Article - The Alchemy of Celebration
by Aneesha Dillon
Of all the insights that I have received from Osho, certainly one of the most significant is understanding the value of Celebration as a quality of life on the spiritual path.
It is a few weeks since I arrived home from the annual Osho Risk Summer Festival in Denmark in July. I went there to lead some Tantric Pulsation events and to take the opportunity to sing and celebrate for a week with Milarepa and his band in Risk’s generous, fragrant, overflowing summer Festival.
When I arrived there I was harried, depleted, and nearly—no, actually—depressed from traveling so much, and felt in need of a break. (The night before I had missed my flight to Denmark because I fell asleep in the frequent traveler lounge, and had to book another ticket for the next morning, at great expense.!)
I arrived the next morning, and with my first event at 2:30 pm, I quickly connected over lunch with several of my dear friends who live and work at the Osho Risk Meditation Center.
Suddenly, it was as if we all began to dance together--the participants and the program leaders, the cooks and bar tenders, the musicians and entertainers, with the whole Buddhafield around and involved. For a week we danced our feet into the earth, raised our arms and our voices to the sky, sang songs, hugged a lot, and celebrated countless small moments each day, both alone and with others.
This week in the Danish countryside demonstrated to me the truth about meditative celebration, and its capacity to transform the quality of human life, in the short term and also in the long term. Sometime during the last days of the Festival I suddenly realized I was awake, happy, relaxed, and full of energy. I was being healed almost without realizing it.
Through singing, dancing, and meditating together with a group of 75-100 people for a week, something really does happen; something is deeply nourished and happy, relaxed, and even joyful, ecstatic.
Looking back, I can remember specific experiences that I had while living in Osho’s Buddhafields over many years, moments which formed something inside me that remains as a foundation, both in my personal life and in my work with people.
When I arrived in Pune from California in late 1976—it was called Poona in those days—music and dancing were already a dimension of Osho’s meditations. The Dynamic and Kundalini meditations were part of the Ashram’s daily schedule, and Nataraj (Dancing meditation) and many other moving meditations were part of the monthly 10-day Meditation Camps, which Osho always insisted that new arrivals participate in.
Chaitanya Hari (Deuter) was already busy recording the music that still accompanies us in these extraordinary meditations. I have continued to use Chaitanya Hari’s music from those past, and later years, in my groups because for me he is one of Osho’s musicians who can transmit through his music a certain fragrance that I associate with Osho’s presence. Many of the musicians who played together over many years for Osho’s arrival and departure in morning and evening discourses, transmit this meditative quality.
It is such a joy to play recordings of their music in my groups—it’s like bringing friends with me into the grouproom. I sing and dance with these songs and they kindle my spirit, moment to moment as I work.
Within days of my November ’76 arrival in Pune, Aneeta arrived, also from California. She was the woman who had learned Sufi Dance with Pir Vilayat Khan and brought this uplifting practice to the world of Osho. And almost immediately, Osho invited Aneeta to start leading Sufi Dance every day at 10 in the morning. I was virtually a devotee of Sufi Dance, participating every day for several years.
One day, someone came to me and said, “Aneeta has laryngitis, can you lead Sufi Dance? “Yes, absolutely” I said, not yet knowing if it was true. Those days of standing in for Aneeta helped me grow in my capacity to lead this wonderful practice.
So many joyful, playful, and devotional songs and dances were created and shared in the Pune One years. There are a number of us, here and there around the world, who learned, and teach, Sufi Dance, which we now usually call Heart Dance. It is energizing, grounding, centering, heart-opening, and up-lifting. And done regularly, it is a transformative practice that can raise consciousness and deepen presence.
Around the same time Aneeta arrived in Pune, there came a young German guitarist/songwriter named Anubhava, who began to teach his songs to a small group of us in the ashram. They were beautiful, poetic songs, sung in parts and rounds, sometimes using the words of Rumi, or the poetry of other Mystics.
Anubhava conducted the first music groups in Buddha Hall, where hundreds of us met to sing and dance every evening at 7 o’clock. This practice helped us to expand in our capacity for totality in body and spirit, and to grow roots of fire and wings of ecstasy.
