What is the relationship between meditation and health?

A friend has asked: what is the relation between meditation and jati-smaran, past life remembering?

When one succeeds in recalling past lives and they begin to appear like dreams, immediately one's present life begins to look like a dream too. Those who have called this world maya have not done so just to propound a doctrine of philosophy. Jati-smaran -- recalling past lives -- is at the base of it. Whosoever has remembered his past lives, for him the whole affair has suddenly turned into a dream, an illusion. Where are his friends of past lives? Where are his relatives, his wife and children, the houses he lived in? Where is that world? Where is everything he took to be so real? Where are those worries that gave him sleepless nights? Where are those pains and sufferings that seemed so insurmountable, that he carried like a dead weight on his back? And what became of the happiness he longed for? What happened to everything he…

Can meditation be useful for the common people to be healthy?

It is the best thing to help people to be healthy, because it gives you the taste of eternal life. It leads you into the shrine of your own being which has never known any death or any sickness. And when you become identified with it -- which you really are -- your resistance to sickness, to disease, even to death, is tremendously powerful. Yes, meditation can be a great help for people for health. Every medical institute or hospital must have a special section, a division for meditation. Anyone who is in hospital should also be meditating. While he is taking medicines he should also be meditating. By the way, you will be surprised to know that the words medicine and meditation both come from the same root, which means that which gives you health. Medicine is the physical way, meditation is the spiritual way. The spiritual is certainly…

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only. The interviewer's remarks have been omitted where not relevant to Osho's words] INTERVIEW BY SWAMI VIDEHA, RIZA MAGAZINE, ITALY QUESTION:* BHAGWAN, THE MAGAZINE IS A MEDICAL PSYCHOSOMATIC MAGAZINE, SO WE ARE SPEAKING TO PROFESSIONALS: DOCTORS, PHYSICIANS, AND PEOPLE DEALING WITH MEDICINE WHO LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT THE SCIENCE OF MEDITATION. CAN YOU INTRODUCE THIS TO THESE PEOPLE? ANSWER:* The first thing -- perhaps they may not be aware of it -- is that the words "medicine" and "meditation" come from the same root. Their meaning is the same: to heal. Medicine heals the body, meditation heals the soul. Medicine is outwardly, meditation is inwardly. And man is whole only when medicine and meditation are together in deep harmony.

Beloved master, is meditation enough to be whole and healthy? Please explain.

Religion is a journey inwards, and meditation is the way. What meditation actually does is, it takes you, your consciousness, as deep as possible. Even your own body becomes something outside. Even your own mind becomes something outside. Even your own heart -- which is very close to the center of your being -- becomes outside. When your body, mind and heart, all three, are seen as outside, you have come to the very center of your existence. This coming to the center is a tremendous explosion which transforms everything. You will never be the same man again, because now you know the body is only the outer shell; the mind is a little bit inner, but not really your inner core; the heart is a little bit more inner, but still not the innermost center. You are disidentified with all the three. It is because of this that George…

Osho, if even the body is not healthy, how will I go beyond the body, and then beyond the mind? Osho, I have become very despondent—please give some guidance.

Samadhi! The body is always unhealthy. The body can never truly be healthy. That’s why the wise have called the body a disease. Not only the bodies of those admitted to hospitals—body as such is a disease. It is called a disease because the body is born and it will die. From birth onward, the body is dying. After birth, what else have you done except die? The moment you were born, dying began. A one-day-old child is already one day dead. With the very first breath taken after leaving the mother’s womb, that much death has already happened—the journey toward death has begun. After birth, only death is certain. And of that which is destined to die, what kind of health can there be? Health belongs only to the immortal. One who is truly healthy is one who knows the immortal. The body is mortal; death is hidden in…