Thank you all of you who joined us for Sunday’s Mega Dynamic Meditation.

To do Dynamic Meditation in a big group is a transformative experience. Your smiles, hugs and positive energy at the end of the session prove that! Here is a lovely VIDEO which captures the spirit, feel free to share it.

Love Osho Team – Swaram & Chetna

Some things we do:

Dynamic Meditation - Every Thursday, 6.45pm, WC1H 8BS
Weekly Dynamic Meditation class in Central London: release stress, let go of pent-up tensions and charge yourself with positive energy. Dynamic Meditation is the healthiest and most potent antidote to modern stress. Details HERE.

Osho Active Meditations Workshop –  16 September 2017 – London, SW9 9NZ
A wonderful introduction to the world of Osho Active Meditation. This workshop blends traditional mindful techniques with Osho Active Meditations and is suitable to new comers as well as to more experienced meditators. Details HERE.

Residential Retreat – 3/5 November 2017, Hampshire, GU34 3RJ
A full weekend of meditation, nature, silence, energy and friendship. The best way to relax, recharge, enjoy and go deep into meditation. In a stunning venue in the idyllic English countryside. Details HERE.

A strange coincidence is that I almost certainly first saw him at the age of 12, on a Boy Scouts’ outing to a football match in London (Fulham v Man Utd.), where he was patrolling the touchline at half-time, selling roasted peanuts to the crowd! I just happened to remember this, which he confirmed a few years ago.

To anyone who didn’t know him he might have appeared as just another ordinary sort of guy, without much ‘worldly success’ or social status to his name, but he had great qualities, a meditative presence, a depth, informed by practical common sense, a quiet, gentle man, loving, calm under pressure, who showed great fortitude in adverse circumstances, not least during his final illness. Then, as Ken says, there was that smile…

Dharmen at his last “moving” job

Dharmen/Brian was the sort of guy you could trust to do a good, conscientious job if he took something on. He advised me on a few computer problems, transferred online meditation/relaxation material onto cds for both of us and actually chose the computer I’m currently using.

He was a good companion on a few outings to football at Arsenal, cricket at Lord’s and pop/rock music at the Albert Hall, and I enjoyed helping him play tennis. A few years ago he introduced me to weekly Ratu Bagus Shaking sessions, which I found surprisingly therapeutic. Then there were the mutual recreational efforts to devise ways to ‘beat the bookies’…

He wasn’t one for wasting words, but when he spoke his mind it made an impression. I well recall that at a satsang meeting during which he’d remained silent most of the time, he vehemently declared the prime importance of meditation – of which, I’d say, he was a good example.

I’m glad I was able to say a few words of appreciation and thanks to him over the phone the night before he died. I wasn’t able to get to his funeral but I hear it was a special, very moving event, befitting such a lovely guy. As Amitabh says, he will be (and is) missed.

Satyadeva

Neurons in the brain communicate with each other via electric impulses which fluctuate rhythmically. Using EEG technology (electroencephalogram), it is possible to monitor these patterns, called brain waves. Interestingly, scientists have noticed a striking difference in brain waves patterns between meditators and non-meditators.

 This particular field of investigation, stemmed from the work of Dr Richard Davidson. In collaboration with the Dalai Lama, Dr Davidson monitored Tibetan monks’ brain waves activity. One of those monks is Matthieu Richard, who is considered to be “the world happiest man”, due to his exceptional brain waves patterns.

 But is happiness just the result of brain waves? And can biofeedback devises transform you in a Tibetan monk?

 First let’s have a quick look at all the different type of brain waves and their characteristics.

 BETA waves are the pattern of normal waking consciousness and fluctuate between 12 and 30 times per second. They are associated with concentration, arousal, alertness, and cognition. At the highest point, the most rapid beta waves are associated with anxiety and stress.

 ALPHA waves are the pattern of relaxation and fluctuate between 8 and 12 times per second. The slowest alpha is a state of deep relaxation, known as the twilight state between sleep and waking.

 THETA waves are the pattern of dreaming sleep and fluctuate between 4 and 8 times per second. During this state, the rational and critical mind is switched off and it is possible to access directly the subconscious mind.

