According to Osho, the paradox is that the more you identify with the body, the more unconscious enmity you carry toward it—expressed as indulgent decay or ascetic torture; but as identification drops through meditation, hostility falls and a natural friendliness arises. In witnessing you choose the middle-string tuning—neither tight nor loose—caring for the body as a sacred instrument rather than exploiting or punishing it.
When you stop clinging to the body and just watch, you stop fighting it and start caring for it gently, avoiding extremes.
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…
Osho, it is not clear to me how the conscious witness can become identified with the inert three gunas!
That is why cars are designed—because we know human nature—so that you use the same foot for the accelerator and the brake. We fear you might try to do both at once. If you could press both together, trouble would arise. So to press the brake, your foot must come off the accelerator. But with the mind we do not manage this. With the mind we try to do both things at once. I asked that friend, “What is the trouble? Why are you restless?” He said, “The cause of my unrest is that my son does not obey me.” Whose son obeys whom? The son is not the cause here. Why do you want him to obey? The son will live his own life. I asked, “Did you obey your father?” Who obeys his father? A son will walk paths the father never walked. He will live in a…
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.
Real truth is what is experienced as such
The very first foundations of a life of spiritual endeavour are love of oneself and spiritual harmony. Surely you will be confounded to hear this, because you have been often advised to suppress something within you. But I say that there is nothing within you that needs suppression or extirpation. There are certain drives within every man that need to be harnessed, not extirpated; certain forces that must needs be awakened and loved, not suppressed. They should be controlled and directed along the proper course. But those who consider them hostile can never be successful in transforming them. A man of understanding can transform even poison into nectar, but one who has no understanding whatever is sure to turn his nectar into poison. I call understanding nectar and deficiency in it poison. We see that putrefying things, things that emit foul smell, are used as fertilizers. Just now some one…