Yoga Chinmaya – Sat Sangha Salon

Meditation and Brahmacharya – Krishna Radha

Beloved Chinmaya

Chinmaya was a hard man to miss in the ashram. He was tall with very dark skin and long, shiny, thick, black hair. His eyes were also very dark and so piercing that I could feel the fire coming out of them. He had a moustache, a long beard and on rare occasions a lovely smile, but for the most part he seemed serious and self-absorbed. His skin was smooth to touch and his body very flexible, as was to be expected from a man steeped in the ways of yoga.

He had come to Osho five years earlier, with a small following of his own disciples, and walked around the ashram in an aloof, silent, Buddha-like way. He also had a certain charisma — you couldn’t help but turn around whenever he passed by — and Indian sannyasin would often stop, bow down and touch his feet, as if recognising him as next in line to Osho.

What attracted my attention was the odd things he did during meditation, like half-closing his eyelids and then rolling his eyes upwards so that you could see only the white parts. It looked strange and yet very spiritual, and since I was on a deep spiritual quest myself I thought, “Hmm, he might be the perfect match for me.”

I don’t really remember how we came together. All I know is that I was the one who set out to catch him, not the other way around. He was the unreachable castle which I, Joan of Arc, had decided to conquer; a habit of mine that over the years has pushed me into chasing several unattainable men.

Being with Chinmaya was a gift in an unexpected sense: he encouraged me to go even more deeply into meditation, so that besides Dynamic in the morning and Kundalini in the evening, I was experimenting with lots of other techniques, sometimes alone and sometimes with him. In that way we clicked immediately, but on a sexual level it was difficult for us to connect. Our love-making was awkward, as if the energy between us could not flow easily in that direction.

After our second night together, I got a message from Osho to come and see him with Chinmaya –a real surprise, because I had no idea that he knew we were together. Next evening we went to darshan and sat in front of the Master.

I can’t remember Osho’s exact words, but he said something like “You have experienced meeting sexually and it is already too much for you. You are making love too much. From now on you just make love together twice a month.”

I was stunned.

What? Twice a month? After Osho had, just a few weeks before, given me a technique for coming to full orgasm and encouraging me to go for my own pleasure and sexual fulfillment? And now I end up in a situation that seems more like Yoga than Tantra, where I am meditating like crazy, working five hours a day and then, on top of it, I can’t make love more than twice a month?

Yet I did not protest. After the initial shock wore off, I took it as an invitation to explore something new. Of one thing I was sure: Osho was not trying to make life difficult for me, or punish me in any way. If he made a suggestion like this, there must be something in it.

Chinmaya and I continued to sleep together, not every night but often. Of course, I was waiting for the moment when our two weeks would be over, thinking “it’s going to be the biggest thing of my life,” and when the time came it was so disappointing, so incredibly disappointing, that it was almost like a disaster.

Then I had to leave India and go back to Italy for three weeks, mainly to get a new passport — my old one had expired — and a new visa for India. I also had to check in with my family and assure them that their wayward daughter was still alive and relatively sane.

While I was gone, Chinmaya wrote to tell me that he had become “brahmacharya” and had shaved his head. I wasn’t sure what “brahmacharya” meant — I had a vague idea that he was going to be celibate with everyone except me — but a few days later, while still in Italy, I decided to shave my head as well, causing everybody around me to think I had head lice.

Back in Pune, the bomb dropped. Chinmaya explained that “brahmacharya” meant that he wasn’t going to have sex with anyone, including me.

A couple of days later, I went to see Osho and said, “Well, now Chinmaya is brahmacharya, so what about me? Should I find a new boyfriend?”

He smiled and said, “Why? You have known the relaxation of sex, now you should know the power of celibacy. And everyone should know both. Unless you have known both you haven’t known the full map.

So I decided to become celibate. Chinmaya and I were meeting every day and in the beginning it was a bit awkward, lying together, knowing that we were not going to make love. But then, to my surprise and delight, it became one of the most beautiful experiences.

Knowing that we did not have to do anything, to come to any end, to complete anything, created such a relaxation, such an openness between Chinmaya and myself — plus, of course, so much meditation that we were doing together — that it opened the doors of my sexuality in a totally different way.

On a biological level, I guess the fact that I was only twenty-one years old, a time when young people’s sex hormone levels are very high, strengthened the experience. The energy was building and building, pumping through my system.

