According to Osho, as identification with the body fades through meditation, inner enmity dissolves and a profound peace and friendliness arise. You stop abusing or torturing the body; instead you befriend it and keep it in balanced tune—neither too taut nor too slack—so that life’s music can flow. Boundaries of mine/stranger soften; compassion expands to all, and the body becomes a skillful vehicle, not a prison.
When you stop thinking you are just your body, you relax, feel kind to everyone, and treat your body gently like a helpful tool, not something to spoil or punish.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, as long as we are identified with the body, we don’t really care for it; we only use it as a means to gratify our ego. But as that identification lessens, a new recognition arises, a new feeling of friendship toward the body. Why this paradox?
As a person becomes more silent, the feeling of enmity begins to drop. It’s not a question of toward whom; the very vibration of hostility starts falling from within. A blissful person can feel only friendliness. As your meditation deepens, you will feel you have become friendly with everyone. Those who were yours remain yours; those who were strangers also become yours. The ignorant, however identified they may be with the body, still regard it as other. And however much they live in the body, they live with an inner enmity toward it. You may adorn the body as much as you like, yet inside there is a kind of hostility. You may not recognize it, but you are an enemy of the body. And that enmity can be fulfilled in two ways. One way is to make the body a means of indulgence. Then you will only destroy it.…
Beloved Osho, as long as we are identified with the body, we do not care for it. Instead we use it as a tool to satisfy the ego. But as our identification with the body starts diminishing, there arises slowly a new acquaintance, a new sense of friendship with the body. Why this paradox?
Saint Francis was dying and at the very last moment he opened his eyes and said, "Thank you so much! You have been my constant companion -- nobody else would have done so much. Whether I traveled to heaven or to hell, whether I did something good or bad, you have always been with me. How great is your compassion! Now that I am about to leave you forever, please accept my thanks." The disciples standing around Saint Francis could not understand with whom he was holding this conversation. One of them asked him, "Are you out of your senses, or are you going mad because death is approaching? To whom are you talking? You are not looking at any of us, nor does your conversation appear to be addressed to us. And none of us has been with you in all the situations the way you just described, so…
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.
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.