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Osho, In Search of the Miraculous, 662 pages, HC. - euro 22.50 - order here
This book is an unusual yet fascinating read for anyone who is interested in the practical application of the esoteric aspects of mysticism, and the science of human energy as it is understood in the East.
During this series Osho is in the process of developing his Dynamic meditation, and responding to questions about many facets of his work, including kundalini energy and shaktipat, the transfer of energy from an awakened one to a seeker of truth.
All techniques in this book can help us experience miraculous moments when our energy expands and takes us into something far beyond the known.Guiding the reader through the seven bodies and their corresponding chakras, Osho talks on psychic phenomena, dreams, telepathy, hypnosis, color therapy, Dynamic Meditation, Kundalini, mediums, gurus, and the Tantric dimension of sex. "I am talking about very scientific things," he says, "not something belonging to religious superstitions."
The path of kundalini: authenticity and freedom
In yesterday's talk, you said that false experiences of kundalini can be projected which you consider to be not spiritual but psychic. In your initial talk, however, you had said that kundalini is only psychic. This means, according to you, that there are two states of the kundalini - psychic and spiritual. Kindly explain this.
In order for you to understand this the structure of the various subtle bodies must be fully elaborated upon.
The individual can be divided into seven bodies. The first body is the physical body which we all know. The second is the etheric body, and the third - which is beyond this second - is the astral body. The fourth - which is beyond this - is the mental or psychic body; and the fifth - which is beyond this again - is the spiritual body. The sixth is beyond the fifth, and it is called the cosmic body. Then the seventh and the last is the nirvana sharir, or the nirvanic body, the bodiless body. A little more information about these seven bodies will make it possible for you to understand the kundalini fully.
In the first seven years of life, the sthul sharir - the physical body alone is formed. The other bodies are in seed form. They have a potential for growth but they lie dormant in the beginning of life. So the first seven years are years of limitation. There is no growth of intellect, emotion or desire during these years. Only the physical body develops within this period. Some people never grow beyond seven years; they stagnate at this stage and are no more than animals. Animals develop only in the physical body; the other bodies remain untouched within them. In the next seven years - that is from seven years to fourteen years - the bhawa sharir, the etheric body, develops. These seven years are years of emotional growth of the individual. This is why sexual maturity, which is the most intense form of emotion, is reached at the age of fourteen. Now some people stagnate at this stage. Their physical bodies grow but they are stuck with the first two bodies.
In the third seven-year period, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, the sukshma sharir, the astral body, develops. In the second body, emotion is developed; in the third body reasoning, thinking and intellect are developed. This is why no court of law holds a child responsible for his actions up to the age of seven, because the child has only the physical body. We treat the child the same way as we would treat an animal; we cannot hold him responsible. Even if a child commits a crime it is assumed that he has committed it under the guidance of someone - that the real criminal is someone else.
After the development of the second body a person reaches adulthood. But this is the adulthood of sex. Nature's work is complete with this development, and this is why nature gives its full cooperation up to this stage. But at this stage man is not man in the full sense of the word. The third body, where reason, intellect and the thinking power develop, is an outcome of education, civilization and culture. This is why the right to vote is granted to a person when he is twenty-one years of age. Though this is prevalent all over the world, some countries are debating whether to allow an eighteen-year-old the right to vote. This is natural, because as man is becoming more and more evolved, the usual span of seven years for the growth of each body is becoming less and less.
All over the world girls reach puberty at the age of thirteen to fourteen years. Since the last thirty years the age for this is becoming less and less. Even a girl of eleven reaches puberty. The lowering of the voting age to eighteen is an indication that man now completes the work of twenty-one years in eighteen years. Normally, however, twenty-one years are required for the growth of the third body, and the majority of people do not develop further than this. Their growth stops short with the development of the third body, and there is no further development for the rest of their lives.
What I call the psyche is the fourth body - the manas sharir. This body has its own wonderful experiences. Now a person whose intellect is not developed may not be able to take interest in or enjoy mathematics, for instance. Mathematics has its own charm, and only Einstein can be absorbed in it as a musician is in music or a painter is in colors. For Einstein mathematics was not work but play, but the intellect must reach this peak of development in order to turn mathematics into play.
