Osho on Running As Meditation, If you can run then there is no need for any other Meditation

[A sannyasin asks: I’m a runner and when I run each day I get a feeling very much like when I’m doing dynamic meditation... Can I use it as a meditation?]

Osho – Yes, use it as much as you can. If you can run then there is no need for any other meditation – it is enough! … Any action in which you can be total becomes meditation, and running is so beautiful that you can be totally lost in it. And you are in contact with all the elements – the sun, the air, the earth, the sky; you are in contact with existence.

When you are running your breathing naturally goes very deep and it starts massaging the hara centre… which is in fact the centre from where meditative energy is released. It is just below the navel, two inches below the navel. When breathing goes deep it massages that centre, makes it alive. And when you are running, you are throwing all carbon dioxide out of your lungs. Carbon dioxide makes people dull, dead, frozen, blocked.

Carbon dioxide is good for trees and very bad for man. We are in mutual agreement with the trees: they inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen; we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. That’s why as there are becoming less and less trees on the earth, man is becoming less and less alive, because the partner is dying. That’s the whole meaning of ecology: we are together! You breathe out, the tree breathes in; the tree breathes out, you breathe in. The tree purifies you through oxygen, you nourish the tree through carbon dioxide.

When you are running, the whole carbon dioxide is thrown out and your lungs are full of oxygen.
When they are full of oxygen they purify the blood, they purify the whole system. That’s what purity is; it has nothing to do with morality. Purity has something to do with biology, it is a biological concept. When your blood is pure and is not hampered by poisons and used garbage – it is red and alive, full of joy and each drop of blood is dancing in you – you are in the right mood to catch meditation. Then there is no need to do it – it happens!

Running against the wind is a perfect situation. It is a dance of the elements. And while running
you cannot think: if you are thinking, then you are not running rightly. When you are running totally, thinking stops. You become too earth-bound, the head no more functions. The body is in such an activity that there is no energy left for the head to go on and on; the thinking stops.

And in those moments of non-thinking, your existence is pure, you simply are, you don’t know who. You don’t know if you are Indian, German, English, Christian, Mohammedan – you don’t know who you are. All is forgotten, you are unburdened of the head… you are again an animal! In that moment – when you are again an animal – there is a possibility to contact god.

This is my message – that before a man can contact god he will have to become an animal, never before it… because man is a false entity, not authentic at all. Before we can rise high and reach
the ultimate we will have to become authentic, as authentic as animals. Through running that
authenticity happens…. It is perfectly good, and now it will be coming more and more because now you know what meditation is.

And both these things will help each other: in meditation you will again and again come to those
moments which come in running, and in running you will come again and again to those moments which come in meditation. By and by both methods will become one. Then there will be no need to do them separately: you can run and meditate, you can meditate and run.

Sometimes try one technique…. Just lying down on the bed, imagine that you are running. Just
imagine the whole scene: the trees and the wind and the sun and the whole beach and the salty air. Imagine everything, visualise it, make it as colourful as possible. Remember any morning that you liked the most – when you were running on some beach or in some forest. Let it fill you completely… even the smell of the trees, the pine trees, or the smell of the beach.

Anything that you have liked very much, let it be there as if it is almost real; then start
running in imagination – you will find that your breathing is changing. Go on running… and you can do this for miles. There is no end to it, you can do it for hours. And you will be surprised that even doing this on the bed, you will attain to those moments again when suddenly the meditation is there. So if some day you cannot run for some reason – you are ill, or the situation does not allow, or the city is not worth running in, you cannot run – you can do this and you will attain to the same moments.

