OSHO Kundalini Meditation - A Closer Look — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:11So now we want to look at Osho Kundalini Meditation.
2. 0:16This meditation is interesting because it particularly gets misunderstood because, and
3. 0:23you can still see people who, when the music starts they are standing there, and the music
4. 0:29starts, and as the music starts its like ready steady go and off they go, shaking away.
5. 0:36Which is exactly the opposite of how Osho describes this meditation.
6. 0:43So I want to play you a demonstration of how Osho's explaining it with Osho's voice describing
7. 0:51exactly what he's talking about and I'll read it to you afterwards in case you don't catch
8. 0:57all the words because it is so valuable.
9. 1:15If you are doing the Kundalini meditation, allow the shaking, don't DO it.
10. 1:24Stand silently, feel it coming.
11. 1:29And when you body starts a little trembling, help it.
12. 1:33But don't DO it.
13. 1:37Enjoy it, feel blissful about it, allow it, receive it, welcome it, but don't WILL it.
14. 1:47If you force it will become an exercise, a bodily physical exercise.
15. 1:54Then the shaking will be there but just on the surface.
16. 2:00It will not penetrate you.
17. 2:03You will remain solid, stone-like, rock-like within.
18. 2:09You will remain the manipulator, the doer, and only body will be following, body is not
19. 2:14the question.
20. 2:16You are the question.
21. 2:19When I say shake, I mean your solidity.
22. 2:21Your rock-like being should shake to the very foundations.
23. 2:29So it becomes, liquid, fluid, melts, flows, and when the rock-like being becomes liquid,
24. 2:42your body will follow, then there is no shaker, only shaking.
25. 2:49Then nobody is doing it.
26. 2:51It is simply happening.
27. 2:54Then the doer is not.
28. 2:59Enjoy it, but don't WILL it, and remember you will a thing you cannot enjoy it.
29. 3:08They are reverse, opposites, they never meet.
30. 3:15If you will a thing you cannot enjoy it, if you enjoy it, you cannot will it.
31. 3:35So let me just read that to you because it's such a valuable piece to understand.
32. 3:40So Osho is saying:
33. 3:41If you are doing the Kundalini meditation, allow the shaking, don't DO it.
34. 3:46Stand silently, feel it coming.
35. 3:49And when you body starts a little trembling, help it.
36. 3:52But don't do it.
37. 3:53Enjoy it, feel blissful about it, allow it, receive it, welcome it, but don't will it.
38. 4:01Now the reason this is so valuable is because the most difficult thing about meditation
39. 4:10is doing nothing.
40. 4:12I mean it is very counter intuitive, every one is so good at doing stuff and if you want
41. 4:18something done, I'm your guy.
42. 4:20But doing nothing?
43. 4:22I mean that's not on the curriculum of any place I ever went.
44. 4:26Doing nothing?
45. 4:28What kind question is that?
46. 4:30And it is the essence of meditation.
47. 4:34So Osho frequently will use the analogy of the mirror.
48. 4:39The sort of watcher, the witness, the experiencer.
49. 4:43That is like a mirror, it reflects everything and does nothing.
50. 4:49When you stand in front of the mirror, it sees everything but it has no comment.
51. 4:55That complete doing nothing-ness is the most trickiest part of the whole game of mediation.
52. 5:04So you hear, I mean Osho would tell you those beautiful Basho piece:
53. 5:10Sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
54. 5:15And a zillion people say yes yes yes but what does it actually mean?
55. 5:20Lovely words and Osho Kundalini Meditation gives you the experience in you bones.
56. 5:29Now you know what it means, not intellectually.
57. 5:33You know, inside you, exactly what the doing nothing means.
58. 5:38Not that nothing's happening, but you're not the doer of it.
59. 5:44You're allowing it, letting it happen, its happening by itself, and you're just allowing
60. 5:51it to happen.
61. 5:53So that is THE most valuable part of this meditation.
62. 5:57Osho explains:
63. 5:59If you force it will become an exercise, a bodily physical exercise.
