What is happening with you?

Osho, the other day you lovingly told me to be more concerned about myself and less about others. Thank you Osho. I got the point. And yet I must ask one more question not to do with me but with you. What exactly is happening with you? Every month your body is becoming more sensitive in every way and the phenomenon. Even to my state of unawareness, is awesome. Can you say something about your changes?

This is from Chaitanya Sagar. Good that he says this is the last question that he is asking not about himself! I can understand your worry, your concern. The fact is simple. After the age of thirty-five life starts declining. Thirty-five is the peak: if you are going to live for seventy years, thirty-five is the peak. After thirty-five you start declining. It is now downhill. If somebody becomes enlightened after thirty-five -- as Buddha became at forty, Mahavir became at forty -- then he can live a little longer, because he was already downhill. Enlightenment will not disturb the body more than it was already disturbed. If you become enlightened before the age of thirty-five then there is danger. Shankara became enlightened before the age of thirty-five. He died at thirty-three. When you are going uphill and life is moving strong -- and you become enlightened -- the connection…

Question: First question: Osho, it feels as if my body is like a cage or a bottle in which a great, powerful lion is imprisoned, and he had been asleep for lifetimes upon lifetimes—but your provoking has awakened him. He is hungry and terribly restless to be freed from the cage. Many times during the day he goes frantic, lets out a battle-cry, roars, and leaps upward. At his bellowing, his roaring, and the thrust of those upward leaps, every hair on my body trembles, and my forehead and the crown of my head begin to burst with energy. After that I sink into a strange intoxication and ecstasy. Then the lion quiets a little, writhes, paces to and fro, and keeps on growling. And then, in kirtan or in the remembrance of you, he even dances in bliss! Out of compassion, please explain what is happening?

Osho, for the past month something strange has been happening. When I begin meditation in the meditation hall—after bowing to you and remembering you beneath your picture—within moments my skin seems to vanish into emptiness, the circulation stops, the breath almost ceases. After an hour to an hour and a half, it takes another half hour to return to the previous state. Yet throughout, I experience an incomparable bliss and freshness. Kindly guide me.

When a flower laughs, remember: who knows how many drops of dew have become tombs in its laughter. Behind its smile the deaths of countless dewdrops are hidden. When someone attains the bliss of samadhi, many pains lie concealed behind it. To endure those pains with a feeling of grace is what is called austerity. Austerity does not mean to inflict suffering upon yourself—there is no need to. When you go on the inner journey, many sufferings come by themselves. The one who bears those sufferings as good fortune, as God’s grace, as blessing—he is the true ascetic. So, Anand Gautam, the auspicious hour has come—do not let it slip away. Continue exactly as you are doing. Proceed in the same direction in which the journey has begun. More will happen—deeper and for longer. Even if you are lost for hours, inform your friends and loved ones not to be…

Beloved Osho, I am such a doer. How can I become more open and available to you without doing? How to find the balance between doing and non-doing, to reconcile your two statements: "you have to act without will," and, "effort is also needed"?

You will be surprised to know that when I entered the university, I was doing so much exercise -- running, swimming, jogging and other exercises -- that a few other students became interested. They started following me, to go for a run. I had never thought that there was any problem in it, but the man who owned all the restaurants and the mess at the university came to see me and said, "I will give you a totally free pass as far as food is concerned, but please don't help these people to run and jog and swim, because I am going to be bankrupt! "Before you came I had never seen people eating thirty-five chappattis at a time -- and your followers are doing that. At the most four chappattis are enough. But if everybody starts eating thirty-five chappattis at a time, seventy chappattis in a day, then…

Osho, I no longer feel like staying in this body; I feel like taking leave of it. Yet for your sake I am pulled back from leaving. I cannot explain anything. I don’t even know what to write. Osho, what should I say?

Anand Bharti, the body is a temple. One who stands for the deity cannot be against the deity’s house. The Divine has made a dwelling in this body. Honor this body, accept it, and feel gratitude toward the Divine for it. But I know where this repeated impulse to leave the body comes from. For centuries you have been taught enmity toward the body. For centuries the same conditioning has been given: the body is the enemy; it must be destroyed, dropped; one must contrive never to be born in a body again. The body has been so vilified that naturally this conditioning has seeped into the blood, bones, flesh, and marrow. Yet the truth is exactly the opposite: it is the mind that is to be dropped, not the body. The mind is man-made; the body is a gift of God. The body is neither Hindu nor Muslim, neither…