The second question:

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

THE FIRST FEW DAYS OF ACTIVE MEDITATION TEND TO TIGHTEN MUSCLES, CAUSING PAIN EVERYWHERE. IS THERE ANY WAY TO GET OVER THAT?

Go on doing it! You will get over it -- and the reasons are obvious. There are two reasons. First, it is a vigorous exercise and your body has to get attuned to it. So for three or four days you will feel that the whole body is aching. With any new exercise it will happen. But after four days you will get over it and your body will feel stronger than ever.

But this is not very basic. The basic thing goes deeper, and the basic thing is what modern psychologists have come to know. Your body is not simply physical. In your body, in your muscles, in the structure of your body, many other things have entered through suppressions. If you suppress anger, the poison goes into the body. It goes into the muscles, it goes into the blood. If you suppress anything, it is not only a mental thing, it is also physical -- because you are not really divided. You are not body AND mind; you are bodymind -- psychosomatic. You are both together. So whatsoever is done with your body reaches to the mind and whatsoever is done with the mind reaches to the body, as body and mind are two ends of the same entity.

For instance, if you get angry what happens to the body? Whenever you get angry certain poisons are released into the blood. Without those poisons you will not get mad enough to be angry. You have particular glands in the body, and those glands release certain chemicals. Now this is scientific, this is not just a philosophy. Your blood becomes poisoned.

That is why, when you are angry, you can do something which you cannot do ordinarily -- because you are mad. You can push a big rock: you cannot do it ordinarily. You cannot even believe afterwards that you could have pushed this rock or thrown it or lifted it. When you are back to normal again, you will not be capable of lifting it again because you are not the same. Particular chemicals were circulating in the blood. You were in an emergency condition; your total energy was brought to be active.

But when an animal gets angry, he gets angry. He has no morality about it, no teaching about it. He simply gets angry and the anger is released. When you get angry, you get angry in a way similar to any animal. But then there is society, morality, etiquette, and thousands of things. You have to push the anger down. You have to show that you are not angry; you have to smile -- a painted smile! You have to create a smile, and you push the anger down. What is happening to the body? The body was ready to fight -- either to fight or to fly, to escape from the danger, either to face it or escape from it. The body was ready to DO something: anger is just a readiness to do something. The body was going to be violent, aggressive.

If you could be violent and aggressive, then the energy would be released. But you cannot be -- it is not convenient, so you push it down. Then what will happen to all those muscles which were ready to be aggressive? They will become crippled. The energy pushes them to be aggressive, and you push them backwards not to be aggressive. There will be a conflict. In your muscles, in your blood, in your body tissues, there will be conflict. They are ready to express something and you are pushing them not to express. You are suppressing them. Then your body becomes crippled.

And this happens with every emotion. And this goes on day after day for years. Then your body becomes crippled all over. All the nerves become crippled. They are not flowing, they are not liquid, they are not alive. They have become dead, they have become poisoned. And they have all become entangled. They are not natural.

Look at any animal and see the grace of the body. What happens to the human body? Why is it not so graceful? Why? Every animal is so graceful: why is the human body not so graceful? What has happened to it? You have done something with it: you have crushed it and the natural spontaneity of its flow has gone. It has become stagnant. In every part of your body there is poison. In every muscle of your body there is suppressed anger, suppressed sexuality, suppressed greed -- and everything -- suppressed jealousy, hatred. Everything is suppressed there. Your body is re#ally diseased.

So when you start meditating, all these poisons will be released. And wherever the body has become stagnant, it will have to melt, it will become liquid again. And this is a great effort. After forty years of living in a wrong way, then suddenly meditating, the whole body is in an upheaval. You will feel aching all over the body. But this aching is good, and you have to welcome it. Allow the body to become again a flow. Again it will become graceful and childlike; again you will gain the aliveness. But before that aliveness comes to you the dead parts have to be straightened and this is going to be a little painful.

Psychologists say that we have created an armor around the body and that armor is the problem. If you are allowed total expression when you get angry what will you do? When you get angry, you start crushing your teeth together; you want to do something with your nails and with your hands, because that's how your animal heritage will have it. You want to do something with your hands, to destroy something.

If you don't do anything your fingers will become crippled; they will lose the grace, the beauty. They will not be alive limbs. And the poison is there. So when you shake hands with someone, really there is no touch, no life, because your hands are dead.

