“Meditation is a simple process
Of watching your own mind.
Not fighting with the mind
Not trying to control it either.
Just remaining there, a choiceless witness.”
-Osho, Eighty Four Thousand Poems

Welcome, returning and first-time viewers of this blog alike! It has been just over one year since I posted on this site and wowee, what an incredible and intense year it has been! (To say the least).

I hit post on the second part of a three-part blog series on June 1st, 2023, just a few days before arriving in India for the first time. Thinking that I would be able to finish the third part in the new country… I was kidding myself.

Unfortunately, those waiting on the glamorous description of my time in the glitzy city of Dubai might be disappointed. The draft for part three was hung up for good once I was swept into the whirlwind that awaited me in India.

Those of you who have been here before might notice I’ve changed some things: a new name, a new web domain, and a new beginning – with all my past posts deleted. In this blog I will do my best to encompass the radical transformation that has weaved through my life in the past 13 months. I do not exaggerate when I say that almost every cell in my being has been touched by change, so you can imagine the task.

I decided that I would split this post up into two parts to accommodate for what Instagram has done to all of our attention spans, (and for my rather detailed writing style)! This first part you are reading now will dive into one of my initial experiences in India- a step-by-step description of Osho’s Dynamic Meditation.

In part two, which I will post tomorrow, we will deeply discuss questions such as- what really is meditation, who is Osho, and how exactly meditation has changed my life (and has the potential to change yours too). Be sure to come back tomorrow because then we will really get into the “meat and potatoes” of this story.

There is a poem by Indian poet Sudarshan Faakir translated from Urdu:

शायद मैं जिंदगी की सहर लेके आ गया
कातिल को आज अपने ही घर लेके आ गया

“Perhaps I have returned to the dawn of life, I invited the murderer into my home.”

What on earth could this mean you wonder? In part two, I will share an interpretation that aligns with the story that began on June 5th, 2023…

We’re Not In Kansas Anymore

Stage One

6:00 am- The gong rings, and a soundtrack of drums commences. A giant room filled with people, all wearing maroon-coloured robes, immediately begin to breathe deeply and chaotically. There is no entering the water slowly with this meditation, you apply your total energy from the very first second.

The instructions say: “Breathing chaotically through the nose, let breathing be intense, deep, fast, without rhythm, with no pattern… Do this as fast and as hard as you possibly can until you literally become the breathing.” This is my first time doing Dynamic Meditation, and boy, am I in for a treat.

This cacophony of inhalations and exhalations lasts for 10 minutes. And as time goes on, you can feel the energy in the room rising from the intensity of the participants. It’s only 6:05 am, yet this is some of the most energy I will exert all day.

The purpose of this breathing is to build up your energy to support the intensity of the following stages. Your breathing is intimately connected with your emotional state. So breathing chaotically and without a regular rhythm breaks up your typical frame of mind and accesses buried emotions. You’ll see why this is important next.

Stage Two

6:10 am- Another gong rings and the music changes. This time, an explosion. Screaming, wailing, jumping, laughing, crying, dancing… madness ensues from all directions. The second stage of Dynamic Meditation is catharsis. The point is to let go of everything inside that needs to be thrown out. To give your body freedom to express totally whatsoever is there. And to be a witness through it all.

This is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life without even knowing it! I go INSANE. Screaming like I’m being murdered, swearing like I’m deranged, flailing my body around like a rag-doll, and throwing myself heavily to the marble floor, squirming and kicking like a tantrum-throwing child.

Imagine all those times you had a highly charged emotion or a feeling like sadness, laughter, rage, or terror, but you couldn’t express it. You bit your tongue, choked back tears, clenched your fist under your desk, and kept it inside to maintain respectability. Every time you held yourself back, the energy from that emotion buried itself deep inside of you. Later causing outbursts at others or cruel inner dialogue and self-loathing, eventually making you sick.

This second stage of Dynamic Meditation allows you a space, without judgment, where all your suppressed energies can be safely unburdened. It’s an incredible atmosphere of freedom.

Stage Three

6:20 am- gong, new music. The instructions for stage three are: “With arms raised high above your head, jump up and down shouting the mantra “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” as deeply as possible. Don’t stop for 10 minutes. Exhaust yourself completely.”