As the energy built up between us without being released, just looking into each other’s eyes became a sexual experience, sending ripples of electricity through my body; just touching fingers became an erotic, almost orgasmic sensation.

The feeling spread beyond any personal relationship. We were lying together, we were touching, we were looking into each other’s eyes and yet it was as if everything was making love with me, to me, for me. It became so intense that I started to have the same experience with nature.

-Krishna Radha aka Radha C. Luglio

You can read more about Yoga Chinmaya here.

Radha is a Meditation teacher and internationally renowned Tantra expert. She is the inspirer of Tantralife School.

The More He Kills Me, The More Grateful I Become – Yoga Chinmaya

An interview Maneesha conducted with Yoga Chinmaya around 1977, which was published in the darshan diary, The Buddha Disease.

Chinmaya was one of the first disciples of Osho and has been living in the ashram with the two dozen or so other Indian sannyasins for some years now. Over the past year particularly, he as come to be regarded – not unkindly – as the ashram’s pundit, or Mulla Nasrudin alternately. The questions he puts to Osho in the morning discourse are invariably lengthy and very intellectual, setting Chinmaya up for the inevitable Zen whack from Osho and friendly chaffing from fellow-sannyasins!

Well-loved – particularly by Indian sannyasins – Chinmaya has something of a following himself, and has established a reputation for being able to produce deeply significant and highly esoteric reasons for the most innocent of happenings around Osho!

It was interesting to talk with him about his first meeting with Osho because at that time Osho was professor at the University of Jabalpur.

Coming from a family who followed the orthodox Hindu tradition Chinmaya remained discontent with that way of life and started searching intently by himself…

Chinmaya: In 1965, I came across a very small article written by Osho – he used to write articles for magazines and newspapers, Sunday articles. I came across this article – ‘Love, non-violence, meditation and samadhi’ – and it struck me very deeply because I was well-acquainted with previous literature about yoga and bhakti and had been in contact with a few yogis and wandering monks.

I immediately caught the quality and joyousness of Osho and felt that I had to meet this man. I read his first book of meditation ‘The Path of Self-Realisation’ originally in Hindi, so I had grasped this basic attitude towards religious experience, about an approach to life that was against all techniques, all gurus, scriptures, traditions, patterns, disciplines, and I was a very staunch student to yoga, so I became more curious. This man seemed to be very much a stirrer-up of debate and yet very charismatic.

Chinmaya procured Osho’s address and made his way to where he lived…

Chinmaya: Finally I was in front of his bungalow and read the name-plate ‘Acharya (teacher) Rajneesh’, and I relaxed.

Slowly I opened the gate and entered into the beautiful rose garden which he himself used to maintain and has mentioned many time. I entered the main building and just gave a sharp knock on the door and hear the sound, “Please come in.” I pushed the door open and just in front of me Osho was sitting.

I was attracted immediately because he was so healthy and shiny and beautiful… and so young! He was writing on a pad – perhaps some article for a magazine. Immediately he put his pen aside and welcomed me.

He asked what my occupation was and what I practised in religion and he listened very carefully to my description of what I was practising. I told him that I had read a few of his articles and books and that I had many questions that I would like to ask him because I was a yoga student and he was so much against techniques. He was against even concentration, all physiological techniques, breath techniques, meditation techniques, visualisation techniques, feeling and sound techniques.

He slowly explained how the techniques are harmful, how they are violent, how they manipulate the human brain and how risky that is.

So he talked for about one and a half hours and then he said, “Enough for today!” I said, “No! I still have half my questions unanswered!” He said to come again next morning.

Maneesha: Can you describe a little more about him as a person?

Chinmaya: He used to always sit on a mattress bed and visitors would sit with him on the same mattress. He used to always have a bare chest and wear a white lunghi.

I found him tremendously magnetic and just radiating energy, bubbling over with energy. It was as if you were near a cyclone of energy. He was so robust and healthy and strong that you completely forgot who you were, where you were… the past just disappeared because he took your attention completely at every level. He was so refreshing, so rejuvenating to be near, that all problems, all the past, was completely forgotten. For the first time you felt that you could solve everything in life and I felt for the first time that here was a man who could reply to all my thousands of questions!