I’m certain such experiences set up neurological patterns in the brain, which deepen with every succeeding similar experience. I remember how Osho strongly emphacised the importance of everyone being present on the three main celebration days—December 11th, his Birthday, March 21, his Enlightenment day, and Guru Purnima (Master’s) day, the full moon in July. These were days of intense celebration, singing and dancing in Osho’s presence. Sometimes, the day after, I felt like I’d been hit by a truck-- it felt like a deep surgery had happened. And at the same time I felt a new lightness growing in me. Something collective was growing between us and Osho and the whole Existence. Being present for it, being total in it, that was the point.
Aneeta and Anubhava fell in love and started leading Sufi Dance together. After more than thirty years they are still together, and live in Northern California. Each year they travel to Europe to lead Sufi Dance and Singing Groups. They have both been a huge inspiration for many thousands of sannyasins around the world, and for the many of Osho’s musicians who came after.
Many excellent musicians and song-writers gathered around Osho over the years, even after he had left his body. Their devotional songs, inspired by the qualities felt in Osho’s presence, are full of grace, light, and delight. Many of these musicians are world class and are impacting contemporary inspirational music.
Another phase of Osho’s work in late Pune One (’79-81) that influenced my understanding of bliss and ecstasy, and the higher forms of pleasure, involved rather esoteric energy work, in which there were female energy mediums, dancing and swaying to the beat of energetic music. The lights were flashed on and off like a strobe while Osho touched the 3rd Eye of mediums and ‘guest’ as the energy rose upwards, creating ecstatic states of inner awareness and bliss. Personally, I experienced an upward explosion of energy in my own energy darshans with Osho, that left me feeling dissolved into an ocean of consciousness and bliss. Sometimes I felt it for days afterwards.
In Osho’s Darshan Diaries from late Pune One you can find beautiful photos of these energy darshans. The faces show an extraordinary grace, an indescribable inner feeling as delicate as a whisper.
After years of living in that vibe, the ‘celebration grooves’ or pathways have become well-traveled, familiar, and easy to find. Just to sing an Osho song, just to feel the oneness of every one of us together, touches an easily recognizable feeling, or chord that brings me home to myself. Osho taught us, through the energy darshans and other celebrative events, how to reach for those inner spaces of blissfulness and joy, and how to receive invisible, yet tangible, blessings from the beyond.
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Of all the insights that I have received from Osho, certainly one of the most significant is understanding the value of Celebration as a quality of life on the spiritual path.
It is a few weeks since I arrived home from the annual Osho Risk Summer Festival in Denmark in July. I went there to lead some Tantric Pulsation events and to take the opportunity to sing and celebrate for a week with Milarepa and his band in Risk’s generous, fragrant, overflowing summer Festival.
When I arrived there I was harried, depleted, and nearly—no, actually—depressed from traveling so much, and felt in need of a break. (The night before I had missed my flight to Denmark because I fell asleep in the frequent traveler lounge, and had to book another ticket for the next morning, at great expense.!)
I arrived the next morning, and with my first event at 2:30 pm, I quickly connected over lunch with several of my dear friends who live and work at the Osho Risk Meditation Center.
Suddenly, it was as if we all began to dance together--the participants and the program leaders, the cooks and bar tenders, the musicians and entertainers, with the whole Buddhafield around and involved. For a week we danced our feet into the earth, raised our arms and our voices to the sky, sang songs, hugged a lot, and celebrated countless small moments each day, both alone and with others.
This week in the Danish countryside demonstrated to me the truth about meditative celebration, and its capacity to transform the quality of human life, in the short term and also in the long term. Sometime during the last days of the Festival I suddenly realized I was awake, happy, relaxed, and full of energy. I was being healed almost without realizing it.
Through singing, dancing, and meditating together with a group of 75-100 people for a week, something really does happen; something is deeply nourished and happy, relaxed, and even joyful, ecstatic.
Looking back, I can remember specific experiences that I had while living in Osho’s Buddhafields over many years, moments which formed something inside me that remains as a foundation, both in my personal life and in my work with people.
When I arrived in Pune from California in late 1976—it was called Poona in those days—music and dancing were already a dimension of Osho’s meditations. The Dynamic and Kundalini meditations were part of the Ashram’s daily schedule, and Nataraj (Dancing meditation) and many other moving meditations were part of the monthly 10-day Meditation Camps, which Osho always insisted that new arrivals participate in.
