The human mind is effort-oriented, action-oriented, obsessed with activity – because the more active you are, the more your ego can be fulfilled, the more you can say “I.” All activity is basically food for your egoistic personality.
Meditation is not an effort, it is not an activity. Rather, it is a deep surrender. Rather, it is to be in non-activity. Basically, just to be is meditation: not doing anything, not desiring anything, not hankering to go somewhere, just being here and now. To be simply here and now, that’s what I call meditation.
But it is very difficult to conceive. Even to contemplate it is difficult because the mind cannot conceive of anything that is not an effort. The very language of the mind, the very framework, the very structure, is based on effort: to do something, to achieve something, to go somewhere.
Mind is very serious, and meditation is absolutely non-serious.
When I say this you may be bewildered, because people go on talking about meditation very seriously. But meditation is not a serious thing. It is just like play: non-serious – sincere, but non-serious. It is not something like work, it is more like play. Play is not an activity. Even when it is active, it is not an activity. Play is just pleasure. The activity is not going anywhere, it is not motivated. Rather, it is just overflowing energy.
But it is difficult because we are so much in activity. We have always been so active that activity has become a deep-rooted obsession. Even while asleep we are active. Even thinking about relaxing we are active. We even make relaxation an activity: we make an effort to relax. This is absurd! But because of the habit, the robot-like habits of the mind…
So what to do? The mind cannot now conceive how to be non-active. So what to do? Only non-activity leads you to your inner center. So I have devised a means, and the means is to be active to such an extreme that activity simply ceases. It ceases because you are so madly active that the mind’s hankering to be active is thrown out of your system. Only then, after a deep catharsis, can you fall down into inactivity and have a glimpse of the world that is not the world of effort.
Once you know it, you can move into it without any effort. Once you have the feeling of it – how to be just here and now, without doing anything – you can move into it at any moment, you can remain in it anywhere. Ultimately, you can be outwardly active and inwardly deeply inactive.
But in the beginning, you will have to do a very paradoxical thing. The paradox is this: you have to be active, madly active, violently active, so that everything is released, your obsessions are released.
Moreover, we have suppressed so many things. We are just a heap of repressions. Those repressions are always there working in the unconscious, constantly disturbing you, poisoning you. Unless they are released you cannot feel at ease with yourself. And if you cannot feel at ease with yourself, how can you feel at ease with the universe? If you cannot feel at home with yourself, how can you feel at home with the universe? But unless you are deeply at ease with the whole, you have not tasted religion.
You have not been in contact with yourself for so long, for many lives. You are alienated from yourself, you have become a stranger to yourself because of this repressive attitude. We go on repressing everything. You have not screamed, laughed, you have not cried, you have not done anything authentically, deeply, in which your totality is involved.
Deep down, you have been collecting madness. It can erupt at any moment. No one is normal because, just behind the so-called normalcy, the abnormal, the madman, is hidden. That abnormal, that repressed unconscious is a volcano, and it goes on disturbing your life, it goes on disturbing your perceptions. It goes on disturbing everything. It is a poison, a source of poison that has to be released to make you feel at home with yourself. That’s the first step. Only then can you be at ease with the universe.
And once – if even for a single moment – the universe becomes your home, you have become religious. It’s a transformation. Then you will never be something else. Then you can move anywhere, you can be anyone or anything, and you will remain, deep down, in your home. This feeling, in depth, can come only when all the accumulated nonsense inside you is released and thrown out.
We go on preserving it. We are always on guard so that it won’t be released; we protect it from everywhere. If you even go on protecting it during this meditation camp, nothing will happen. If you are ready to act out whatsoever is repressed in your system, then much is possible. You can leave here a totally new man; a new being can happen to you. But you will have to be daring, expressive, authentic and playful with yourself.
We will be doing three meditations: in the morning, in the afternoon, and the night. I’ll tell you something about the morning meditation so you can be ready for it.
The morning meditation is a mad meditation – madness with a method. Whatsoever is suppressed in you has to be brought out. Once it is brought out, you will be relieved of it, unburdened from it. As I see you, I see you so burdened – everyone carrying the Himalayas with himself. You cannot move an inch with this whole Himalaya on your head. Throw it off! That’s what I call daring. Be courageous.
