Thursday, December 5, 2013

SEVEN HUMAN BODIES: #1: PHYSICAL BODY: Discipline or Celebration?

WHY PURIFY

The thinner and purer the first (physical) body gets, the easier it is to access our higher bodies. It is virtually impossible for an alcoholic, a drug addict, a maniac or such to work on their higher bodies, since the physical addiction will require the entire energy the body can possibly accumulate to feed that addiction or mania. And the body needs a lot of energy to jump to the next level of consciousness.
The more physicality and "baggage" the body accumulates - the less possible it is to reach higher levels. Thus all the body purifications, veganism, detoxifications, and abstaining from toxic and gross substances like alcohol, drugs, meat, heavy metals, to start with.

Osho has spoken about physical purity at the very beginning, in the 60s and 70s, but once he became more popular among foreigners he switched his focus from physical body purity to global problems, human emotions and relationships. Why is that? In the very beginning, when Osho had just a few disciples, there was no need to work on their worldly problems: they were already ready for serious work, individually hand picked, and their relationships with the world have already been worked through. They were not striving for anything more than enlightenment. 

When Osho became more popular in the world, all kinds of people started to get attracted, seeing the "success" of the first disciples; most of them were not ready for the trip towards the ultimate; they were still preoccupied with the world, interested in the worldly possessions and relationships, and for the most part not ready at all to drop every attachment. To manage those people, to bring them closer to themselves, to help them become happy and fulfilled would not be possible if Osho put them on a rigorous monk routine. Most of them would simply run away! Needless to say that the whole Osho concept of Zorba the Buddha started to shape around that: a human who lives happily in the world, makes money, celebrates life and moves towards meditativeness and awareness. And to live happily in the society a human has to deal with the relationships with that society, not purify himself to such a degree that he or she cannot stand the society or any other impurity anymore... So, most Osho sannyasins took body purification and purity as something petty, unnecessary; celebrating life, often with alcohol and drugs, abundant sex, and taking everything they could from life... 


Portland Book Review

Why is it that Osho's old disciples, the ones who have received the esoteric teaching about seven bodies in the 60s and early 70s, are the ones still revered in Osho realm, and most later disciples, especially westerners, who conduct therapy groups and Osho activities, are still full of ego and weaknesses? Could lack of purity be the reason? Why in a human mind, even the mind of a sannyasin, celebration, toxic substances and overeating often go hand in hand? Why can't we learn to celebrate life just living, dancing, singing, being happy to be alive, without a glass, a plate or a smoke? It's socially accepted to share substances with friends, but when one seriously works on their energy, isn't it enough to just exchange energy with others?

I've seen many well-known therapists in Pune and around the world who, after completing a meditation camp or a deep, healing therapy group celebrated that very completion with alcohol and meat, looking utterly unaware and driven by desire. How come people who meditate almost daily for many years and do a lot of psychotherapy are so "un-enlightened"?

I've been asking myself this question for a long time until discovering 2 Osho books - The Psychology of the Esoteric and In Search of the Miraculous. Both of them consist of early Osho talks translated from Hindi. Osho hasn't spoken on esoteric topics in English mostly because the questions he'd been asked by westerners were of a different realm and not about the step-by-step bodywork on the road towards spiritual opening. The topics covered in these 2 books are mind-blowing and completely opposite of how the standard western mind understands Osho.
Inspired by the books, work and experiments we have conducted on ourselves, we decided to start a new project -"7 BODIES"- to help seekers understand the necessity and extreme importance of tactical work on all our accessible bodies. And the more we work on our grosser bodies, the more access we get to the subtler ones. This is serious work, but Osho taught to do it playfully, and to be non-serious about serious things. That helps to remain juicy, not to lose joy of living while working on ourselves. Osho looked at yogis, Buddhist monks and other "serious" spiritualists and decided this is not the way for his sannyasins. That's why he advised his followers to sing, dance and meditate doing so. It is way more difficult than sit for years in a private cell, because distractions and temptations are plenty, but this path would work out a lot of unresolved issues and "hooks" (attachments) and sky-rocket anyone who is pure-heartedly stepping onto it.

ALL OUR BODIES ARE CONNECTED.
When I started to meditate intensively, my body pretty soon denied alcohol and animal products without any effort from my side. Literally, one morning it told me "enough is enough", and I never went back since. This was another proof for me that different bodies within us are connected, and are much wiser than "us", or what we think to be "us".

When one works on their bodies, meditates and purifies, the physical body becomes more sensitive and starts to communicate its needs much better to the mind. And if one listens to their body, it becomes very easy to understand the truth about it. Not the needs imposed on us from the outside, but the actual truth about nutrients, vitamins, nourishment, liquids, physical touch, beauty, emotional connections and love, as well as poisons, heavy metals, toxins, impure foods and polluted air. Our bodies have collected millions of years of unconscious experiences and wisdom, and we will gain access to that information only if we become less gross / more subtle. To explain how to do that - is the whole purpose of our project called 7 BODIES.

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