What happens to the sense of the body during and after meditation?

Osho, in the morning meditation the body disappears completely. What remains feels immense, beyond all limits and ends. But after meditation, through the rest of the day, the sense of the body returns; once again the small, limited body is experienced. So is all this only the play of the ego?

Three things should be kept in mind in this regard. First, as meditation deepens, the body will disappear; or sometimes it will become very vast; or sometimes it may feel very minute, very small—smaller than it “is.” The body’s appearance depends on the mind. If the mind expands greatly, the body seems expanded; if the mind contracts, the body seems small. In fact, the boundary of the body is perceived through the boundary of the mind. This is confirmed by experience. And it is not the play of the ego; it is the outcome of meditation. After meditation it is natural that the body again appears as it ordinarily is. There is nothing to worry about in this. For friends to whom this is happening, whenever during the day they have the opportunity—even for a moment or two—close your eyes and again keep experiencing the body’s vastness. Do this two…

For example, it brings you the experience that not the body, so clearly, so solidly, so categorically, that even if the whole world denies it, it cannot make any difference: you know from your innermost core you are not the body. It brings you the experience that you are not the mind either. And the moment you know you are neither the body nor the mind, suddenly a door opens. You have never been born and you are never going to die because only that which is born can die. The body was born, the mind was born -- they will die -- but you were before your birth and you will be after your death. Once this reality is revealed to you all fears and all miseries disappear. You become part of eternity. Only one thing remains and that is pure consciousness. And pure consciousness is nothing but godliness.

As you move into meditation this feeling starts becoming stronger every day. That does not mean that you start neglecting the body, on the contrary, you start caring about the body more carefully because it is a beautiful house, a gift of god. You have to keep it clean and beautiful and young and vital, energetic, alive, because you have to live in it for many many years. There is no need to make it ugly, poor, starved. Make it a palace, make it a marble palace, make it a temple, but remember "I am not it," so when it dies you are not dying. The body is born, the body dies; you are never born and you never die. And the method of meditation is very simple: just watching. Three things have to be watched. The first is the body and its actions.

It is not something negative. It can be used and can be used beautifully and very positively. It is just that you are not feeling identified with your body... and that's perfectly good. There are methods of spiritual growth where that identification has to be broken. All paths of awareness follow that key: one has to remember that one is not the body. It is happening naturally to you. But I can understand: coming from the West, one feels very puzzled and weird if one starts feeling that one is not the body. Then who is one? Nobody is the body. We live in the body -- we are not it. We participate in it, we co-operate with it but we are not it. We live through it but we are not it. We flow through it but it remains an abode, a vehicle.

Osho, in yesterday’s talk you spoke about the impact of shaktipat or kundalini awakening when the first three bodies are undeveloped. Please kindly shed more light on what the impact would be if the second and the third bodies are undeveloped. Also, what preparation should a seeker make to develop the first three bodies—the physical, etheric, and astral?

If you awaken to the feeling body and follow back, you will suddenly enter the subtle body. There you see: anger is not anger, forgiveness is not forgiveness—both are forms of the same waves. Love and hate are one in wave-nature; only configurations differ. Hence love turns to hate and hate to love. Yesterday’s friend becomes today’s enemy and then friend again—because they lie on the same spectrum, differing in degree, not in kind. Freud sensed that we love and hate the same object. His explanation goes only so far—because he knew nothing of the other bodies. He traced it to the child’s ambivalence toward the mother—the first love-object—who sometimes soothes, sometimes scolds; thus love and hate both get associated to one object, and later all love-objects carry both feelings by association. But this is catching the bubble near bursting, on the surface. Deeper, if love and hate can coexist…