
Dance: Merging with the Cosmos
You are a great problem-creator… just understand this and suddenly problems disappear. You are perfectly in shape; you are born perfect, that is the whole message.
You are born perfect; perfection is your innermost nature. You have just to live it. Decide, and live it.
But if you are not yet fed up with the game you can continue, but don’t ask why. You know. The why is simple: the ego cannot exist in emptiness, it needs something to fight with. Even a ghost of your imagination will do, but you need to fight with someone. The ego exists only in conflict, the ego is not an entity, it is a tension. Whenever there is a conflict, the tension arises and the ego exists;’ when there is no conflict the tension disappears and the ego disappears. Ego is not a thing — it is just a tension.
And of course nobody wants small tensions, everybody wants big tensions. If your own problems are not enough, you start thinking about humanity and the world and the future… socialism, communism, and all that rubbish. You start thinking about it as if the whole world depends on your advice. Then you think, ‘What is going to happen in Israel? What is going to happen in Africa?’ And you go on advising, and you create problems. People become very excited, they cannot sleep because there is some war going on. They become very excited. Their own life is so ordinary that they will have to reach extraordinariness from some other source. The nation is in difficulty so they become identified with the nation. The culture is in difficulty, the society is in difficulty — now there are big problems and you become identified. You are a Hindu and the Hindu culture is in difficulty; you are a Christian and the church is in difficulty. The whole world is at stake. Now you become big through your problem.
The ego needs some problems. If you understand this, in the very understanding the mountains become molehills again, and then the molehills also disappear. Suddenly there is emptiness, pure emptiness all around. This is what enlightenment is all about — a deep understanding that there is no problem.
Then, with no problem to solve, what will you do? Immediately you start living. You will eat, you will sleep, you will love, you will have a chit-chat, you will sing, you will dance — what else is there to do? You have become a God, you have started living. If there is any God, one thing is certain: he will not have any problems. That much is certain. Then what is he doing with all his time? No problems, no psychiatrist to consult, no gurus to go and surrender to… what is God doing? What will he do? He must be getting crazy, whirling. No, he is living; his life is totally full with life. He is eating, sleeping, dancing, having a love affair — but without any problems.
Start living this moment and you will see that the more you live, the less problems there are. Because now that your emptiness is flowering and living there is no need. When you don’t live, the same energy goes sour. The same energy which would have become a flower, is stuck; not being allowed to bloom it becomes a thorn in the heart. It is the same energy…
If people can dance a little more, sing a little more, be a little more crazy, their energy will be flowing more, and their problems will by and by disappear. Hence I insist so much on dance. Dance to orgasm; let the whole energy become dance, and suddenly you will see that you don’t have any head — the stuck energy in the head is moving all around, creating beautiful patterns, pictures, movement. And when you dance there comes a moment when your body is no longer a rigid thing, it becomes flexible, flowing. When you dance there comes a moment when your boundary is no longer so clear; you melt and merge with the cosmos, the boundaries are mixing. Watch a dancer — you will see that he has become an energy phenomenon, no longer in a fixed form, no longer in a frame. He is flowing out of his frame, out OF his form, and becoming more alive, more and more alive.
But only if you dance yourself will you know what really happens. The head inside disappears; again you are a child. Then you don’t create any problems.
Live, dance, eat, sleep, do things as totally as possible. And remember again and again: whenever you catch yourself creating any problem, slip out of it, immediately. Once you get into the problem then a solution will be needed. And even if you find a solution, out of that solution a thousand and one problems will arise again. Once you miss the first step you are in the trap. Whenever you see that now you are slipping into a problem, catch hold of yourself, run, jump, dance, but don’t get into the problem. Do something immediately so that the energy that was creating the problems becomes fluid, unfrozen, melts, goes back to the cosmos.
Primitive people don’t have many problems. I have come across primitive groups in India who say they don’t dream at all. Freud would not be able to believe that it is possible. They don’t dream, but if sometimes somebody dreams — it is a rare phenomenon — the whole village fasts, prays to God. Something has gone wrong, something wrong has happened… a man has dreamed.
It never happens in their tribe because they live so totally that nothing is left in the head to be completed in the sleep. Whatsoever you leave incomplete has to be completed in your dreams; whatsoever you have not lived remains as a hang-over and completes itself in the mind — that’s what a dream is. The whole day you go on thinking. The thinking simply shows that you have more energy than you use for living; you have more energy than your so-called life needs.
You are missing real life. Use more energy. Then fresh energies will be flowing. Just don’t be a miser. Use them today; let today be complete unto itself; tomorrow will take care of itself, don’t be worried about tomorrow. The worry, the problem, the anxiety, all simply show one thing: that you are not living rightly, that your life is not yet a celebration, a dance, a festivity. Hence all the problems.
If you live, ego disappears. Life knows no ego, it knows only living and living and living. Life knows no self, no center; life knows no separation. You breathe — life enters into you; you exhale you enter into life. There is no separation. You eat, and trees enter into you through the fruit. Then one day you die, you are buried in the earth, and the trees suck you up and you become fruits. Your children will eat you again. You have been eating your ancestors — the trees have converted them into fruits. You think you are a vegetarian? Don’t be deceived by appearances. We are all cannibals. Life is one, it goes on moving. It comes into you; it passes through you. In fact to say that it comes into you isn’t right, because then it seems as if life comes into you, and then passes out of you.
You don’t exist — only this life’s coming and going does. You don’t exist — only life exists in its tremendous forms, in its energy, in its millions of delights. Once you understand this, let that understanding be the only law. And start living as Buddhas from this very moment.
If you decide otherwise, it is for you to decide — but as I see it, it is a decision: ‘I am not going to befool myself anymore. Now I start living as a Buddha, in emptiness. I will not try to find unnecessary occupations. I dissolve.’
Source:
This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.
Discourse Series: Ancient Music in the Pines
Chapter #2
Chapter title: A thousand and one bifurcations
22 February 1976 am in Buddha Hall
References:
Osho has spoken on ‘dance, celebration, festivity, energy, life’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- The Book of Wisdom
- Come, Come, Yet Again Come
- The Hidden Splendor
- Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance
- Beyond Enlightenment
- Om Mani Padme Hum
- Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, 2
- Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2, 3, 4
- The Path of the Mystic
- The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1, 2
- Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1, 2
1 Comment
Shalom Frandev
Thank You 🙏