Catharsis by Osho
Q: How do you bring about the catharsis that you are talking about?
It takes time, but it is not difficult. How have we become so suppressed? The technique to release the suppression is just the opposite.
The method of repression is to not express. If you feel angry, you don’t express it. You suppress it, you don’t allow it to come out. My method is quite the contrary. If you are angry, express it. Not to someone, but in a vacuum. If you are angry at me, don’t express it to me. Go into a room and express it to the vacuum. If you express it toward someone it creates a chain reaction and you will never be out of it. But if you suppress it within, it becomes poisonous. It will remain in your system and will go on doing many many foolish things to you. Ultimately, you will have to express it somewhere somehow.
My method is to express everything that is inside. If there are special problems, moral problems, don’t express it to someone else. Express it in a vacuum. So my method starts with expressing everything that has been suppressed.
In the first step, I insist on chaotic breathing, for ten minutes. Not systematic breathing, but chaotic breathing. Systematic breathing cannot disturb your suppressed being. Chaotic breathing is very meaningful because breath is the link between your body and mind. If you are angry you have a different rhythm of breathing. If you are in love a different rhythm of breathing. If you are sad, again there is a different rhythm of breathing. If you are relaxed, a different rhythm of breathing. When your state of mind changes, your breathing changes immediately. So if you change your breathing, your state of mind is affected immediately. You cannot breathe rhythmically and be angry simultaneously. It is impossible. You cannot go into the sex act with very silent breathing. Impossible!
So first I insist on chaotic breathing. Just taking the breath in and throwing it out. No yogic method is to be used. Inhale as much as possible and then exhale as much as possible, forgetting everything but the breathing. Just remember to exhale and inhale so forcibly that your whole system is disturbed: every cell of the body is disturbed, every cell of the mind is disturbed. You are trying to disturb the whole set pattern that has been developed in you!
In the second step, when your breathing has disturbed your body/mind completely, I tell you to express whatever is inside you. Whatsoever comes to your mind, for ten minutes you are to express it. If you want to scream, scream madly. If you want to weep, weep madly. If you want to laugh, laugh. If you want to jump, be angry, throw your violence to the sky, then do it. Whatsoever you want to express, express. But not to someone; just in a vacuum.
The second step is expression. You will be surprised to see how many things start coming to you once you start expressing them. It is not only that your mind expressed them. Your body expresses them. For the first time, you become aware that your body has many repressions to express. If you are a violent man, your hands will be moving as if you are killing someone or beating someone. Many screams will come out. And through the screams, much will be released.
For this second step to happen totally, takes time. But within three weeks you will be able to express what is within you spontaneously. Then you will feel that something is leaving you and you are being unburdened.
Only then can the third step happen. The third step is a particular sound, “Hoo.” Not the word who, just the sound ‘
“Hoo” – meaningless. For ten minutes you have to repeat it, “Hoo, Hoo, Hoo.” This sound hits the sex center inside. There are different sounds, and every sound reaches a different layer within. If you say om, the sound that has been traditionally used, it goes to the heart. If you say om, the sound never goes below the heart; but if you say, “Hoo,” the sound reaches below the navel and hits the sex center.
Modern man – the modern mind and the modern body – is so involved with sex that unless that center is hit, nothing can be done with man. The sex center can be hit in two ways: from without or from within. Sex is the only energy in you; it is the source of all energies. If it moves out, it becomes biological reproduction. If it moves in, it becomes spiritual transformation – a rebirth of yourself.
In the third step, you are to just go on crying, screaming, “Hoo!” and hitting the sex center. Soon, within a few weeks, you will begin to feel an uprush of energy starting from the sex center and moving up through your spine. You will feel a warmth, you will feel that a new path has been opened inside you. And once this energy begins to move from your spine toward the head, you will have a different view about yourself, a different outlook, a different dimension. Once this energy reaches the head, it can be released from the head. Normally sex energy is released from the sex center. That is one pole of our being. The opposite pole is the head. If the sex energy can be released from the head, you are transformed; you are a different being.
So these are the three steps to do. The fourth step is simple relaxation – just falling dead. Not doing anything: no effort, no technique. Just remaining silently with whatsoever is. After doing the first three steps, you are so exhausted that relaxation comes easily. You want to relax, your whole body wants to relax. You fall down and lie there like a dead man. In this deadness, you become a witness. You are simply a witness, not doing anything.
This fourth step is what has been known for ages as meditation. But now these first three steps have to be added to it. Unless these three are done, just telling people to be silent, sit silently, is meaningless. They can sit, they can force themselves to sit, but they cannot be silent because the madness will go around and around inside them. Rather when they are sitting silently, they will become more mad inside.
Osho, The Book of Wisdom