Osho on Seven Bodies Continued... Spiritual, Cosmic and Nirvanic Bodies

Osho - The fifth body is the spiritual body. As far as the spiritual body is concerned, ignorance of oneself is the only tension. All the time you are, you know perfectly well that you do not know yourself. You will pass through life, you will do this and that, you will achieve this and that, but the sense of self ignorance will be with you continuously. It will be lurking behind you; it will be a constant companion no matter how much you try to forget it, how much you try to escape from it. You cannot escape from your ignorance. You know that you don’t know. This is the disease at the fifth level.

Those in Delphi who wrote on the temple, Know Thyself, were concerned with the fifth body. They were working on it. Socrates continuously repeated: Know Thyself. He was concerned with the fifth body. For the fifth body, atma gyana, self-knowledge, is the only knowledge. Mahavira said, ”By knowing oneself, one knows all.” It is not so. One cannot know all by knowing oneself. But the antithesis is correct. By not knowing oneself, one cannot know anything. So to balance this, Mahavira said, ”By knowing yourself, you will know all.” Even if I know everything, if I do not know myself, what is the use? How can I know the basic, the foundational, the ultimate, if I have not even known myself? It is impossible.

So with the fifth body, the tension is between knowing and ignorance. But remember, I am saying knowing and ignorance; I am not saying knowledge and ignorance. Knowledge can be gathered from scriptures; knowing cannot be gathered from anywhere. There are so many persons operating under this fallacy, this misunderstanding between knowledge and knowing. Knowing is always yours. I cannot transfer my knowing to you; I can only transfer my knowledge. Scriptures communicate knowledge, not knowing. It can say you are divine, you are atman, you are the Self, but this is not knowing.

If you cling to this knowledge, great tension will be there. Ignorance will be there along with false, acquired knowledge and information – borrowed knowledge. You will be ignorant, but you will feel that you know. Then there is much tension. It is better to be ignorant and know perfectly that ”I am an ignorant man.” Then tension is there, but it is not so great. If you do not delude yourself with knowledge acquired from others, then you can seek and search within yourself, and knowing is possible. Because you are, this much is certain: that whatever you are, you are. This cannot be denied.

Another thing: you are someone who knows. It may be that you know others, it may be that you know only illusions, it may be that what you know is not correct, but you know. So two things can be taken for granted: your existence and your consciousness. But a third thing is lacking. The essential personality of man can be conceived through three
dimensions: existence, consciousness and bliss – sat-chit-anand. We know that we are existence itself; we know that we are someone who knows – consciousness itself. Only the bliss is lacking.

But if you seek inside yourself, you will know the third also. It is there. The blissfulness, the ecstasy of one’s existence is there. And when you know it, you will know yourself completely: your existence, your consciousness, your bliss. You cannot know yourself completely unless bliss is known, because a person who is not blissful will go on escaping from himself. Our whole life is an escape from ourselves. Others are significant to us because they help us to escape. That is why we are all other-oriented. Even if one becomes religious, he creates God as the other. He becomes other-oriented again; the same fallacy is repeated.

So at the fifth stage, one has to be in search of oneself from within. This is not a search, but a ”being in search.” Only up to the fifth body are you needed. Beyond the fifth, things become easy and spontaneous. The sixth body is cosmic. The tension is between you – your feelings of individuality, of limitation – and the unlimited cosmos. Even in the fifth stage you will be embodied in your spiritual body. You will be a person. That ”person” will be the tension for the sixth. So to achieve a non-tense existence with the cosmos, to be at one with the cosmos, you must cease to be an individual.

Jesus says, ”Whoever loses himself will find himself.” This statement is concerned with the sixth body. Up to the fifth it cannot be understood, because it is completely anti-mathematical. But from the sixth, this is the only mathematics, the only rational possibility: to lose oneself. We have been enhancing ourselves, crystallizing ourselves. Up to the fifth body the crystallization, the selfhood, the individuality can be carried. But if someone insists on being an individual, he remains with the fifth. So many spiritual systems stop with the fifth. All those who say that the soul has its own individuality, and the individuality will remain even in a liberated state – that you will be an individual, embodied in your selfhood – any system that says this, stops with the fifth. In such a system, there will be no concept of God. It is not needed.

