Expansion

Beloved Osho, often these days I feel as if I am pregnant. It is not a down-pulling burden. It rather feels like a weightless, but expansive something in my belly and my chest. It is a very strange sensation for a man. I am not showing any signs of pregnancy yet -- my belly is still flat as usual but now I have exposed myself, and there is no holy ghost to blame and I am certainly not the virgin mary. Beloved master, what is it that I am pregnant with? Is it you?

Premda, I hope it is me. In fact, every disciple has to come to this stage where he feels almost pregnant with the divine. It is a spiritual pregnancy. But because we are too much identified with the body, it may even seem that the body is also pregnant. But something is growing within you. It is not part of the body, you need not be a Virgin Mary. And, of course, holy ghosts are not available anymore, only unholy ghosts -- there are a few: one lives with Anando; another has been found in the Vipassana go-down. But they are all unholy ghosts, they don't do holy things. So you need not be worried about them. Moreover, even the holy ghost has not been able up to now to do a miracle, to make a man pregnant. It would have been more in tune with the Christian ideology if…

With this, the body feels a little light!

Yes, you will feel light. You will feel light, because what we call the sense of the body—our body-consciousness—is our heaviness. What we call heaviness is nothing but the sense of the body. That is why even a sick, thin person feels burdened, while a healthy person, however heavy in weight, feels light. The awareness of the body that we carry is our load. And that body-consciousness, the sense of the body, exists in the same measure as there is discomfort in the body. If there is pain in the leg, you become aware of the leg; if there is pain in the head, you become aware of the head. If there is no discomfort anywhere, the body is not felt at all. Therefore the very definition of a healthy person is: one who experiences bodilessness; one to whom it does not seem, “I am the body.” Then understand, that…

Questioner: how is it that the body begins to feel light after deep and fast breathing?

It is true that the body will feel light after this meditation. It will be so because our consciousness of body is one of heaviness. What we call heaviness is nothing more than our awareness of the body. The body weighs heavy on a sick person even if he is skinny and wiry. But a healthy person, even if he is a heavyweight, carries his body very lightly. So it is really our body-consciousness which feels like a weight on us. And we become conscious of our body only when it is in pain, when it is suffering. We become conscious of our feet when they are hurting. We become aware of our head when it is aching. If there is no body pain, we are never aware of our body. This consciousness is the measure of our suffering. We define a healthy person as one who feels as if…

Osho, in yesterday’s talk you said that a seeker should first be concerned with becoming a vessel, and should not go about begging from place to place. But the very meaning of a seeker is that he has obstacles in practice. He doesn’t know how to become a vessel, how to prepare. So if he does not go asking, what should he do? How difficult it is to meet the right guide!

But searching and begging are two different things. In fact, the one who does not want to search is the one who begs. Searching and begging are not the same; they are opposites. He who wants to avoid searching begs; a seeker never begs. And the processes of searching and begging are entirely different. In begging you have to keep your attention on the other—the one who will give. In searching you have to keep your attention on yourself—the one who is to receive. It is true that there are obstacles on the path of the seeker. But if we understand rightly, saying there are obstacles on the path of the seeker means the obstacles are within the seeker; the path too is within. And to understand one’s obstacles is not very difficult. So we will have to speak a little more extensively on what the obstacles are and how…