OSHO ON "BODY"

--> I say unto you: The body is your greatest friend. Take care of your body.

--> Your body is giving you the right indication; the body is very wise. The mind is a very late arrival. The body has lived millions of years, it knows what is needed. It is the mind that interferes. Mind is very immature, body is very mature. Listen to the body. And when I say listen to the body, I don't mean remain confined to the body. If you listen to the body, the body will not have anything to say to you -- things will be settled. And when the body is at ease, relaxed, and there is no tension, and the body is not fighting for something, is not trying to attract your attention because you are not fulfilling a need, when the body is calm and quiet, you can float high, you can fly high, you can become a white cloud.

But only when body needs are truly looked after. The body is not your enemy, it is your friend. The body is your earth, the body has all your roots. You have to find a bridge between you and your body. If you don't find that bridge, you will be constantly in conflict with your body -- and a person who is fighting with himself is always miserable. The first thing is to come to a peace-pact with your body and never break it. Once you have come to a peace-pact with your body, the body will become very, very friendly. You look after the body, the body will look after you -- it becomes a vehicle of tremendous value, it becomes the very temple. One day your body itself is revealed to you as the very shrine of God.

--> If you really want to be a sensitive, intelligent mind, you need a sensitive, intelligent body too. Yes, the body has its own intelligence. Don't kill it, don't destroy it, otherwise you will be destroying your intelligence. But if it is respected, then it becomes something religious, spiritual, holy.

--> In the beginning it will be difficult but for just three weeks allow nature. When you feel hungry, eat, when you feel sleepy, go to sleep. When you don't feel hungry, don't eat. It is not a fast, remember, because a fast is from the mind, and you are feeling hungry but you are on a fast. There is no harm if you don't feel sleepy; there is no harm because the body doesn't need it, so don't force it. Stay awake, enjoy, go for a walk, have a little dance in the room or sing or meditate, but don't force sleep. When you feel sleepy, when the eyes say: Now go to sleep....

And don't force yourself in the morning to come out of bed; allow your inner being, give it a chance. It will give you the indication, the eyes will open by themselves. For a few days there will be difficulty but within three weeks... and I say within three weeks if you don't interfere; if you interfere, then three lives are not enough. Don't interfere and just wait for things to happen, and allow them. Within three weeks you will fall into nature again

--> I don't think that by torturing yourself you can meditate more easily; on the contrary, if your body is pleasantly at ease you can meditate more easily. I don't think that when you are fasting you can meditate. You can only think of food and nothing else; you will dream of food and nothing else. But if you are well fed, well nourished, you don't think of food -- there is no need. The body is completely satisfied, it does not create any disturbance.
To live pleasurably, to live joyously is not against meditation. It is really the basic need of meditation. I know many kinds of ascetics but I have never seen any intelligence in them, I have never seen any creativity in them. I have never seen in their eyes a light of the beyond, or in their gestures some message that cannot be said through words. They don't have anything. They are simply starving -- and starving because it fulfills the ego, because the more they starve, the more they torture themselves, more and more people come to worship them.

--> People can be helped with diseases, because almost seventy percent of diseases are mental. They may be expressed through the body, but their origin is in the mind. And if you can put in the mind the idea that the disease has disappeared, that you need not worry about it, it does not exist any more, the disease will disappear.

-->You can fast for three days, you can force your body to fast, but if it is repression, the fourth day the body will take revenge -- you will eat too much, for a few days you will eat too much. In fact, if you had lost any weight in those three days, you will gain more weight within a week. The body has taken the revenge, the body has taught you a lesson. Fighting is not the way -- not the way of the buddhas. Fighting is stupid; it is your own body, you need not fight with it, you have just to be more watchful of it. If some watchfulness starts crystallizing in you, you will be surprised that the body starts following you. It no longer commands you, it no longer orders you: it becomes obedient to you.


--> When the spine is erect, making a ninety-degree angle with the earth, your body expends the least energy possible. If you are leaning towards the left or towards the front, then your body starts spending more energy, because the gravitation starts pulling you downwards and you have to keep yourself, you have to hold yourself so that you don't fall. This is expenditure. An erect spine was found to need the least spending of energy. Then sitting with your hands together in the lap is also very very useful for low-energy people, because when both the hands are touching each other, your body electricity starts moving in a circle. It does not go out of your body; it becomes an inner circle, the energy moves inside you.