I used to meditate about life, about problems, existence, different kinds of life, about the causes of misery, and for over ten years I used to write diaries about my contemplations. My diaries were full of queries – one query leading to another and one question leading to deeper and deeper and deeper questions. I used to raise my hands in a lovely place far away from the city and used to pray, “Who is there on earth who can reply to my questions?”

In questioning I used to go deeper and deeper and came to a point of futility and helplessness. Then I used to be left in silence and nowhereness.

Later on I became aware that I was following a very specific meditation procedure – that was the ‘koan’, a Zen method. After the questioning and relaxing into silence I used to go into meditation and I had many experiences which I would not decode at that time – I used to feel my head becoming bigger and bigger and bigger.

Maneesha: Osho felt to you to be absolutely unique at that time?

Chinmaya: Yes. Later on I became aware that he was working on the minds of people for the first ten, twelve years of public contact after enlightenment and postgraduation. He had in his mind how he would go step by step dealing with the consciousness of Indian citizens who were in contact with him.

At that time he was using negation and debate, challenging people and their ideas and beliefs, challenging the intelligentsia of the nation – and hitting hard. He used to disturb them terribly – just as if he wanted to wash out the rubbish from their minds so that he could put out his new vision and ideas.

Maneesha: What was so disturbing about him, if in effect what he was saying at this stage was not unlike what Krishnamurti was saying?

Chinmaya: His life was entirely different from Krishnamurti’s. For many years – at least twenty years – Osho used to live in guru fashion – long hair, lungis and a big cover sheet over his chest and wooden sandals. He looked like a spiritual man. By all means, the outer appearance and the inner personality – he was the perfect spiritual man, whereas Krishnamurti looked very much like a layman.

Osho used to talk more about god; he used the words ‘god’ and ‘mukti’ and he used to emphasize meditations more than Krishnamurti did. He used to say that the relaxation of body and mind is a very gradual process which leads to the inner silence and emptiness.

He used to have deeper public contact – like going to religious festivals, religious discourses, where many spiritual heads would be; he was entering the traditional fields of religion in India. He would meet different spiritual leaders on the stage as one of them but always against them – firing!

He was more into the practical problems of religion rather than remaining aloof and just talking. He used to take initiative on the practical dimension – holding meditation camps, going for spiritual tours. And he was talking not only to the very sophisticated but moving into lower public life too.

Krishnamurti was always very reserved and limited in his contact whereas Osho – Acharya Rajneesh he used to be called at that time – would even go to inaugurate a shop, a juice drink shop! He would go for picnics with his students when he was a professor and would attend many seminars of his students and professors and philosophers. He used to go for drives to the forest, to picnics and boating and would always take groups with him.

He always attracted young people to him and they started slowly becoming crazily in love with him.

Chinmaya continued to explore everything of a spiritual nature for he felt that Osho had no practical approach at that time that one could use in everyday life. He visited gurus and pundits in the Himalayas and stayed for some time at Muktananda’s ashram but decided he was coming too confined to a specific system.

In 1968 he was asked by a group of Osho’s followers to conduct yoga classes in Mumbai – a move supported by Osho.

Osho had resigned from his post as professor in August 1966 and begun to travel extensively around India. By 1970 Osho had moved his headquarters to Mumbai…

Chinmaya: Before coming to Mumbai to make his headquarters he had been talking to a group of sixty thousand about being aware of socialism, and in the mornings was leading meditation classes.

One morning he came and we were expecting the old techniques – ‘relax your body, relax your breathing, relax your thoughts’ and this and that, but he said, “Today I’m going to introduce you to a completely new method of meditation!” We became alert and then he described his first chaotic meditation. Suddenly there were explosions – cries and noises and sounds of panting and falling down and dancing and banging into each other! People were even tearing at their clothes – people were crazy in the second stage.

We were shocked completely by this sudden experience with a new technique, but he encouraged us to continue it.

At the end of April, 1971, just before visiting Ahmedabad, Osho called me and said that a new phase of his spiritual work would start – the work between master and disciples. He said that we should find a new name for him and especially asked me to bring a list of possible names. He liked the name ‘Bhagwan’ and immediately ordered me to change his names in recent publications and called me one evening to announce the change of name in public and to explain why he had changed from Acharya Rajneesh to Bhagwan Rajneesh.

