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Respect your body the same way as you respect your soul. Your body is as sacred as your soul is. In existence everything is sacred because the whole thing is throbbing with the heartbeat of the divine....
You are moving moment to moment, from one stage of consciousness to another stage of consciousness. The body may be fast asleep, but it is also conscious. You know if you are asleep and a mosquito starts disturbing you, you remain asleep and your hand removes the mosquito.... The body has its own consciousness.
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| | ©Photo from Ojas archive |
The scientists say the body has millions and millions of living cells; each cell has its own life. You have lost the capacity of wonder; otherwise you would wonder first about your own body, how the body turns the bread into blood. We have not been able to find a factory yet where bread can be turned into blood. And not only that, it sorts out what is needed and what is not needed by your body; that which is not needed is thrown out, and that which is needed is needed for different functions.
The body goes on supplying different places, different parts of your body, whatever their need is. You eat the same food for all your needs; out of the same food your bones are made, your blood is made, your skin is made, your eyes are made, your brain is made; and the body knows perfectly well what is needed and where it is needed. The blood is circulating continuously, supplying particular chemicals to particular parts.
Not only that, the body also knows the priority. The first priority is your brain – hence, if there is not enough oxygen, first the body will give the oxygen to the brain. The other parts are tougher and they can wait a little, but the brain cells are not so tough. If they don't get oxygen for six minutes they will die, and once they are dead they cannot be revived.
It is a tremendous work of intelligence to be alert about the different functions. When you have a wound, then the body stops supplying certain parts which can survive, but first the wound has to be healed. Immediately the white cells of the body rush towards the wound to cover it so it is not open. And then inside, the work, the very subtle work, continues.
Medical science knows that we are not yet as wise as the body is. The most prominent physicians have said that we cannot cure the body; the body cures itself – we can only help. At the most our medicines can be of some help, but the basic cure comes from the body itself. It is a wonder how it is being done. It is such a vast work.
I have come to know from one scientist friend, who has been working on the functions of the body, that if we want to do all those functions we will need almost one square mile of factory with many complicated mechanisms, computers. Then, too, we are not certain that we will succeed – and your religions have been condemning the body and telling you that to take care of the body is irreligious....
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| ©Photo from Ojas archive | |
First, inside become one with your body, then become one with the whole existence. The day your heartbeat has a synchronicity with the universe and its heartbeat you have found religion – not before it.
For centuries man has been told all kinds of life-negative things. Even to torture your body has been a spiritual discipline....
You walk, you eat, you drink, and all these things indicate that you are a body and a consciousness as an organic whole. You cannot torture the body and raise your consciousness. The body has to be loved – you have to be a great friend. It is your home, you have to clean it of all junk, and you have to remember that it is in your service continuously, day in, day out. Even when you are asleep, your body is continuously working for you digesting, changing your food into blood, taking out the dead cells from the body, bringing new oxygen, fresh oxygen into the body – and you are fast asleep!
It is doing everything for your survival, for your life, although you are so ungrateful that you have never even thanked your body. On the contrary, your religions have been teaching you to torture it: the body is your enemy and you have to get free from the body, its attachments. I also know that you are more than the body and there is no need to have any attachment. But love is not an attachment, compassion is not an attachment. Love and compassion are absolutely needed for your body and its nourishment. And the better body you have, the more is the possibility for growing consciousness. It is an organic unity.
|  | <…> Once you have become aware of your consciousness, of your being, there is no God above you. Only such a person can be respectful towards other human beings, other living beings, because they all are as mysterious as he himself is…different expressions, varieties which make life richer. And once a man has found consciousness in himself, he has found the key to the ultimate. Any education that does not teach you to love your body, does not teach you to be compassionate to your body, does not teach you how to enter into its mysteries, will not be able to teach you how to enter into your own consciousness.
The body is the door – the body is the stepping stone. And any education that does not touch the subject of your body and consciousness is not only absolutely incomplete, it is utterly harmful because it will go on being destructive. It is only the flowering of consciousness within you that prevents you from destruction. And that gives you a tremendous urge to create – to create more beauty in the world, to create more comfort in the world....
Man needs a better body, a healthier body. Man needs a more conscious, alert being. Man needs all kinds of comforts and luxuries that existence is ready to deliver. Existence is ready to give you paradise herenow, but you go on postponing it – it is always after death.
In Sri Lanka one great mystic was dying.... He was worshipped by thousands of people. They gathered around him. He opened his eyes: just a few more breaths would he take on the shore and he would be gone, and gone forever. Everybody was eager to listen to his last words. The old man said, "I have been teaching you for my whole life about blissfulness, ecstasy, meditativeness. Now I am going to the other shore - I will not be available anymore. You have listened to me, but you have never practiced what I have been telling you. You have always been postponing. But now there is no point in postponing, I am going. Is anyone ready to go with me?"
There was a great pindrop silence. People looked at each other thinking that perhaps this man who had been a disciple for forty years, he may be ready.... But he was looking at the others – nobody was standing up. Just from the very back a man raised his hand. The great mystic thought, "At least, one person is courageous enough."
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But that man said, "Please let me make it clear to you why I am not standing up. I have only raised my hand. I want to know how to reach to the other shore, because today of course I am not ready. There are many things which are incomplete: a guest has come, my young son is getting married, and this day I cannot go – and you say from the other shore, you cannot come back. Some day, one day certainly, I will come and meet you. If you can just explain to us once more – although you have been explaining to us for your whole life – just once more how to reach the other shore? But please keep in mind that I am not ready to go right now. I just want to refresh my memory so that when the right time comes...."
That right time never comes. It is not only a story about that poor man, it is the story of millions of people, of almost all. They are all waiting for the right moment, the right constellation of stars.... They are consulting astrology, going to the palmist…inquiring in different ways what is going to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow does not happen – it never has happened. It is simply a stupid strategy of postponement. What happens is always today.
A right kind of education will teach people to live herenow, to create a paradise of this earth, not to wait for death to come, and not to wait for death to come, and not to be miserable till death stops your misery. Let death find you dancing and joyous and loving. It is a strange experience that if a man can live his life as if he is already in paradise, death cannot take away anything from that man's experience.
My approach is to teach you that this is the paradise, there is no paradise anywhere else, and no preparation is needed to be happy. No discipline is needed to be loving; just a little alertness, just a little wakefulness, just a little understanding.
* - excerpt from OSHO. From medication to meditation.
Updated on 14-10-2015 |
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