PRACTICES OF YOGA – ASANAS, PRANAYAMAS, MUDRAS AND BANDHAS — WERE DISCOVERED IN THE STATE OF MEDITATION

IN DIFFERENT STATES OF MEDITATION, DIFFERENT POSTURES ARE FORMED BY THE BODY FROM WHICH THE DEPTH OF MEDITATION OF THE MEDITATOR COULD BE TOLD. CONVERSELY, CAN THE SAME INNER STATE BE BROUGHT ABOUT BY FORMING THE NECESSARY POSTURES? IN THAT CASE, CAN MEDITATION BE ATTAINED BY THE USE OF VARIOUS ASANAS, PRANAYAMAS, MUDRAS AND BANDHAS? WHAT IS THEIR USE AND SIGNIFICANCE?

First came the experience of meditation. With the experience of meditation it was found that the body assumed many postures. Actually, whenever the mind is in a particular state the body takes an appropriate corresponding posture. For instance, when you are filled with love your face, your expression, is one way, and when you are angry your expression becomes altogether different. In anger you grind your teeth and clench your fists and the body is ready for fight or flight. When you are in a forgiving mood the eyes are soft and the palms of the hand open. When a man is filled with forgiveness his fists will never clench. Just as clenching the fist is a preparation to fight, opening the fist and spreading out the palm is an indication of freedom from the urge to fight; it is an assurance of protection. To clench the fist is to frighten the other person.

The nature of the body is that it works in accordance with the state of mind. The body follows the mind: it always follows behind. So ordinarily we know what a man will do in anger and what he will do in love — also what he will do in a state of trust. But we do not know how he will react to the deeper states of mind.

When deep states are created within the mind a great deal takes place in the body also. Various mudras, gestures, and also many asanas, postures happen that tell of the changes within. In fact, the asanas are formed at the time of preparation for particular inner states. Mudras are formed later and they give information about a person’s inner state.
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When we feel emotionally wounded, memories can pop up that most of us automatically want to throw in the basement of our unconscious.

We think that time will take care of them, but they keep coming back. Here’s a much more effective way to heal your emotional wounds:

“If you are feeling miserable, let it become a meditation. Sit silently, close the doors. First feel the misery with as much intensity as possible. Feel the hurt. Somebody has insulted you: now, the best way to avoid the hurt is to go and insult him, so that you become occupied with him. That is not meditation.

If somebody has insulted you, feel thankful to him that he has given you an opportunity to feel a deep wound. He has opened a wound in you. The wound may be created by many many insults that you have suffered in your whole life; he may not be the cause of all the suffering, but he has triggered a process.

Just close your room, sit silently, with no anger for the person but with total awareness of the feeling that is arising in you — the hurt feeling that you have been rejected, that you have been insulted. And then you will be surprised that not only is this man there: all the men and all the women and all the people that have ever insulted you will start moving in your memory.

You will start not only remembering them, you will start reliving them. You will be going into a kind of primal. Feel the hurt, feel the pain, don’t avoid it. That’s why in many therapies the patient is told not to take any drugs before the therapy begins, for the simple reason that drugs are a way to escape from your inner misery. They don’t allow you to see your wounds, they repress them. They don’t allow you to go into your suffering and unless you go into your suffering, you cannot be released from the imprisonment of it.

It is perfectly scientific to drop all drugs before going into therapy — if possible even drugs like coffee, tea, smoking, because these are all ways to escape. Have you watched? Whenever you feel nervous you immediately start smoking. It is a way to avoid nervousness; you become occupied with smoking. Really it is a regression. Smoking makes you again feel like a child — unworried, non-responsible — because smoking is nothing but a symbolic breast. The hot smoke going in simply takes you back to the days when you were feeding on the mother’s breast and the warm milk was going in: the nipple has now become the cigarette. The cigarette is a symbolic nipple. Through regression you avoid the responsibilities and the pains of being adult. And that’s what goes on through many many drugs.

Modern man is drugged as never before, because Modern man is living in great suffering. Without drugs it will be impossible to live in so much suffering. Those drugs create a barrier; they keep you drugged they don’t allow you enough sensitivity to know your pain. The first thing to do is close your doors and stop any kind of occupation — looking at the TV, listening to the radio, reading a book.

Stop all occupation, because that too is a subtle drug. Just be silent, utterly alone. Don’t even pray, because that again is a drug, you are becoming occupied, you start talking to God, you start praying, you escape from yourself. Atisha is saying: Just be yourself. Whatsoever the pain of it and whatsoever the suffering of it, let it be so. First experience it in its total intensity. It will be difficult, it will be heart-rending: you may start crying like a child, you may start rolling on the ground in deep pain, your body may go through contortions. You may suddenly become aware that the pain is not only in the heart, it is all over the body — that it is aching all over, that it is painful all over, that your whole body is nothing but pain. If you can experience it — this is of tremendous importance — then start absorbing it.

Don’t throw it away. It is such a valuable energy, don’t throw it away. Absorb it, drink it, accept it, welcome it, feel grateful to it. And say to yourself “This time I’m not going to avoid it, this time I’m not going to reject it, this time I’m not going to throw it away. This time I will drink it and receive it like a guest. This time I will digest it.” It may take a few days for you to be able to digest it, but the day it happens, you have stumbled upon a door which will take you really far far away.

