Active Meditation
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Active Meditation is the generic term for a number of meditation techniques created by Osho. All of Osho's active meditations involve a beginning stage of activity -- sometimes intensely physical -- followed by a period of silence.
[edit] Specific Methods
The Active Meditation techniques are:
- Dynamic Meditation
- Kundalini Meditation
- Nataraj Meditation
- Nadabrahma Meditation
- No Dimensions Meditation
- Gourishankar Meditation
- Mandala Meditation
[edit] Quotes
"Just sitting directly in silence won't help. The moment you will sit silently, you will see all sorts of things moving inside you; you will feel it almost impossible to be silent. First throw those things out so you come to a natural state of rest. Real meditation starts only when you are at rest."
"In Buddha's time, dynamic methods of meditation were not needed. People were more simple, more authentic. They lived a more real life. Now, people are living a very repressed life, a very unreal life. When they don't want to smile, they smile. When they want to be angry, they show compassion. People are false, the whole life pattern is false. People are just acting, not living. Many incomplete experiences go on being collected, piled up inside their minds."
"A catharsis is needed because your heart is so suppressed, due to your brain. Your brain has taken over so much of your being that it dominates you. There is no place for the heart, so the longings of the heart are suppressed. You have never laughed heartily, never lived heartily, never done anything heartily. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make things mathematical, and the heart is suppressed. So firstly, a chaotic method is needed to push the center of consciousness from the brain toward the heart."
Regarding traditional methods, he said, "But we are in an altogether different situation now. The whole atmosphere, the whole thought-sphere, has changed. Every method is organic to a particular situation, to a particular mind, to a particular man. The fact that the old methods don't work doesn't mean that no method is useful. It only means that the methods themselves must change. As I see the situation, modern man has changed so much that he needs new methods, new techniques." For a more complete text, see Need for new methods.