 DELTA waves are the pattern of dreamless sleep and fluctuate between 0.1 and 4 times per second. Only advanced meditators can enter into this state whilst awake.

 GAMMA waves are the patterns of Tibetan monks. They are like spikes of activity which only happens inside Theta waves. Tibetan monks show very high amplitude gamma oscillations, several hundred % higher than the average person. It is estimated that this is the result of thousands of hours of meditation.

 Normally people function in beta waves and spend little time in alpha waves during waking hours. There are a number of benefits in slowing down the brain waves patterns: during alpha state endorphins are produced, cortisol (the stress hormone) is reduced, the parasympathetic nervous system is enhanced whilst the sympathetic nervous system calms down.

 As you might know there are on the market products that claim to slow down your brain activity, hence offering you all the benefits of meditation without effort. Biofeedback techniques promise to shortcut the thousands of hours of meditation practice deployed by Tibetan monks to reach those states. But is that so?

 Osho says: “There is going to be a great misunderstanding in scientific circles, and it has a certain basis. The basis of all misunderstanding is: when the being of a person is in a state of meditation, it creates certain waves in the mind. These waves can be created from the outside by technical means. But those waves will not create meditation – this is the misunderstanding. By creating the waves, you cannot create the situation – because those waves are only symptoms, indicators. It is perfectly good; you can study them. But remember that there is no shortcut to meditation, and no mechanical device can be of any help”.

 So biofeedback devises can certainly help you feel more relaxed, calm and peaceful; they are a natural remedy to anxiety, better than a sleeping pill. However, if you are interested in meditation, remember what Osho says: “If you want the real, you will have to go through a deep inner search, a profound understanding of your mind, an awareness of all the cunning ways of the mind so that the mind can be put aside. Meditation cannot be produced by drugs, it cannot be produced by machines, it cannot be produced from the outside”.

 So if you want the real deal, come and join us to experience the benefits of Osho Active Meditation.

By Amrit Sadhana who is in the management team of Osho International Meditation Resort, Pune   (This article appeared first in the Asian Age.)

Memory has been a highly important faculty of the human brain, so much so that it is believed to be equivalent to intelligence. It is amazing how the tiny brain encodes and retains every small bit of experience and reproduces it whenever needed. In neurological terms, it is the re-creation or reconstruction of past. Neurons are the cells crucial in memory formation and retention. The Lilienfield Study and Thinking Guide suggests that there are around 100 billion neurons in the brain.

Osho

Nature has created this complex and sophisticated device because memory was a great learning tool, but now with the advent of artificial intelligence, memory has taken a backseat. The computer is doing almost all of the brain’s work and with greater efficiency. It is not a bad news though because memory is mechanical, and it is time to go beyond this level and use other dormant parts of the brain.

The new thinking is that memory hampers intelligence because memory is a storage, it cannot create anything original; intelligence, on the other hand, is a creative response to “now”. So if you want to develop creativity, spontaneity, intuitive faculty you have to go beyond the memory and awaken intelligence. You have to clean the debris of your experiences, so that you can be unburdened and be available to the future. If the consciousness has to grow vertically this burden has to be discarded.

Osho had suggested a technique to unburden the mind. Start with living you lives consciously. It will never become a burden on you if you do so. Whatsoever you do consciously is lived through and is no longer a hangover. Whatever you live unconsciously becomes a hangover because you never live it totally. When something is incomplete it wants to be completed. And this becomes your memory.

Unburdening is a process that needs to be done every day. Try this Osho tactic:

“Every night for one hour, before you go to sleep, close your eyes and relive your past. By and by you will unearth many memories. You will be surprised that you were unaware that these things are there and with such vitality and freshness, as if they had just happened!  Watch these memories as you watch a movie, move slowly, so that everything is covered. A certain quality of freedom and freshness will come to you, and you will feel you have touched the source of life.”

The results of daily visits down your memory lane are stupendous. There will be a spring in your step and your touch will come alive again. As blocks disappear, your life will start flowing; anger will dissipate and love will flow in its purity. You will become more sensitive, alive and open.

