Osho on Seven Bodies Continued.... Astral and Mental Body

Osho - The third body is the astral body. It has its own tensions. They are concerned not only with this life but with your previous lives. Tension in the third body is because of the accumulation of everything you have been and of everything you have been longing for. Your total longing, thousands and thousands of lives and their repetitive longings, are in the astral body. And you have always been longing! It does not matter for what. The longing is there.

The astral body is a storehouse of your total longings, your total desires. That is why it is the most tense part of your being. When you go into meditation you become aware of astral tensions, because meditation starts from the third body. People who have begun to be aware of these tensions through meditation come to me and say, ”Since I started meditating, tensions have increased.” They have not increased, but you have become aware of them now. Now you know something that you were not aware of before. These are astral tensions. Because they are essences of so many lives, they cannot be described by any particular word. Nothing can be said about them that can be understood. They can only be lived, and known.

 Desiring itself is the tension. We are never without the desire for something or other. There are even people who desire desirelessness. It becomes a total absurdity. In the third body, the astral body, you can desire to be desireless. In fact, the desire to be desireless is one of the strongest desires. It can create one of the biggest gaps between what is and what you want to be. So accept your desires as they are, and know that you have had so many desires throughout so many lives. You have desired so much, and the whole thing has been accumulated.

So for the third body – the astral body – accept your desires as they are. Do not fight with them; do not create a desire against desires. Just accept them. Know that you are full of desires, and be at ease with it. Then you will become non-tense in the astral body. If you can accept the infinite crowd of desires within you without creating a desire against these desires; if you can be in the crowd of desires – they are your whole accumulated past – and accept them as they are; if this acceptance becomes total, then, in a single moment, the whole crowd disappears. They are no longer there, because they can exist only against a background of desiring, a constant desiring for that which is not.

The object of desire does not matter; it is irrelevant. Desire even desirelessness and the background is there; the whole crowd will be there. If you accept your desire, a moment of desirelessness is created. You accept your desire as it is. Now there is nothing to desire; desiring is not there. You accept everything as it is, even your desires. Then the desires evaporate; nothing has to be done with them. The astral body becomes at ease; it comes to a state of positive well-being. Only then can you proceed to the fourth body.

The fourth body is the mental body. Just as there are desires in the astral body, in the mental body there are thoughts: contradictory thoughts, a whole crowd of them, each thought asserting itself as the whole, each thought possessing you as if it were the whole. So the tension in the fourth body is created by thoughts. Being without thoughts – not asleep, not unconscious, but a thoughtless consciousness – is the health, the well-being of the fourth body. But how can one be conscious and thoughtless?

Every moment, new thoughts are being created. Every moment something of your past is coming into conflict with something of your present. You were a communist and now you are a Catholic and believe in something else, but the past is still there. You can become a Catholic, but you cannot throw off your communism. It remains in you. You can change your thoughts, but the discarded thoughts are always there waiting. You cannot unlearn them. They reach into your depths; they go into the unconscious. They will not show themselves to you because you have discarded them, but they will remain there, waiting for their chance. And the chance will come.

Even in a period of twenty-four hours, there will be a moment when you will be a communist again and then again you will be a Catholic. This will go on and on, back and forth, and the total effect will be confusion. So for the mental body, tension means confusion – contradictory thoughts, contradictory experiences, contradictory expectations – and ultimately results in a confused mind. And the confused mind will only become more confused if it tries to go beyond confusion, because out of a state of confusion, no-confusion cannot be achieved. You are confused.

Spiritual seeking will create a new dimension for your confusion. All your other confusions are still there, and now a new confusion has been added. You meet this guru, then that, then the next, and each guru brings new confusion to you. The old confusion will be there, and a new one will be added. You will be a madhouse. This is what happens in the fourth body, the mental body. There, confusion is the tension. How can one cease to be confused? You can cease to be confused only if you do not deny one particular thought in favor of another, if you do not deny anything – if you do not deny communism in favor of religiousness, if you do not deny God in favor of a philosophy of atheism. If you accept everything that you think, there is no choice to be made and tensions disappear. If you go on choosing, you go on adding to your tensions.

