Body

 

 

You have to find your own body, its way, what suits -- that's right for you. And once you have found it, you can easily allow it, and it will not be enforced because it will be in tune with the body, so there is nothing as if you are imposing it; there is no struggle, no effort. Watch, while eating, what suits you. People go on eating all sorts of things. Then they get disturbed. Then their mind gets affected. Never follow anybody's discipline, because nobody is like you, so nobody can say what is going to suit you.

 

That's why I give you only one discipline and that is of self-awareness, that is of freedom. You listen to your own body. The body has a great wisdom in it. If you listen to it, you will always be right. If you don't listen to it and you go on enforcing things on it, you will never be happy; you will be unhappy, ill, ill at ease, and always disturbed and distracted, disoriented.

 

-Osho, “The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 1, #4, Q3“

 

 

⯎

 

 

One of the reasons man is still uncivilized is the division between mind, body, and soul. This division has been preached by all the religions of the world. They have condemned the body; a few of them have condemned the mind, too. And they have all praised the soul. The result has not been as they expected. The result has been a very strange poisoning of humanity. People have not dropped their bodies, they have not dropped their minds, but they have become guilty about them. They have lost self-respect, they have lost touch with the wisdom of their own bodies, and they have lost the mastery of their own minds. And the reality is that unless all three function in a total organic unity, a man is not whole.

 

One who is not whole is not holy either.

 

My basic approach is: I am not against the body, I am not against the mind; I am all for a unity, a symphony, a synchronicity amongst these three spheres. And a man will be fulfilled only, complete only, when all three are functioning in total harmony.

 

In the East, the body has been so much condemned that the ultimate result is poverty -- no science, no technology, a poor, hungry body; starved, condemned, neglected. And in the West, the result has been a healthy body, an evolved technology, richer literature, art, all for the nourishment of the mind, but a poor soul, almost nonexistential. This is a strange tragedy. The West is suffering from a poor soul, and the East is suffering from a poor body and a poor mind.

 

My suggestion to you, Sameer, is that the work for the future humanity, for a new man, is to drop the old conditioning -- of the East, and of the West. Drop all antagonism, either of the spiritualist or of the materialist. Accept the realistic approach that existence is both -- matter on the outside and spirit on the inside. And in between the two is the bridge of the mind.

 

In a miniature form, the same is true about every human being. The new man will come out of this unity.

 

-Osho, “The New Dawn, #19, Q1”