64. 6:05Then the shaking will be there but just on the surface.
65. 6:07It will not penetrate you.
66. 6:10You will remain solid, stone-like, rock-like within.
67. 6:14You will remain the manipulator, the doer, and the body will only be following, the
68. 6:19body is not the question.
69. 6:20You are the question.
70. 6:22When I say shake, I mean your solidity.
71. 6:25Your rock-like being should shake to the very foundations.
72. 6:28So it becomes, liquid, fluid, melts, flows, and when the rock-like being becomes liquid,
73. 6:35your body will follow, then there is no shaker, only shaking.
74. 6:40Then nobody is doing it.
75. 6:41It is simply happening.
76. 6:43Then the doer is not".
77. 6:47See that's the key here.
78. 6:49And, the reason this becomes such an issue is because now people say well "Hang on a
79. 6:58second" Before you were saying particularly for example in relationship to Osho Dynamic
80. 7:05meditation, be a watcher, be a witness, as if it's happening to someone else.
81. 7:11Watching from a distance.
82. 7:13And now I'm hearing you say be total, spontaneous, and in the moment.
83. 7:18And I'm, really, please make up your mind which is it.
84. 7:23And then Osho will say, linguistically they seem opposite, but experientially they are
85. 7:29just two sides of the same coin.
86. 7:32And in reality unless you're a watcher, a witness, it's not possible to be total, spontaneous,
87. 7:39and in the moment.
88. 7:40And unless you're total, spontaneous, and in the moment, its not possible to be a watcher.
89. 7:46So, Osho Dynamic is the watching doorway.
90. 7:50Yes you're watching totality, but it's the watching doorway.
91. 7:55Kundalini is the totality doorway.
92. 7:57There is no mention of watching or witnessing in the first 30 minutes of Kundalini meditation.
93. 8:03This is when you become so total as he puts it "Then there is no shaker, only shaking."
94. 8:12The shak-ER disappears, theres only shaking.
95. 8:18And then in the dancing you'll hear often Osho say exactly the same thing, you danced
96. 8:24with totality, and then the danc-ER dissappears, and there's only dancing.
97. 8:32So this is the totality doorway.
98. 8:35And I'll just give you another.
99. 8:37We found - I have to read it to you only because it's a Hindi translation, so again, Osho talking
100. 8:44about specifically Kundalini.
101. 8:46And again, just to give you hint of how this all works,
102. 8:51So for the first 15 minutes, let your body shake and vibrate.
103. 8:58Shaking the body means letting the energy melt, wherever it is repressed.
104. 9:03Letting the energy flow from where it is blocked.
105. 9:07If you allow your body to shake rightly for 15 minutes, then all the repressed energy
106. 9:13will begin to manifest and flow.
107. 9:16The second stage is dancing.
108. 9:19Dancing means the energy that is now spread everywhere gets transformed into bliss.
109. 9:26Dance as if you are celebrating.
110. 9:29As if something tremendous has happened.
111. 9:32As if a light has descended into your life.
112. 9:35Dance with joy because the more blissful you are the more the energy moves upward.
113. 9:42And the more the energy moves upward, the more blissful you become.
114. 9:47Suppose you were intoxicated, and started dancing as if you had drunk the entire tavern dry.
115. 9:54Would you dance like a miser?
116. 9:57It wouldn't happen.
117. 9:59Dancing like a miser would mean, dancing as you if you have to do it.
118. 10:03What to do?
119. 10:04I just got caught here.
120. 10:06Or, as if you were just observing, expecting that perhaps something will happen by dancing
121. 10:11this way.
122. 10:13No, that won't work.
123. 10:16Such lukewarm efforts won't work, you need intense passion.
124. 10:21Dance like a madman."
125. 10:39As Osho explains, "For the first 15 minutes let your body shake and vibrate.
126. 10:48Shaking the body means letting the energy melt wherever it is repressed.
127. 10:53Letting the energy flow from where it is blocked.
