The Alchemy of Dance
Osho on Dance
When the life, the mind and the eyes are in agreement”, hmm? — that is the way to find the inside. When you are in agreement, when there is no conflict inside you, that is the way. That is why Bauls insist on being without conflict, on being natural, spontaneous. Don’t create any division within yourself, otherwise you will never be able to reach — because a tremendous quality of agreement is needed. When you fall into harmony, the door is open. “When the life, the mind and the eyes are in agreement, the target is within your reach. You can see the formless one with bare eyes.” “Forget not,” they say, “that your body contains the whole of existence.” “I am fulfilled,” they sing, “being a blow of your own breath on your flute. What more can I wish for me than to be blown away with such melody?”
A Baul is fulfilled the moment he comes to a deep agreement within himself. His singing and his dancing is nothing but an effort to fall into agreement with himself. Have you watched somebody dancing? What happens? Have you observed yourself sometimes dancing? What happens? Dance seems to be one of the most penetrating things, in which one falls into a harmony. Your body, your mind, your soul all fall into a harmony in dancing. Dancing is one of the most spiritual things there is. If you really dance, you cannot think. If you really dance, the body is used so deeply that the whole energy becomes fluid. A dancer loses shape, fixity. A dancer becomes a movement, a process. A dancer is not an entity: he’s movement, he’s energy. He melts. Great dancers, by and by, melt. And a dancer cannot retain his ego because if he retains the ego, that will be a jarring note in his dance. A real dancer loses his ego in it. He forgets that he is. The dancer is lost; only the dance remains. Then the door opens because you are one unity. Now the soul is not separate, the mind is not separate, the body is not separate. All have fallen in one line. All have become one, melting into each other, merging into each other.
It is said about Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers in the world, that there were moments when he would take jumps, and he would come back so slowly that it was almost impossible. He would fall back featherlike, as if gravitation had lost its power over him. Scientists were worried: “This should not happen, it cannot happen” — but it was happening. No other dancer has been capable in that way. And of course, Nijinsky went mad; he became a Baul. His is one of the madnesses which has not yet been understood. And because he was in the West, it was impossible to comprehend what had happened to him. He was confined to a psychiatric hospital, forced, given electric shocks, insulin shots. Had he been in the East he would have become one of the greatest Bauls. His madness was nothing to be treated, it was something to be revered.
But how did he become mad? He became mad through his dancing. When he was asked what happens to him, he said, “It happens only when I am lost, so I cannot say anything about it. If I am, then it never happens. I have tried it. If I am there, deliberately trying it, consciously trying, it never happens. But there are moments when I am lost. Then simply, I don’t know who jumps — and then it happens. I am also surprised. I have no explanation for it, but it happens only when I am lost.”
That is what Bauls say: when you dance and you become a whirlwind and, by and by, you are completely lost in your dancing, it happens. Something breaks down inside you. The barriers are lost. You become one unity. A great orgasm spreads all over your being. You are in tune with existence in those moments. These moments are the SATORIS of Zen, but Bauls have a better way to attain them. Zen has to be worked on for twelve, fifteen, twenty, thirty years. It is a very slow process. It is the path of meditation.
Bauls can attain to it more easily. Just the day you decide that, “I am ready to drop my ego,” you become available to God and God becomes available to you. The essential man suddenly arises over the non-essential; there is a mutation. And this is the moment when you are full of love, when you are love, when your energy is love. This is the moment when you can bless the whole existence. When there is no conflict within you, there cannot be any conflict between you and the existence. That is the secret: drop all conflict within you, and your conflict with the existence is also dropped simultaneously. Become one within you and you have become one with the existence.
Source:
Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.
Discourse Series: The Beloved, Vol 1 Chapter #1
Chapter title: Submission is the secret of knowledge
21 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall
References:
Osho has spoken on ‘Dancing, Egolessness, Existence, Life’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles:
Osho has also spoken on similar topic in many of His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles:
- Come, Come, Yet Again Come
- The Discipline of Transcendence
- Ecstasy – The Forgotten Language
- From Death to Deathlessness
- The Rebellious Spirit
- Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance
- Sufis: The People of the Path