It caused much controversy all over India because the word ‘Bhagwan’ is highly respected; no man would dare to call himself god. Many articles appeared against the change and Osho received hundreds and hundreds of letters against it. After one month he suddenly wrote a press note of about fifteen lines, saying:

“I am nobody – only he is. Whatsoever, the existence, the infinite reality, states, I just respond to it. So I am not a person. Not a messiah, not a teerthanka – but I am nothing less!”

The excitement continued for about eight months and then everybody settled.

Chinmaya said that the outcry was, in part, because Osho had become such an active, social figure and a threat to many…

Chinmaya: About three-quarters of the intelligentsia were focused on him. They were disturbed – and magnetised – by him. Everyone became alert that this man would do something explosive and every field was thinking that he belonged to their field.

Politicians used to think that he would take over the Government of India, educationists were thinking he would start hundreds of educational institutions all over India. Culturists, literary people, thought of him as the top authority but they were not completely adjusted to him.

They used to regards him as a genius, as a scholar, a revolutionary, a unique thinker – unparalleled – but they were not ready to accept him as a god or as a buddha or as someone other-worldly. Those who were opposing him on religion were popes – shankaracharyas – who had vested interest in religion, and he was trying to uproot them from the establishment.

Osho closed himself in his Mumbai residence, only meeting seekers, devotees, disciples. He stopped all interviews to VIP’s and press reporters and he was not in any way interested in scholars. Then he started having thousands of disciples. Those who were deeply into religious life and practical spirituality were feeling his divinity even in his lectures on life problems, on education and culture. He used to bring the flowering of god-consciousness to everything.

Chinmaya became Osho’s secretary for three years, organizing lectures, meditation programmes and camps…

I used to see him a lot at this time – I used to sit with him for approximately one to two hours a day and I used to have conversations and consultations with him. In the first early years I also used to travel with him for lectures and camps.

Before residing with him I was living in his ideas, his expressions, in the world of his words and, a little bit, the world of his meditation. But then I started living with him, my relationship became of being to being, the words and his wisdom became secondary and a spiritual closeness became deeper and deeper. Slowly, slowly I started dropping scholarship and knowledge and mind trips and became concerned with inner silence and spiritual questions.

Maneesha: You must be the most-often-mentioned sannyasin in Osho’s discourses now! Do you think Osho is saying certain things about you as a device for you?

Chinmaya: Osho wants to explode my ego forever. I constantly feel that he’s on my head all the time just like a volcano trying to explode and wash out my ego forever. His compassion, which is also a divine fire, is burning me so that the impure gold is being passed through the furnace of spiritual fire so that in the final process only absolutely pure gold comes out.

The more he kills me, the more grateful I become… tears of gratefulness overflow from my eyes.

Text and photos from The Buddha Disease, Chapter 10

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

This was first seen on Osho News.

You can read more about Yoga Chinmaya here.

Wake Up Into No-mind

Obituary for Swami Yoga Chinmaya, Nov 8, 1942-August 15 2019.

6th body enlightened; 9th level bodhisattva

“Relax into your being
Stop doing so much
Live in nonduality”

These words are his last words to me in April 2019. He was Osho to me since I met him in January 1986 in Kathmandu. He said, “I can offer you intimacy, Bodhicitta.” Carolyn and I tore up our tickets back to America, moved to the Pokhara commune, and have lived with Chinmaya-ji for most of the last 34 years. 10 years ago I asked him, “Swamiji, when you answer me, how much is you and how much is Osho?” He answered, “There is no one here, it is all Osho.”

Swamiji was a different mirror to each person. These are Bodhicitta’s recollections. When Pune One disbanded, he asked Osho “Where should I go?” Osho, “Go home.” Chinmaya, “Where is my home?” He traveled around India and Nepal collecting the small group who became loyal to him and have remained with him for 40 years, to this day. They bought some land in Pokhara, Nepal and started a small commune there, Osho Teerth. Osho called him and his fellow travelers back to Pune in 1987, saying that He did not have long to live and they should be in His presence. After Osho left His body, Chinmaya proposed starting the Osho Neo- yoga Institute in Pune. His plan was a program to move people from the fourth body to the fifth body. His conditions were that he should choose who was acceptable to the program, and that half the people should be on scholarship because most of the Indians could not afford Resort prices. The inner circle rejected his request. He told me, “They do not understand me here.”

