I never tell people to begin with just sitting. Otherwise you will begin to feel many things unnecessarily...things that are not there.
     If you begin with sitting, you will feel much disturbance inside. The more you try to just sit, the more disturbance will be felt; you will become aware only of your insane mind and nothing else. It will create depression; you will feel frustrated. You will not feel blissful; rather, you will begin to feel that you are insane. And sometimes you may really go insane.
     If you make a sincere effort to "just sit," you may really go insane.
     Only because people do not really try sincerely does insanity not happen more often. With a sitting posture you begin to know so much madness inside you that if you are sincere and continue it, you may really go insane. It has happened before, so many times. So I never suggest anything that can create frustration, depression, sadness...anything that will allow you to be too aware of your insanity. You may not be ready to be aware of all the insanity that is inside you; you must be allowed to get to know certain things gradually.
     Knowledge is not always good; it must unfold itself slowly as your capacity to absorb it grows.

     I begin with your insanity, not with a sitting posture.
     I allow your insanity. If you dance madly, the opposite happens within you. With a mad dance, you begin to be aware of a silent point within you; with sitting silently, you begin to be aware of madness. The opposite is always the point of awareness.
     With your dancing madly, chaotically, with crying, with chaotic breathing, I allow your madness. Then you begin to be aware of a subtle point, a deep point inside you that is silent and still, in contrast to the madness on the periphery. You will feel very blissful; at your center there is an inner silence. But if you are just sitting, then the inner one is the mad one; you are silent on the outside, but inside you are mad.
     If you begin with something active – something positive, alive, moving – it will be better; then you will begin to feel an inner stillness growing. The more it grows, the more it will be possible for you to use a sitting posture or a lying posture and the more silent meditation will be possible. But by then things will be different, totally different.

     A meditation technique that begins with movement, action, helps you in other ways, also. It becomes a catharsis. When you are just sitting, you are frustrated; your mind wants to move, and you are just sitting. Every muscle turns, every nerve turns. You are trying to force something upon yourself that is not natural for you; then you have divided yourself into the one who is forcing and the one who is being forced. And really, the part that is being forced and suppressed is the more authentic part; it is a more major part of your mind than the part that is suppressing, and the major part is bound to win.
     That which you are suppressing is really to be thrown, not suppressed. It has become an accumulation within you because you have been constantly suppressing it. The whole upbringing, the civilization, the education, is suppressive. You have been suppressing much that could have been thrown very easily with a different education, with a more conscious education, with a more aware parenthood. With a better awareness of the inner mechanism of the mind, the culture could have allowed you to throw out many things.

     You have accumulated anger, sex, violence, greed...everything! Now this accumulation is a madness within you. It is there, inside you. If you begin with any suppressive meditation – for example, with just sitting –you are suppressing all of this; you are not allowing it to be released. So I begin with a catharsis. First, let the suppressions be thrown into the air; and when you can throw your anger into the air, you have become mature.
     You become more and more mature when you are less and less dependent.
     If you can be angry alone, you are more mature. You do not need any object to be angry. So I make a catharsis in the beginning a must. You must throw everything into the sky, into the open space, without being conscious of any object.
     Be angry without the person with whom you would like to be angry. Weep without finding any cause; laugh, just laugh, without anything to laugh at. Then you can just throw the whole accumulated thing. You can just throw it, and once you know the way, you are unburdened of the whole past.
     Now, in your innocence, sitting meditation can be done – just sitting, or just lying or anything – because now there is no mad one inside to disturb the sitting.
    In this sitting there is no divided mind, no suppression. This sitting becomes a flowering.

     You must have seen statues of Buddha sitting on a flower, a lotus flower. The lotus is just symbolic; it is symbolic of what is happening inside Buddha. When "just sitting" happens from the inside, you feel just like the opening of a flower. Nothing is being suppressed from the outside; rather, there is a growth, an opening from the inside; something inside opens and flowers. You can imitate Buddha's posture, but you cannot imitate the flower. You can sit completely Buddha-like – even more Buddha-like than Buddha – but the inside flowering will not be there. It cannot be imitated.
     You can use tricks. You can use breathing rhythms that can force you to be still, to suppress your mind. But it is not good; it is not a flowering. The other way is better; when your mind changes and then, as a consequence, your breath changes; the change comes first from the mind.
     Awareness is not a static thing. Awareness, too, is movement...a dynamic flow.
     So if you start from the outside, if you force yourself to sit like a statue, you are killing much. First be concerned with catharsis, with cleaning out your mind, throwing everything out, so that you become empty and vacant...just a passage for something from the beyond to enter. Then sitting becomes helpful, silence becomes helpful, but not before.
     Silence must be alive, dynamic.
     You begin to feel it growing inside you just like a mother begins to feel a child growing. A deep silence is growing inside you; you become pregnant with it. Only then is there transformation.

Osho Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy

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