Question – YOU SAID THAT LIFE IS A PILGRIMAGE WITHOUT A GOAL. IS THIS ONLY FOR THE UNENLIGHTENED? WHEN AN ENLIGHTENED BEING LEAVES HIS BODY, DOES THE PILGRIMAGE CONTINUE?
Osho – Yes, the pilgrimage continues, but the pilgrim is no more. The pilgrim disappears, the pilgrimage continues. In you just the opposite is the case: the pilgrim is there and the pilgrimage is not there yet. The pilgrim is too much, hence it obstructs the pilgrimage.
The dancer disappears but the dance continues; the singer disappears but the song continues. The song cannot die because the song is out of God. The dancer cannot live eternally because the dancer is only out of your mind, just a fiction.
The dance is the reality, the dancer is just a fiction – hence Sufis have developed many methods through dance: the whirling dervish, the turn. What happens in the turn? What happens for the whirling dervish when he goes on dancing and whirling and whirling and whirling? What happens? A moment comes the whirler disappears, there is only whirling; the turner is no more, there is only the turn. There is energy but there is no centre to that energy.
In that very moment there is meditation. Dance is one of the ancient-most methods, TARIQA – hence my insistence on dance is very great. Many people come to me – orthodox Jainas. Catholics, Buddhists – and they say ’Why so much dance?’ Because they think that only when you sit silently under a tree with an absolutely unmoving body can meditation happen.
Meditation can happen in two ways. One: all movement disappears – then you sit like a Buddha, stone-like, statue-like. When all movement disappears the mover disappears, because the mover cannot exist without the movement. Then there is meditation. Or, two, you dance. You go on dancing and dancing and dancing and a moment comes of such ecstasy, of such extreme movement of energy, that in that movement the rock-like ego cannot exist.
It becomes a whirlwind. The rock disappears and there is only dance. The movement is there but the mover is no more there. Again, meditation has happened. Those who are following the path of love, MAHABA, for them dance will suit perfectly. Those who are following the path of knowing, for them sitting Buddha-like, in yoga postures, unmoving, will be helpful.