A couple of weeks later he and Swami Krisna Saraswati, his personal secretary of forty years, asked me and Carolyn to move to the Himalayas with them. It was an instant YES. A new community was started in Bageswar, Uttaranchal. Between 20 and 30 of us lived there full-time. Hundreds of devotees from all over India, Europe, America, and Japan would circulate through. Chinmaya kept an increasingly private profile. He forbade any photos to be taken of him in the last 20 years. He asked that no mention be made of him or us in Osho publications. He never tape recorded any of his talks nor published any of his remarks.

I remember around the year 2000 when a visitor asked him how Osho’s work in the world was going, he said “Osho’s work is going fantastically. 90% of it does not have an Osho label on it!” The visitor reproached him for not leading camps and being a public figure the way several other prominent sannyasins were. He said “what we are doing in Bageswar is supporting the meditation 90 million people around the planet. You cannot understand what is happening.” He said that the forces that destroyed the commune and Osho were still active in the world, and that the esoteric work would continue to be conducted telepathically amongst those who are able to access it. It is unhackable.

About 2002, on a rooftop in Munsyari, he said to Carolyn and myself, “Osho is as available today as both a continuous energy and a moment to moment guiding intelligence as he was when he was in the body. It is our receptivity that determines how much we receive.”

His main methods:
living with us;
sitting with us at lunch and dinner and for an hour or more after each meal.

We would sit in silence in a circle. Occasionally someone would ask a question.

We would either listen to or watch Osho discourses every other night.
Individual meetings, sometimes several hours long, when we requested and he thought us ready.

He also loved to travel around the Himalayas and would pack us in the van for short trips to view sunsets and sunrises, local beauty spots and places where enlightened teachers had lived. There were 2 to 4 week long trips through to Tibet, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Assam and Kashmir. He had no tolerance for spiritual ego trips and would find ways, devices that would allow people on the trip to leave of their own volition. He took no sides in the political squabbles amongst Osho people. He would often show us videos and discuss other enlightened Masters. Anandamurti was his favorite. He also commented on and shared with us about Krishnamurthi, Meher Baba, Adyashanti, Eckhart Tolle, Tony Parsons, Gurdjieff and Neem Karoli Baba to name a few.

In around 2015 he moved to Delhi, and then to Goa because of his declining health. Hundreds of sannyasins from around the globe continued to visit him though he became increasingly physically inaccessible. In 2016 he picked me up at the airport, and on the way home to the house he said to me “I am just a happening and you are just a happening Bodhicitta. There is nobody here.” He said to me in a meeting that the costume and the mala and the club of sannyasins were no longer necessary for Osho to spread in the world. He made it clear that the transmission, the attunement and synchronization of energy with other people was the essential transmission. That the words, thoughts and understandings came later and did not necessarily require a Pledge of Allegiance to Osho.

The next year I asked him if I was enlightened, he replied “Perhaps, perhaps not.” This is my koan.

This spring I was preoccupied with the world situation, both domestically and internationally. I sent word to him about my concern.
His response.

“Wake up into no-mind
Hence all thoughts and concepts disappear
They are the source of the problem”

-Anand Bodhicitta aka Andrew Ferber

You can read more about Yoga Chinmaya here.

An Extraordinary Intoxication – Osho

It feels to me that my body is like a cage or bottle, in which a very powerful lion is imprisoned and he has been sleeping there for many lives, but now he has been awakened by your harassment. He is hungry and very impatient to be freed from the cage. Many times during the day he becomes enraged and roars, he leaps up roaring. Every cell of my body trembles from this roaring and leaping up, and the forehead and upper part of the head begin to burst with energy. After this I fall deep into an extraordinary intoxication and ecstasy. Then the lion becomes a little quiet, shakes, walks slowly and goes on growling. And then in kirtan or in remembering you he dances ecstatically. Please explain what is going on?

Yoga Chinmaya has asked.

… what is happening is good. It is happening just as it should. Don’t be frightened by it. Let it happen. Help it in every way. A unique process has begun, whose final crescendo is liberation.

We are certainly imprisoned in the body – a lion locked up in a cage. Confined for such a long time that the lion has forgotten his own roar. Confined for such a long time that the lion has started thinking the cage is his home. No only this, he has started thinking, “I am the cage. I am the body!”

A hit is needed. That’s why you are with me, so I can hit – and you wake up.

