The active meditation techniques he developed are perhaps Osho's most respected and effective contribution to the seekers' toolbox.

The need for it was that modern culture people don't have an easy time sitting in silence. Us, with our clever, busy heads.

The usual solution in times gone by was to make a community far from the influence of the culture, or a "Holy" (Means: Set apart) space - temple, monastery etc. This distance from the culture eased the mind-busyness, at least after some years of a simple life. When the mind quieted down, meditation could begin in earnest.

The modern, western mindset, which Osho's typical sannyasin had, is seriously busy, intensely righteous and is generally one hell of an obstacle to transcend. Perhaps an order of magnitude more severe than the old methods were designed to cope with.

I have heard a story form the 1950's of a related (to Dynamic Meditation) technique which makes this point. An Indonesian school developed a cathartic technique which worked brilliantly on their students and the general Indonesian population then. The technique was designed with a beginning, and the end would be when the bulk, perhaps all, of the current angers, fears frustrations and resentments had been purged. It worked fine with others who came and tried it,but when Westerners came, trouble appeared. These guys had much, much more "polluted" minds than those the technique had been designed for, and they took an unprecedented length of time to complete the process. When the technique was taken to America, serious problems resulted, and, according to this story, some people are still in mental institutions forty years later, because the process has gone so deep that it will only end when their gargantuan store of the mind's baggage is exhausted. That's a scary story, and I can't vouch for it's factual accuracy, but, in the gist of it, that's how it went.

Osho's active techniques are primarily Dynamic meditation in the morning, Kundalini (also an active meditation) at sundown. The morning thing is a very adequate substitute for the morning jog, gym workout, chakra alignment, energy balancing, coffee, vigorous whipping, or whatever you normally use to get going. It takes one hour, and you'll fly through your day - FLY.

The evening thing, Kundalini Meditation is a very adequate substitute for your normal "wind down" routine, whether that involves a whiskey, joint, TV, married sex, reading, web surfing, masturbating, working, or whatever combination. It has startling and pleasant side effects including relief from the modern ills of insomnia, low libido, stress and numbness.

These meditations are described in more detail at osho.com.