The sages speak on the Forgotten Language

Linked to Navanita’s two contribution on cellular healing, we are showing here what Osho and other sages have to say about body-mind, cell function, consciousness and the forgotten language…

“Be silent, close your eyes,
feel as if your body is frozen.
Let the guest move towards the host.
Your innermost center is not far away,
just one single step.
Don’t be afraid, you are entering
into your own house.
You have forgotten the way,
you have forgotten the language,
you have been outside long enough.
The bird has been in the cage
for many, many years, but today
the bird opens its wings
and moves in freedom in the inner sky
that is your real home.
In this silence you are a buddha.
Remember it.
Let this remembrance follow you like a shadow
around the day.
Slowly, slowly it will become
your very breathing, your very heartbeat.
Buddha is not to be worshipped,
one has to become a buddha.
Except for that, there is no worship, no prayer.
You don’t need any priest,
you don’t need any scriptures,
you don’t need to be in any religious organization,
you have to be just yourself –
silently, peacefully settling within your home.”

Osho, Zen: The Diamond Thunderbolt, Ch 13

“Discoveries have been made about the nature of the cells in the brain. Where these cells get their energy from has not yet been discovered. It is emptiness itself which animates these cells and which then send signals throughout the body to the billions and trillions of cells in the body which activate thoughts, movement of the limbs, the senses, the mind, etc. This is creation. In the beginning there is emptiness. Emptiness animates the cells, and the cells then make the intellect and the mind work. Then, once there is mind, the body, the senses and the objects they see arise. All these perceptions are registered via the cells.

…Some higher force, some force which is subtler than the cells is conscious of what is happening to the cells. It is aware.”

Poonjaji, Satsang, 1993

“The urge is so new: for many centuries there has not been such an upheaval in human consciousness. This upheaval comes only after twenty-five centuries; it is a cycle. The highest peak of that cycle was when Buddha was alive. In India was Gautam Buddha, Mahavira and many other great teachers. In China was Lao Tzu, Lieh Tzu and Chuang Tzu and many other great teachers. In Iran was Zarathustra and in Greece was Socrates and Heraclitus, Pythagoras and many other great teachers. The world has never known a moment like that. It was a great upsurge of human consciousness. That moment is again coming close by; twenty-five centuries are complete.

This age is going to touch its climax, hence so much search, particularly in the young people because they are the first to herald a new age. They are always the first to understand and to receive the new.”

Osho, The Sun Behind the Sun Behind the Sun, Ch 15

“Relax. Let the body lie down.
Remember you are not the body,
nor the mind.
You are the witness, which is far away –
even skies are underneath it.
It is a watcher on the hills.
Your body is in the dark valleys down below.
The distance between your witness
and your body-mind structure is qualitative.
It cannot be bridged.
And people go on living in ignorance,
because they go on thinking
that they are the body, they are the mind.
And because of this identification
with body and mind,
they have forgotten the language of their inner being,
their inner nature, their universality,
their eternity – the buddha.
This beautiful evening.
This dance of the rain
around the Buddha Auditorium,
and ten thousand buddhas in utter silence,
relaxed, centered…
it becomes a miracle.
It is a magic moment.
I can see there are no individuals,
but only an ocean of consciousness.
This is the point
where one becomes ultimately drunk,
drunk without any drugs.
Let this drunkenness sink in every fiber of your being.
Soon you will be coming back.
Fill all your buckets
with the nectar of the living stream of life,
and bring it with you.”

Osho, Ma Tzu: The Empty Mirror, Ch 6, Q 1

Chan Master, Hongzhi said, “The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning… Vast and far reaching without boundary, secluded and pure, manifesting light, this spirit (essence) is without obstruction. Its brightness does not shine out but can be called empty and inherently radiant. Its brightness inherently purifying, transcends casual conditions beyond subject and object. Subtly but preserved, illuminated and vast, also it cannot be spoken of as being or non-being.”

Sills p.19 (Leighton and Wu 2000 p.4)

“Be worshipful, be respectful towards your body. God has chosen it to be his residence.