With each body that develops, infinite possibilities open before us. One whose etheric body does not develop, who stagnates after the first seven years of development, does not have any interest in life beyond eating and drinking. So the cultures of those civilizations where the majority of people have developed only up to the first body revolve entirely around their taste buds. The civilization where the majority of people have got stuck at the second body will be sex centered. Their personalities, their literature, their music, their films and books, their poetry and paintings, even their houses and vehicles, will all be sex centered: all these things will be completely filled with sex, with sexuality.
In the civilization in which the third body develops fully, people will be intellectual and contemplative. Whenever the development of the third body becomes very important in a society or in a nation, many intellectual revolutions take place
....
Dreams are not false; they have their own reality. But dreams can be real as well as unreal. Real dreams are those which have been actually dreamed. The trouble also is that you cannot narrate your dream precisely upon waking. For this reason, in the old days any man who could narrate his dream clearly and precisely was held in high esteem. It is very, very difficult to report a dream correctly. The sequence of the dream is one thing when you dream it and just the opposite when you remember it. It is like a film. When we see a film the story unwinds from the beginning of the film. Similarly, the reel of the dream drama winds in one direction in sleep and begins to unwind in the opposite direction in the waking state, so we remember the last part of the dream first and go backwards in recollection. What we dreamed first becomes last in recollection. This would be just like someone who tries to read a book from the wrong end; the reversed words would cause just such a chaos. So to remember a dream and give a true representation of it is a great art. Generally, when we recall a dream we recollect happenings we never dreamed of. We drop a good portion of the actual dream and later most of the rest.Dreams are a happening of the fourth body, and the fourth body has a great potential. Whatever siddhis are mentioned in yoga are attained in this body. Yoga has incessantly warned the meditator not to go into them. The greatest danger is there of going astray. Even if you go into a psychic state it has no spiritual value.
So when I said that the kundalini is psychic, what I meant was that it is actually a happening of the fourth body. This is why physiologists cannot discover the kundalini within the human body. So it is only natural that they deny the existence of kundalini and the chakras and call them imaginary. They are the happenings of the fourth body. The fourth body exists, but it is very subtle; it cannot come within our grasp. Only the physical body can be grasped. Yet there are corresponding points between the first body and the fourth body.
....
So, for instance, when the kundalini awakens you cannot take intoxicants; it is impossible. The mental body gets influenced by alcohol very quickly as it is very delicate. This is why - and you will be surprised to know this - when a woman consumes alcohol she becomes more dangerous than a man who does so. This is because her mental body is even more delicate, and it gets affected so quickly that things get out of her control. This is why women have protected themselves from this hazard by certain rules in society. This is one place where women did not seek equality with men, although unfortunately of late she is trying to. The day she asserts her equality in this area and tries to outdo men in it she will cause such harm to herself as has never been caused by any action by men.In the fourth body the awakening of the kundalini cannot be proved by your telling about the experience, because, as I said before, you can falsely imagine the awakening and experiencing of the kundalini also. It can only be judged by your physical traits: whether any radical transformation has taken place in your personality. No sooner does the energy awaken than there will be immediate signs of change in you. This is why I always say that behavior is the outer criterion and not the inner cause. It is a criterion of what has happened within. With each attempt some things inevitably begin to happen. When the energy awakens it becomes impossible for the meditator to take any intoxicants. If he does indulge in drugs and alcohol, then know that his experiences are all imaginary, because it is absolutely impossible.
After the awakening of the kundalini the tendency for violence disappears completely. Not only does the meditator not commit violence, but he has no feeling of violence within himself. The urge to commit violence, the urge to harm others, can only exist when the vital energy is dormant. The moment it awakens the other ceases to be the other and so you cannot wish to harm him. Then you will not have to repress violence within yourself because then you cannot be violent.
If you find that you have to repress the feeling of violence, then know that the kundalini has not awakened. If after the eyes open you still feel your way about with a stick, then know that the eyes cannot see yet, no matter how much you claim otherwise - because you have not yet given up your stick. Whether an outsider can find out whether you can see or not is dependent of your actions. Your stick, your stumblings and your unstable walk prove that the eyes have not yet opened.
