Traditional methods are systematic and modern method is active and chaotic

If you ask a Zen monk, ”From where do you think?” he puts his hands on his stomach. When Westerners came into contact with Japanese monks for the first time, they could not understand. ”What nonsense! How can you think from your stomach?” But the Zen reply is meaningful. Consciousness can use any center of the body, and the center that is nearest to the original source is the navel. The brain is furthest away from the original source, so if life energy is moving outward, the center of consciousness will become the brain. And if life energy is moving inward, ultimately the navel will become the center.

The quality of the mind has basically changed. In Patanjali’s days, the center of the human personality was not the brain; it was the heart. And before that, it was not even the heart. It was still lower, near the navel. Hatha yoga developed methods which were useful, meaningful, to the person whose center of personality was the navel. Then the center became the heart. Only then could bhakti yoga be used. Bhakti yoga developed in the middle ages because that is when the center of personality changed from the navel to the heart. Now, not even bhakti yoga is relevant. The center has gone even further from the navel. Now, the center is the brain. 

Modern man has changed so much that he needs new methods, new techniques. Chaotic methods will help the modern mind because the modern mind is, itself, chaotic. This chaos, this rebelliousness in modern man is, in fact, a rebellion of other things: of the body against the mind and against its suppressions. If we talk about it in yogic terms we can say that it is the rebellion of the heart center and the navel center against the brain. These centers are against the brain because the brain has monopolized the whole territory of the human soul. 

We use chaotic methods rather than systematic ones because a chaotic method is very helpful in pushing the center down from the brain. The center cannot be pushed down through any systematic method because systematization is brain work. Through a systematic method, the brain will be strengthened; more energy will be added to it. A catharsis is needed because your heart is so suppressed, due to your brain. Your brain has taken over so much of your being that it dominates you. There is no place for the heart, so the longings of the heart are suppressed. You have never laughed heartily, never lived heartily, never done anything heartily. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make things mathematical, and the heart is suppressed. So firstly, a chaotic method is needed to push the center of consciousness from the brain toward the heart. Then catharsis is needed to unburden the heart, to throw off suppressions, to make the heart open. If the heart becomes light and unburdened, then the center of consciousness is pushed still lower; it comes to the navel. The navel is the source of vitality, the seed source from which everything else comes: the body and the mind and everything. 

Traditional methods have an appeal because they are so ancient and so many people have achieved through them in the past. They may have become irrelevant to us, but they were not irrelevant to Buddha, Mahavira, Patanjali or Krishna. They were meaningful, helpful. The old methods may be meaningless now, but because Buddha achieved through them they have an appeal. The traditionalist feels: ”If Buddha achieved through these methods, why can’t I?” But we are in an altogether different situation now. The whole atmosphere, the whole thought-sphere, has changed. Traditional methods are systematic because the people in earlier times for whom they were developed were different. No traditional method can be used exactly as it exists. So in a way, all traditional methods have become irrelevant.

Abridged from Osho’s discourse - The Psychology of the Esoteric, Talk #4