These words that I say to you are not mere words. Think of them as arrows. They will pierce you. Sometimes you will be angry with me too. Because everything was moving along peacefully, comfortably and suddenly there is confusion. But there is no other way to wake you up; you will have to pass through pain.

When energy rises within, the body will not be able to bear it. The body has not been made to endure it. The capacity of the body is very small. The energy is vast. As if one wants to enclose the whole sky in a small courtyard… so when the energy awakens many disturbances will arise in the body. The head will be splitting with pain.

And sometimes it happens that even after enlightenment disturbances continue in the body. It is completely natural before enlightenment, because the body is not ready. It is as if you put one thousand candles of electricity into an electric line that has the capacity to carry one hundred candles – it will rattle and catch fire! It is just the same when the energy which had been sound asleep within you awakens – it manifests and your body is not ready for it. Your body is ready to accept your being a beggar; it cannot accept your being an emperor. The body has limits, you have no limits.

… it will be jolted, storms will arise. Before enlightenment happens, before samadhi, these shocks are completely natural. And sometimes it happens that samadhi happens and the shocks continue coming, the storms continue, because the body was not able to get ready.

This is what happened in Krishnamurti’s case. The process continued forty years after attaining the ultimate. The body could not absorb the shock. Krishnamurti will wake up in the middle of the night shouting and screaming. He starts to growl – really growling. And for forty years he has had a headache that doesn’t go away, it comes and goes but it never totally leaves him. Sometimes the pain is so strong that it feels his head will burst.

From the standpoint of the body, these last forty years have been years of great difficulty for Krishnamurti. Sometimes it happens this way. But usually the body becomes ready as samadhi happens. But with Krishnamurti the body could not adjust because samadhi had been forced. The thinkers that brought Krishnamurti up, those Theosophists worked hard, made untiring efforts to bring on samadhi. Their aspiration was to give birth to a world teacher. The world needs it – if a Buddha can be incarnated….

If Krishnamurti had worked only by his own efforts, perhaps he would have needed one or two more births. But then this problem would not have arisen. The worked was forced: what needed two lifetimes to happen, happened instantly. It happened but the body could not get ready. It happened suddenly when the body was not ready. So there have been forty years of physical suffering. Even now Krishnamurti growls at night and wakes up again and again from his sleep. The energy won’t let him sleep. He screams!

It seems amazing that a person who has achieved the ultimate should scream at night. But the cause is clear. An enlightenment that should have taken two lifetimes to happen, was forced too quickly. Because of this the body was not ready and the process continues. It has happened but this process continues. He has reached home but the body remains behind, still being dragged along.

The being has reached home, the body has not reached. The pain and suffering of this dragging continues.

Don’t be frightened by what’s happening. These are the first indications of samadhi, the first steps of samadhi. Take them as auspicious, accept them happily. If you are ready to accept them as blessings, then very soon they will slowly become quiet. And as soon as the body begins to accept, begins to cooperate, the readiness and capacity of the body increase.

You have called out to the infinite, so you will have to become infinite. You have challenged the vastness, so you will have to become vast.

There is a very unique story in the Old Testament – the story of Jacob. Jacob was seeking god. He distributed all his wealth. He sent all his beloved friends, his wife, his children, his servants – he sent them all far away. He was waiting for god on the deserted bank of a river. God arrived.

But it was very strange – Jacob started wrestling with god. Does anyone wrestle with god? But Jacob started struggling with god. It is said that they fought the whole night. As morning approached, as dawn was about to come Jacob was defeated. When god was about to leave him, Jacob fell at god’s feet and said, “Please give me your blessing.”

God said, “What is your name?”

Jacob told him his name.

God said, “Today you have become Israel” – the name that the Jews are known by – “From today on you are Israel. Now you are no longer Jacob, Jacob has died.” – Just as I change your name when I give you sannyas initiation. The old is gone.

God told Jacob: “Jacob has died, from now on you are Israel.”

This story is from the Old Testament. There is no other story of someone fighting with god. But there is a great truth in this story. When that ultimate energy descends, what happens is almost like a fight. And when the ultimate experience happens and you are defeated by the divine and the body is vanquished and you accept defeat – then your final initiation happens. In that moment divine blessings shower on you. Then you are new. That is when you taste the nectar of the eternal for the first time.

Yoga Chinmaya is almost there where Jacob must have been. It is difficult to say how long the night may be. It is hard to say how long the struggle will last. No prediction can be made. But this struggle is auspicious.

