They Danced, They Found, They Absorbed – Osho

Each master has to create devices according to his own talents, capacities, genius.

For example, one of the great Sufi masters, Jalaluddin Rumi, had nothing to say, he was not a man of words – but he knew how to dance. His discourse was that of dancing. He would dance, his disciples would dance, and a certain dancing which is called “whirling” … just standing on one spot and whirling. This dancing had made him enlightened, because he whirled for thirty-six hours, continuously, non-stop, till he fell down. But when he opened his eyes, he was a totally different man.

Whirling still goes on. There are dervishes, Sufi followers of Jalaluddin Rumi, who still go on whirling – nothing happens. It was only a device. With Jalaluddin Rumi it was alive; the man gave life to it. With him, dancing was not just dancing. Whirling with Jalaluddin Rumi, you were all slowly becoming stars circling in the sky, and with his grace, with his beauty and with his experience radiating.

Truth is infectious, and there is no antidote to it yet.

For twelve hundred years, dervishes have been whirling; nothing happens. You can go on whirling, but you have forgotten that the whirling was significant because there was a man as a source of radiation – while you were whirling, he was reaching to your hearts.

A story is that a few people had gone hunting and they came across the camp of Jalaluddin Rumi. Just out of curiosity they looked inside the doors. It was a walled garden, and nearabout one hundred disciples were whirling with Jalaluddin Rumi. Those people thought, “These are mad people. Who has ever heard that by whirling you can get truth? In what scripture, in what religion is it written? There is no record. This man is mad, and he is driving so many young people mad.”

They went on. Hunting was far more significant. Obviously it was saner than to dance with Jalaluddin Rumi.

After their hunting, they went back. Just out of curiosity about what had happened to the whirlers, they again looked into the door. They were surprised: those hundred people were sitting under the trees in silence, with closed eyes, as if there was nobody – absolute silence; you could hear the wind blowing through the trees.

Those hunters said, “Poor fellows . . . finished. This happens by whirling – all energy lost. Now they are sitting like the dead; perhaps a few are already dead.”

Do you think they started discussing amongst themselves whether these people had achieved truth? If sitting like this with closed eyes… “What was the need of whirling, you could have sat before.” They went away.

The next month, they went again for hunting. Again, just out of curiosity – “Now what happened to those people – are they really dead, or still sitting, or gone, or what happened?” They looked. There was nobody, only Jalaluddin Rumi was sitting there. They laughed. They said, “Everybody has escaped; they must have understood that this man is mad. He was almost killing them by dancing, whirling. He seems to be an expert, thirty-six hours non-stop… anybody would be dead by that time! No coffee break, no tea break, just continuous whirling . . .”

So they went in and asked Jalaluddin Rumi, “What happened to your disciples? We had come one month ago and there was a group of at least one hundred people.”

Jalaluddin said, “They danced, they found, they absorbed, and they have gone into the world to spread the message.”

“And what are you doing?” they asked.

He said, “I am waiting for the second batch. My people have gone out; they will be bringing them.”

-Osho

From Osho Upanishad, Discourse #27

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