Mystic mantra: A place for the heart

My attention was drawn to an article published in the Guardian recently. It mentioned a situation where people are asked to walk in a plain room — alone, without phones, books or anything to write with — and told to sit on a chair and just remain with their thoughts. You may say it is quite simple. But the results of an experiment done by psychologists at Virginia and Harvard Universities are surprising. The people hated being left to think alone, regardless of their age, education, income or the number of hours they used smartphones or social media. The participants even preferred to have harmless electric shocks to sitting idly with their thoughts.

This is an alarming state of mind people have got into. The modern man is an extremely restless being. If we look into the reasons we find that the modern man lives through the brain because the intellect is highly developed. Science, logic, technology, everything need an intellectual and logical approach. This overemphasis on the brain has suppressed other parts of human life namely the heart, the body and the being. Our environment, air, water, society, living conditions — everything has changed radically. We are living in an artificial world. Not only artificial, but chaotic too. Everyone is trying to find some peace, some silence in their lives but they don’t know how to.

The old methods of meditation and yoga do not fulfil the need of the modern man. For there is a huge gap between the past and the present, the outer and the inner. How to bridge this gap? Someone with an enlightened wisdom who also has the creative genius to design new methods for the new man is needed.

Osho has diagnosed the malady and has devised tons of active meditations. If you can’t sit silently, no problem! Become totally active. Osho meditations involve vigorous physical activity, chaotic breathing exercises, emotional release, which bring silence in their wake.

Osho gives a bird’s eye view, “In Patanjali’s days, the centre of the human personality was not the brain; it was the heart. Before that, it was not even the heart. It was still lower, near the navel. Now, the centre is the brain. I use chaotic methods rather than systematic ones because a chaotic method is very helpful in pushing the centre down from the brain. The centre cannot be pushed down through any systematic method because systemisation is brainwork. A catharsis is needed because your heart is so suppressed, your brain has taken over so much of your being that it dominates you. There is no place for the heart, so the longings of the heart are suppressed. You have never laughed heartily, never lived heartily, never done anything heartily.”