Awareness must be choiceless. You must be aware of your total thought process, the total confusion. The moment you become aware of it, you will know that it is all confusion. Nothing is to be chosen; the whole house must be discarded. Once you know it is just a confusion, the house can be discarded at any time; there is no difficulty in discarding it. So begin to be aware of your total mind. Do not choose; be choiceless. Do not say, ”I am an atheist,” or, ”I am a theist.” Do not say, ”I am a Christian,” or, ”I am a Hindu.” Do not choose. Just be aware that sometimes you are an atheist and sometimes a theist, sometimes you are a Christian and sometimes a communist, sometimes a saint and sometimes a sinner. Sometimes one ideology appeals to you and sometimes another, but these are all fads.

Be totally aware of it. The very moment you become aware of the total process of your mind is a moment of nonidentity. Then you are not identified with your mind. For the first time you know yourself as consciousness and not as mind. Mind itself becomes an object to you. Just as you are aware of other people, just as you are aware of the furniture in your house, you become aware of your mind, the mental process. Now you are this awareness – unidentified with the mind. The difficulty with the fourth body, the mental body, is that we are identified with our minds. If your body becomes ill and someone says you are ill, you do not feel offended; but if your mind becomes ill and someone says, ”Your mind is ill; you seem to be going insane,” then you are offended.

Why? When someone says, ”Your body seems to be ill,” you feel that he has sympathized with you. But if someone says something about mental illness – that as far as your mind is concerned, you seem to be derailed; you are neurotic – then you are offended because there is a deeper identification with the mind than with the body. You can feel yourself to be separate from the body. You can say, ”This is my hand.” But you cannot say, ”This is my mind,” because you think: ”My mind means me.” If I want to operate on your body you will allow me, but you will not allow me to operate on your mind. You will say, ”No, this is too much! My freedom will be lost!” Mind is much more deeply identified. It is us. We do not know anything beyond it, so we are identified with it.

We know something beyond the body: the mind. That is why the possibility of being nonidentified with the body exists. But we do not know anything beyond the mind. Only if you become aware of thoughts can you come to know that mind is nothing but a process, an accumulation: a mechanism, a storehouse, a computer of your past experiences, your past learning, your past knowledge. It is not you; you can be without it. The mind can be operated on. It can be changed; it can be thrown from you.

And now, new possibilities are there. Someday even your mind will be able to be transplanted into someone else. Just as the heart can be transplanted, sooner or later memory will be able to be transplanted. Then a person who is dying will not die completely. At least his memory can be saved and transplanted into a new child. The child will acquire the whole memory of the person. He will talk about experiences through which he has not passed but he will say, ”I have known.” Whatever the dead man knew the child will know, because the whole mind of the dead person has been given to him.

This seems dangerous, and it is possible that we will not allow it to happen because our own identity will be lost. We are our minds! But to me, the possibility has much potentiality. A new humanity may be born out of it. We can be aware of the mind because the mind is not us; it is not ”me.” My mind is as much a part of my body as my kidney is. Just as I can be given a new kidney and I will still be the same person, with nothing changed, so too I can go on living with a transplanted mind with nothing changed. I can go on being the old self I was, but with a new mind added to me. Mind too is a mechanism. But because of our identification with it, tension is created.

So with the fourth body, awareness is health and unawareness is disease; awareness is non-tension and non-awareness is tension. Because of thoughts, because of your identification with them, you go on living in your thoughts and a barrier is created between you and your existential being. There is a flower within your reach, but you will never come to know it because you are thinking about it. The flower will die, and you will go on thinking about it. Thinking has created a film between you and the experience – transparent, but not so transparent; only an illusion of transparency.

For example, you are listening to me. But it may be that you are not really listening. If you are thinking about what I am saying, you have ceased listening. Then you have gone ahead or gone back; you are not with me. Either it is the past you will be repeating in your mind or it will be the future projected through the past, but it will not be what I am saying. It is even possible that you can repeat verbatim what I have said. Your mechanism is recording it. It can repeat what I have said, reproduce it. Then you will claim, ”If I have not heard you, how can I reproduce it?” But a tape recorder does not hear me. Your mind can go on working just like a machine. You may be present, or you may not be. You are not needed. You can go on thinking and still be listening. The mind – the fourth body, the mental body – has become a barrier.