The aim of this stage is to unlock and tap into latent energy within you. When you push through the initial phases of exhaustion, you may find layers upon layers of power waiting deep inside. Think of a mother who, in dire emergency, finds the strength to lift a car off her trapped child. This is the kind of effort we are looking for here. A super-effort.

Stage three is no joke. Jumping up and down without stopping for 10 minutes straight with your arms raised above your head? Not at all as easy as it might sound. This stage used to haunt me. It would be the first thing I would think about (more like dread) when my alarm would ring at 5:20 am. “How the fuck am I going to get through that jumping?” But eventually new awareness dawned on me, which you will read about next. And this stage became like an extremely intense flow state.

Stage Four

6:30 am- STOP! The instructions follow: “Freeze wherever you are, in whatever position you find yourself. If your arms are up, keep them up. If your knees are bent, keep them bent. Don’t arrange the body in any way. Be a witness to everything that is happening to you.”

The room, just a second before filled with shouting and intense music, immediately drops dead into complete silence. Fervent breathing can be heard as we calm down our buzzing bodies and catch our breath from the intensity of the previous movement. But within 30 seconds not a sound is heard.

Oh, beloved stage four… at first, it is simply an excruciating experience.

I am exhausted. Sweat drips from every surface of my skin: dropping off my nose onto the floor and rolling down my chest, legs, and arms. My robe sticks to me like I’m in a wet t-shirt competition.

“How am I supposed to stand still with my arms in the air when all I want to do is lie down?!” My mind is thinking ferociously, almost in a panic. The first few times, I relented. I gave in to my mind and it’s insisting, “I can’t do it”. But as I continued to attend this meditation, I started to have a totally new and fascinating experience…

I could watch my mind almost as an entity separate from myself: protesting, resisting, screaming at me to put my arms down, but choosing not to give in. As soon as I could watch my mind separate from myself, the pain subsided, and acceptance and patience took over. This stage became an influential experience of witnessing myself at a moment of extreme tension yet feeling cool and calmly observant.

Out of this, a new question arose: “What does it mean for my life to be able to choose to watch and accept a triggering moment instead of reacting in old patterned modes of behaviour?”

Stage Five

6:45 am- the fifth and final stage. Out from the pin-drop silence of stage four slowly arises a single flute in the distance, signaling the end of the freeze. You can lower your arms and move your body from its statue-like posture. The final 15 minutes is a celebration, with joyous music you can dance and relish in the resulting aliveness from your efforts. What a dynamite way to begin the day!

This is Dynamic Meditation, a never-before-seen revolutionary technique designed for the modern humans of today. To release old energies and patterns from the past, to create space for a fresh quality of life, and to invite a new awareness of yourself to grow. It takes place at the crack of dawn every morning at the Osho International Meditation Resort in Pune, India.

Osho Describes the Need for Dynamic Meditation

“Meditation was not something arduous or difficult, but to the Western mind or even to the Eastern mind as it is today – absolutely taken over by Western ideology – watching the mind is not easy. So much garbage and so much crap has been forced into the mind that you will go almost crazy just watching it. It is a film which begins but never ends. You can go on watching day in, day out, year in, year out, and the mind is always ready to supply new images, new dreams.

“It is because of this that I had to create a few devices – Dynamic Meditation, Kundalini Meditation, and others – before you could enter a silent witnessing meditation like vipassana. I have made devices to help you cathart, throw out your garbage rather than wasting time in watching it.

“These devices are needed just to clear the rubbish… and to bring you into a state of naturalness, simplicity.

“From there the only way is witnessing, which Buddha called vipassana. Vipassana means “looking at”. If you want to do vipassana or any silent meditation, Dynamic Meditation becomes absolutely essential. Your mind has been poisoned and that poison has to be thrown out. To throw it out you have to go completely crazy; otherwise that craziness remains inside you and won’t allow you to get into silent, watching witnessing meditation.”

-Osho, Sat Chit Anand – Truth Consciousness Bliss, Talk #3

I hope you enjoyed part one of this story! Tomorrow we will delve deeper into meditation and my experience this past year committing to the practice. If you would like to follow my blog and receive notifications when I make new posts, go to the home page of diamondlife.blog, and in the bottom right corner of your screen there will be a button to subscribe.

See you tomorrow for part two!

-Olivia (Radha)

Some material used here (images and text excerpts) is Copyright©OSHO International Foundation, www.osho.com/copyrights