While Ailon introduces his School of Playfulness, he says that if he hadn’t had access to the psychic muscle of laughter, he wouldn’t have been able “to ride out the waves, nor come up with the creative ideas that have arisen.”
Seriousness is simply sickness of the soul, and only sick souls can be covered into slaves… The day man forgets to laugh, the day man forgets to be playful, the day man forgets to sing and dance, he is no more man; he becomes a sub-human species.”
Osho, Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet, Ch 23
With the advent of AI, Osho’s prophetic words have never been more relevant. The world is heading towards more robotism, more automation, towards a more left-brain, process-driven organisation of society. How does that make you feel? It makes me feel scared about the values and principles from which society will be organised, nervous that technology will reign supreme over humanity, over the heart, over the mystery of existence.
Okay, maybe I’ve started on too big a note here. Let’s scale it down. How do you feel when your life becomes too regulated and serious? How do you feel when stress narrows your range of thoughts and emotions into a tunnel-vision state of task-completion and fight or flight? For me it feels yuck! I was brought up in a controlling environment with the never-ending ‘right-wrong’ laws and customs of Orthodox Judaism and English public-schooling. My rebellion was to try and find a life of freedom and emotional expression – firstly through psychedelics and then more substantially through the practices and teachings of Osho – in particular his championing of creativity and self-expression as being essential for the healthy functioning of a human being.
Over the last 30 years, I’ve found myself exploring self-expression as an artist, a writer, a comedian, a musician, a clown and a storyteller. It’s been an up-and-down journey of success and failure in the outside world, but also an exotic dive into my emotional underworld – and I would gladly repeat it all if given the chance to live my life again. Underneath it all, I can see that there has been one consistent guide-rope and governing principle – and that has been my sense of humour. If I didn’t have access to the psychic muscle of laughter, I would not have been able to ride out the waves nor come up with about 50% of the creative ideas that have arisen. As the big guy says:
A sense of humor is one of the very essentials of intelligence. The moment you lose it you lose intelligence also; the more you have it, the more intelligent you are.”
Osho, Guida Spirituale, Ch 3, Q 3
My own experience is that this is profoundly true. If I did not laugh, and constantly pay homage to the gods of laughter (through my worship of TV comedy in all its forms), I would be an emotionally impoverished man. Humour, laughter and play have brought an unquantifiable benefit into my life, work and relationships. It has given me an emotional release-valve in my close relationships, a social lubricant amongst groups of strangers, a creative freedom when coming up with new ideas, and a far more natural and ease-ful communication style as a teacher. Oh – and apparently it even makes you more likeable. The point I’m trying to make by rabbiting on about my own journey, is that if humour is able to bestow such gifts on an individual, why are we not being nudged and nursed towards developing it as a life-skill? Why are children and adults not being invited to develop the reflex of playfulness throughout their lives as a form of emotional wellbeing and psychic health?
Funny you should ask (sorry, that’s just me talking to my sub-personalities). After spending most of my adult life as a facilitator of innumerable forms of mind-body techniques (or hippy-shit as it’s known in the trade), I find myself going down the singular path where I am attempting to participate in this noble quest of promoting the path of play. I’ve called it ‘The School of Playfulness’ – a learning centre where adults can access their emotional muscle of freedom and self-expression in a climate that is essentially non-serious.
Yep, it comes back to what Osho calls ‘The disease of seriousness’. Having been infected with this illness since birth (or even before?), I am emotionally hyper-sensitive to situations where all the humour has drained out of the room. It means that I’m now unable to teach a workshop in a preposterously do-or-die state of earnestness, and if I catch myself taking myself too seriously, the ‘clown’ part of me surfaces and takes the piss out of myself. It’s a wonderful safety-valve, and I believe that everyone can access their own inner resource of ‘how to take themselves less seriously’.
Let’s zoom in a bit. What I’ve learnt from watching and practising the craft of stand-up comedy is self-deprecation. Most comics are immediately able to hone in on their own idiosyncrasies and ‘own it’ in front of an audience. Do you know how liberating this is? Do you know how much psychic tension is lifted from your veins when you no longer feel compelled to hide a deep and dark secret – such as that you like picking your nose? Or that you’re afraid of tattoos – or in my case that I look like Salman Rushdie? Audiences love honesty. And when we’re able to learn to be honestly and authentically ourselves we learn to love ourselves that tiny bit more. To put it another way – the part of our bioenergy that was busy covering up and hiding our flaws is now liberated and able to relax back into our centre.
I guess I’m writing this piece to let you know that I’m beginning this journey and exploration of self-expressive therapy à la ‘School of Playfulness’. It’s a place where people can come and learn to marry their authenticity with their humour and individual uniqueness. We use a variety of techniques and structures – from generalised playfulness games, baby steps into true-life storytelling, and, above all, we use the method of Clown Healing – where the ability to practise failure in a safe space releases a certain portion of our psychic tension. And we learn to take ourselves that little bit less seriously. As that happens, we become easier to be around, a bit more generous emotionally, a bit more self-accepting, and my guess is – that we will take it a bit more in our stride when the robots take over.
If you’d like to get a taste of what this feels like before the next chapter of human history unravels itself, I’m running ongoing sessions in London, and very proudly offering the first School of Playfulness training at Osho Leela between March-May 2025. You’re also welcome to drop me a line to chat about any of this, if it calls you. osholeela.uk
Related article
- Clown Healing: Who says your spiritual practice needs to be serious? – Ailon tells the story how Clown Healing was born. He’s often facilitating the process in the UK
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