...
The atma sharir - the fifth body, which is called the spiritual body - is of great value. If growth in life continues in the proper manner, then by the age of thirty-five this body should be fully developed. But this is a faraway idea because even the fourth body is only developed in a very few people. This is why the soul and such things are only a topic of discussion for us; there is no content behind the word. When we say atman, it is merely a word; there is nothing behind it. When we say wall, there is not only the word but also the substance behind the word; we know what "wall" means. But there is no meaning behind the word atman, because we have no knowledge, no experience of the atman. This is our fifth body, and only if the kundalini awakens in the fourth body, is entrance possible in the fifth; otherwise we cannot enter. We are not aware of the fourth body, so the fifth also remains unknown.
...
The sixth body is the brahma sharir - the cosmic body. When a person evolves beyond his atman, when he is willing to lose it, he enters the sixth body. If mankind develops scientifically, the natural development of the sixth body would take place at the age of forty-two, and that of the nirvana sharir - the seventh body - at the age of forty-nine. The seventh body is the nirvanic body which is no-body - which is a state of bodilessness, an incorporeal state. This is the ultimate state where only the void remains - not even the brahman, the cosmic reality, but only the emptiness. Nothing has remained; everything has disappeared.So when anyone asked Buddha: "What happens there?" he replied: "The flame dies out." "Then what happens?" he would be asked again. "When the flame is lost, you do not ask, 'Where has it gone? Where is the flame now?' It is lost, and that is all." The word nirvana implies the extinction of the flame. Therefore, Buddha said, nirvana takes place.
The state of moksha is experienced in the fifth body. The limitations of the first four bodies are transcended and the soul becomes totally free. So liberation is the experience of the fifth body.
Heaven and hell pertain to the fourth body, and he who stops here will experience them. For those who stop at the first, second or third body, life between birth and death becomes everything; there is no life beyond death for them. If a person goes beyond into the fourth body, after this life he experiences heaven and hell where there are infinite possibilities of happiness and misery.
If he reaches up to the fifth body there is the door of liberation, and if he reaches up to the sixth there is the possibility of the state of God-realization. Then there is no question of liberation or no liberation; he becomes one with that which is. The declaration of "AHAM BRAHMASMI" - I am God - is of this plane. But there is yet one step more, which is the last jump - where there is no aham and no Brahman, where I and Thou are totally nonexistent, where there is simply nothing - where there is total and absolute void. That is nirvana.
These are the seven bodies which are developed within a period of forty-nine years. This is why the midpoint of fifty years was known as the point of revolution. For the first twenty-five years there was one system of life. Within this period efforts were made to develop the first four bodies; then one's education was supposed to be complete. Then one was supposed to search for his fifth, sixth and seventh bodies throughout the remainder of his life, and in the remaining twenty-five years he was expected to attain to the seventh body. Therefore, the age of fifty was looked upon as a crucial year. At this time a man became a wanaprasth, which only means that now he should turn his gaze towards the forest - that now he should turn his eyes away from people, society and the marketplace.
The age of seventy-five was yet another point of revolution - when a man was to become initiated into sannyas. To turn toward the forest means to remove oneself from crowds and people; sannyas means, now the time has come to look beyond the ego, to transcend the ego. In the forest the 'I' will necessarily be with him though he has renounced all else, but at the age of seventy-five this 'I' too has to be renounced.
A man takes fifty years to develop the body he should have developed in twenty-one years. It is obvious that he does not have as much strength at fifty as he had at twenty-one, so he has to put in a lot of effort. Then what would have been easier to accomplish at the age of twenty-one becomes long and arduous.
...
The correct form of education is that which develops the first four bodies. Right education is that which takes you up to the fourth body. There the work of education is complete. No education can help you enter the fifth; you have to go there by yourself. Right education can easily take you up to the fourth body. After this the growth of the fifth body, which is very valuable and personal, begins. Kundalini is the potential of the fourth body; this is why kundalini is a psychic phenomenon. I hope this is now clear to you.Excerpt from In Search of the Miraculous, chapter 16: The mysteries of the seven bodies