Osho Looking in the Mirror Meditation

[The sannyasin asks: When I am looking in the mirror I feel that the reflection is not mine. Why is it so? I am looking daily in the mirror. I feel that whatever I am looking at is not me.]

Osho - It’s perfectly beautiful, this experience – because you are not your body, you are not your face. Your body is just like your clothes, it is just your garment. Go on looking; the feeling will become more and more clear and loud. One day you will suddenly see that whatsoever you are seeing in the mirror is not you at all, and that will be a great insight. It is not you! People think that they are seeing themselves in the mirror because they are identified with their bodies.

Something is changing inside: the identification is breaking It is a beautiful sign.... It should not be thought of as a trouble but as a blessing. Yes, when you look in the mirror and you feel this is not you, it is very disorienting. Nothing to be worried about – enjoy it! This is how it should be; this is truth. If you think you are mirrored in the mirror, that is a lie... although an accepted lie and everybody believes in it. You will feel at ease with it, because everybody also thinks that way. Otherwise this is a lie we have agreed upon.

You are not it. It is just a reflection of your body, not your reflection. Your consciousness cannot be reflected by the mirror; there is no mirror to reflect it. If anything comes to reflect consciousness – the closest to the mirror – that is love. Only in very deep love do you sometimes feel some reflections of your being which are not of your body but of your consciousness. But those too are very rare, because love, to go that deep, needs great courage, great surrender... and people are not ready to surrender that much. They want the other to surrender; then it never happens.

But once in a while it happens to lovers; they can function like mirrors for each other. And when two lovers are in deep intimacy and have become mirrors reflecting each other, a great experience happens, because if two mirrors are reflecting each other nothing will be reflected. Infinity will be reflected. There will be no end to it. This mirror will reflect that, and that mirror will reflect this mirror, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. If two mirrors are facing each other they will create an infinity.

And that’s the beauty of love: at its climax, when two persons become really intimate, they reflect each other and suddenly persons disappear; there is only presence and infinite presence. Only love comes a little bit close to the mirror, but the ordinary mirror cannot do that.

The experience is something beautiful, very significant. Disorienting, I understand, but if once you understand that this is right, the disorientation will disappear and it can become a meditation for you. Make it a meditation: whenever you have time, just look at the mirror and see that it is not you. Now see it consciously; don’t avoid it. In fact, make it a meditation: sit before the mirror for as long as you can, continuously seeing that this is not you. And this can give you a great satori, a great insight, one day. Suddenly you will see that your body has disappeared: there is only consciousness, pure witness.

Make a meditation out of it. It has been used in the past as a meditation.

Source: " God’s Got A Thing About You, Chapter 17 " - Osho