What's Wrong With Neo-advaita?

[Prabhaker]

@Annetta

Modern man have to go through catharsis... Osho

Catharsis simply means throwing out that which should be thrown out, throwing out that which should not be kept in.

Now in ordinary life it is difficult. You cannot throw your anger everywhere and anywhere. You will get into so many difficulties. It will be too costly, and dangerous too. You need a special situation where you can throw your anger, where anger is accepted. A group is an artificial situation where everything is accepted. If you become angry, the group is not repressive. Rather on the contrary, the group helps you, provokes you to be angry, brings out all your violence and aggression, accepts it -- WELCOMES even, gives you an opportunity and confidence that here you are not rejected, that here there is no expectation. Nobody's expecting that you should not be angry or this and that. Whatsoever you are, you are given total freedom to be THAT. A group is an artificial situation. The society cannot allow that.

Once your anger has started bubbling up, you will be surprised how much you have been carrying. How much poison is there in your system. And only when this poison has gone, that smoke has disappeared, will you be able to find insight or bliss methods like Sufi Dancing. If a man who is angry participates in Sufi Dancing, his dance will have anger to it. You can watch, you can watch people, and you can see their dances have different qualities. Somebody's dance is a kind of rage; anger is filtering through his dance, through his gestures. Somebody's dance has grace to it, love is flowing, a kind of elegance. Somebody else's dance has compassion in it. Somebody else's dance has ecstasy in it. somebody else's dance is just stale and dull, he is just making empty gestures, there is nobody behind them -- mechanical. Watch. Why this difference? -- because they are carrying different layers of repression.

When you dance, your anger will dance if it is there. Where can it go? The more you will dance, the more it will dance. If you are full of love, when you start dancing your love will start overflowing -- it will dance all around you, all over the space. Your dance is going to be your dance, it will contain all that you contain. If you are sexually repressed, then your dance will have that.

Now it is a problem for Indians to participate in the Sufi Dance. Many have written to me. One Indian sannyasin, a very honest man, wrote a letter. He was participating in the dance. Three days afterwards, he wrote 'I am feeling very guilty, because I become sexually aroused. Whenever I go into the Sufi Dance, I become sexually aroused. I feel very guilty.' He was asking forgiveness 'Osho, forgive me.' And he became so afraid that he stopped dancing.

Now the whole life of repression... He may never have been able to hold the hands of any woman except his wife, and that too only in the night when everybody is fast asleep. He may not have been able to move with such dancing energy of women, men. It is very natural; there is no need to feel guilt. It is just the whole repressed life.

Now this man who becomes sexually aroused in Sufi Dance, is he going to feel any insight in it? He will feel great guilt, and he will not feel spiritual at all! He will feel sexual, and he will be in a turmoil. He will be very much confused. His whole being will be on a volcano. He may start trembling, and he may become afraid that he may DO something. That's what he wrote to me -- 'I cannot participate in Sufi Dance any more, because I may DO something. I may not be able to control myself I become so aroused.'

This is bound to happen. If you are sexually repressed, then sex will bubble up when you dance. So you cannot go directly, you have to go through catharsis. Only then can blissful methods be of help.

Cathartic methods are modern inventions. In Buddha's time they were not so needed because people were not so repressed. People were natural, people lived primitive live -- uncivilised, spontaneous lives. So VIPASSANA -- VIPASSANA means insight -- was given by Buddha directly to people. But now you cannot go into VIPASSANA directly.

And the teachers who go on teaching VIPASSANA directly don't belong to this century; they are two thousand years backwards. Yes, sometimes they may help one or two persons out of one hundred, but that can't do much. I am introducing cathartic methods, so that first what the civilisation has done to you can be undone, so that you become primitive again. From that primitiveness, from that primal innocence, insight becomes easily available. Then bliss methods work -- never before that.

"OSHO"
I Say Unto You, Vol 2
Chapter #8
Chapter title: Significance is Inner Nourishment

[Prabhaker]

@Annetta

Modern man is a very new phenomenon. No traditional method can be used exactly as it exists because modern man never existed before. So, in a way, all traditional methods have become irrelevant.

For example, the body has changed so much. It is so drugged that no traditional method can be helpful. The whole atmosphere is artificial now: the air, the water, society, living conditions. Nothing is natural. You are born in artificiality; you develop in it. So traditional methods will prove harmful today. They will have to be changed according to the modern situation.

Another thing: the quality of the mind has basically changed. In Patanjali’s [the most famous commentator on Yoga] days, the center 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. The center has gone even further from the navel. Now, the center is the brain. That is why teachings like those of Krishnamurti have appeal. No method is needed, no technique is needed – only understanding. But if it is just a verbal understanding, just intellectual, nothing changes, nothing is transformed. It again becomes an accumulation of knowledge.

I use chaotic methods rather than systematic ones because a chaotic method is very helpful in pushing the center down from the brain. The center cannot be pushed down through any systematic method because systemization is brainwork. Through a systematic method, the brain will be strengthened; more energy will be added to it. Through chaotic methods the brain is nullified. It has nothing to do. The method is so chaotic that the center is automatically pushed from the brain to the heart. If you do my method of Dynamic Meditation vigorously, unsystematically, chaotically, your center moves to the heart. Then there is a catharsis.

A catharsis is needed because your heart is so suppressed, due to your brain. 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. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make things mathematical, and the heart is suppressed. So firstly, a chaotic method is needed to push the center of consciousness from the brain toward the heart.