Between you and that which is, there is a barrier. The moment you come to touch, you move away from the experience. The moment you come to look, you move away. I take your hand in my hand. This is an existential thing. But it may be that you are not there. Then you have missed. You have known – you have touched and experienced – but you were in your thoughts. So at the fourth body one must be aware of one’s thought process, taken as a whole. Not choosing, not deciding, not judging; just aware of it. If you become aware, you become nonidentified. And nonidentification with the mechanism of the mind is non-tension.

Osho on Seven Bodies Continued... Spiritual, Cosmic and Nirvanic Bodies

Osho - The fifth body is the spiritual body. As far as the spiritual body is concerned, ignorance of oneself is the only tension. All the time you are, you know perfectly well that you do not know yourself. You will pass through life, you will do this and that, you will achieve this and that, but the sense of self ignorance will be with you continuously. It will be lurking behind you; it will be a constant companion no matter how much you try to forget it, how much you try to escape from it. You cannot escape from your ignorance. You know that you don’t know. This is the disease at the fifth level.

Those in Delphi who wrote on the temple, Know Thyself, were concerned with the fifth body. They were working on it. Socrates continuously repeated: Know Thyself. He was concerned with the fifth body. For the fifth body, atma gyana, self-knowledge, is the only knowledge. Mahavira said, ”By knowing oneself, one knows all.” It is not so. One cannot know all by knowing oneself. But the antithesis is correct. By not knowing oneself, one cannot know anything. So to balance this, Mahavira said, ”By knowing yourself, you will know all.” Even if I know everything, if I do not know myself, what is the use? How can I know the basic, the foundational, the ultimate, if I have not even known myself? It is impossible.

So with the fifth body, the tension is between knowing and ignorance. But remember, I am saying knowing and ignorance; I am not saying knowledge and ignorance. Knowledge can be gathered from scriptures; knowing cannot be gathered from anywhere. There are so many persons operating under this fallacy, this misunderstanding between knowledge and knowing. Knowing is always yours. I cannot transfer my knowing to you; I can only transfer my knowledge. Scriptures communicate knowledge, not knowing. It can say you are divine, you are atman, you are the Self, but this is not knowing.

If you cling to this knowledge, great tension will be there. Ignorance will be there along with false, acquired knowledge and information – borrowed knowledge. You will be ignorant, but you will feel that you know. Then there is much tension. It is better to be ignorant and know perfectly that ”I am an ignorant man.” Then tension is there, but it is not so great. If you do not delude yourself with knowledge acquired from others, then you can seek and search within yourself, and knowing is possible. Because you are, this much is certain: that whatever you are, you are. This cannot be denied.

Another thing: you are someone who knows. It may be that you know others, it may be that you know only illusions, it may be that what you know is not correct, but you know. So two things can be taken for granted: your existence and your consciousness. But a third thing is lacking. The essential personality of man can be conceived through three

dimensions: existence, consciousness and bliss – sat-chit-anand. We know that we are existence itself; we know that we are someone who knows – consciousness itself. Only the bliss is lacking.

But if you seek inside yourself, you will know the third also. It is there. The blissfulness, the ecstasy of one’s existence is there. And when you know it, you will know yourself completely: your existence, your consciousness, your bliss. You cannot know yourself completely unless bliss is known, because a person who is not blissful will go on escaping from himself. Our whole life is an escape from ourselves. Others are significant to us because they help us to escape. That is why we are all other-oriented. Even if one becomes religious, he creates God as the other. He becomes other-oriented again; the same fallacy is repeated.

So at the fifth stage, one has to be in search of oneself from within. This is not a search, but a ”being in search.” Only up to the fifth body are you needed. Beyond the fifth, things become easy and spontaneous. The sixth body is cosmic. The tension is between you – your feelings of individuality, of limitation – and the unlimited cosmos. Even in the fifth stage you will be embodied in your spiritual body. You will be a person. That ”person” will be the tension for the sixth. So to achieve a non-tense existence with the cosmos, to be at one with the cosmos, you must cease to be an individual.