128. 10:58If you allow your body to shake rightly for 15 minutes, then all the repressed energy
129. 11:03will begin to manifest and flow."
130. 11:25The second stage is dancing.
131. 11:28Dancing means that the energy that is now spread everywhere gets transformed into bliss.
132. 11:34Dance as if you are celebrating.
133. 11:37As if something tremendous has happened.
134. 11:40As if a light has descended into your life.
135. 11:43Dance with joy because the more blissful you are, the more the energy moves upward.
136. 11:48And the more the energy moves upward, the more blissful you become.
137. 11:54Suppose you were intoxicated, and started dancing as if you had drunk the entire tavern
138. 12:00dry.
139. 12:01Would you dance like a miser?
140. 12:04It wouldn't happen.
141. 12:05Dancing like a miser would mean dancing as you if you have to do it.
142. 12:10What to do?
143. 12:11I just got caught here.
144. 12:13Or, as if you were just observing, expecting that perhaps something will happen by dancing
145. 12:18this way.
146. 12:19No, that won't work.
147. 12:22Such lukewarm efforts won't work, you need intense passion.
148. 12:28Dance like a madman."
149. 12:42This meditation is really the totality doorway.
150. 12:49And it really gives you an opportunity to experience how the doer disappears, doing
151. 12:58is happening, of course shaking is happening, dancing is happening, but you are not the doer of it.
152. 13:05So these are two wonderfully important incredibly valuable aspects to Osho Kundalini Meditation.
153. 13:13In the third stage, you get a choice between sitting and standing.
154. 13:19And in this same Osho translation we found Osho to say that you'll find sitting helpful,
155. 13:27and then in the last stage it's lying down.
156. 13:30And basically, this, the last - the first 30 minutes is, as I explained, is about totality,
157. 13:39there is no mention of any watching.
158. 13:41And in the second 30 minutes, its basically watching, waiting, with awareness, as Osho
159. 13:49describes it.
160. 13:51So before we finish, I just want to say one or two things which relate to this in terms
161. 13:57of the active meditations in general.
162. 14:01So, the key element here is, what was it, 20 - 25 years ago, the West finally agreed
163. 14:14that the mind and the body were connected.
164. 14:19So, although the East had been saying the mind and body are one since forever, eventually,
165. 14:26the West came round to the view that the mind and body are at definitely at least sort of
166. 14:32one-ish.
167. 14:33Right?
168. 14:34But actually, underneath, what that still remains the idea that really the mind is number
169. 14:43one.
170. 14:44The mind is the boss, the mind is really the, and the body really only there just to provide
171. 14:49room service for the mind.
172. 14:52That is how it tends to be put across.
173. 14:57And there is, if you go and watch a, there a TED talk by a guy called Wolpert.
174. 15:03And he has a very different view.
175. 15:06And what he is saying is that the reason this species is so successful is because of movement.
176. 15:15Everything about our survival depended on the way we moved.
177. 15:20So whether it was hunting, the idea was to bring back something real, not have some wonderful
178. 15:28theory about whether the moon was made of cheese.
179. 15:32It was about the body and movement, that was what, and obviously it's not just big movements,
180. 15:41otherwise all the professors of the world would be Orangutans.
181. 15:44Have you seen them move?
182. 15:45It must be all kinds of movement.
183. 15:48So like facial movements, speech movements, incredibly sophisticated movement.
184. 15:54If he is right, that really triggers the change in human beings as they evolved.
185. 16:02And he found this little sea creature, kind of a sea squid.
186. 16:09Which is sort of cylindrical creature that swims around the ocean, and then it is looking
187. 16:13for a flat rock to live on.
188. 16:15And when it finds a nice flat rock, that's where it stops and now it's never going to
189. 16:21move again.
190. 16:23And the first thing it does is consume it's own nervous system.
191. 16:29Which for Wolpert would absolutely make sense.
192. 16:32The nervous system is for movement.
193. 16:35And movement is for survival, not the other way round, which is the way most of us think
194. 16:41about this.