Source: from Osho Book “This is It”

Osho Meditation while flying in Aeroplane, Higher the altitude, Easier is Meditation

[A sannyasin, who is a pilot, asks Osho if there is a meditation he can do while flying.]
Osho – Mm mm, that time can be used in a very very significant way; the whole time can become a meditation. In fact you cannot find a better situation to meditate than while flying at a higher altitude. The higher the altitude, the easier is the meditation. Hence, for centuries, meditators have been moving to the himalayas to find a high altitude.
When the gravitation is less and the earth is very far away, many pulls of the earth are far away. You are far away from the corrupted society that man has built. You are surrounded by clouds and the stars and the moon and the sun and the vast space…. So do one thing: start feeling one with that vastness, and do it in three steps.
The first step is: for a few minutes just think that you are becoming bigger, and within a few days you will be able to feel that you have become bigger… you are filling the whole cockpit.
Then the second step: start feeling that you are becoming even bigger, bigger than the plane, in fact the plane is now inside you – the second step.
And the third step: feel that you have expanded into the whole sky. Now these clouds that are
moving on your radar screen, and the moon, and the stars – they are moving in you: you are huge, unlimited.
This feeling will become your meditation, and you will feel completely relaxed and non-tense. Your work will become just child’s play and it will not be any stress on you – it will happen on its own accord. You will get down from the flight more fresh than you had begun. And keep quiet.
Tell to people not to talk too much to you unless it is necessary. Make your colleagues alert that you will be meditating, mm ? or you can just put a sign on yourself ’Now I am meditating’, so they know not to disturb you. It will be great… nothing like it!
In fact in the early days – when the aeroplane was just invented – the thrill of the aeroplane was the thrill of the sky. But we go on losing things because they become too routine. Now you are flying every day, so who looks at the sky and who looks at the sun making beautiful psychedelic colours on the clouds – who looks?
So start looking at the sky that surrounds you there and by and by let there be a meeting between the inner sky and the outer sky… and for this, this will be very good. For a few minutes think that you are becoming big, bigger than the plane, then so big that everything is inside you.
Whenever you can get time, continue to meditate, mm? and this will be very relaxing editation.

Source: from Osho Book “This is It”

Osho – It is always energy being more in one part, less in another, that makes you feel Lopsided

[A sannyasin says she feels a certain restlessness about her which she experiences mainly as being in her arms. They feel like they need to do something energetic.... ]
Osho – Mm mm, it can be. Start doing one thing every night: sit in a chair and rest your head (Osho demonstrates, his head resting back on the chair like you do at the dentist). You can have a pillow, mm? so you are in a resting posture. Then release your lower jaw, just relax it so the mouth opens slightly, and start breathing from the mouth, not from the nose. But the breathing has not to be changed, it has to be as it is – natural.
The first few breaths will become a little hectic. By and by it will settle down and the breathing will become very shallow. It will go in and out very slightly; that’s how it should be, mm? Keep the mouth open, eyes closed, and rest. Then start feeling that your legs are becoming loose, as if they are being taken away from you, broken from the joints. Feel as if they are being taken away from you, they have been cut loose, broken, and then start thinking that you are just the upper part; the legs are gone.
Then the hands: think that both the hands are becoming loose and being taken away from you. You may even be able to hear just a click! inside when they are broken. You are no more your hands – they are dead, taken away. Then just the torso remains. Then start thinking about the head – that it is being taken away, that you are being beheaded, that the head is broken. Then leave it loose: wherever it turns – right, left – you cannot do anything.
Just leave it loose; it has been taken away. Then you have just your torso, mm? Feel that you are only this much – this chest, the belly, that’s all. Do this for at least twenty minutes, and then go to sleep. This is to be done just before the sleep. Do it for at least three weeks and then you tell me how you are feeling, mm? This restlessness will settle. It is just that your body is not aligned, the energy is not proportionately distributed. Taking these parts as separate, only the essential will remain, so your whole energy will move in the essential part.
That essential part will relax and the energy will start flowing in your legs, in your hands, in your
head, again, in a more proportionate way. A new distribution of energies is needed. It is always energy being more in one part, less in another, that makes you feel lopsided. So your hands must be getting more energy than other parts.
Then you want to do something with your hands, and if you cannot find anything to do you can become angry. The hands get angry if they have too much energy: when they cannot do anything, they want to destroy. Either they create or they destroy. If you can create, good; if you cannot create, then destruction. So just do this for three weeks and then come back, mm?
Source: from Osho Book “This is It”