Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 13. KRISHNA GOES TO THE WEST
is charged with meditative energy, it won’t work as a transforming factor in your life. The difficulty is
that very often the basic know how is lost and we are left with empty words and superficial rituals.
Day in and day out someone is chanting ”Rama, Rama”, and another is chanting ”Krishna, Krishna”
and nothing happens. Do what you can till the end of time, nothing will happen.
You also want to know what kirtan, or singing hymns of praise to Krishna 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 nonessential,
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.
Question 2
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 242 Osho