The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. RIGHT SEARCH, WRONG DIRECTION
is repeated incessantly from every side, it also appears to be truth. You may be a healthy person,
but if the people around you decide to drum it into you constantly, ’You are ill, you are ill’, you will
soon feel ill. It will not take long. The hypnotic power of suggestion is difficult to overcome.
All the world declares that you are the body. Not only men, but even stones and rocks, earth and sky
seem to be in the conspiracy to proclaim that you are the body. When a thorn pricks, it pricks the
body, not the soul. If someone hurls a stone at you, the blood flows from the body, not from the soul.
Everything – all the world – proclaims: ’You are the body! You are the body!” When this constant
repetition comes from all sides it is difficult to break.
And you stand alone! You are one against the whole world; for only you are within, and the rest of
the world is outside. Besides, they are not wrong, for they can only see your body. Your neighbor
can only see the facade of your house, not the interior. He takes the facade to be your house, for
that is all he can see. The trouble begins when you too begin to think the facade is the house.
To be freed from society is to be freed from the influence of external eyes. He who is thus freed
begins to see clearly that he is within the body, but he is not the body.
Gradually start breaking the first layer. Intensify this remembrance that you are not the body.
Experience it! Mere repetition is of no use. When a thorn pricks, remember it has pricked the
foot; the pain is in the foot and you are only an observer. The thorn cannot prick you; the pain
cannot reach you, for you are only the light that knows. Because of this, anesthesia is used in
surgery. Once you are unconscious you are not aware of what is happening to the body. This could
not be so if you were the body. You are not the body; you are the consciousness. The surgeon
merely severs the connection between your body and your consciousness before he can start to
work on the body.
Those who have carried out intensive research in the field of life and death have experienced – and
I endorse their statements – that when a person dies he is not fully aware of the fact that he is dead
for three or four days! Normally it takes three days for the person to realize that he is dead. The
reason is that death takes place in unconsciousness, and the physical body drops; but a similar
body – the mental body – remains within you. It takes three days or longer for the person to realize
that he is dead. Until then he wanders around the house and his friends and his family.
The soul wanders around the physical body and its earthly connections for three days, and it is
perplexed at what is happening. No one seems to look at him or recognize him. He stands at the
door and his wife goes on weeping. He cannot fathom the mystery for he is just as he was before
– entirely! Nothing is lost with the loss of the body. It is just as if you removed your clothes. If you
removed your clothes and stand naked you do not changed in the least. You are the same, with
clothes or without. You will remain the same. There is a still subtler body that stays with you. It has
the same shape, the same feelings. It takes you a long time to realize that you are dead.
There is a method in Tibet called the Bardo. When a person is about to die this process is begun.
People sit around the dying man and give him suggestions: ’See, you are about to drop your body.
Be filled with the thought that the body is falling away. Be aware that very soon the body that you
find yourself in will not be the physical body; it will be your subtle body. Now you have left the body.
Now it is up to you to choose what kind of womb you want to enter’. Such are the suggestions that
are given.
The Great Path 164 Osho