Osho on Whirling

BELOVED MASTER,

I READ A POEM OF RUMI THE OTHER DAY WHICH WENT: “MOVE WITHIN, BUT DON’T MOVE THE WAY FEAR MAKES YOU MOVE.”

AROUND THE SAME TIME I AWOKE FROM A DREAM IN TEARS AND ALL I REMEMBERED WAS LOOKING AT MYSELF IN A MIRROR, FACE TO FACE, AND MY EYES WERE FULL OF FEAR.

SOMETIMES IN MEDITATION I TOUCH A BLANK HORIZONTAL SPACE WITH NO REFERENCE POINT FOR WHO I AM AND THIS SAME FEAR IS THERE.

CAN YOU HELP ME TO UNDERSTAND AND MAKE FRIENDS WITH THIS FEAR?

Alima, the words of Mevlana Rumi are immensely significant. There have been very few people who have moved and transformed as many hearts as Jalaluddin Rumi. In the world of the Sufis, Mevlana Rumi is the emperor. His words have to be understood not as mere words, but sources of deep silences, echoes of inner and the innermost songs. He is the greatest dancer the world has known. Twelve hundred years have passed since he was alive. His dance is a special kind of dance. It is a kind of whirling, just the way small children whirl; standing on one spot they go on round and round. And perhaps everywhere in the world small children do that and their elders stop them saying, “You will become dizzy, you will fall, you will hurt yourself,” and, “What is the point of doing it?” Jalaluddin Rumi made a meditation of whirling. The meditator goes on whirling for hours — as long as the body allows him; he does not stop on his own. When whirling a moment comes that he sees himself utterly still and silent, a center of the cyclone. Around the center the body is moving, but there is a space which remains unmoved; that is his being.

Rumi himself whirled for thirty-six hours continuously and fell, because the body could not whirl anymore. But when he opened his eyes he was another man. Hundreds of people had gathered to see. Many thought he was mad: “What is the point of whirling?”… Nobody can say this is a prayer; nobody can say this is great dance; nobody can say in any way that this has something to do with religion, spirituality….But after thirty-six hours when they saw Rumi so luminous, so radiant, so new, so fresh — reborn, in a new consciousness, they could not believe their eyes. Hundreds wept in repentance, because they had thought that he was mad. In fact he was sane and they were mad. And down these twelve centuries the stream has continued to be alive. There are very few movements of spiritual growth which have lived so long continuously. There are still hundreds of dervishes. `Dervish’ is the Sufi word for sannyas. You cannot believe it unless you experience, that just by whirling you can know yourself. No austerity is needed, no self-torture is needed, but just an experience of your innermost being and you are transported into another plane of existence from the mortal to the immortal. The darkness disappears and there is just eternal light.

His words, Alima, have to be understood very carefully because he has not spoken much — just a few small poems. His statement, “Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move” — it is so beautiful. Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move — not out of fear, because all so-called religions are based on fear. Their God is nothing but fear, and their heaven and hell are nothing but projections of fear and greed. Rumi’s statement is very revolutionary: Do not move because of fear. All the religions say to people, “Fear God!” Mahatma Gandhi used to say, “I do not fear anybody but God.” When I heard this I said this is the most stupid statement anybody can make. You can fear everybody, but don’t fear God because God can only be approached through love. God is not a person but the universal heartbeat. If you can sing with love and dance with love… an ordinary activity like whirling out of love…. Joy and celebration are enough to reach to the innermost sanctum of being and existence.

You all have been living out of fear. Your relationships are out of fear. Fear is so overwhelming — like a dark cloud covering your life — that you say things which you don’t want to say, but fear makes you say them. You do things which you do not want to do, but fear makes you do them. A little intelligence is enough to see….Millions of people are worshipping stones carved by themselves. They have made their Gods and then they worship them. It must be out of great fear, because where can you find God? The easier way is to carve a God in beautiful marble and worship. And nobody thinks that this is sheer stupidity, because everybody else is doing it in different ways — somebody in the temple and somebody in the mosque and somebody in the synagogue; it does not make any difference. The essential thing is the same, that what you are doing is out of fear — your prayers are full of fear. Rumi is making a revolutionary, an extraordinary statement: “Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.” Then what is the way to move within? Why not move playfully? Why not make your religion a playfulness? Why be so serious? Why not move laughingly? — just like small children running joyously after butterflies for no special reason. Just the joy of the colors and the beauty of the flowers and the butterflies is enough — and they are so immensely happy.

In every twenty-four hours find a few moments which are fearless, which means in those moments you are not asking for anything. You are not asking for any reward and you are not worried about any punishment; you are simply enjoying the whirling, the going inwards.

In fact, just in the beginning it may look a little difficult. As you move a little inwards you become automatically joyful, playful, prayerful. A gratitude arises in you that you have never known before and a space opens up which is infinite, your inner sky. Your inner sky is not less rich than the outer sky: it has its own stars and its own moon and its own planets and its own immensity; it has exactly as vast a universe as you can see outside. You are just standing in between two universes: one is outside you; one is inside you. The outside universe consists of things, and the inside universe consists of consciousness, of bliss, of joy.

Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move, because fear cannot enter inwards. Why can fear not enter inwards? Fear cannot be alone, and inwards you have to be alone. Fear needs a crowd, fear needs companionship, friends, even foes may do. But to be alone, to go inwards, you cannot take anybody with you; you have to be more and more alone. Not only can you not take anyone, you cannot take anything either. Your wealth, your power, your prestige — you cannot take anything. Inside you cannot take even your clothes! You will have to go nude and alone; hence fear cannot move inwards, fear moves outwards. Fear moves towards money, fear moves towards power, fear moves towards God; fear moves in all directions except inwards. To go inwards the first requirement is fearlessness.

Source:

Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.

Discourse Series: Om Shantih Shantih Shantih Chapter #11

Chapter title: Just don’t be a polack!

5 March 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘whirling’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. A Bird on the Wing
2. Beyond Psychology
3. The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3
4. The Hidden Splendor
5. The Osho Upanishad
6. The Rebellious Spirit
7. Rinzai: Master of the Irrational
8. The Transmission of the Lamp
9. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1