Osho comments:   Celebration Cannot Be According to the Calendar

This, I think, is one main reason of Mother Meera´s lasting impact on hundreds of thousands of western people. The whole structure and the work around her is so simple, in simplicity lies its beauty and most probably the authenticity.

Last Sunday, during the silence after the love-making, my friend says delicately, “Would you like to come for Mother Meera´s Darshan?
Crisply, I answered, ” No!”
She asked, “Why?”
Now I was out of silence back into the active brain. “Because I don´t have the hunger. It is some kind of hunger which inspires us to go anywhere. Different people have different hungers. This is surely not my hunger to go to anyone for religious reasons.”
She understood and there was no further discussion.

Basically, since I’ve known her these last two or three months, there has always been mention about her spiritual mentor near Freiburg,  and Mother Meera´s coming visit.

People who know me deeply have said many times, ” You change your decisions very fast.” My ex-wife used to say, “You change decisions faster than people change underwear. As a family and  working woman, I cannot rely upon an inconsistent partner.”

To her I explained many times, one decision is based on many components. Once the new reasons emerge which are better than the previous ones I don´t feel ashamed to change them. I am more bounded by the sense of fairness and better judgement where all sides feel win-win.

Next day, during the silent sitting in the church and in the wellness area of the Fitness Centre, I was feeling, “Even if I  don´t have hunger, what is the resistance? Why I don´t go playfully to Mother Meera’s darshan?
Two of my friends at sannyasnews have also asked me to go, why not accept their suggestion and feel the atmosphere?
If you can go to a Swingers Club why not to a gathering of nice people?
Are you afraid to bow down before a lady? Do you think you will become small in your eyes?”

And somewhere picture of MM was getting zoomed in the memory…

At 11 in the evening I checked the darshan schedule and within minutes booked my place for Tuesday, 4pm darshan meeting. There was a peace in me that I had taken a courage to do something new which is not bad in any sense. I don´t think it affects my loyalty to my path. Moreover, I became curious to see the effect, as during the ashram days, while working in Sannyas Initiation Office I had years of experience in high-energy atmosphere of devotion and trust where being feels at the right place at the right time.

Whole of Tuesday there was some curiosity, but not that of an investigative journalist. It was to see something new,  and also the effect on me of surroundings and people.

There must have been around 350 people in the auditorium, most of them aged  45-80. Many children and their parents. The car numbers in the parking area were indicating many people had come from France as well as Switzerland. So a few people had driven two to three hours to reach there.

From the participants’ energy it was clear they are well versed in spiritual literature, meditation practice and some kind of connection with other Indian masters like Sai Baba and Babaji. I will say most of them looked like organic food eaters who have a sceptical attitude towards normal pharmaceutical medicines. I can imagine many people were there with the hope of faith healing.

There was no music. Everybody sitting silently. At exactly 4, Mother enters. Participants stand up to greet her. She reaches the stage. Sits on her chair and the process starts. Same process everywhere – Freiburg, Berlin, London, Paris, Sydney, New York.

One by one people sit before her. She puts the fingers on the head.
Few seconds later there is an eye connection, she nods with the eyes.
One moves, another comes, three persons per minute. In two hours around 350 people get one-to-one, non-personal connection, a kind of silent blessings.

If I say something about Mother Meera´s events in one sentence I can say, “Nothing can be simpler than this.” No theatrical dialogues but only silence, no devotional music but a feeling among the people some kind of healing and positive energy will be transmitted, a kind of loving installation of godly apps in the brain during those precious 17-20 seconds before her. One waits meditatively and patiently for two hours.

Surely there is something…I won´t say it is an all-in-one wonder tablet but whatsoever it is, it’s not the copy of anyone else.

P.S: A few other thoughts I would like to share during the course of comments.

Shantam Prem Opines
.
In India, which is sometimes seen as a spiritual capital of the world, it is a common theme among meditators and devotees from different schools to go around asking others,

“What kind of achievement (Uplabdhi) do you get from your Master and his path?”

Shantam

Invariably, people who ask this on a regular basis are Jehovah the Witness type puritans who have already a high self-opinion about their true path.