Chaitanya Hari (Deuter) was already busy recording the music that still accompanies us in these extraordinary meditations. I have continued to use Chaitanya Hari’s music from those past, and later years, in my groups because for me he is one of Osho’s musicians who can transmit through his music a certain fragrance that I associate with Osho’s presence. Many of the musicians who played together over many years for Osho’s arrival and departure in morning and evening discourses, transmit this meditative quality.
It is such a joy to play recordings of their music in my groups—it’s like bringing friends with me into the grouproom. I sing and dance with these songs and they kindle my spirit, moment to moment as I work.
Within days of my November ’76 arrival in Pune, Aneeta arrived, also from California. She was the woman who had learned Sufi Dance with Pir Vilayat Khan and brought this uplifting practice to the world of Osho. And almost immediately, Osho invited Aneeta to start leading Sufi Dance every day at 10 in the morning. I was virtually a devotee of Sufi Dance, participating every day for several years.
One day, someone came to me and said, “Aneeta has laryngitis, can you lead Sufi Dance? “Yes, absolutely” I said, not yet knowing if it was true. Those days of standing in for Aneeta helped me grow in my capacity to lead this wonderful practice.
So many joyful, playful, and devotional songs and dances were created and shared in the Pune One years. There are a number of us, here and there around the world, who learned, and teach, Sufi Dance, which we now usually call Heart Dance. It is energizing, grounding, centering, heart-opening, and up-lifting. And done regularly, it is a transformative practice that can raise consciousness and deepen presence.
Around the same time Aneeta arrived in Pune, there came a young German guitarist/songwriter named Anubhava, who began to teach his songs to a small group of us in the ashram. They were beautiful, poetic songs, sung in parts and rounds, sometimes using the words of Rumi, or the poetry of other Mystics.
Anubhava conducted the first music groups in Buddha Hall, where hundreds of us met to sing and dance every evening at 7 o’clock. This practice helped us to expand in our capacity for totality in body and spirit, and to grow roots of fire and wings of ecstasy.
I’m certain such experiences set up neurological patterns in the brain, which deepen with every succeeding similar experience. I remember how Osho strongly emphacised the importance of everyone being present on the three main celebration days—December 11th, his Birthday, March 21, his Enlightenment day, and Guru Purnima (Master’s) day, the full moon in July. These were days of intense celebration, singing and dancing in Osho’s presence. Sometimes, the day after, I felt like I’d been hit by a truck-- it felt like a deep surgery had happened. And at the same time I felt a new lightness growing in me. Something collective was growing between us and Osho and the whole Existence. Being present for it, being total in it, that was the point.
Aneeta and Anubhava fell in love and started leading Sufi Dance together. After more than thirty years they are still together, and live in Northern California. Each year they travel to Europe to lead Sufi Dance and Singing Groups. They have both been a huge inspiration for many thousands of sannyasins around the world, and for the many of Osho’s musicians who came after.
Many excellent musicians and song-writers gathered around Osho over the years, even after he had left his body. Their devotional songs, inspired by the qualities felt in Osho’s presence, are full of grace, light, and delight. Many of these musicians are world class and are impacting contemporary inspirational music.
Another phase of Osho’s work in late Pune One (’79-81) that influenced my understanding of bliss and ecstasy, and the higher forms of pleasure, involved rather esoteric energy work, in which there were female energy mediums, dancing and swaying to the beat of energetic music. The lights were flashed on and off like a strobe while Osho touched the 3rd Eye of mediums and ‘guest’ as the energy rose upwards, creating ecstatic states of inner awareness and bliss. Personally, I experienced an upward explosion of energy in my own energy darshans with Osho, that left me feeling dissolved into an ocean of consciousness and bliss. Sometimes I felt it for days afterwards.
In Osho’s Darshan Diaries from late Pune One you can find beautiful photos of these energy darshans. The faces show an extraordinary grace, an indescribable inner feeling as delicate as a whisper.
After years of living in that vibe, the ‘celebration grooves’ or pathways have become well-traveled, familiar, and easy to find. Just to sing an Osho song, just to feel the oneness of every one of us together, touches an easily recognizable feeling, or chord that brings me home to myself. Osho taught us, through the energy darshans and other celebrative events, how to reach for those inner spaces of blissfulness and joy, and how to receive invisible, yet tangible, blessings from the beyond.
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