Then catharsis is needed to unburden the heart, to throw off suppressions, to make the heart open. If the heart becomes light and unburdened, then the center of consciousness is pushed still lower; it comes to the navel. The navel is the source of vitality, the seed source from which everything else comes: the body and the mind and everything.

I use this chaotic method very considerately. Systematic methodology will not help now, because the brain will use it as its own instrument. Nor can just the chanting of bhajans help now, because the heart is so burdened that it cannot flower into real chanting. Consciousness must be pushed down to the source, to the roots. Only then is there the possibility of transformation. So I use chaotic methods to push the consciousness downward from the brain.

Whenever you are in chaos, the brain stops working. For example, if you are driving a car and suddenly someone runs in front of you, you react so suddenly that it cannot be the work of the brain. The brain takes time. It thinks about what to do and what not to do. So whenever there is a possibility of an accident and you push the brake, you feel a sensation near your navel, as if it were your stomach that is reacting. Your consciousness is pushed down to the navel because of the accident. If the accident could be calculated beforehand, the brain would be able to deal with it; but when you are in an accident, something unknown happens. Then you notice that your consciousness has moved to the navel.

If you ask a Zen monk, “From where do you think?” he puts his hands on his belly. When Westerners came into contact with Japanese monks for the first time they could not understand. “What nonsense! How can you think from your belly?

But the Zen reply is meaningful. Consciousness can use any center of the body, and the center that is nearest to the original source is the navel. The brain is furthest away from the original source, so if life energy is moving outward, the center of consciousness will become the brain. And if life energy is moving inward, ultimately the navel will become the center.

Chaotic methods are needed to push the consciousness to its roots, because only from the roots is transformation possible. Otherwise you will go on verbalizing and there will be no transformation. It is not enough just to know what is right. You have to transform the roots; otherwise you will not change.

When a person knows the right thing and cannot do anything about it, he becomes doubly tense. He understands, but he cannot do anything. Understanding is meaningful only when it comes from the navel, from the roots. If you understand from the brain, it is not transforming.

The ultimate cannot be known through the brain, because when you are functioning through the brain you are in conflict with the roots from which you have come. Your whole problem is that you have moved away from the navel. You have come from the navel and you will die through it. One has to come back to the roots. But coming back is difficult, arduous.

Traditional methods have an appeal because they are so ancient and so many people have achieved through them in the past. They may have become irrelevant to us, but they were not irrelevant to Buddha, Mahavira, Patanjali or Krishna. They were meaningful, helpful. The old methods may be meaningless now, but because Buddha achieved through them they have an appeal. The traditionalist feels: “If Buddha achieved through these methods, why can’t I?”

But we are in an altogether different situation now. The whole atmosphere, the whole thought-sphere, has changed. Every method is organic to a particular situation, to a particular mind, to a particular man. The fact that the old methods don’t work doesn’t mean that no method is useful. It only means that the methods themselves must change. As I see the situation, modern man has changed so much that he needs new methods, new techniques.”

Osho, The Psychology of the Esoteric, Talk #4

[Guest Annetta]

Leo is a weird creature.  That's my only opinion. 

[Guest Annetta]

@Prabhaker Thank you for the advice you give it is very helpful ??

[SOUL]

I had never heard this term before but that isn't surprising since I am a spiritual autodidact. Although, just from the description of it I read on Wikipedia I can see why it isn't a favored way that is taught and even anathema for a majority of the teachers. If the way can be described in just a few minutes and doesn't require any of the knowledge, understanding, methods and techniques we may realize why do we need any 'teachers' for?

When it is understood how simple exercising awareness to enlighten consciousness is there is little opportunity to sell books upon books or book lists or courses or lecture series or retreats or continuing education or build an empire of material substance on teaching something that any idiot can "be" without any special knowledge and training..... and trust me any idiot can just "be here now", I would understand this intimately since there are few more idiotic than me.

Plus the mind just can't believe that this can be so simple... you mean for us to exercise awareness to enlighten consciousness doesn't need me?!? Not my knowledge, not my understanding, not any of my methods or techniques, none of my ideas or concepts... well sure, the mind will concede that it doesn't require my self or my ego in theory but cotdammit that's an idea and concept that the mind needs to believe it is needed! The mind cannot believe we can just be without it's machinations.

There are infinite words spoken and written on something that doesn't require a single one of them to be.

 

[Ramu]

@Maxx beyond language...OM

[Ramu]

@Maxx but we have to use language, dude, non-dual or not.

[Real Eyes]

On 5/26/2017 at 0:46 PM, Maxx said:

But all of this does not change anything about the simplicity of enlightenment. In fact trying "to figure it out" just prevents you from seeing it. Enlightenment is nothing to figure out. All the seeking prevents you from seeing it. There is nothing to find. Because it is already. So yes, all trying to figure it out is bullshit, ultimately all seeking is bullshit. 

@Maxx What do you suggest to do then, Maxx?  Clearly, doing NOTHING is not getting the typical person off the street enlightened.  So how is the "Do nothing" advice going to help anybody?  Genuinely curious...

Edited June 1, 2017 by Real Eyes

[Paintballer]

Neo advaita at its best foeces an unprepared person to realize their true self. The good thing about neo advaita is it is quick, the bad thing is it does no talk about embodiment of truth and leaves it to the individual to figure out.

[Guest Annetta]

@Fidelio Yeah I totally do and I did notice.
"One of us... one of us!"

[Guest Annetta]

@Fidelio Indeed.