Excerpt from David Hill’s’ (Anand Chintan’s) recently released book, ‘Mastering Madness’.
In meditation I was turning the finger that I had been pointing at others towards myself. I was taking responsibility for who I had been. What part had I played in his life and death? Forget what others had done. What had I done or not done?
David Hill had to die so that Anand Chintan could be born. My story is like the caterpillar spinning a cocoon, entering into death, and then being reborn as winged creature. For me, meditation and the various therapy groups provided the cocoon. I entered as a world-weary intellectual, an alcoholic, deluded, manic-depressive atheist, and I emerged as a bright-eyed explorer of new worlds.
Going deep into the “insanity” of Dynamic Meditation, I learned that the so-called mental illness I suffered from was nothing more than blocked energy. In my case, I had never allowed myself full expression of fear and anger. Those emotions, especially anger, were taboo in my early life. When anger arose I unconsciously suppressed it. My breath became shallow. I smoked cigarettes. I acted out in various ways. It was all an attempt to squelch the primal emotion. In these ways the individual became perverted.
Dynamic Meditation and other methods gave me permission to express what was real, no matter how ugly and violent. Rajneesh once stated that in his opinion, war was nothing more than a collective expression of humanity’s accumulated, unexpressed fear and anger. In Dynamic I was tapping in on the energies of all that I was conditioned to repress. When I gave expression in a safe, controlled environment, a great amount of tension was released. As it released I became aware of how tight I was, how controlled I was. The alcohol, the nicotine, the drugs, even the sex-obsession were all tools I employed to mask parts of myself I feared and loathed.
To state it as simply as I can, meditation provided a way out of the tyranny of the mind. Prior to meditation I simply did not know that there was something higher than the mind, something that could actually watch the mind. Now, when fatigue or life-trauma try to set my mind on long-winded discourses on the meaninglessness and horrors of life, I have the tool of meditation to employ. So I sit. I watch. I wait. I do special breathing.
If I feel things are out of control, I put on the Dynamic Meditation music and go consciously mad for an hour, and then I watch. This is the Master key. To watch! It seems simple. But think about it. If you are truly watching the mind, then who is this watcher?
Read the review by Kaiyum: Mastering Madness
Available as paperback and Kindle from OshoViha – amazon.com – amazon.co.uk – amazon.de – amazon.in
Born (1943) and raised in Rhode Island, Chintan (David Hill) studied mental illness and became a stage actor. His brother’s suicide precipitated a downward spiral into mental illness (1973). His first Dynamic propelled him into sannyas in 1977. After prolonged visits to Pune and Rajneeshpuram he became co-director of the Rajneesh Center in New York (1978-1980) and worked in mental hospitals. Now retired from the Mental Health field, he works as a writer and promotes meditation as a cure for mental illness. He recently became certified as a High Ropes Course Facilitator, working with various groups promoting Team Building. Chintan currently resides in Deleon Springs, Florida. mentalillnessmyths.com
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