What happens to the mind when the body is worked on?

Beloved Osho, since I have been here, one feeling gets stronger and stronger -- the only thing that I really want to do is sit on your lap.

USHA, JUST FAR OUT! But please don t start doing it. I have fifty thousand sannyasins: just think of me too, otherwise I will be killed in a stampede. But the idea is great, just as an idea -- don't practise it. The idea is symbolic: a great love is arising in you. It is good, it has to be so. Unless you are in deep love with me nothing is going to happen. Only through love, the transformation happens. And it is good that you have not projected it on me -- otherwise, that too happens... Just the other day, I read in the latest issue of YOUTH TIMES a statement of an Indian film actress, Pratima Bedi. She says,"Rajneesh is sexy." Now, I really enjoyed it! She came to see me once; she must have been there for four or five minutes in front of me. She says…

(Osho remains silent for a few minutes, then begins to offer suggestions.)

Keep looking within... keep looking within... let everything outside become dead. Let it go... utterly dead... remain just watching... remain only the witness... drop everything... as if you have died... as if everything outside has died—the body too... thoughts too... only an inner flame remains, watching. Only the seer remains, only the witness remains. Let go... let go... let go completely... (Silence… solitude… hush…) Whatever happens, let it happen... let go completely... keep only looking within and let go completely... drop every grip... (Silence… solitude… hush…) The mind has become quiet and empty... the mind has become utterly empty... the mind has become quiet and empty... the mind has become utterly empty... the mind has become utterly empty... If there is even a slight holding, drop that too... let go completely... dissolve... as if you are not. The mind has become empty... the mind quiet and empty... the mind has…

These are three concentric circles around the center. Of course the heart is closer to being, so it is better to be in the heart than to be in the mind. The mind is closer than the body; it is better to be in the mind than in the body. But the ultimate goal is to be just your being -- no action, no thought, no feeling, just pure witnessing. And then the satori happens and one becomes full of light, full of truth. Then to live is a blessing. Before it, it is just a drag; after it, it is a dance. (Really, meditation is a journey, Osho told Bhavan, from your head to your heart to your being.) Meditation is not-knowing, it is not like knowledge, It is far closer to feeling. It is not like logic, it is far more like love.

How can the mind be transcended and transformed only by bringing the body to a death-like state?

Those eyes were part of a big whole. Their whole quality consisted in being part of a big whole. Now they are independent, not part of anything. The pattern is lost, the live contact is lost. All the traditions of yoga and tantra say that unless you can come to know the living body, your knowledge is false. But how to come to know the living body? There is only one way: you enter into yourself, and move within to see the details of the body. A different world was revealed through these techniques, an alive world. So the first thing: be centered at the heart, and look around at your body, move. Two things will happen. One: you will not feel now that you are the body -- you cannot feel it. You are the observer, one who is aware, alert, looking at, not being looked at. For the…

It happens many times that the body and the mind are not in tune. Then you start feeling as if the body is some other person. The body hangs and you have to carry it and it becomes a wound. If the body and the mind are coinciding with each other, fitting with each other, you can forget the body; you don't remember it. You are almost bodiless. And that's the definition of health: one does not feel that one is in the body. Of course if somebody reminds you, you will remember it, otherwise the body simply does not exist. The mechanism is running so smoothly, so hummingly, that one never feels any distance between the body and oneself.