Osho on catharsis and chaotic meditations

Osho – For sixty minutes every day, just forget about the world. Let the world disappear from you, and you disappear from the world. Take an about-turn, a one hundred and eighty degree turn, and just look inside. In the beginning, you will see only clouds. Don’t be worried about them; those clouds are created by your repressions. You will come across anger, hatred, greed, and all kinds of black holes. You have repressed them, so they are there. And your so-called religions have taught you to repress them, so they are there like wounds. You have been hiding them. That’s why my emphasis is first on catharsis.

Unless you go through great catharsis you will have to pass through many clouds. It will be tiring, and you may be so impatient that you may turn back into the world. And you will say, “There is nothing. There is no lotus and no fragrance, there is only stink, rubbish.”

You know it. When you close your eyes and you start moving in, what do you come across? You don’t come across those beautiful lands Buddhas talk about. You come across hells, agonies, repressed there, waiting for you. Anger of many lives accumulating. It is all a mess there, so one wants to remain outside. One wants to go to the movie, to the club, to meet people and gossip. One wants to remain occupied till one is tired and falls asleep. That’s the way you are living, that’s your style of life.

So when one starts looking in, naturally one is very much puzzled. Buddhas say that there is great benediction, great fragrance, you come across lotus flowers blooming – and such fragrance that it is eternal. And the colour of the flowers remains the same; it is not a changing phenomenon. They talk about this paradise, they talk about this kingdom of God that is within you. And when you go in, you only come across hell. You see not Buddhalands but Adolf Hitler concentration camps. Naturally, you start thinking that this is all nonsense, it is better to remain outside. And why go on playing with your wounds? – it hurts too. And pus starts oozing out of the wounds and it is dirty.

But catharsis helps. If you cathart, if you go through chaotic meditations, you throw all these clouds outside, all these darknesses outside, then mindfulness becomes easier. That is my reason why I emphasize first chaotic meditations and then silent meditations, first active meditations, then passive meditations. You can move into passivity only when all that is there like junk has been thrown out. Anger has been thrown out, greed has been thrown out … layer upon layer, these things are there. But once you have thrown them out, you can easily slip in. There is nothing to hinder. And suddenly the bright light of the Buddhaland. And suddenly you are in a totally different world – the world of the Lotus Law, the world of Dhamma, the world of Tao.

Source: Osho - Orange book of meditation