Jesus says, ”Whoever loses himself will find himself.” This statement is concerned with the sixth body. Up to the fifth it cannot be understood, because it is completely anti-mathematical. But from the sixth, this is the only mathematics, the only rational possibility: to lose oneself. We have been enhancing ourselves, crystallizing ourselves. Up to the fifth body the crystallization, the selfhood, the individuality can be carried. But if someone insists on being an individual, he remains with the fifth. So many spiritual systems stop with the fifth. All those who say that the soul has its own individuality, and the individuality will remain even in a liberated state – that you will be an individual, embodied in your selfhood – any system that says this, stops with the fifth. In such a system, there will be no concept of God. It is not needed.

The concept of God comes only with the sixth body. ”God” means the cosmic individuality, or, it would be better to say, the cosmic no-individuality. It is not that ”I” am in existence; it is the total within me that has made it possible for me to exist. I am just a point, one link among infinite links of existence. If the sun does not rise tomorrow, I will not be. I will go out of existence; the flame will go out. I am here because the sun exists. It is so far away, but still it is linked with me. If the earth dies, as so many planets have died, then I cannot live because my life is one with the life of the earth.

Everything exists in a chain of existence. It is not that we are islands. We are the ocean. At the sixth, the feeling of individuality is the only tension against an oceanic feeling – a feeling without limitation, a feeling that is beginningless and endless, a feeling not of me but of we. And the ”we” includes everything. Not only persons, not only organic beings, but everything that exists. ”We” means the existence itself.

So ”I” will be the tension at the sixth. How can you lose the ”I” how can you lose your ego? You will not be able to understand right now, but if you achieve the fifth, it will become easy. It is just like a child who is attached to a toy and cannot conceive of how he can throw it. But the moment childhood is gone, the toy is thrown. He never goes back to it. Up to the fifth body the ego is very significant, but beyond the fifth it becomes just like a toy that a child has been playing with. You just throw it; there is no difficulty.

The only difficulty will be if you have achieved the fifth body as a gradual process and not as a sudden enlightenment. Then, to throw the ”I” completely in the sixth becomes difficult. So beyond the fifth, all those processes that are sudden become helpful. Before the fifth, gradual processes seem to be easier; but beyond the fifth, they become a hindrance. So at the sixth, the tension is between individuality and an oceanic consciousness. The drop must lose itself to become the ocean. It is not really losing itself, but from the standpoint of the drop it seems so. On the contrary, the moment the drop is lost, the ocean has been gained. It is not really that the drop has lost itself. It has become the ocean now.

The seventh body is the nirvanic. The tension in the seventh body is between existence and nonexistence. In the sixth, the seeker has lost himself, but not existence. He is – not as an individual, but as the cosmic being. Existence is there. There are philosophies and systems that stop with the sixth. They stop with God or with moksha: liberation. The seventh means to lose even existence into non-existence. It is not losing oneself. It is just losing. The existential becomes non-existential. Then you come to the original source from which all existence comes and into which it goes. Existence comes out of it; non-existence goes back into it.

Existence itself is just a phase. It must go back. Just as day comes and night follows, just as night goes and day follows, so existence comes and non-existence follows; non-existence comes and existence follows. If one is to know totally, then he must not escape from non-existence. If he is to know the total circle, he must become non-existential.

Even the cosmic is not total, because non-existence is beyond it. So even God is not total. God is just part of Brahma; God is not Brahman itself. Brahman means all light and darkness combined, life and death combined, existence and non-existence combined. God is not death; God is only life. God is not non-existence; God is only existence. God is not darkness; God is only light. He is only part of the total being, not the total.

To know the total is to become nothing. Only nothingness can know the wholeness. Wholeness is nothingness, and nothingness is the only wholeness – for the seventh body. So these are the tensions in the seven bodies, beginning with the physiological. If you understand your physiological tension, the relief of it and the well-being of it, then you can very easily proceed to all seven bodies. The realization of at-easeness in the first body becomes a stepping stone to the second. And if you realize something in the second – if you feel a non-tense etheric moment – then the step toward the third is taken.

In each body, if you start with well-being, the door to the next body opens automatically. But if you are defeated in the first body it becomes very difficult, even impossible, to open up further doors. So begin with the first body and do not think of the other six bodies at all. Live in the physical body completely, and you will suddenly know that a new door has opened. Then continue on further. But never think of the other bodies or it will be disturbing and will create tensions. So whatever I have said – forget it!