Those tears are very close to the eyes.

And it is healthy to cry, to weep, to laugh. Now scientists are discovering that crying, weeping, laughter are immensely healthful, not only physically but also psychologically. They are very much capable of keeping you sane. The whole of humanity has gone a little cuckoo for the simple reason that nobody

laughs fully, because all around there are people who will say, “What are you doing? Are you a child?—at this age? What will your children think? Keep quiet!”

If you cry and weep without any reason, just as an exercise, a meditation, nobody will believe it. Tears have never been accepted as meditation. And I tell you, they are not only a meditation, they are a medicine also. You will have better eyesight and you will have better inner vision.

I am giving you a very fundamental technique, fresh and unused. And it is going to become worldwide, without any doubt, because its effects will show anybody that the person has become younger, the person has become more loving, the person has become graceful. The person has become more flexible, less fanatic; the person has become more joyful, more a celebrant.

All that this world needs is a good cleansing of the heart of all the inhibitions of the past. And laughter and tears can do both. Tears will take out all the agony that is hidden inside you and laughter will take all that is preventing your ecstasy. Once you have learned the art you will be immensely surprised: why has this not been told up to now? There is a reason: nobody has wanted humanity to have the freshness of a roseflower and the fragrance and the beauty.

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