Prem Geet on how only continuous global celebration can dissolve the error of terror.
I was eating soup at a local café when the big screen TV lit up with news of black-hooded terrorists standing behind their victims, prior to beheading. Suddenly I was eating that and I did not want to be eating Terror Soup. So with eyes averted I ate my dinner but was even more painfully aware that those powerful images were still in me after a brief, unwanted glance. Is it just me or does everyone feel a constriction in the throat as we guard our collective neck after 2014, the Year of Decapitation? I turned to Osho’s discourses for understanding and found:
“Violence is nothing but the energy that has to become love and is not becoming love. Violence is nothing but love unlived. A violent person is one who has too much love-energy and does not know how to release it. Love is creative, violence is destructive, and creative energy turns into being destructive if not used.” (1)
In the aftermath of many beheadings, I am more and more aware of how terroristic news images seep into consciousness and stay there unless creatively engaged and challenged. For me, art is a way of being with something, even the impossible fact of increasing ‘display violence’. I look for new ways to meet these images to free up my own life force. We can’t shrink-to-fit an insane world.
CNN’s Paul Cruickshank has pointed out the pornographic angle of violent “terror marketing” images, saying, “Some of these men have sort of a pornographic attraction to these violent scenes, these violent beheading videos. It really sort of energizes them.” As a world of passive news watchers, we have to de-victimize by taking charge of our daily ‘image diet’.
How do we challenge the acceleration of neo-barbarism and brutality TV? I really don’t know except for a practice of daily meditation. My words are not meant to discount the threat, harm or suffering caused by violent people. It seems the only antidote is the high celebration of life itself found in Osho meditations. In those moments of laughing, dancing, and singing, violence is not possible. We lose only the mind.
In the wonderful book In Search of the Miraculous, Osho says,
“After the awakening of kundalini the tendency for violence disappears completely. Not only does the meditator not commit violence, but he has no feeling of violence within himself. The urge to commit violence, the urge to harm others, can only exist when the vital energy is dormant. The moment it awakens the other ceases to be the other and so you cannot wish to harm him. Then you will not have to repress violence within yourself because then you cannot be violent.”
Because these anti-life news images wrap around the psyche like an almost invisible cloak that we don’t really talk about, I asked long-time Osho lovers, meditators and healers to comment on terrorism:
Artist and author Shunyo says, “Osho has pointed out many times that most of the religions are the source of terror, preaching eternal hell for ‘sinners’. Unless the roots of terrorism are identified, the tree of terrorism will continue to grow.”
Sarmad, a prolific musician and writer, links sexual repression to terrorism and says, “The whole media thing is suspect; why broadcast these images… ? Oh, if we could only rain Osho books on the Middle East!” (2)
Multi-talented poet Madhuri comments, “Why do battle? Why not just meditate? …But my own idea is: find the inner terrorist. Then be total in it for 10 minutes. Then it is gone, and one can go out and have fun. Is all the crap happening in the world, or are we making it so by believing it and giving it energy? I don’t know – I only know my own survival instinct tells me when to avoid something, for my own survival.”
Gifted therapist, healer and wise woman, Susan Ellis, MA, LMFT, also talks about the reality of little-explored parts of self, including the inner terrorist. She says that the outer is always representing the inner and vice versa. The inner terrorist is a constellation of congealed self-hate that needs to find a voice to transform. The inner terrorist is sub-verbal and unconscious, and can be comprised of layers of introjected family abuse and societal exploitation of the feminine. This anti-life message gets stuck in the body tissue but can be dissolved though feeling, naming, sharing, loving and accepting. Inspiring radical forgiveness, the words of Christ have never been more relevant to healing: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
Other friends remain divided between the “Do Something” School and the “Do Nothing” School. While creative expression is my way of doing something to fully participate in life, I love the reality that there is no do-er and nothing ever goes wrong. In the words of Osho:
“There is nobody who can punish you, and there is nobody who can reward you. You are part of the whole; you are not doing it. The whole is doing through you, whether you know it or not. The moment you know that it is the whole which is functioning through you, you become absolutely free of all responsibility.”
“Yes, my context, Devageet, is vast – but it is not my context, it is the context of the whole. It is functioning perfectly well – nothing ever goes wrong. But if you take yourself separately, then you are unnecessarily becoming burdened. My whole teaching is: drop all the burden on the whole, be free of all burden, and live spontaneously and totally and without any guilt.” (3)
Finally, we need to honestly face the ultimate threat, our fear of happiness:
“Happiness is threatening and misery is safe – safe for the ego. Ego can exist only in misery and through misery. Ego is an island surrounded by hell; happiness is threatening to the ego, to the very existence of the ego. Happiness rises like a sun and the ego disappears, evaporates like a dewdrop on the grass leaf.” (4)
Generating a ‘butterfly effect’, we can meditate to rebalance the inner and outer worlds with shining emptiness. In our daily walk, we can intend faith, hope, peace and love. In consciousness, it matters when buddhafields of seekers, lovers, and meditators stay happy and clear. We can detach from these horrific images and project compassion to the frightened souls called terrorists who are first and foremost, individuals.
If we succeed at celebration, we slip into the dancing armies of light, the invisible troops of song that hold the world in joy. Only a continuous global celebration will dissolve the error of terror.
Just think for a moment of the whole world
laughing, dancing, singing – just for one hour.
All kinds of slavery will disappear,
and all nations will disappear,
and all religions will disappear.
Naturally, the presidents and the prime ministers
and the popes and ayatollahs will look very shocked.
What is happening?
And they will join sooner or later,
because what is the point
of standing amongst the whole humanity dancing and enjoying?” (5)
Prem Geet
(1) Osho, Dance Your Way to God, Ch 14
(2) Related article Muslim Society Needs A Lysistrata
(3) Osho, The Invitation, Ch 2
(4) Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 6, Ch 10
(5) Osho, The Invitation, Ch 11
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