195. 16:43And a good way of looking at this is if someone says to you "Okay, what about, what about
196. 16:52an example of the mind affecting the body?
197. 17:01" Oh okay I remember so and so coming into the office looking terrible and uh, obviously
198. 17:08he didn't, he's not feeling very happy.
199. 17:11It's very clear how the mind is affecting the body, but if someone says to you "Okay,
200. 17:15but what about an example of the way the body affects the mind?"
201. 17:19Em, em, that's interesting.
202. 17:23There are two very wonderful examples.
203. 17:25They are both in Malcolm Gladwell books, and one of them Osho talks about in terms of facial
204. 17:32recognition.
205. 17:33So, there are these two guys who are really interested in facial recognition.
206. 17:38So the first thing they do is they identify 630 different facial expressions.
207. 17:46And then they get in their laboratory, sit in front of the mirror, and start making faces
208. 17:53into the mirror, to simulate particular expressions, and they've got their anatomy books to try
209. 18:01and work out which muscles are making which facial expression.
210. 18:07So they are going on day after day after day, and then they both arrive at the office one
211. 18:12morning at the door.
212. 18:14"I feel terrible, no, I don't want to do this anymore, really".
213. 18:19You know they are both looking at each other like what the hell is going one?
214. 18:24Like something in the air conditioning?
215. 18:25What is this?
216. 18:26Right, in tears.
217. 18:28So they get into the lab and they realized they just spent the previous 3 days trying
218. 18:35to work out which were the facial muscles responsible for looking sad.
219. 18:44And just by putting, artificially sad expressions on their face, they had made themselves depressed.
220. 18:53Amazing huh?
221. 18:57One other example was they went to this college with these headsets and they went to the college
222. 19:07and said we've created these new headsets and we'd like you young guys to test them
223. 19:13out, because you like listening to music and you're good with this stuff, so we'd like
224. 19:18to split you into three, and then we're going to play you the same track, its basically
225. 19:22lots of different nice musical pieces that we'll ask you questions about afterwards,
226. 19:27and there a little bit of speech on the end.
227. 19:29So first third come in, put the headphones on, and before you put the headphones on,
228. 19:36while you are listening what we would like you to do is look to the left, and look to
229. 19:40the right, and look to the left.
230. 19:42Ok, great, put the headphones on, play the track, thank you very much.
231. 19:48Next group, before you start listening, we'd like you while you are listening to look at
232. 19:52the ceiling, look at the floor, look at the ceiling, look at the floor.
233. 19:56Very good, put the headphones on, play the second track.
234. 20:00Third lot come in, um, before you start, while you are listening, just look straight ahead.
235. 20:04Ok, great put the headphones on, third lot.
236. 20:07And then afterwards they go to everybody and say: How did you like the headphones?
237. 20:11Were they comfortable?
238. 20:12The treble was good?
239. 20:13The timber?
240. 20:14The bass?
241. 20:15All the usual questions you'd expect about headphones, and oh and uh, by the way um,
242. 20:20that little bit of speech on the end.
243. 20:22That was the point of the whole exercise, because the speech on the end said to these
244. 20:27students - There is a proposal to increase the student library subscription from the current
245. 20:32500 dollars a year to 650 next year or we reject the proposal and put it back to 400
246. 20:39like it was last year.
247. 20:41And oh and the proposal little speech at the end - Are you in favor?
248. 20:46For or against?
249. 20:47Or nothing?
250. 20:48Asked everybody, and they tally up the results, and all the guys who were doing this - No
251. 20:54I think its a really bad idea, I don't think you should do that at all.
252. 20:58And all those who did this - I think thats a really good idea, increase the price, and
253. 21:02all those who kept their head straight said I think I'd leave it alone, really do nothing.
254. 21:10So thats a really dramatic example.
255. 21:13Now you're beginning to see, when Osho says the Osho Active Meditations are a kind of
256. 21:19revolution waiting to happen.