You can feel this. Touch a small child's hand -- a subtle difference is there. When the child really gives you his hand... if he is not giving, then it is alright -- he will withdraw. He will not give you a dead hand, he will simply withdraw. But if he wants to give you his hand, then you will feel that his hand is as if it is melting into your hand. The warmth, the flow -- as if the whole child has come to the hand. The very touch, and he expresses all the love that it is possible to express.

But the same child when grown up will shake hands as if a hand is just a dead instrument. He will not come in it, he will not flow through it. This has happened because there are blocks. Anger is blocked... really, before your hand becomes alive again to express love, it will have to pass through agony, it will have to pass through a deep expression of anger. If the anger is not released, that anger is blocking and love cannot come out of it.

Your whole body has become blocked, not only your hands. So you can embrace someone, you can take someone near your chest, but that is not synonymous with taking someone near your heart. These are two different things. You can take someone near your chest: this is a physical phenomenon. But if you have an armor around your heart, a blocking of emotions, then the person remains as distant as he ever was; no intimacy is possible. But if you REALLY take a person near, and there is no armor, no wall between you and the person, then the heart will melt into the other. There will be a meeting, a communion.

Your body has to release many poisons. You have become toxic, and you will have pain -- mm? -- because those poisons have settled down. Now I #am creating a chaos again. This meditation is to create chaos within you so that you can be rearranged -- so that a new arrangement becomes possible. You must be des-troyed as you are, only then can the new be born. As you are, you have gone totally wrong. You have to be destroyed and only then can something new be created. There will be pain, but this pain is worthwhile.

So go on doing the meditation and allow the body to have pain. Allow the body not to resist; allow the body to move into this agony. This agony comes from your past but it will go. If you are ready it will go. And when it goes, then for the first time you will have a BODY. Right now you have only an imprisonment, a capsule, dead. You are encapsulated; you do not have an agile, alive body. Even animals have more beautiful, more alive bodies than you.

By the way, that is why we have become so much obsessed with clothes -- because the body is not worth showing. We have become so much obsessed with clothes! Whenever you stand naked you will see what you have done to your body. Clothes go on hiding your body from you.

This has been my experience through so many meditation camps: if some people become naked in the camps, really only these people are the ones who have beautiful bodies; thus, they are not afraid. Those who have ugly bodies come and they complain, and they say, "This is not good, people going nude!" Their fear is natural. They are not really afraid of others going nude, they are afraid of themselves; they cannot face their own bodies.

This disease is a vicious circle, because if you do not have a live body you want to hide it, and when you hide it, it becomes more and more dead -- because then there is no need to be alert about its being alive.

Through centuries of clothing we have lost touch with our own bodies. If your head is cut off and you encounter your own body without a head, I am sure you will not be able to recognize that this is your body -- or will you be able to recognize it? You will not be able to recognize it because you are not even acquainted with your own body. You do not have any feeling about it; you are simply living in it without caring about it.

We have done much violence to our bodies. So in this chaotic meditation I am forcing your bodies to be alive again. Many blocks will be broken; many settled things will become unsettled again; many systems will become liquid again. There will be pain, but welcome it. It is a blessing and you will come over it. Continue! There is no need to think what to do. You simply continue the meditation. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of people passing through the same process. Within a few days the pain is gone. And when the pain is gone, you will have a subtle joy around your body.

You cannot have it right now because the pain is there. You may know it or you may not know it but the pain is there all over your body. You have simply become unconscious about it because it has always been with you. Whatsoever is always there, you become unconscious about. Through meditation you will become conscious and then the mind will say, "Don't do this; the whole body is aching." Do not listen to the mind. Simply go on doing it.

Within a certain period the pain will be thrown out. And when the pain is thrown out, when your body has again become receptive and there is no block, no poisons around it, you will always have a subtle feeling of joy wrapped around you. Whatsoever you are doing or not doing, you will always feel a subtle vibration of joy around your body.

Really, joy only means that your body is in a symphony, nothing else -- that your body is in a musical rhythm, nothing else. Joy is not pleasure; pleasure has to be derived from something else. Joy is just to be yourself -- alive, fully vibrant, vital. A feeling of a subtle music around your body and within your body, a symphony -- that is joy. You can be joyful when your body is flowing, when it is a riverlike flow.