The concept of God comes only with the sixth body. ”God” means the cosmic individuality, or, it would be better to say, the cosmic no-individuality. It is not that ”I” am in existence; it is the total within me that has made it possible for me to exist. I am just a point, one link among infinite links of existence. If the sun does not rise tomorrow, I will not be. I will go out of existence; the flame will go out. I am here because the sun exists. It is so far away, but still it is linked with me. If the earth dies, as so many planets have died, then I cannot live because my life is one with the life of the earth.

Everything exists in a chain of existence. It is not that we are islands. We are the ocean. At the sixth, the feeling of individuality is the only tension against an oceanic feeling – a feeling without limitation, a feeling that is beginningless and endless, a feeling not of me but of we. And the ”we” includes everything. Not only persons, not only organic beings, but everything that exists. ”We” means the existence itself.

So ”I” will be the tension at the sixth. How can you lose the ”I” how can you lose your ego? You will not be able to understand right now, but if you achieve the fifth, it will become easy. It is just like a child who is attached to a toy and cannot conceive of how he can throw it. But the moment childhood is gone, the toy is thrown. He never goes back to it. Up to the fifth body the ego is very significant, but beyond the fifth it becomes just like a toy that a child has been playing with. You just throw it; there is no difficulty.

The only difficulty will be if you have achieved the fifth body as a gradual process and not as a sudden enlightenment. Then, to throw the ”I” completely in the sixth becomes difficult. So beyond the fifth, all those processes that are sudden become helpful. Before the fifth, gradual processes seem to be easier; but beyond the fifth, they become a hindrance. So at the sixth, the tension is between individuality and an oceanic consciousness. The drop must lose itself to become the ocean. It is not really losing itself, but from the standpoint of the drop it seems so. On the contrary, the moment the drop is lost, the ocean has been gained. It is not really that the drop has lost itself. It has become the ocean now.

The seventh body is the nirvanic. The tension in the seventh body is between existence and nonexistence. In the sixth, the seeker has lost himself, but not existence. He is – not as an individual, but as the cosmic being. Existence is there. There are philosophies and systems that stop with the sixth. They stop with God or with moksha: liberation. The seventh means to lose even existence into non-existence. It is not losing oneself. It is just losing. The existential becomes non-existential. Then you come to the original source from which all existence comes and into which it goes. Existence comes out of it; non-existence goes back into it.

Existence itself is just a phase. It must go back. Just as day comes and night follows, just as night goes and day follows, so existence comes and non-existence follows; non-existence comes and existence follows. If one is to know totally, then he must not escape from non-existence. If he is to know the total circle, he must become non-existential.
Even the cosmic is not total, because non-existence is beyond it. So even God is not total. God is just part of Brahma; God is not Brahman itself. Brahman means all light and darkness combined, life and death combined, existence and non-existence combined. God is not death; God is only life. God is not non-existence; God is only existence. God is not darkness; God is only light. He is only part of the total being, not the total.

To know the total is to become nothing. Only nothingness can know the wholeness. Wholeness is nothingness, and nothingness is the only wholeness – for the seventh body. So these are the tensions in the seven bodies, beginning with the physiological. If you understand your physiological tension, the relief of it and the well-being of it, then you can very easily proceed to all seven bodies. The realization of at-easeness in the first body becomes a stepping stone to the second. And if you realize something in the second – if you feel a non-tense etheric moment – then the step toward the third is taken.

In each body, if you start with well-being, the door to the next body opens automatically. But if you are defeated in the first body it becomes very difficult, even impossible, to open up further doors. So begin with the first body and do not think of the other six bodies at all. Live in the physical body completely, and you will suddenly know that a new door has opened. Then continue on further. But never think of the other bodies or it will be disturbing and will create tensions. So whatever I have said – forget it!

Osho on Seven Bodies Continued... Physical-Etheric Body, Astral-Mental Body

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