And the body is a miracle; it is tremendously beautiful, tremendously complex. There is no other thing so complex, so subtle as the body. You don’t know anything about it. You have only looked at it in the mirror. You have never looked at it from the within; otherwise it is a universe in itself. That’s what the mystics have always been saying: that the body is a miniature universe. If you see it from the inside, it is so vast – millions and millions of cells, and each cell alive with its own life, and each cell functioning in such an intelligent manner that it seems almost incredible, impossible, unbelievable.

You eat food, and the body transforms it into blood, bones, marrow. You eat food, and the body transforms it into consciousness, thought. A miracle is happening every moment. And each cell functions so systematically, in such an orderly way, in such an inner discipline, that it seems almost not possible – millions of cells. Seventy million cells are there in your single body – seventy million souls. Each cell has its own soul. And how they function! And how they function in such a coherence, in such a rhythm and harmony. And the same cells become the eyes and the same cells become the skin and the same cells become your liver and your heart and your marrow and your mind and your brain. The same cells specialize — then they become specialized cells – but they are the same cells. And how they move, and how subtly and silently they work.

There is a possibility that cancer is nothing but some cell going insane inside you, who has lost track, who is no longer functioning intelligently and has gone berserk. There is a possibility that cancer is nothing but a cell gone out of tune. Otherwise millions and millions of cells are working in such a sane way that even your human society is nothing compared to it. Your society is almost insane — as if everybody is a cancer cell.

In your body, God is manifested. You have to go withinwards. You have not yet acquainted yourself with this temple.

‘Be strong…’ – don’t be a weakling and don’t be a coward and don’t try to escape from the fact of your body. Rather, penetrate into it, go deep into it, go into the mystery of it.

‘Be strong, and enter into your own body.’ Don’t look for God in the sky; look for God within your own body. Kabir is very realistic, very scientific.

… and enter into your own body: ‘For there your foothold is firm.’

Because there you are rooted. The body is your earth; you are rooted in the body. Your consciousness is like a tree in the body. Your thoughts are like fruits. Your meditations are like flowers. But you are rooted in the body; the body supports it. The body supports everything that you are doing. You love; the body supports. You hate; the body supports. You want to kill somebody; the body supports. You want to protect somebody; the body supports. In compassion, in love, in anger, in hate — in every way — the body supports you. You are rooted in the body; you are nourished by the body. Even when you start realizing who you are, the body supports you.

Don’t kill the body. Don’t be a masochist, don’t torture it. It is your friend; it is not your enemy. Listen to its language, decode its language, and by and by, as you enter into the book of the body and you turn its pages, you will become aware of the whole mystery of life. Condensed, it is in your body. Magnified a millionfold, it is all over the world. But condensed in a small formula, it is there present in your body. Decode it there first. And there is no other way to decode it anywhere else.

Be strong, and enter into your own body: for there your foothold is firm.”

Osho, Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language, Ch 7

In the Heart Sutra, Avalokitesvara tells Shariputra the following:

“Listen Shariputra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form;
form does not differ from emptiness,
emptiness does not differ from form.
All dharmas are marked with emptiness;
they are neither produced nor destroyed,
neither increasing nor decreasing.”

Sills p.19 (Hanh 1988, p.1)

“My secret is not far from my limit. It is a light that the eye cannot perceive. It is like the soul that no man sees. Yet the soul is not hidden from the body nor the body from the soul.”

Rumi

“Your body is organic, and you need to listen to its rhythms until you feel that each cell…is talking to you. When you develop such sensitive awareness of your body you can tell it what to do…your whole body feels light and blissful…it is liberating. You reach a point where your body and mind cooperate so perfectly that you feel body is mind and mind is body.”

Lama Yeshe

“The whole message of Gautama the Buddha is to turn in. The message is simple, but the implementation is arduous. It is arduous because for many many lives we have lived outwardly, we have lived the life of an extrovert. We have completely forgotten how to relate with our own beings, how to be with ourselves. We have forgotten the path, the language, the method. Not only that, we have become completely oblivious that there is an interiority to us. We think as if we have only an outside. Now that is stupid. The outside can exist only with an inside; without the inside the outside is impossible. If we can see out, we can also see in. In fact, to see in is easier because it is there that we are rooted.

Osho, The Dhammapadda: The Way of the Buddha Vol. 11, Ch 1

“The body developed out of us, not we from it. We are bees and our body is a honeycomb. We made the body, cell by cell we made it.”

Rumi

Photos by Ma Prabhu Damini