Osho - Mind and Body Are Not Two Things: on the mystery of the body according to the yoga system of Patanjali

Austerities destroy impurities, and with the ensuingperfection in the body and sense organs, physical and mental powers awaken.
Union with the divine happens through self study.
Total illumination can be accomplished by surrendering to God.

Man is like an iceberg: only a part, a minor part is visible onthe surface. The main part is hidden beneath. Or, man is like a tree: its reallife is in the roots, hidden underground; only the branches are visible. If youcut off the branches, new ones will grow because the branches are not thesource; but if you cut off the roots, the tree is destroyed. Only a part of manis visible on the surface, the major part is hidden within. And if you thinkthat the visible man is all, then you make a great mistake. Then you miss thewhole mystery of man and you miss the doors within yourself which can lead youtowards the divine.

If you think that by knowing someones name, by knowing whichfamily he comes from; by knowing his profession, that he is a doctor or anengineer or a professor; or by knowing his face, his picture, that you haveknown him, you are in a great illusion. These are just appearances on thesurface. The real man is far, far, away from all these appearances. In this wayyou may be acquainted with him, but you never know the man. It is enough as faras society is concerned, more is not needed. This skin-deep knowledge is enoughfor the marketplace, but if you really want to know the man, then you have togo deeper. And the only way to go deeper is to go within yourself first.

Unless you know the unknown within you, you will never be able toknow anybody else. The only way to know the mystery that man is, is to know themystery that you are. There are hidden layers behind hidden layers. Man isinfinity.

If you go on diving deeply into man, you will reach God. Man isjust the surface of the ocean, waves. If you dive deeply, you reach the verycenter of existence. Those who have known God have not known him as an object. Theyhave known him as their innermost subjectivity. Those who have known God havenot encountered him. They have not seen him as an object; they have seen him asthe very seer, as their own consciousness. You cannot encounter God anywhereexcept within yourself. He is your depth; you are his surface. You are hisperiphery; he is your center.

The deeper you move within yourself, the deeper you move in thewhole existence; and in others also because the center is one. There aremillions of peripheries, but the center is one. The whole existence is centeredon one point that one point is God. God is the deepest depth of being.

It is a great journey, a great pilgrimage to know man.Patanjalis sutras give you clues how to enter.

The first sutra:

Kayendriya siddhih ashuddhihksyayat tapasah.
Austerities destroy impurities, and with the ensuing perfection in thebody and sense organs, physical and mental powers awaken.

Before you can understand this sutra, many more things have to beunderstood. The body has been very much misused. You have mistreated your ownbody. You dont know the mystery of the body itself. It is not just skin, it isnot just bones, it is not just blood; it is a great organic unity, a greatdynamism.

For centuries, man thought that blood filled the body as waterfills a container. Only three centuries ago did we come to know that blood doesnot fill the body, it is not a stagnant thing; blood circulates. Just threecenturies ago, we came to know that blood circulates, it is a dynamic force. Itdoes not fill the body, but it circulates so silently and so continuously. Themovement is so graceful, without any noise. We have lived with bodies formillions of lives and we have never come to encounter the reality of blood that it circulates.

There are many more mysteries which are hidden. This body is justthe first layer of many there are seven bodies in all. If you move deep inthis body, you will come across new phenomena. Behind this gross body is hiddenthe subtle body. Once that subtle body awakens, you become very powerfulbecause you attain to certain new dimensional forces. This body can lie down inyour bed, and your subtle body can move. For it, there is no barrier. Thegravitation of the earth does not affect it; there is no barrier of time andspace for it. It can move; it can move anywhere , the whole world is open toit. That is not possible for the gross body.

In some of your dreams, the subtle body actually leaves yourphysical body. In some of your deep meditations, your subtle body leaves yourphysical body. Many of you, deeply meditating, have sometimes become aware thatit feels as if you have risen above the earth, a few inches, a few feet. Whenyou open your eyes, you are sitting on the earth. You think you have imagined it.It is not so. In deep meditation the subtle body can go a little higher than yourgross body. Sometimes it also happens that the gross body follows the subtlebody.

There is a woman in Europe who has been studied by all thescientific methods. In deep meditation, she rises four feet above the earth;not only in the subtle body, but in the gross body also. It has been found tobe a fact. It is said in the oldest Yoga treatises that in deep meditation thegross body can move above the ground with the subtle body, and, it says it can riseexactly four feet very easily.

The gross body is just the surface body, the skin of the otherbodies. Then behind the subtle, there are subtler bodies in all, sevenbodies. They belong to seven different planes of being. The more you enter yourown being, the more you become aware that this body is not all. But you willencounter the second body only if this body has become pure.

Yoga does not believe in torturing the body, it is not amasochistic affair but it believes in purifying it. And sometimes, purifyingit and torturing it may look alike. A distinction has to be made. A man canfast and he may only be torturing his body. He may just be against his ownbody, suicidal, masochistic. But then another man can fast and he may not be atorturer, and he may not be a masochist, and he may not be trying to destroythe body in any way. Rather, he may be trying to purify it because in deepfasting the body attains to certain purities.

You go on eating continuously, every day; you never give the bodya holiday. The body goes on accumulating many dead cells which become a load.Not only are they a load and a burden, they are toxins, they are poisonous.They make the body impure. When the body is impure, you cannot see the hidden bodybehind it. This body needs to be clean, transparent, pure. Then suddenly youbecome aware of the second layer, the subtle body. When the subtle body is pure,then you become aware of the third body, and the fourth, and so on.

Fasting helps tremendously, but one needs to be very aware thatone is not destroying the body. No condemnation should be in the mind; and thisis a problem because almost all religions have condemned the body. Theiroriginal founders were not condemners; they were not poisoners. They lovedtheir bodies. They loved the body so much that they always tried to purify it.Their fasting was a purification.