Answers too have a set pattern. Much variation on a theme of:  “I feel joy, I feel peace. I feel energy rising on the backbone, I feel hot ball energy on my forehead, it is not head ache, you have to have it to feel it, it cannot be explained.”

I am a Sikh who became a disciple of a not so respected Osho. As a result  I was often  asked about  Inner ‘Uplabdhi’ with their intended follow up question,  such that they can show me a better path (Theirs!).

Whosoever the person,  my answer had and has always the same intonation,   “I have no interest about inner achievement. I am not one of those to check my  bank passbook, enquiring endlessly as to how much interest has come in the investment. For me it is enough of an achievement that I care not how many masters exist, and neither do  I care whether Osho is a true master or a false one.

Up until today,  Osho is not a saviour kind for me,  but an architect type, who has a new plan to reconstruct man’s inner software such that it produces a  more loving, intelligent and rebellious humanity.

As I remember, during my Osho ashram years in the nineties, fellow disciples never bothered others to enquire about inner achievement, nobody even asked others, “Are you meditating or only hanging around?” Hanging around too was a kind of meditation!

However  at sannyasnews, I am often  being bombarded by enquirers about my meditative state.  I remember it parallels my then  ‘back home’ days from the ashram.

It is surely not a sannyasin’s way to judge the subjectivity of others.  I don´t think Meditation is that kind of  wonder drug which can heal cough and constipation and create people who think in a similar way. In fact the opposite. Thankfully, subjective life is not mathematics where every learned person must answer the same for any puzzle of addition, subtraction, multiplication or division.

With this background, I request readers of this piece to write about their own inner depth and spiritual experiences. I am curious how they write. I will learn too!

Doing the Gurdjieff movements in Nisarga
was and is a technical bind,
a choral liability,
a gordian knot,

an exercise in futility, a realisation of defeat, a surrender to due diligence without result, unrewarding practice, mutual support, contrition, vulnerability, a deepening sense of separation ,and unity, moments of sublime gratitude, insight beyond the already known that arises from and permeates the heart, actual love chest pain , two left feet, hands that can’t be trained to follow deliberately confusing patterns, legs that cant be told what to do except follow, the rising unity of the sung voice, the sacred origins of do re mi , dogged persistence, technical instruction stripped of phatic pleasantries, constant failure, occasional success, fear, frustration, watching, stopping, breathing, present attention, relief…

there are so many of these one word aphorisms – ‘pithy observations that reveal a general truth’

but the movements are rewarding…like any deliberate effort must be ( i don’t ski, mountain climb, or do algebra so comparisons are limited )…

but more than that…
for me it was bonding and fun… absurd ridiculous fun… made possible by my old friend Amiyo and her husband Chetan… They are at it right now.. as I type, in another corner of Europe with friends , doing the Work…

The music is very touching, just of itself, composed by Gurdjieff and used for all the movements

In moments the tears, music, movements, the friends, the heart , the support implicit, Osho, Gurdjieff, …all fuse…wonderfully…

If you like to try the impossible without result attachment..have a go…

its the legacy Osho requested Amiyo to promote…through sacred movement…

heres some music to set the mood.. but its not the one we moved to, that I don’t have.. just in my body-mind memory..best place for tunes…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-wcGWR3ndQ

And if you want a storytelling read…try

Damascus Nights…

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/507036.Damascus_Nights…

and dont forget the
http://www.tracscotland.org/festivals/scottish-international-storytelling-festival

love

Ma Neeraj is starting up some Osho Nadabrama meditations in North London, in an unusual venue, an Adobe house in the Meadow Orchard Project in Crouch End.  Details at the end of Osho’s text.

Osho describes the Nadabrama Meditation
“It is a mantra meditation, and mantra is one of the most potential ways. It is very simple yet tremendously effective, because when you chant a mantra or you chant a sound your body starts vibrating; your brain cells particularly start vibrating.

If rightly done your whole brain becomes tremendously vibrant, and the whole body also. Once the body starts vibrating and your mind is already chanting, they both fall in a tune. A harmony – which is ordinarily never there – between the two. Your mind goes on its way, your body continues on its own. The body goes on eating, the mind goes on thinking.’ the body goes on walking on the road the mind is moving far away in the stars. They never meet – they both go on separate pathways, and that creates a split.

