I have chosen Leela, one of my therapists, to create a new meditative therapy. The first part will be Yaa-Hoo! — for three hours, people simply laugh for no reason at all. And whenever their laughter starts dying they again say, “Yaa-Hoo!” and it will come back. Digging for three hours you will be surprised how many layers of dust have gathered upon your being. It will cut them like a sword, in one blow. For seven days continuously, three hours every day… you cannot conceive how much transformation can come to your being.

And then the second part is “Yaa-Boo.” The first part removes everything that hinders your laughter — all the inhibitions of past humanity, all the repressions. It cuts them away. It brings a new space within you, but still you have to go a few steps more to reach the temple of your being, because you have suppressed so much sadness, so much despair, so much anxiety, so many tears — they are all there, covering you and destroying your beauty, your grace, your joy….

If you go in you will find both, laughter and tears. That’s why sometimes it happens that by laughing, suddenly you find tears also start coming together with it — very confusing, because ordinarily we think they are contrary. When you are full of tears it is not a time to laugh, or when you are laughing it is not the right season for tears. But existence does not believe in your concepts, ideologies; existence transcends all your concepts, which are dualistic, which are based on duality. Day and night, laughter and tears, pain and blissfulness, they both come together. When a man reaches into his innermost being he will find the first layer is of laughter and the second layer is of agony, tears.

So for seven days you have to allow yourself to weep, cry, for no reason at all — just the tears are ready to come. You have been preventing them. Just don’t prevent, and whenever you feel they are not coming, just say, “Yaa-Boo!” These are pure sounds, used as a technique to bring all your laughter and all your tears and clean you completely, so that you can become an innocent child. This is absolutely my meditation. Leela will be in charge of it and you will be surprised that no meditation can give you so much as this small strategy. This is my experience of many meditations, that what has to be done is to break two layers in you. Your laughter has been repressed; you have been told, “Don’t laugh, it is a serious matter.” You are not allowed to laugh in a church, or in a university class…

So the first layer is of laughter, but once laughter is over you will suddenly find yourself flooded with tears, agony. But that too will be a great unburdening phenomenon. Many lives of pain and suffering will disappear. If you can get rid of these two layers you have found yourself.

Maneesha, there is no meaning in the words, `Yaa-Hoo’ or `Yaa-Boo’. These are simply techniques, sounds which can be used for a certain purpose to enter into your own being.

And you may have felt it — when you shout, “Yaa-Hoo!” you may have felt a sudden breeze of freshness and joy. I don’t want so many people to cry here; that’s why I have not used the other part. That is to be used in special groups.

I have invented many meditations, but perhaps this will be the most essential and fundamental one. It can take over the whole world.

Already from every country news cuttings are coming to me — “What is this Yaa-Hoo!?” People are making up meanings of their own, but it has taken over around the world. Now the second thing is Yaa-Boo! And the whole process of Yaa-Hoo and Yaa-Boo, the couple, married… arranged marriage!…

If you cry and weep without any reason, just as an exercise, a meditation… nobody will believe it. Tears have never been accepted as meditation. And I tell you, they are not only a meditation, they are a medicine also. You will have better eyesight and you will have better inner vision. I am giving you a very fundamental technique, fresh and unused. And it is going to become worldwide, without any doubt, because its effects will show anybody that the person has become younger, the person has become more loving, the person has become graceful.

The person has become more flexible, less fanatic; the person has become more joyful, more a celebrant.

All that this world needs is a good cleansing of the heart of all the inhibitions of the past. Laughter and tears can do both. Tears will take out all the agony that is hidden inside you and laughter will take all that is preventing your ecstasy.

Once you have learned the art you will be immensely surprised: why has this not been told up to now? There is a reason: nobody has wanted humanity to have the freshness of a rose flower and the fragrance and the beauty. I have called this series of lectures THE MYSTIC ROSE. “Yaa-Hoo!” is the mantra to bring the mystic rose in your very center, to open your center and release your fragrance. Your life becomes for the first time significant, not just useful.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series:

YAA-HOO! The Mystic Rose

Chapter #30, Question 1
Chapter title: Laughter and tears — a cleansing of the heart
21 April 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

References:

Osho has also spoken on ‘laughter, crying, tears’ in many of His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles:

1. Satyam Shivam Sundram
2. This, This, A Thousand Times This: The Very Essence of Zen
3. The Book of Wisdom
4. From Death to Deathlessness
5. The Rebellious Spirit
6. The Rebel
7. The Messiah
8. A Bird on the Wing
9. Beyond Enlightenment
10. Come, Come, Yet Again Come
11. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 11
12. The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3
13. The Path of the Mystic
14. Sat Chit Anand
15. Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet