Body and Mind

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…

4. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength or of knowledge. At the instant of deprivation, transcend.

5. DEVOTION FREES. But either way one goes on worrying about the future. Buddha said, "There is no heaven and no afterlife." And he said, "There is no soul, and your death will be total and complete; nothing will survive." People thought he was an atheist. He was not, he was just trying to create a situation in which you can forget the tomorrow and can remain in this very moment, here and now. Then meditation follows very easily. So if you are thinking of death -- not the death which will come, or is to come later -- fall down on the ground and lie dead. Relax and feel, "I am dying, I am dying, I am dying." And not only think it, feel it in every limb of the body, in every fib of the body. Let death creep in. It is one of the most beautiful meditations.…

Osho, to remain awake even in death—or to successfully orchestrate a conscious death in meditation—what preparations should a seeker make concerning the body-system, the breath-system, the state of the breath, the state of prana, celibacy, willpower, etc.? Kindly shed detailed light on this.

But even in a cinema hall, where it is easier because it is all shadows, we do not remain witnesses. If we inspected the handkerchiefs of those exiting, we would know how many cried. We all know nothing is on the screen—only light and shadow. Yet everything “happens” there, and we become participants. Do not be mistaken that while watching a film you are merely a viewer—you become a participant. Someone pleases you, someone repels you; you identify. If we cannot be witnesses even to a film, how will we be witnesses in life? Life, too, is not much more than a film. At depth, like the play of rays on the screen, life is the play of electrical particles. If you reduce the body or a wall to its ultimate component, you find only electric particles. The difference between the screen and this is not great—two-dimensional there, three-dimensional here.…

Chetana and Chaitanya have asked: Seeing your health, our hearts melt. In such a situation our positive, creative outlook fails us. Please show the way!

It is natural. When attachment to me arises, attachment to my body also arises. For now it is difficult for you to make a distance between me and my body. Difficult—because you have not yet made a distance within yourself between you and your body. What has not happened within you, you cannot do with me either. The arithmetic is straightforward. There is only one remedy: begin, within yourself, to create a distance between the body and the one you are. I am perfectly healthy. About the body I cannot say anything—speaking of me, I am perfectly healthy. But the body has its own laws. The body has its own structure. It will go its own way. And if the body is to die, then, by falling ill now and then, it will give notice. It has to go; it has to take leave. It cannot leave all at once;…