You must know that energy is always released through the fingers, energy is never released from round-shaped things. For example, your head cannot release energy, it contains it. Energy is released through the fingers, the toes of the feet and the hands. In a certain yoga posture the feet are together, so one foot releases energy and it enters into the other foot; one hand releases energy and it enters into the other hand. You go on taking your own energy, you become an inner circle of energy. It is very resting, it is very relaxing.

The yoga posture is the most relaxed posture possible. It is more relaxing than even sleep, because when you are asleep your whole body is being pulled by gravitation. When you are horizontal it is relaxing in a totally different way. It is relaxing because it brings you back to the ancient days when man was an animal, horizontal. It is relaxing because it is regressive; it helps you to become an animal again. That's why in a lying posture you cannot think clearly, it becomes difficult to think. Try it. You can dream easily but you cannot think easily; for thinking you have to sit. The more erect you sit, the better is the possibility to think.

-->And remember, again let me repeat it: the middle is not a fixed point. You cannot decide once and forever that this is the middle, that "I will eat only so much" -- because your needs change. One day you have walked ten miles, you may need a little more food. One day you have rested, you have not worked at all, it was a holiday -- you will need a little less food. One day you have been chopping wood; you will need more food, your body needs more nourishment. And one day it was raining and you were simply playing cards; you can do with little food.

And once in a while your body may not need food at all. If you are ill it will be good to give the body complete rest, because eating means work for the body. The body has to digest it, the body has to continuously work on the food. Once in a while it is good; if you are feeling that the body is not in good shape, it is good not to eat. But there is no religious quality about it; this is a very scientific approach. One thing is certain: that nothing can become a static phenomenon. You have to go on moving.

When you are young you will need eight hours sleep. When you become old you will need four hours sleep, three hours sleep, and that will be enough. When you were a child you needed ten hours of sleep. In the mother's womb the child needs twenty-four hours of sleep; after the birth, twenty-two hours, then twenty hours, then eighteen hours, and slowly slowly... by the end, when a person comes to die, he needs only two hours sleep and that's enough. In the mother's womb the child is growing; those nine months one grows so much that one will not be growing as much in ninety years' time. Leaps and bounds! The pace is so quick and so fast that the child needs absolute rest. But the old man, he has stopped growing long ago. Now the body does not need so much rest. The body no longer revives itself; it is getting ready to die, the process of revival has stopped. Now whatsoever cells are dying are dying; they are not being reproduced again. Hence, less and less sleep is needed. You can't fix it forever.

There are fools who fix it, who say, "I have taken a vow to sleep for only five hours a night." They will suffer when they are young, they will suffer when they are old; their suffering will never end. When they are young they will suffer because the body may need ten hours sleep, nine hours sleep, at least eight hours sleep -- and they have decided to sleep only five hours. They will be continuously missing those three hours. They will look a little sad, tired, their faces lusterless, their eyes always sleepy. They will not show intelligence, because body and mind both need deep rest. They will simply move through life like a somnambulist, half asleep.

And their scriptures say that if you feel sleepy in the daytime it means you are a sinner, TAMASIK, that you are suffering from lethargy. And the only thing that you are really suffering from is foolishness! You have decided that you will sleep only five hours when the need is for eight hours. And in old age you will try to sleep five hours and you will not be able to sleep, then you will suffer because you can sleep only three hours. Then the whole night you are tossing and turning and cursing the whole world, and you can't conceive why you can't sleep at least five hours. And trying to sleep five hours when you can sleep only three hours will be a disturbance; it will keep you in despair. You will continuously think that something is being missed. Never decide like that. Buddha says: Let your life be dynamic. It has to correspond to the reality, to the situation in which you are. Don't follow dead rules; respond to reality, to that which is. In that responsibility you grow, you become mature. To be responsible is to be right.



-->I want my people, for the first time in the whole history of man, to be lovers of themselves, their bodies. Take care of the body, it is taking care of you. You cannot repay it, there is no way. It is doing so much for you, what have you done for it? fasting, celibacy, standing naked in the burning hot sun, or standing naked in the freezing cold. And these maniacs have been worshipped down the centuries as the greatest heroes of humanity. Get rid of these heroes. They all need to be imprisoned. They all need psychiatric treatment, they are simply mad. But the line of mad prophets and messiahs has impressed strange ideas on your delicate mind.