The basic schizophrenia is created because the body goes in one direction, the mind goes in another direction. And you are the third element – you are neither the body nor the mind, so you are pulled apart by these two. Half of your being is pulled by the body and half of your being is pulled by your mind. So there is great anguish – one feels torn apart.

In a mantra meditation – nadabrahma or any chanting – this is how the mechanism works: when you start chanting a sound – and any sound will do; even abracadabra – if you start resounding inside, the body starts responding. Sooner or later a moment comes when the body and the mind are both together in one direction for the first time. When body and mind are both together, you are free from the body and the mind – you are not tom apart. Then the third element which you are in reality – call it soul, spirit,’ atma’, anything – that third element is at ease because it is not being pulled in different directions.

The body and the mind are so much engrossed in chanting that the soul can slip out of them very easily, unobserved, and can become a witness – can stand out and look at the whole game that is going on between the mind and the body. It is such a beautiful rhythm that the mind and body never become aware that the soul has slipped out… because they don’t allow so easily, mm? they keep their possession. Nobody wants to lose his possession. The body wants to dominate the soul, the mind wants to dominate the soul.

This is a very sly way to get out of their hold. They become drunk with the chanting, and you slip out.

So in nadabrahma, remember this: let the body and mind be totally together, but remember that you have to become a witness. Get out of them, easily, slowly, from the back door, with no fight, with no struggle. Mm? they are drinking – you get out, and watch from the outside….

This is the meaning of the English word ‘ecstasy’ – to stand out. Stand out and watch from there… and it is tremendously peaceful. It is silence, it is bliss, it is benediction.

This is the whole secret of chanting – that’s why chanting has prevailed down the centuries. There has never been a religion that has not used chanting and mantra. But there is a danger also! If you don’t get out, if you don’t become a witness, there is a danger – then you have missed the whole point. If you become drunk with the body and the mind and your soul also becomes drunk, then chanting is an intoxicant. Then it is like a tranquiliser – it will give you a good sleep, that’s all. It is a lullaby. Good – nothing wrong in it – but not of any real value either.

So this is the pitfall to be remembered: chanting is so beautiful that one wants to get lost. If you are lost, then good, you enjoyed a rhythm, an inner rhythm, and it was beautiful and you liked it, but it was like a drug – it is an acid trip. By chanting, by the sound, you created certain drugs in your body.

Chanting creates chemical changes in the body, and those changes are no different than marijuana or LSD. Some day, when research goes deeper into meditation, they are going to find that chanting creates chemical changes – just as fasting also creates chemical changes.
After the seventh or eighth day of fasting, one feels tremendously jubilant, weightless, very glad for no reason, delighted – as if all burden has disappeared. Your body is creating a certain chemical change.

I am as much against LSD as I am against fasting. And if chanting is used as a drug, I am against it. So the point to be remembered is that you have to use the sound, the chanting, the mantra, not as an intoxicant for your being. Let it be an intoxicant for the body and the mind but you slip out of it before you become intoxicated; you stand out and you watch. You see the body swaying and you see the mind feeling very very peaceful and calm and quiet. Watch from the outside and be alert like a flame.

If this is not done you will have a good sleep but nothing more. Then it is a good thing for health but nothing for the ultimate growth.

Good – pay attention to nadabrahma, mm? And sometimes sitting silently, start chanting anything, ‘aum’, will do, or choose anything, any word, and get in tune with it. Meaning is not important: it can be meaningless – it can be meaningful. ‘Aum’ has no meaning. Or you can create your own mantra and chant it. But remember to slip out of it.

Let the body get drunk, let the mind get drunk, let them fall into a deep love-affair with each other, and you slip out of it. Don’t stay there longer – otherwise you will fall asleep. And if one falls asleep, it is not meditation. Meditation means awareness. So remember it!”
Osho

Nadabrahma Humming Meditation   Three Thursdays  5.30 to 6pm

on17th September, 1st October and 8th October.

at The Ecobuilding (Adobe House)
Meadow Orchard Project,
131, Park Rd, (behind the Heath Centre)
Crouch End London N8 8JD

W7 bus stops outside.

