Is identifying with our body and mind what prevents us from being one with everything?

Question: Maneesha has asked: OUR BELOVED MASTER, IS OUR IDENTIFYING WITH OUR BODY AND/OR MIND ALL THAT IS PREVENTING US FROM BEING ONE WITH EVERYTHING? Meanwhile, back in the White House dining room, Nancy has just finished her banana split dessert. "Now, Ronald," she says, wiping her mouth. "I insist we take down those purple and green striped curtains in your bedroom at the ranch-house...." Suddenly, Alvin, still sweating buckets, bursts into the room. Seeing Nancy chatting to Ronald, he stops dead in his tracks, and his jaw drops open. "Holy shit, Nancy!" screams Mindbender. "What the hell are you doing? Ronald died two hours ago!" Nancy, takes a close look at the senile old president. "My goodness," she says, "how can you tell?" Nivedano... (Drumbeat) (Gibberish) Nivedano... (Drumbeat) Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Osho, it is not clear to me how the conscious witness can become identified with the inert three gunas!

That is why cars are designed—because we know human nature—so that you use the same foot for the accelerator and the brake. We fear you might try to do both at once. If you could press both together, trouble would arise. So to press the brake, your foot must come off the accelerator. But with the mind we do not manage this. With the mind we try to do both things at once. I asked that friend, “What is the trouble? Why are you restless?” He said, “The cause of my unrest is that my son does not obey me.” Whose son obeys whom? The son is not the cause here. Why do you want him to obey? The son will live his own life. I asked, “Did you obey your father?” Who obeys his father? A son will walk paths the father never walked. He will live in a…

The song continues:

CUT THE ROOT OF A TREE AND THE LEAVES WILL WITHER; CUT THE ROOT OF YOUR MIND AND SAMSARA FALLS. THE LIGHT OF ANY LAMP DISPELS IN A MOMENT THE DARKNESS OF LONG KALPAS; THE STRONG LIGHT OF THE MIND IN BUT A FLASH WILL BURN THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE. WHOEVER CLINGS TO MIND SEES NOT THE TRUTH OF WHAT'S BEYOND THE MIND. WHOEVER STRIVES TO PRACTICE DHARMA FINDS NOT THE TRUTH OF BEYOND-PRACTICE. TO KNOW WHAT IS BEYOND BOTH MIND AND PRACTICE ONE SHOULD CUT CLEANLY THROUGH THE ROOT OF MIND AND STARE NAKED. ONE SHOULD THUS BREAK AWAY FROM ALL DISTINCTIONS AND REMAIN AT EASE. So in the beginning techniques are meditations; in the end you will laugh, techniques are not meditation. Meditation is a totally different quality of being, it has nothing to do with anything. But it will happen only in the end; don't think it…

People live identified with the body; that's how the body becomes an imprisonment. Rather than helping you to grow towards the infinite, your identification with the body makes you very finite, very small. And that is one of the fundamental causes of misery; the body will get old, then you will feel afraid, scared -- you are getting old; the body will be ill and then you will be in tremendous fear -- and sooner or later the body is going to die. You may not think about it, but it is there. You see people dying -- you cannot deny it; you may overlook it but you cannot deny it. You may no look at it, you may bypass it, but still it is there and deep down you know that you have to die.

So people are very rarely at ease with their bodies, but they are always at ease with their minds, for the simple reason that mind is not observed by others. Even if it carries many ugly things nobody can observe it. And even those ugly things you can keep to the back; you need not observe them yourself. That's how repression happens: people go on repressing whatsoever is not of their liking, they go on throwing it in the basement of their mind and the basement has become so big, it is ninety per cent of your mind. Only ten per cent at the top you decorate with beautiful ideas, morality, mannerism, etiquette -- nice things. It is a decorative piece in a show window where you receive guests and welcome friends. But that is not your reality.