You’ll still feel hurt, but you won’t be hurt inside by it because you’re just watching it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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, you have earlier said, “Live moment to moment, live in the present.” Now you are saying, “Return to the past.” What should we do?
So it is with the mind—there are ruts. The past means endless grooves. However much you understand, your intellect agrees, you make decisions, you resolve—at the moment of resolve you feel something is going to change. But not even an hour passes before your decision breaks. Then only self-condemnation is produced, nothing else. Your saints, your fakirs, your priests and pundits—most of the time they only succeed in producing self-condemnation in you, nothing else. Their words are logically correct. You cannot even say they are wrong; you have to admit they are right. In that admission you take a decision. But against what are you deciding? Inside are grooves carved since who knows when, deep tracks. Walking in them has become a habit. It is easy to walk in them. They will pull you again and again. The meaning of returning into the past is: these grooves must be erased.…
Regarding the bliss of the Self: suppose it has become clear to me that throughout the day I see body and soul as separate, and within that two things arise—joy and sorrow. When joy comes, the experience of it is inside. If some suffering comes in the body, does the soul experience that suffering the way the mind does? Suppose the body is gravely ill and in pain twenty-four hours—then one who has realized the soul should not be affected by the pain, right?
In truth, the soul is only the power of pure awareness. It gives awareness. To have awareness is one thing; to be afflicted by what one is aware of is quite another. If this foot is injured, to be aware that there is an injury is one thing; to be tormented by the pain of the injury is quite another. Awareness will not occur to one who is unconscious. Awareness will not occur to one who is unconscious! Full awareness happens to the one who is conscious. But being aware that there is pain in the foot and being aware that “I am unhappy” are two different things. Even if a thorn were to prick Mahavira while walking on the road, he would know that a thorn has pricked—only that much: a thorn has pricked. Just as it would be evident to you if a thorn pricked you. If you…
Osho, granted that for the self-realized the personal experience of pleasure and pain comes to an end, but surely they must still be made happy or unhappy by the pleasure and pain of others, mustn’t they? Please shed light.
No. One whose experiences of pleasure and pain have ended is not affected by the pleasure and pain of others either. It may be difficult for you to think so, because you imagine he should be deeply affected by your joys and sorrows. No — he has seen that what you call pleasure is not pleasure at all. So, seeing your pleasure and your pain, compassion arises for you, but he does not become happy or unhappy. Only compassion arises — seeing that you are still caught in a dream! Imagine two people sleeping in the same room, both crushed under a dream of suffering, both seeing a hellish nightmare. One wakes up. Naturally, for the one who has awakened, the dream’s pleasures and pains have become meaningless. Do you think that, seeing the other muttering and shouting beside him — hearing him say, “Move away, a demon is sitting…
It is also asked: Osho, in the second stage the body feels completely separate, yet whenever something happens to the body I become aware of it immediately.
It is separate, yes—but that does not mean you will not know. Even when it is separate, you will know. Even when there is a sense of oneness, you still know. What changes is how the knowing appears; the knowing is there in any case. When the body is felt as separate and hunger arises, it will seem that the body is hungry. And when the body is felt as one with you, it will seem that I am hungry. That is the only difference; there will be no other difference. If there is pain in the body, then when the body is separate it will feel as though somewhere at a distance the body is in pain and I am aware of it. And if you take yourself to be one with the body, it will feel as if I am in pain. In the illusion of unity, in…