The Evening Meeting

The Evening Meeting

The Evening Meeting is the time when everyone can dance and celebrate and then sit silently.

About the Evening Meeting Bhagwan says:

"Every night, these few moments are the most valuable in your life. Every evening, when so many living Buddhas gather here, this place becomes the most important in the whole world. Because nowhere are so many people meditating together - digging so deep that they can find the very life source, the eternity, the deathlessness."

And:

"That which cannot be said has to be experienced. This is a great experience of getting into the inner space. Something is experienced in this gathering which no one has been able to define. This is the highest peak of the whole day's working, meditating or doing groups." Osho

 

The meeting starts with 20 minutes of high-energy music for dancing with totality by yourself, “a wild celebration of energy.” Let the energy of celebration build up inside you. Don’t waste this energy in shouting or whistling or looking around at others. This period of dancing includes shouts of “Osho” three or four times, and ends with three shouts of “Osho.”

 

As Osho describes this sound: “It is a sound without meaning. It is simply using sound to reach soundless silence.” 

 

The raising of the hands to the stars indicates the longing for higher consciousness. It “should be really sharp. And to make it sharp your hand has to be there!”

 

“It goes just like a sword. It all depends with how much intensity, urgency, totality, you do it.

It is not a mantra. It is simply using sound to reach the soundless silence.”

“It has to be said exactly like the lion’s roar, which comes from the belly. It is not just from your tongue – not even from your throat or your heart. It hits just under your navel. That’s where you are coming from. The life center is just under your navel, two inches under the navel.

You have to watch from what source it is coming. You have to go inward to that source.

It not only hits your center, your very being, it also brings in you a tremendous feeling of joy, laughter, dance. It is celebration.” Osho

 

And:

“You have to watch from what source it is coming. You have to go inward to that source.
So every night before the meeting, I help to show you the way without saying anything. Then in the meditation you are amazed that this is the same path. And as I leave, I remind you again of your origin.

“A sound that can thrill each fibre and cell of your being can give you a dancing quality; it can give you a music unheard, a life that was asleep. An authentic sound penetrates so deep that you cannot remain asleep.”

And:

The sound… not only hits your center, your very being, it also brings in you a tremendous feeling of joy, a laughter, a dance. It is celebration.  

About this period before sitting down, Osho explains, “The more total people are beforehand, the deeper the silence will go in the meditation.”

The three shouts of Osho are followed by sitting silent. This begins with intermittent pieces of Indian music, up until three “explosive” drumbeats. The sitting silently then continues through the Osho Talk on video until the Gibberish and Let-Go. Osho has described the shouts of Osho, the sudden interruptions of the Indian music as “stop exercises.”

About the unexpected gaps during his speaking, Osho describes how the TV interviewers would keep asking him to give byte size answers to their questions: “Why can't you speak like everybody else? Why do you suddenly become silent? You speak a word and then you leave a gap.” He explains:

 

 “I said, ‘This is the way I am going to speak, because it is a question not only of speaking, it is a question of giving moments of meditation to the people who are listening to me.

"’While I am speaking they are engaged; their minds are filled with me. When suddenly I stop for a moment, their minds also stop, waiting.... And those are the most beautiful moments, when they have a taste of meditation without knowing that they are meditating.’"

Osho, The Sword and the Lotus, Talk #24

 

About the Evening Meeting Bhagwan says:

"Every night, these few moments are the most valuable in your life. Every evening, when so many living Buddhas gather here, this place becomes the most important in the whole world. Because nowhere are so many people meditating together - digging so deep that they can find the very life source, the eternity, the deathlessness."