257. 21:22You start to appreciate what you're talking about.
258. 21:26So when for example when I was reading to you before:
259. 21:30So he says, we're talking about Kundalini:
260. 21:34"You will remain solid, stone-line, rock-like within"
261. 21:40I mean how many people do you know that thats a pretty good description of?
262. 21:46People who look they pretty dead all day long.
263. 21:52You know what I mean?
264. 21:54It's kind of how they live, life's not a lot of fun.
265. 22:01I mean there a sort of epidemic of lifelessness.
266. 22:05I mean when do you see dance and celebration?
267. 22:09Get on a subway at 8:30 on any city on any Monday morning, it's like understandably sort
268. 22:17of posthumous meat hanging from the straps.
269. 22:20This is not a pleasant experience.
270. 22:23You know I mean, It's not much fun.
271. 22:26Somehow the life and joy and juice of life has disappeared.
272. 22:34And then Osho is explaining, I mean what would we do about this?
273. 22:39Are we going to put Prozac in the drinking water?
274. 22:42Are we going to talk about it for another million years?
275. 22:47And it's really important to understand this difference because I mean mammals have been
276. 22:53suffering from from trauma for at least a 100 million years.
277. 22:58And very recently one group of one species of mammal came up with this brilliant idea
278. 23:03that the way you deal with trauma is to talk about it.
279. 23:07And the other half of this species, the eastern view has always been, that is not helpful.
280. 23:15You talk about it, you feel a little better about it, and what the east has always said
281. 23:20"See it!"
282. 23:22Just as we said, "See it, acknowledge it, accept it, and thank you, and no thank you,
283. 23:29good bye".
284. 23:30A totally different model.
285. 23:32And this whole idea that we are going to go on talking about it, I mean, how much more
286. 23:36talking do we have to do about it?
287. 23:39Everyone already looks miserable, they were miserable before they started talking, and
288. 23:42they are still miserable looking after talking about it.
289. 23:47And then along comes Osho and says "Shake it out!"
290. 23:51So simple, do it anywhere, do it in any factory, any office, any where you like, easy, simple.
291. 24:02Shake it out.
292. 24:02You don't have to talk about it, you don;'t have to get involved in it, just let it go.
293. 24:09As he says, very soon this will happen in every office, every hospital, every mental
294. 24:16hospital, every prison, maybe we start with the warders, whatever it is, everybody, basically
295. 24:23is going, we're all going to benefit from it, and when you look at your morning newspaper,
296. 24:28the sooner the better.
297. 24:35Okay I've hope you've enjoyed the talk and we'll end with just watching the demonstration
298. 24:42of the Osho Kundalini Meditation.
299. 24:56The meditation lasts one hour and has four stages:
300. 25:03First stage: 15 minutes.
301. 25:08Be loose and let your body shake.
302. 25:11Feeling the energies moving up from your feet.
303. 25:18Let go everywhere and become the shaking.
304. 25:24Your eyes may be open or closed.
305. 25:41Second stage: 15 minutes.
306. 25:45Dance any way you feel and let the whole body move as it wishes.
307. 25:54Your eyes may be open or closed.
308. 26:14Third stage: 15 minutes.
309. 26:17Close your eyes and be still.
310. 26:20Sitting or standing, witnessing whatever is happening inside and out.
311. 26:45Fourth stage: Keeping your eyes closed, lie down, and be still.
312. 27:08Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming.
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314. 27:17John Andrews was Osho's personal physician, taking care of his body for many years including his final days.
315. 27:21As a meditator and scientist for many decade, John Andrews enjoyed following, and writing about, the gradual acceptance of meditation by the scientific community turn into the current flood of interest.
316. 27:25He now writes about the final step into an individual journey without end.
317. 27:28As Osho explains, it is "an open experiment", where, "Any truth that may come later on can be absorbed by this system without any conflict".
318. 27:33Now we can move easily from what is often confusing plethora of different approaches to the simple, clear and practical approach to meditation by Osho -
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