In the morning meditation there are four steps. The first step is of ten minutes: chaotic breathing… I say chaotic. No system is to be applied, no pranayama. Just chaotic breathing: breathing in and breathing out. Forget everything else. Use breathing as a hammering, and breathe so fast, so deep and so chaotically that you become just a system of breathing: breathing in, breathing out. It works miracles.
First: it helps you to release your repressed emotions, because breathing has helped you to repress them, so only through breathing can they be released.
You may not be aware of it, but the more repressed a man or a woman you are, the shallower is your breathing. A repressed man cannot take deep breaths. He is afraid: his breath cannot go deep down to his navel, it is just shallow. He takes it in and throws it out. It never goes to the very roots of his being. He is afraid of the roots; he is afraid of being total, because if he is total then he will have to release his repressions. He will have to act differently, he will not be able to control himself. He will be thrown into the deep river of existence. Existence will control him, he will not be able to control existence. To control, we control our breathing system.
Look at a child: he breathes differently. He is not yet cultured, civilized, that’s why. But the whole of society is working to cultivate him, and once he becomes aware of the society, his breathing will change.
The breathing changes at a particular moment. When the child becomes aware of his sex – or the society, his parents, his family makes him aware of his sex or her sex – the breathing changes. The breathing becomes shallow, because a deep breathing system massages your sex center from within. It excites the sex center, it goes deep down and helps the sex energy to move. Society, religions – the so-called religions – are all afraid of sex. Families, cultures, civilizations are all afraid of sex. So the child… Once the child is condemned for his sexuality, he will never again breathe naturally. His breathing will become shallow, because if his breath goes deep down, the sex center will be excited. He cannot allow his breathing to go so deep. That’s why everyone’s breathing is shallow.
So, the first step of the technique is just the opposite situation to this social structure: you have to breathe so deeply that the sex center is hit from within, and the sex center is hit so forcibly that the energy there is released.
The sex center can be hit in two ways. It can be hit from without: when you are attracted to the opposite sex, it is hit from without. Then the energy moves outward. If you take a deep breath and hit the center from within, the energy moves within – the same energy. Sex is both. It can move out, it can move in. It can move down, it can move up. You have both avenues; the energy just has to be released. An inner system exists in which sex energy can move. We have called it kundalini; kundalini is nothing but sex energy moving within.
So, for ten minutes you have to fight with civilization, fight with shallow breathing: chaotic breathing!
It will also do one more thing: it will release your body energy, your body electricity. They call it “bioelectricity.” Once the bioelectricity is released in the body you can use it as a vehicle to go beyond – to go beyond the body. We are afraid of the body, so we don’t allow it to be really alive. We have made it half-dead. Half-dead, it is controllable. If it is totally alive, it is not controllable.
We are afraid of it. The mind is always afraid, afraid of only one thing: what will happen if the mind is not in control? The mind can control only a dead body or a half-dead body. If the body is fully alive, the mind becomes afraid. The energy is so much that the mind is thrown off.
The ten minutes of chaotic breathing will help your body energy to be released. Every cell of your body will become alive and dancing. And when these cells start dancing within, you yourself will also have a feeling of dance. Your whole body will start dancing and jumping. Allow it. This is how one enters the river of existence.
In the second step, for ten minutes you have to act out all your madnesses. Don’t be shy, because we have not gathered here for that. Don’t be afraid of others. Just think that you are here alone. This is a path of loneliness; one has to travel it alone. Many others will be doing the meditation, everyone will be doing it, but you are to be concerned only with yourself. If you are concerned with others you will not move an inch from where you are, and your whole time here will be wasted. Don’t be concerned with others. Remain absolutely concerned with yourself.
And remember, you have many madnesses within you. You already know that, that’s why you are afraid. Release them! If you want to scream, scream. If you want to weep, weep. If you want to jump, jump. If you want to dance, dance. If you just want to be like a child – playing with your body, jumping, dancing, screaming – do it!
And do it playfully, don’t be serious about it. If you are serious you cannot be totally released. Be playful. Enjoy the madness that is coming out of you. Help it, enjoy it, cooperate with it. If you are really interested in going beyond your madness, this is the way. When it is released you will feel unburdened, you will feel weightless. You will feel a subtle newness entering you, as if your childhood has come back. You are a child again: new-born, fresh. This freshness is essential. This innocence is essential to move further.
