Amrit Sadhana @ Osho International Meditation Resort, Pune, India.

Meditation is an inner bath

  

It is customary in India to take a bath, wear clean clothes before entering a temple

 It is customary in India to take a bath, wear clean clothes before entering a temple or performing a religious ritual. It is a good practice but nobody bothers to inquire what is the necessity of a bath? This outer bath is symbolic, it is an indicator of the inner bath, the bath of the mind. Unless one goes inside and looks at the immense dirt the mind has gathered one cannot conceive of the need of the inner bath. The human mind is a junk yard. There is anger, hatred, miseries, anxieties and all kinds of insanities buried in there. All these wounds release poison in the body. For example those who suppress their anger have very bad teeth and nails. As soon as anger arises, the poison begins to spread towards your nails and teeth. This happens with every negative emotion that emerges in the mind. The affect different parts of your body.  No detergent has been found to cleanse this inner filth!

However, Osho has found a highly effective method of cleansing the mind which is called catharsis. He is the first mystic who has introduced catharsis into meditation.

He says, " Release your anger, your pain, your miseries, your anxieties into the emptiness. And do not do this only mentally, let it be expressed by your whole body. If you can do it whole heartedly then you will not only find your mind becomes pure but your body will also achieve new dimensions of health, you will find that many illnesses are suddenly released by your catharsis. So many diseases which had firmly gripped you have suddenly disappeared.

"For example if you have an asthma, it means that somewhere the relation between breathing and the mind has become unnatural, somewhere the link is broken, some obstacle has arisen. If you can rightly experiment with the deep and chaotic breathing, that obstacle will dissolve. Or if you suffer from a constant headache, it means that some kind of anxieties have entered which are eating away your brain like worms from within. And you are overburdened. If those anxieties are dropped, suddenly you will find that your head has become light. "

 It will be a real purification if one cleanses the mind by this meditation and then cleanses the body before entering any religious place. In fact if the mind and the body is clean there will be no need to go to any sacred place, you become the sacred place! Just close your eyes and sit silently. All the mystics have said it again and again, don't search for any religious place, just look within. A purified mind and body is the abode of the whole.