Body memory and mind memory

So firstly, the walls of the mind, the mental processes, are not meditation, they are obstacles. What are walls of the mind? How has the mind defined itself? How has it become a limited thing? Where are the boundaries, the walls, due to which the mind has become separated from the Mind?

There are three things: the first is memory. The greater part of the mind is memory. And this memory is a long one, it goes back to all the infinite lives that you have lived. The mind accumulates everything, not only that which you have collected consciously. When you are asleep the mind is collecting. When you are even in a coma, completely unconscious, the mind is collecting. The mind goes on collecting. Nothing escapes it. The unconscious mind is a great Chinese wall of memories – a very long one.

So the body has
its own memories,
and your mind
has its own.

This memory is not only a part of your brain, but in fact a part of each and every cell of your being, of each and every cell of your body. That is why twenty-four cells from the male and twenty-four cells from the female begin to create you. They have a built-in program, they have a built-in memory. One day we will be capable of knowing what type of a nose you will have even when you are in the womb the first day. The new egg will indicate what type of eyes you will have, how great will be your age, how much intelligence, how much ego.

That so simple looking cell is as complex as you are. It is all the memories of the whole race. It carries on the collective mind. And then your soul, your ego, your mind, penetrates in it. So the body has its own memories, and your mind has its own. You are a crossroads – a mind with so many memories, and a body with so many memories of the whole collective race, the whole collective mind. Bodily memories are stronger than the mind. So you always are a victim to them. Howsoever you may think against them, when the moment comes the body wins. Your mind is nothing before it, because it is a racial mind. That is why all the religions fell in a trap when they began to fight the body. You cannot fight it. If you begin to fight it, you will only be wasting your life.

You cannot fight with the body because, in fact, it is the race – not only the race, it is the whole history of the being itself. Things go on living in you. Everything that has existed goes on living in your body. Your own self carries everything within it. That is why a child in the womb has to pass through all those stages through which the human being passes in evolution.

Those nine months in the womb are total evolution compressed. One begins just as an amoeba, the first primitive cell. One begins just in the same situation as the amoeba had to begin in sea water. The womb contains the same chemical conditions as the sea water. The womb water in which the cell swims has the same components as the sea water, exactly the same.

So in a way your body
is the whole evolution.

In the womb the evolution begins again. Of course, it is a miniature evolution. But the whole thing has to begin again, because the cell has a memory, it cannot work otherwise. It will go again through the same process. The time will be short. The amoeba had to pass millions of years, then it was able to come on the earth from the sea. This cell, this egg cell within the womb, will pass within a week. But in those seven days there will be the same evolution, compressed from millions of years, and the same stages. These nine months are compressed evolution, and the cell has a built-in program.

So in a way your body is the whole evolution. In a very compressed atomic state the body has a memory of its own. One who desires or longs to be in meditation will first have to understand his body memory, the physiological memory. Do not fight with it. If you begin fighting you are taking the wrong step. You will be more and more disturbed. Be cooperative, there is no other way. Let the body be completely at ease. Do not create any tension between you and the body. Your real fight is not with the body, not with the body memory but with ego memory – your psyche, your mind. And that is another thing, completely different. So do not fight with the body.

When we fight with the body, we never have time to fight with the mind. And if we begin to fight with the body, it will go on and on. It will be suicidal, it will be destructive, it will just sow seeds of its own defeat. One is bound to be defeated – a single cell fighting the whole humanity, fighting the whole being as such; that is impossible.

So do not take bodily memories as your memories. For example, hunger is a body memory. You can fight with it, but to win will be very difficult, very arduous, nearly impossible. If you win, your victory will be your total defeat, because if you can win over your hunger you have taken a suicidal step. Within ninety days you will be dead. Even the body will not indicate to you that now is the time to feed it. So it is good that you never win over it, otherwise it will be suicidal. Then between you and your body memories there will be no bridge. That is the only way to win – but you are not winning really, you are going to murder yourself.

So there are methods which can break the bridge between you and your body. There are methods, so many hatha yoga methods to break the bridge. The body goes on crying hunger, hunger, hunger… but you never know, the bridge is broken. The body goes on, but you never know about it, you become insensitive to it. Never practice anything which makes your body or you insensitive, because meditation is total sensitivity.

When you become meditative, your body will become so sensitive – you cannot conceive now how sensitive the body organs can be. We never hear exactly, we never see exactly – just so-so. You pass through a garden, you seem to be looking but you just look, you do not see. The eyes have become insensitive, you have been fighting with the eyes. The body has become insensitive, you have been fighting the body.

The whole culture is against the body – this whole culture, wherever it is, East or West, it makes no difference. The culture that has developed on this planet is, in a way, diseased. It is against the body, and the body is a great mystery. If you go against the body, then in a way you have gone against the universe; it is a miniature universe. Your relationship to the universe, your bridge to the universe, your instruments to the universe, are all through the body. Your body is just a midway station.

So do not fight with the body. Always make a clear distinction of what is the body memory and what is the mind memory. Hunger is the body memory, and you can know it. But the mind has its own memories also. They are not existential; they have no survival value, in fact. Body memories have a survival value, and that is the basic distinction. If you deny the body memories, if you fight against them, you will not survive. But psychological memories have no survival value really. They are simply waste accumulation – something which is to be thrown if you have accumulated it, something which needs to be thrown. You have only burdened yourself with it. And these mind memories are long.

Osho, I Am the Gate, Ch 12, Q 1 (excerpt)