In the third step, we will be using the sound hoo as a mantra. You have to shout “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” loudly, forcibly, bringing your total energy to it, as if your whole life is at stake. For ten minutes you have to go on screaming, yelling “Hoo! Hoo!” What is this hoo going to do?
It is going to do two things. When you scream “Hoo!” your total breath is thrown out. The more loudly you scream the better. Exhale totally; this creates a space within you. In that space, sex energy can move upward. The hoo is to help sex energy to move up. When you say “Hoo!” your sex center contracts, the breath goes out, and a space is created within you just near the sex center. In that space, in that emptiness, sex energy moves upward.
These three steps are to be done with so much energy and force that nothing is left behind. You are not withholding anything, you are totally in it.
Then, after thirty minutes, when I feel that you have released your madness and your energy is moving, suddenly I will say “Stop!” Then you have to stop completely, as you are. Don’t move, don’t do anything. If your hand is raised, if you are in a dancing posture or jumping when you hear me calling you to stop, stop then and there. The moment you hear it, feel as if you are no longer: you have become just a stone, a statue. Someone will be standing, someone else will be sitting, someone else will be lying down. Don’t move, don’t cry. No noise, no movement. Suddenly it is to be as if everyone has become dead. Even if you fall… If you are standing and your posture is such that you cannot stand that way, don’t make any adjustment, just let the body fall. But don’t help it to fall. Don’t make any adjustment, don’t change your posture.
It is essential that this stopping be deeply understood, because you can deceive yourself. If your posture is awkward, or you feel it is troublesome, inconvenient, your mind can deceive you. Because I am not there, you think that you can change your posture a little and be comfortable. Then you have missed the point.
Don’t do anything. The moment I say “Stop!” stop all movements. What will happen? – in this sudden stop, you will be thrown to the center. Just a moment before, you were moving as a cyclone, in mad activity. Suddenly I say “Stop!” Everything stops. You are thrown to the center, you immediately become the observer. If you do anything at all, you will miss the moment.
Don’t do anything. A single movement and you can miss the whole point. So when you hear me calling you to stop, stop – whatsoever happens! Your body may fall down, let it fall. But don’t help it. Consciously, you are not to do anything.
For ten minutes you will remain in this stone-like state. Those ten minutes will be a new experience. You will enter a new space within: something which is beyond you, you have never known it. And even a glimpse will fill you with bliss. For these ten minutes – in this stone-like, dead state – you will be really alive for the first time. You will become an observer, a witness of your own body.
This witnessing is meditation. In this witnessing you will feel light filling you, bliss entering you and a divine presence everywhere: all around, within, without. But you are just to be a witness of everything: of the light, of bliss, of divine presence – just a witness.
This is going to be in the morning meditation. Then, remain a witness for the whole day. Remain a witness the whole day. Remain more and more silent, witnessing yourself. If you feel like screaming, jumping, dancing during the day, you can do it alone. And if someone else is doing it, don’t pay any attention to him, let him do it. But don’t disturb others. Don’t talk much, don’t judge. For the eight days of the camp, cancel all judging attitudes. Someone may go naked – you are not to judge. Remember only one thing: that whatsoever you are doing, do it only with yourself. Don’t touch anybody’s body and don’t be concerned with anyone else.
In the morning meditation, if you feel that it would be good for you to go nude, you are allowed. Even in the middle of the meditation, if you feel that clothes are hindering you, you can throw them off – but only in the morning meditation, not in other meditations. And you can be nude in the morning meditation but not at any other time during the day.
For these coming eight days, feel as if you are a child – neither judging anyone nor condemning anyone. Don’t evaluate. Exist here like children: with no morality, with no moral concepts, just pure, innocent. Morality is not pure because it has a condemning attitude in it. It is not innocent, it is calculating. Be innocent like children, and help others to also be in such innocence.
Don’t disturb anyone. Remain more and more silent. Don’t read, don’t talk, don’t use the mind much. It is better to use the body more and the mind less. Remain concerned with only one thing: that you have come here for meditation.
In the afternoon for one hour we will be doing another meditation. I will explain that to you in the morning.
Our night session is over.

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