LietuviškaiLT   EnglishEN  

Meditacijos centras Ojas
 





Influece of dynamic meditation and oxygen to the state of consciousness

Questioner: "You said that the ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes through deep breathing. Will you please explain how this matter is connected with the awakening of the kundalini?"*

There are many connections between them. One, we carry within us the potential for both life and death. While the oxygen of breath represents our potential for life, carbon dioxide represents the potential for death. When your oxygen gradually diminishes and disappears and you are left with carbon dioxide alone, you will turn into a corpse. It is like we burn a piece of wood – it keeps burning so long as oxygen is available. There is fire, there is life in the wood so long as oxygen is available to it. But as soon as its oxygen is spent, it is dead. It is reduced to ashes, to coal, which is carbon. The carbon which is left behind is nothing but dead fire.

Both the elements are operating within us. If we have more of carbon dioxide, we will slide into lethargy. That is why it is easier to sleep in the night than in the daytime, because during the night the amount of carbon dioxide goes up while that of oxygen declines. That is how we go to sleep so easily in the night and not so easily during the daytime. In the daytime the amount of oxygen in the air goes up because of the sun, and everything is awake and active. And with sunset, the proportion of oxygen in the air drops considerably.

  

<...>

The same thing happens within you. When the quantity of oxygen in you goes up, your latent energies begin to awaken. For every kind of latent energy to wake up, oxygen is a must. We can keep a dying man alive for a little while with the help of oxygen. He would be instantly dead if the oxygen tube is removed from his nostrils. But with oxygen he can be kept alive for a few days, a few months, even for a few years, because his utterly enfeebled life force is being revived by oxygen. We are keeping death itself at bay with the help of oxygen.

<...>

Any increase in carbon dioxide inevitably increases our sleep. And everything that produces carbon in our body sends our already sleeping energies into deeper sleep, it deepens our unconsciousness. That is why, as the population of the world is growing, every person’s share of oxygen is going down in the same measure. And that adds to our unconsciousness – which is already too much. A time may come soon when our capacity to be awake will be at its minimum.

You feel fresh in the morning. You feel fresh when you go to a forest or visit a seashore. And you become listless and dull when you are in the market place, when you are in a crowd. Why? It is because of the preponderance of carbon dioxide and lack of oxygen. It is true that oxygen is being created all the time, but as a crowd consumes more oxygen, it leads to a scarcity of oxygen in the marketplace. Go to a crowded place – a cinema house or a temple – and soon you will be in the grip of dullness and insensitivity. And go to a mountain or a garden, or a riverside, and you will feel alert and alive and happy.

  

There is a great purpose in increasing the quantity of your oxygen. It changes your inner balance; it makes you more wakeful and aware, less sleepy and unconscious. And if the amount of oxygen is increased swiftly and sharply and abruptly, it will make a radical difference in your inner balance. It will be like one side of the scales goes to the top and the other side touches the ground. And if this change is brought about in one stroke, you will experience it very quickly and sharply. A slow and gradual change is hardly felt by you.

That is why I insist on fast and intense breathing so that you bring about such a swift change that you pass from one stage to another in just ten minutes, and also observe the process of change itself. It is only when a thing changes swiftly and sharply that it can be so clearly observed.

For instance, each one of us passes from infancy to adolescence and from youth to old age, but the process is so slow and gradual that we never know exactly when we become adolescent, when we be come old. If someone asks for the exact date when I became old, I cannot tell. An old man is confused, he fails to understand that he is now old, because between his youth and old age there was no gap whatsoever. Similarly, a child does not know that he has come of age; he continues to behave as a child. While he looks adolescent to others, he himself remains unaware of this fact. While his parents expect him to take up his responsibility in the family, he still takes himself to be a kid.

It is so because the transition from one stage to another does not happen with a bang; it is very silent and slow. In the same way an old man continues to behave as though he is a young man; he is not aware that a change has taken place in his life. And how can he know?

A sharp and sudden transition is needed for one to know it. If there was a fixed day and hour for this transition to take place, there would have been no room for confusion. And then there would be no need to remind a grown up or an old person about his proper state.

In meditation I aim at a change so sharp and powerful that you clearly know the difference between your sleeping consciousness and its awakened counterpart. It should come like a leap, with a bang, so you know well that the transformation has happened. This knowing is valuable; it will help you very much. For this reason I support techniques that bring about sudden and sharp transformation. If it takes a long time, you will never know it. And this ignorance has its dangers. The danger is that if you don’t know what change has taken place then it will not deepen your understanding as it should.