We will go for tea afterwards in  Bicket’s Coffee Shop inside Park Road Swimming Pool.

Led by Ma Neeraj.

Donation £3

Bring warm clothes and a cushion if you have one.

More information:  ring Ma Neeraj Davies on 020 8341 4380

You need to be reminded about Buddha’s life:

Up to his twenty-ninth year, he was a pure Zorba. He had the best young girls available in his kingdom, by the dozen. His whole palace was full of music and dance. He had the best food, best clothes, beautiful palaces to live in, great gardens. He lived more deeply than poor Zorba the Greek.

Zorba had only one Bubulina — an old, faded woman, a prostitute who had lost all her customers. She had false teeth, false hair — and Zorba was her customer only because he could not afford to pay. You call him Zorba? — and you forget completely the twenty-nine years of Buddha’s life which were far richer. Day in, day out, he was simply living in luxury, surrounded by everything that he could imagine. He was living in a dreamland. It was this experience that turned him into a Buddha.

… .. . It has not been analyzed this way. Nobody bothers about the first part of his life — which is the very base.

Siddhārtha Gautama (Buddha’s birth name)  became fed up. He tasted every joy of the outside; now he wanted something more, something deeper, which was not available in the outside world. For the deeper you have to jump in. At the age of twenty-nine he left the palace in the night in search of the inner. It is Zorba going in search of the Buddha.

Zorba the Greek never became a Buddha for the simple reason that his Zorbahood is incomplete. He is a beautiful man, full of zest, but a poor man. He wants to live life in its intensity, but he has no opportunity to live it. He dances, he sings, but he does not know the higher nuances of music. He does not know the dance where the dancer disappears.

The Zorba in Buddha knew the highest and the deepest parts of the outside world. Knowing it all, now he was ready to go on an inner search. The world is good, but not good enough; something more is needed. It gives momentary glimpses; the Buddha wants something eternal. And all these joys will be finished by death. He wants to know something which cannot be finished by death.

If I have to write Gautama Buddha’s life, I will start it from Zorba. And when he is completely acquainted with the outer and whatever the outside can give, and still finds the meaning missing, he goes in search — because that is the only direction that he has not looked in. He never looks back — there is no reason to look back, he has lived it all! And he is not just a religious seeker who has not known the outer at all. He is a Zorba — he goes towards the inner with the same zest, with the same strength, the same power. And, obviously, he finds in his innermost being the contentment, the fulfillment, the meaning, the benediction that he has been seeking.

It is possible you can be a Zorba and stop there. It is possible you may not be a Zorba and start looking for the Buddha — you will not find him. Only Zorba can find the Buddha; otherwise, you don’t have the strength: you have not lived in the outside world, you have avoided it. You are an escapist.

To me, to be a Zorba is the beginning of the journey, and to become a Buddha is reaching the goal. And it can happen in the same individual — it can only happen in the same individual. That’s why I am insisting continuously: don’t create any split in your life, don’t condemn anything of the body. Live it — not unwillingly — live it totally, intensely. That very living will make you capable of another search.

That’s why I don’t say my sannyasins have to be ascetics, that my sannyasins have to leave their wives, their husbands, their children. All that nonsense has been taught for centuries, and how many people — out of millions of monks and nuns — how many people have blossomed? Not even a single one. I want you to live life undivided. And first comes the body, first comes your outer world.

The moment the child is born he opens his eyes, and the first thing he sees is the whole panorama of existence around him. He sees everything except himself — that is for more experienced people. That is for those who have seen everything of the outside, lived it, and are freed from it.

Freedom from the outside does not come by escaping. Freedom from the outside comes by living it totally, and then there is nowhere to go. Only one dimension remains, and it is natural that you would like to search in that remaining dimension. And there is your Buddha, your enlightenment.

You are saying, “Is it possible that Zorba and Buddha can meet?” That is the only possibility. Without Zorba there is no Buddha. Zorba, of course, is not a full stop. He is the preparation for the Buddha. He is the roots; Buddha is the flowering.

From Bondage to Freedom
Chapter – 40  Without Zorba there is no Buddha