A new journey has started in your life, you are moving into a new kind of being — because immediately, the moment you accept the pain with no rejection anywhere, its energy and its quality changes. It is no longer pain. In fact one is simply surprised, one cannot believe it, it is so incredible. One cannot believe that suffering can be transformed into ecstasy, that pain can become joy. Whenever anything is total it turns into its opposite.

This is a great secret to be remembered. Whenever something is total it changes into its opposite, because there is no way to go any further; the cul-de-sac has arrived. Watch an old clock with a pendulum. It goes on and on: the pendulum goes to the left, to the extreme left, and then there is a point beyond which it cannot go, then it starts moving towards the right. Opposites are complementaries. If you can suffer your suffering in totality, in great intensity, you will be surprised…you will not be able to believe it when it happens for the first time, that your own suffering absorbed willingly, welcomingly, becomes a great blessing. The same energy that becomes hate becomes love, the same energy that becomes pain becomes pleasure, the same energy that becomes suffering becomes bliss.”

Source: Osho, excerpted from The Book of Wisdom, Chapter 5

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How to take this fragrance with me wherever I go?

At the Osho International Meditation Resort I find myself dancing at 10:30am in Buddha Grove under crisp blue skies, and at lunchtime savoring organic food while listening to soft sitar melodies in a beautiful garden. My evening begins with celebration and meditation in the energy field of thousands of buddhas from 140 countries…and this goes on and on. How to take this fragrance with me wherever I go?

“The fragrance that you have felt in this temple of seekers is not something that you can leave behind. This fragrance contains love, meditativeness, silence, trust, life-affirmative values, a song of gratitude, a dance with the trees and with the stars….
This fragrance is an experience of a totally new atmosphere that does not exist in the outside world. If you meditate, you will become the same temple. Then, wherever you go the fragrance will go with you like a shadow; even others will feel it.

It is not the first time that such a question has come to me. The moment they enter the gate many people have felt suddenly, as if they are entering into another world — the air is different, the vibe is different — as if they have come home. And there is bound to be a certain fragrance, because so many people are meditating, and slowly, slowly their inner-being flowers are opening. The whole purpose of all these people to be here is absolutely different from any gathering anywhere outside in the world.

These are the people who are in search of the essential, existential life source. They are at different stages of evolution in consciousness, but they are all radiating something of higher stages. So when you enter the temple, you will find the air is different, the trees are different, the people are different. And if you also become a meditator, as I know you are becoming, this fragrance will start coming from within your own being. Even others may feel it wherever you go.

I want my sannyasins… I have taken away the clothes which made them distinct; I have taken away their malas. But still people feel that they look a little different from others….
A sannyasin will have a certain fragrance, a certain style, a certain way which is subtle; it may not be very apparent to the eyes, but it can be detected.

I would like you to be known as separate from the crowds, not by your clothes not by anything outer, but just by your very being — your silence, your peace, your love, your eyes.
Every gesture of you should declare that you are a sannyasin.

One day the pope gets a phone call from God. God says to him, “Since you have been such a good pope, I wanted you to be the first to know.”
“The first to know what?” asks the pope.
God says, “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that from now on, the world will have only one religion.”
“That’s wonderful,” says the pope. “Now everyone will be at peace, and everyone will get along with one another — that’s great. But what is the bad news?”
“In a few days,” says God, “you will be receiving a phone call from Ma Anando in Poona!”

That one religiousness is not going to be Catholic or Christian. That one religiousness is going to be this fragrance, Prem Maharaj, that you have been feeling here. Once our people are ready, they will go on spreading it all over the world; it needs it tremendously.

Just remember one thing: Never be miserly. Share your experiences here with me your silences of the heart, your flowering of the being. Go on sharing the song that you have heard here, that music that is all around you.

Sometimes I feel sad for a few people. One old sannyasin, Kabir, wrote a letter to me, saying “Osho, I want to share what has happened to me in all these years living with you. But can I talk about you without mentioning your name?” This cowardliness should be dropped.

I want you not to be sheep, but lions.
I want you to roar about the experience, because the world is so deaf that unless you roar they won’t pay any attention. And the moment you mention my name, even if they are dead, they will wake up! Without my name, they will feel goody-goody, and you will feel very goody-goody. But only with my name, will you be able to judge whether those people have any intelligence, any awareness, any understanding, or whether they are just mediocre people with prejudiced minds.

Share without being miserable, without being miserly, and share with authority. You have nothing to lose.
It is a tremendous challenge to change this whole earth into a paradise, but you will not be able to do that if you are cowardly or miserly. There are many sannyasins who remain silent and don’t share just out of the fear that they may be condemned: “You have also fallen from the traditional religion, from the convention,” they simply remain quiet. That’s not right; that is not compassionate. That is cruel. If you know something, share it for two reasons, because the humanity needs it, and the second reason is that the more you share, the more you will have of it.”

Osho, excerpted from The Invitation, Chapter 20

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