Use familiar Western ideas for the first layers, invent clear new words where needed, and focus less on labels and more on directly feeling them—starting by being aware of your body.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
You said we have seven bodies: an etheric body, a mental body and so on. Sometimes it is difficult to adjust the indian language to the terms of western psychology. We have no theory for this in the west, so how can we translate these different bodies into our language? The spiritual is no problem, but the etheric? The astral?
Begin from the physical. Then every other step opens for you. The moment you work on the first body, you have glimpses of the second. So begin from the physical. Be aware of it moment to moment. And not only outwardly aware. You can become aware of your body from the inside also. I can become aware of my hand as I have seen it from the outside, but there is an inner feeling to it too. When I close my eyes the hand is not seen, but there is still an inner feeling of something being there. So do not be aware of your body as seen from the outside. This cannot lead you inward. The inner feeling is quite different. When you feel the body from within, you will know for the first time what it is to be inside the body. When you see it only from…
Osho, in yesterday’s talk you said that a seeker should first be concerned with becoming a vessel, and should not go about begging from place to place. But the very meaning of a seeker is that he has obstacles in practice. He doesn’t know how to become a vessel, how to prepare. So if he does not go asking, what should he do? How difficult it is to meet the right guide!
But searching and begging are two different things. In fact, the one who does not want to search is the one who begs. Searching and begging are not the same; they are opposites. He who wants to avoid searching begs; a seeker never begs. And the processes of searching and begging are entirely different. In begging you have to keep your attention on the other—the one who will give. In searching you have to keep your attention on yourself—the one who is to receive. It is true that there are obstacles on the path of the seeker. But if we understand rightly, saying there are obstacles on the path of the seeker means the obstacles are within the seeker; the path too is within. And to understand one’s obstacles is not very difficult. So we will have to speak a little more extensively on what the obstacles are and how…
Western psychotherapy has gone only on the lower steps of the ladder. And the reason why they have gone on the lower steps of the ladder is because Western psychology started studying sick, mentally deranged people. They were on the lower steps, so naturally they started finding out more and more about those lower steps. Eastern psychology has simply mentioned that these steps are there to be avoided, but they have not been studied. No thesis is available in the East which goes into details about these steps, they have simply been mentioned. But in the East the higher steps have been very deeply studied, because they were studying the meditators, not the sick people. Because the objective study was different, the whole approach became different. They were studying the meditators so they became aware of the no-mind, of superconsciousness, of cosmic consciousness.