Cooperate with this energy. This lion inside that wants freedom – it is you. This energy that wants to rise towards the head, that wants to go from the sex center to the crown chakra, that wants to create a path – it is you. For many lives it has been subdued and lying coiled up, now it is starting to raise its hood. You are fortunate, you are lucky. With this you are approaching the final blessing.

Your real transformation will happen.

Krishnamurti has written in his notebook, whenever my head is splitting, when at night I cannot sleep and the screaming and shouting come and something inside me growls – after all this is over a unique experience comes. After this a great peace descends. Blessings shower in every direction. Everywhere lotuses and more lotuses are blooming.

Exactly this is starting to happen to Chinmaya. It is good.

After this I fall deep into an extraordinary intoxication and ecstasy.

When the energy arises after it has had its struggle, and the body becomes a little ready, then a new ecstasy will come: there is growth. You have come up a little. You have transcended a little. You have come out of the prison a little, you have found open sky. You will be fulfilled. You will dance, you will dance for joy.

Then the lion becomes a little quiet, shakes, walks slowly and goes on growling. And then in kirtan or in remembering you he dances ecstatically.

The lion wants to dance. There isn’t room enough to dance in the body. More space is needed for dancing – what space is available in the body? Dance can only happen outside of the body. This is why if you dance totally you will find you no longer remain a body. In the ultimate grace of dance, at the ultimate height, you are out of the body. The body goes on turning, goes on moving rhythmically but you are outside, you are no longer inside.

This is why I have invariably included dance in my methods of meditation, because there is nothing more miraculous for meditation than dancing. If you dance fully, if you dance totally, then in that dance your being comes out of the body. The body will go on moving in rhythm but you will experience that you are out of the body. And then your real dance begins: below, the body will go on dancing; above, you will dance. The body on the earth, you in the sky! The body in the earthly, you in the celestial. The body will dance the dance of matter, you will dance the dance of consciousness. You will become Nataraj, the king of the dance.

You ask, “Please explain what is going on?”

The unprecedented is happening, the wondrous is happening, the rare is happening! What is happening is not to be explained, it is to be experienced. Whatever I say will not help you understand this experience, at the most it can help you become capable of accepting it more easily. Accept it with joy. Do not repress it.

Naturally the idea will come to suppress it thinking, “What madness is this, I am growling like a lion? What is this roaring? People will think I am mad!” So naturally the idea will come to suppress it, to hide it – don’t let anyone know. What will they say?

Don’t worry. Don’t bother about what anyone says. If people say you are mad, then go mad! Has anyone become enlightened without going mad? Give your attention to your interiority. If bliss is coming from this, if ecstasy is coming, if wine is raining then don’t worry. This world has nothing so valuable as this to give to you. So don’t make any compromise with the world. Don’t sell an inch of your being, even if in exchange you will get the whole universe as your kingdom. Jesus has said, what use is it if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? If you save your soul, even if you lose the whole world you have everything.

Have courage, be daring. Let your trust, your faith in yourself grow. Soon your body will start gradually accepting it. Then the roaring will disappear. Then only dance will remain. Then the lion will not suffer, because the lion will have found a path: when he wants to go out he can go out, when he wants to come in he can come in. Then this body is no longer a jail, then this body becomes a place to relax. When you want to come in, come inside; when you want to go out, go outside.

When you can go out and in as easily as you come and go from your house… it is cool, you feel cold; you go outside and sit in the sunshine. Then the sunshine increases, the sun climbs high, it starts getting hot, you start sweating – you get up and come in. Just as you come and go from your house, then the house is not a prison – if you are sitting in prison you don’t have the possibility to come out or go in whenever your heart feels like it. In jail you are a prisoner; at home you are a master. When your lion can dance outside, can fly in the sky, can play with the moon and stars – then there is no problem. Then there is no fight with the body. Then the body is a place for relaxation. When you get tired you can return inside and rest. Then there is no enmity with the body either. Then the body is a temple.

-Osho

From Enlightenment: The Only Revolution, Chapter Eight

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

On August 15, 2019, Sambuddha Swami Yoga Chinmaya left the body behind and disappeared into the Great Mystery. Read the intimate tribute, Wake Up Into No-Mind.

You can read more about Yoga Chinmaya here.

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