 

Osho dynamic meditation

The first stage The second stage Tre third stage The fourth stage The fifth stage
Ten minutes of deep, intensive, and chaotic, better - spontaneous, breathing. 
Ten minutes of deep, intensive, and chaotic, better - spontaneous, breathing. 
Ten minutes of catharsis, cleaning, relaxation. 
Ten minutes of catharsis, cleaning, relaxation. 
Ten minutes of ecstatic jumping, relaxation from spirit to matter.   Believes  and gods are on the roadside. 
Ten minutes of ecstatic jumping, relaxation from spirit to matter. Believes and gods are on the roadside. 
Fifteen minutes of  stop, witnessing - transformation of the seed, meditation. 
Fifteen minutes of stop, witnessing - transformation of the seed, meditation. 
Fifteen minutes of  celebration, dance. Photo: Ojas © 2013 
Fifteen minutes of celebration, dance.

Photo: Ojas © 2013
 

 

It often happens that someone comes to some spiritual experience all unaware and effortlessly, and the change is so slow and silent that he does not know what it is all about. Then he tries to interpret it in his own old ways – which are mostly wrong – because the necessary perspective to understand it is lacking. Many times it happens that you are very close to a new spiritual experience and you bypass it, because you interpret it according to your old moorings. All this happens just because the changes happen so gradually and slowly.

<...>

It is for this reason that I teach you this intense and dynamic way of meditation.

And oxygen has great significance. It is a tremendously precious thing. The more you fill your body with oxygen the more speedy will be your transition from the body to the soul. If you understand it rightly, you will know that your body is your dead end; the body is that part of you which shows itself because it is dead. This part of you, being dead, has been solidified and therefore it is visible. And the soul is another part of you that continues to be liquid and subtle, rare and ethereal; it cannot be grasped. A good quantity of oxygen, which brings awakening and life to you, will create a good distance between your body and soul. Then you will clearly know them to be absolutely different from each other, although they are two parts of the same being – you.

Therefore, breath plays a great role in the awakening of the kundalini.

The kundalini is your energy asleep. You cannot awaken it with the help of carbon dioxide. Rather, carbon will deepen its sleep. Oxygen is a great aid in awakening the kundalini. This is the reason that we have always given such great importance to morning meditation. The reason is this: that in the morning even a small breath carries a large amount of oxygen with it. The earth happens to be in a very unique and extraordinary state for a full hour after sunrise, and to take advantage of this situation, morning has been chosen all the world over as the finest time for meditation.

  

The more you hammer the kundalini with your fast and intense breathing, the more quickly it will awaken. But the difficulty is that we don’t see clearly how it operates, and therefore the significance of deep breathing is lost on us. For instance, a lamp is burning. We see the oil in the earthen pot, we see the wick and the matchstick that lights it. We also see the flame and the light arising from it. But we fail to see the real thing: the oxygen which is the vital part of the whole operation. It is really oxygen that burns and becomes light. Neither the oil nor the wick nor the matchstick is that important. The oil, the wick and the matchstick are the visible parts of the lamp, they form its body. But its invisible part, the oxygen, which forms the soul of the lamp and which really burns, is not visible.

I have heard that one evening a family went out to visit friends, leaving behind a boy to take care of the house. There is a small temple in that house and a lamp is burning before a statue of some god. The boy has been especially asked to see that the lamp does not go out. Meantime, a strong wind begins to sweep through, and the boy gets worried about the lamp. So he brings a glass bowl and covers the lamp with it. Although the lamp is well protected, yet its flame dies immediately. Perhaps the lamp could have survived the wind, but it could not survive lack of oxygen; it was dead in a second.

The oxygen, which is really the vital force, is invisible. What we call our life is a process of oxygenation; it is like the burning of the lamp. Speaking in scientific terms, life is the flaming oxygen. Whether it is in human beings or in trees or in the lamp or in the sun himself, wherever there is oxygenation there is life. So the more the oxygenation, the brighter your life’s flame. And kundalini is this life’s flame. Oxygenation heightens the flaming and flow of the kundalini. So oxygen is very effective with the kundalini.

 

* excerpt from OSHO. In Search of the Miraculous, Vol. 1

Updated on 06-05-2014







Ojas Meditation Center

21d Pavasario Str.   |   LT-10309 Vilnius, Lithuania, EU   |     phone: +370-5-2153398   |   mobile phone: +370-61911551  
Resort: Mishkiniu vil. 8, Nemenchine eld., Vilnius r.   |     mobile phone: +370-68511533  

We answer phone calls on Mon-Fri 9AM-12AM, Sat 2PM-5PM, except during meditation courses

e-mail:   |   website: https://www.ojasmc.eu

© Ojas Meditation Center 2024. All rights reserved. Copyright information



News