Question :

Why are we normally not able to feel Disidentified with the body?

 

 

You are totally identified with your body because normally there is no gap between you and your body. What you are doing, your body is doing, and vice versa. You and the doings of your body are identified as one and the same. But when the body takes its own course, it becomes an automaton. Things begin to happen which you had never planned, which you never thought possible. ”Am I doing this? Am I feeling this?” And you know that you are not doing it. You did not will it but still the dance goes on – and vigorously, too.

 

Then there is a gap. The gap between the doer and the doing is there: you are not doing it. Now the body has become an automaton. Consciousness cannot identify itself with an automaton. You cannot identify yourself with a machine unless the machine works according to your will. If I tell this microphone to move and it begins to move, there is every possibility that I may identify myself with it. Now it has become part and parcel of me: it moves when I ask it to move. The hand moves when I tell it to move, and when I tell it not to move it does not. That is the basis of identification: through the movement, the mover and the moved have become one.

 

 

 

But when the body moves without your conscious exertion then it becomes a separate machine. Only then can you see that you are separate from the body. This is such a distinct feeling that no confusion remains. That is why I emphasize body movement. Let it happen. Whatever happens, let go. You will see that your body has become like that of a madman, or an animal, or a machine, and you will not be able to identify with it, so you remain aloof. Now you begin to be a witness.

 

In the second step of the technique you begin to witness all that is happening. The body is moving, the hands are moving, forming many mudras – mudras that you have never known or planned. Your inner witness comes into being. You begin to see the happenings as something outside yourself; now you are not the doer but just a seer. There is no question of your doing anything; you begin to see.

 

In the beginning the identification with the body may be there, but as you allow yourself to let go more and more into the technique, action vanishes. If the body falls to the ground you will not think that you have fallen but that the body has fallen. Then, in the third step you are to shout Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! with total intensity. You must become completely mad. Move deeper and deeper into the sound. Bring your effort to a peak, because only from the peak can you fall to the very depths of your being. The more mad you become, the higher the peak of intensity that you reach, the deeper will be the depths that you fall into and the more sanity there will be.

 

Real sanity is that which comes after the transcendence of madness. Relaxation comes only when you have come to a peak of tension. Then the fourth stage is reached: the mind becomes calm, quiet. Now, having gone through the three previous stages of ten minutes each, you are just to relax for ten minutes. Stop everything that you have been doing in the first three stages and just fall down or stop, remaining frozen in whatever position you are in. Now there is nothing to do. There is no question of doing anything because you will be completely exhausted, your whole being will be tired. Now letgo becomes an automatic process.

 

The technique is a sequence of stages, each following automatically from the preceding stage. If you continue the technique and do not add the fourth stage it will come by itself as a natural consequence of what has gone before. It is bound to – a moment is bound to come when everything is exhausted and you fall down. There is nothing left to do.

 

The fourth stage is the moment of nondoing. That is what I call dhyana, meditation. The first three stages are only steps; the fourth stage is the door. Then you are. There is nothing to do, neither breathing nor movement nor sound, just silence. The three previous stages must be ”done” in a sense, but the fourth stage comes of its own accord. Then something happens that is not your doing. It comes as a grace: you have become a vacuum, an emptiness, and something fills you. Something spiritual pours into you when you are not.

 

You are not there because there is no doing; the ego disappears when there is no doer. The doer is the ego. So you can be in the first three steps because you are doing something – breathing, moving, shouting – but now, in the fourth stage, you cannot be, because there is no doing. The ego is nothing but an accumulation of your memories of past actions, so the more a person has done, the more egocentric he is. Even if your doing has been in social service or religious work, whatsoever you have done becomes part of the ego. Ego is not an entity but the memory of your doings, so in those moments when there is no doing, you are not. Then something happens. Even though you are not doing anything you are totally conscious. Silent, but conscious. Exhausted, but conscious.

 

Only consciousness is there: a consciousness of your deep letgo, a consciousness that now everything has disappeared. When the fourth stage has ended, when it becomes a memory, then you can recollect it. But in the moment itself there is nothing, there is only consciousness. Because only nothingness is there, you cannot be conscious of anything. Afterward you recognize that there has been a gap. Your mind functioned until a particular moment; then there was a gap, and then it began again. You feel this gap afterward: the gap, the interval, becomes a part of your memory.

 

Our memory records events and this gap is a great event, it is a great phenomenon. Mind is a mechanism. It records everything; it is just like the tape recorder that we are using here. The recorder will record two things: when we speak, the words are recorded; and when we are not speaking, the silence, the gap, is also recorded. Even when we are not speaking, something is being recorded – the silence, the gap. In the same way, the mechanism of the mind is always there recording everything. In fact, it is even more keen, more sensitive, when there is a gap.

 

The tape recorder can blur what I am saying, but it cannot blur my silence. The gap will be recorded more intensely; there is no possibility of error. So the gap is remembered – and the gap is blissful. In a way a memorable event is a burden, a tension, while the gap is a calm, blissful interval. This gap is dhyana, meditation.

 

-Osho, "The Great Challenge, #2, Q5"