What happens when the nerves snap?

A friend has asked: Osho, if events happen in nature and feelings in man, then when one attains siddhi and experiences one’s separateness, do bodily pain and mental anguish stop?

This needs a little understanding. First, understand the difference between pain and suffering. If a thorn pricks your foot, two things happen. One is pain. Pain means you experience that there is hurt in the foot. I know there is hurt in the foot. You are the knower. The pain happens in the foot; you are the seer of it. You are the witness. This does not mean that if you are a witness and someone pricks your foot you will feel no pain. Do not fall into that illusion. There will be pain, because the prick of a thorn is an event. But there will be no suffering. Keep this distinction in mind. Suffering happens when I become one with the pain. When I say, “A thorn is pricking me,” then suffering happens. When I say, “A thorn is pricking the foot—and I am seeing it,” then there is…

Osho, in the Chandogya Upanishad there is a sutra: na pashyato mṛtyuṁ pashyati na rogaṁ noto duḥkhatām, sarvaṁ ha paśyaḥ paśyati sarvam āpnoti sarvaśa iti. That is, the knower does not see death, nor disease, nor sorrow; he sees all as the Self and attains everything. You are a witness—does a buddha truly see even death, disease, and sorrow as the very Self? Kindly give us direction on this sutra.

Buddha uses nirvana in exactly this sense. When the flickering lamp of ego is extinguished, the whole sky is yours. The moons and stars are yours. When you are not, everything is yours. Understand this paradox well—here lies the secret of religion, the distilled essence of the mystics and seers. The sutra of the Chandogya is profound—very profound. Let the ego dissolve; you are no more; then all is yours. When you are not, nothing is “other.” It is the “I” that creates the “you,” the division. When the line of “I” disappears, the courtyard becomes the sky. Demolish the walls you have drawn around your yard—your courtyard is the open heavens. Na pashyato mṛtyum... To the knower death is not seen—he does not know death, he does not die—because whatever could die he let die in advance. Ego could die—and what is unreal alone can die. What is, is…

Osho, our body has about twenty billion cells, and chemical reactions are going on in it every moment. When you or Ashtavakra say, “Be the witness,” whom are you addressing?

You kill for sport? No animal does that. And another curious fact: no animal kills within its own species. No lion kills another lion. No monkey murders another monkey. Only man is the animal who murders his own kind. Ants don’t murder ants. Elephants don’t murder elephants. Dogs don’t murder dogs. They may quarrel or fight, but they don’t commit murder. Man alone murders man. What is there in man for which you are so worried? If it were lost, what would be lost? Trees are very beautiful. Animals are very innocent. But I am not saying you should become trees or animals. I am only saying: drop the ego. And secondly, I never said that one should stop reacting to pleasure and pain. Ashtavakra never said that either. To keep equanimity in pleasure and pain does not mean to stop responding. It only means: “I will remain a witness—if…

Please explain how it is possible that just by looking, by witnessing the recordings in the brain cells, the sources of thought process can cease to be.

They never cease to be, but just by witnessing identification is broken. Buddha lived in his body for forty years after his enlightenment; the body has not ceased. Continuously for forty years he was talking, explaining, making people understand what has happened to him and how the same can happen to them. He was using the mind; the mind has not ceased. And when he came back after twelve years to his home town, he recognized his father, he recognized his wife, he recognized his son. The mind was there, the memory was there; otherwise recognition is impossible. The mind has not really ceased. When we say the mind ceases, we mean your identification is broken. Now you know this is the mind and this is "I am". The bridge is broken. Now the mind is not the master. It has become just an instrument; it has fallen to its…

Osho, should one just keep watching it? Keep feeling it? What thought should be there at that time? What feeling should be there at that time?

So you can prevent meditation from happening—and you are preventing it—but you cannot make it happen. Our whole problem is very reversed. The reality is that when someone asks me, Meditation is not happening, he is asking the question upside down. In fact, he is striving with all his life’s breath to make sure that meditation does not happen. He has spoiled lifetimes to see that meditation does not happen. And for meditation he has erected a thousand kinds of barriers so that it cannot happen. You are fully arranged so that you do not become a witness. And then when you hear from someone that there is great bliss in witnessing, you think, All right, let me also become a witness. So you try to become a witness too. And all your arrangements to prevent witnessing continue as before; nothing in them changes. Within that very setup you also…