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Part VI : Kirtan Mandali
In October 1971 Osho starts the Kirtan Mandali groups of Indian
and Western sannyasins, who travel around India giving talks on
His teachings, leading meditations, playing music, singing and
dancing.
You want to know what kirtan...can do to enhance devotion.
It can do a lot if we do it rightly. The way we are doing the
second stage of Dynamic Meditation can be used for singing or
dancing as well. It has been used in the past by those who knew
its real meaning. Those who don't know the real meaning just dance
and shout - which is a waste of time. If kirtan can be done
in the way of the second stage of the Dynamic Meditation, it can
be of tremendous help.
If you can dance with abandon, you will begin to see yourself
and your body as separate from each other. Soon you will cease
to be a dancer; instead you will become a watcher, a witness.
When your body will be dancing totally, a moment will come when
you will suddenly find that you are completely separate from the
dance.
In the past many devices were designed to bring about this separation
between a seeker and his body, and singing and dancing was one
such device. You can dance in such a way and with such abandon
that a moment comes when you break away from dancing and clearly
see yourself standing separate from the dance. Although your body
will continue to dance, you will be quite separate from it as
a spectator watching the dance. It will seem as if the axle has
separated itself from the wheel which continues to keep moving - as
if the axle has come to know that it is an axle and that which
is moving is the wheel, although separate from it.
Dancing can be seen in the same way as a wheel. If the wheel
moves with speed, a moment comes when it is seen distinctly separate
from the axle. It is interesting that when the wheel is unmoving
you cannot see it as separate from the axle, but when it moves
you can clearly see them as two separate entities. You can know
by contrast which is moving and which is not.
Let someone dance and let him bring all his energy to it, and
soon he will find there is someone inside him who is not dancing,
who is utterly steady and still. That is his axle, his center.
That which is dancing is his circumference, his body, and he himself
is the center. If one can be a witness in this great moment then
kirtan has great significance. But if he continues to dance without
witnessing it, he will only waste his time and energy.
Techniques and devices come into being and then they are lost.
And they are lost for the simple reason that man as he is tends
to forget the essential and hold on to the non-essential, the
shadow. The truth is that while the essential remains hidden and
invisible like the roots of a tree, the non-essential, the trunk
of the tree is visible. The non-essential is like our clothes,
and the essential is like our soul. And we are liable to forget
that which is subtle and invisible and remember the gross, the
visible. It is for this reason when someone comes to me to know
if kirtan can be useful, I emphatically deny it and ask him not
to indulge in it. I know that now it is a dead tradition, a corpse
without soul, as if the axle has disappeared and only the wheel
remains....
There are two ways to come to the axle, the center, the supreme.
One of the ways lies in your being so steady and still - just
at a standstill - that there is not a trace of trembling in
you and you arrive at the center. The other way is just the contrary:
you get into such terrific motion that the wheel runs at top speed
and the axle becomes visible and knowable. And this second way
is easier than the first.
It is easy to know the axle if the wheel is in motion. While
Mahavira comes to know it through stillness, through meditation,
Krishna knows it through dancing. And Chaitanya surpasses even
Krishna in dancing; his dance is magnificent, incomparable. Perhaps
no other person on this earth danced as much as Chaitanya. In
this connection it is good to bear in mind that man has both a
circumference and a center, and while his circumference - the
body - is always moving and changing, his center - his
soul - is still and quiet, it is eternal. And the question
of questions is how to come to this unchanging, eternal center.
krishn13
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