Feel your body as empty

What the method is

The core instruction for this meditation, as presented in the texts, is to “Feel your body as empty”. This practice aims to transcend the identification with the physical form and realize one’s true nature as a boundless, unembodied consciousness.

How it is done

While a direct, step-by-step guide for “Feel your body as empty” is not explicitly detailed under this exact heading in the provided sources, the essence of this method is found in related techniques that lead to the experience of the body’s non-existence or subtle nature. The practice involves:

  • Cultivating Weightlessness: A primary approach is to sit or lie down and intensely feel yourself becoming weightless. This is not merely a conceptual exercise but an attempt to deeply feel the absence of weight, which is an attribute of the body. If you persist in this feeling, a moment comes when you realize you are weightless, thus going “beyond mind” and the body.
    • A stable posture, such as the Buddha posture (siddhasana), can be helpful, as it minimizes the area affected by gravity, allowing for a stronger sensation of weightlessness. You can balance yourself by leaning slightly to find the point where the least pull of gravity is felt, then remain there.
  • Imagining Losing Strength or Dying: Another method involves imagining yourself gradually being deprived of strength or knowledge, reaching a point of “deprivation” or a “death-like state”.
    • Lie down, relax, and intensely feel as if your body is dying, becoming heavy like lead. This deep feeling will lead to the mind stopping, as a dead body needs no mind.
    • Alternatively, imagine the whole existence is sucking your strength out until nothing is left inside.
    • At the “instant of deprivation” or when the body feels like a “dead weight,” become the observer and witness the body from a detached perspective, realizing “you are there standing as a witness, not in it”. This is crucial for transcendence.
  • Observing Inner Space: By breathing in and out silently, without thinking, one can feel “outer space” and “inner space”. The throat can be seen as a “swinging door” between these two spaces. If this “door is broken,” the two spaces merge into one, leading to a feeling of “nothingness within”.
  • Dissolving Sensory and Mental Experiences: Techniques such as “Look upon some object, then slowly withdraw your sight from it, then slowly withdraw your thought from it. Then” can lead to a state where the object disappears, then its image, leaving only pure subjectivity or consciousness – a “nothingness” or “pure being”. This involves moving step by step, allowing the first part (object-feeling) to be complete before attempting the next (absence-feeling, then pure being).
Commentaries and Insights
  • Purpose of the Method: Dissolving Identification: The fundamental aim of Tantra, and thus this method, is to help the practitioner transcend identification with the body and mind, which are considered illusory or merely external layers. By experiencing the body as empty or non-existent, the illusion of being solely the body is broken.
  • Reality as Non-Dual: Tantra asserts that reality is non-dual. The division between matter and non-matter, body and spirit, is merely a perspective. When viewed through the senses, reality appears as matter; when viewed from within, beyond the senses, it appears as non-matter. This meditation helps shift perception to this inner, non-material view.
  • The “Zero” or “Nothingness” of Being (Shunya): This method leads to the realization that one’s true nature is a “nothingness,” “emptiness,” or “zero” (shunya). This isn’t a void of non-existence, but a state of pure consciousness, unbounded and infinite. In this state, there is no “small ‘I’” or ego.
  • Experience of Liberation: When one realizes they are not the body, life changes completely. This experience leads to feelings of lightness, freedom, bliss, and the disappearance of misery. The “beyondness” leads to an eternal, deathless existence. It is an “ecstatic moment” and a “deep ease”.
  • Mind as a Barrier and Instrument: The mind creates divisions and problems, preventing direct experience of reality. These techniques are designed to “put the mind aside” or transcend it. While the mind initially helps in understanding and initiating the technique, the goal is to go beyond its conceptual framework. The body is also seen as a crucial instrument for spiritual transformation, as physiological processes are linked to psychological states.
  • Fear of Non-Existence: The mind may resist this experience, as the concept of “nothingness” or “no-self” can create fear and anxiety. Osho emphasizes confronting this fear and understanding that one cannot die by simply performing these methods. This fear arises because one is accustomed to identifying with boundaries and definitions.
  • Spontaneous Revelation: Truth is not something to be achieved but is “already here,” “already the case,” present “here and now”. The techniques are a “discovery,” an “uncovering,” rather than an attainment. The experience is not caused by the technique itself but happens when barriers are removed.
  • The Role of Imagination: While seemingly a mental act, imagination is crucial and potent, especially when focused at the third eye center. It can create real phenomena and affect physical states. However, one must avoid mere fantasy or “spiritual dreaming” and distinguish between true experience and imagination.
  • Cautions: Some techniques, particularly those involving intense energy or bodily sensations like hotness in the spine, can be powerful. If a technique feels too uneasy or unbearable, or creates fear, it should be stopped, as there are many other methods available. It’s also important to complete the energy movement if it’s initiated, such as bringing the rising energy to the head for release, to avoid creating imbalances or “wounds”.
  • Non-Judgment and Acceptance: Tantra encourages a total acceptance of all inner and outer facts, without judgment or division. This includes accepting moods, desires, and even the “animal heritage” without suppression. This acceptance allows for awareness and transformation, as “understanding is the secret of all mastery”.
  • Connection to Other Concepts: This method aligns with practices that lead to “no-mind”, where thoughts cease and direct awareness takes over. It is a path to Samadhi, the state of cosmic consciousness, where the individual center dissolves into the cosmos, and one feels “one with the whole” or becomes “omnipresent”. This involves becoming a “spiritual atom” that explodes, dissolving the ego.