Let yourself become weightless

What the Method Is

This meditation method is encapsulated in the core instruction: “When on a bed or a seat, let yourself become weightless, beyond mind”. It invites the practitioner to shed the perceived heaviness of the body and mind, aiming to experience a state of lightness and transcendence.

How It Is Done

To practice this method, consider the following practical guidance and steps:

  • Choose a posture: Begin by sitting on a bed or a seat. While any comfortable seated position is acceptable, Osho suggests that the Buddha posture (siddhasana) is ideal for facilitating weightlessness. You can also sit on the ground, preferably on natural earth, and even be naked to enhance closeness to nature.
  • Body positioning:
    • Keep your spine straight. This reduces the body’s surface area affected by gravity, thus diminishing the feeling of weight.
    • In the Buddha posture, lock your legs and hands to create an inner electricity circuit.
    • For those who prefer standing, like Mahavira, standing meditation minimizes the area affected by gravity (only the feet touch the ground).
  • Balance and centering: With closed eyes, balance your body completely. Lean gently to the right, left, forward, and backward to feel the pull of gravity, then find the precise center where the least pull of gravity is felt, and remain there. This process helps in centering yourself.
  • Cultivate the feeling of weightlessness:
    • Conceive of yourself as weightless. This is not merely an intellectual concept but a deep feeling that your body has become devoid of weight.
    • Go on feeling, feeling, feeling this weightlessness until a moment comes when you suddenly realize it.
  • Practice in daily activities: This technique can be attempted in various situations: while walking, sitting, or sleeping.
  • Persistence: It is crucial to stick to the technique for a few days to feel whether it is working.
Commentaries and Insights
  • Purpose and Outcome: The core aim of this technique is to throw you upon yourself, making you centered. By realizing you are weightless, you effectively disconnect from the body and mind, leading to a state of being “beyond mind”. The ultimate realization is that “You are already” weightless, and the method simply creates the situation for you to realize this inherent state.
  • De-hypnotizing the Self: The belief that “I am a body and that is why I feel weight” is described as a hypnosis that needs to be broken. This meditation serves as a method to de-hypnotize yourself from this identification, leading to the realization that you are not the body.
  • Nature of Weight: Osho explains that weight belongs to the body, not to “you”. Furthermore, he states that the mind also has weight, while consciousness is inherently weightless. This technique helps to transcend both the physical body and the mental weight.
  • Experience of Transformation:
    • When you successfully practice, you will realize you are “no more a body”.
    • In deep meditation, the identification with the body is broken.
    • This leads to a feeling of infinite power and the realization that you are like an “emperor” identified with a “slave” (the body).
    • The experience can cause your bed, room, and even the “whole world [to] disappear”.
    • You become the “master of gravity” and may even feel capable of disappearing with your body, though these stories (like Mohammed’s disappearance) are often seen as mythological.
    • Ultimately, realizing you are not the body changes your life completely, as your entire life is currently centered around the body. The feeling of distance between your consciousness and the body becomes “crystal clear”.
  • Connection to Other Methods and Concepts:
    • This technique is one of the “techniques to relax the nerves” and achieve a continuous state of ease.
    • It shares common ground with “Close your senses, become stone-like” in its aim to disconnect from the physical body and external world to achieve centeredness. Both methods aim to make one realize “you are not the body”.
    • It relates to the concept of ecstasy, which means “to stand out”. Feeling yourself out of the body, even for a moment, leads to a state where there is no mind, as mind is the bridge connecting you to the body.
    • The state of no-mind is achieved when the body fully relaxes, causing the mind process to stop.
  • Nature of Spiritual Health: The feeling of weightlessness and bodily detachment contributes to spiritual health, which Osho compares to physical health: just as medicine removes disease for health to appear, meditative techniques remove barriers for enlightenment to happen.
  • Simplicity vs. Ego: Like many Tantric techniques, this method appears simple, but the mind often finds simple things unappealing because the ego seeks challenge and difficulty. Osho emphasizes that these simple methods are powerful because they touch fundamental realities, leading to transformation through indirect means.
  • Effort and Spontaneity: While the technique requires initial effort, the goal is for the feeling to arise spontaneously. True spiritual awakening is not a cultivated or practiced thing, but an eruption of one’s basic nature when one patiently waits and watches. The “suddenness” of insight is a recurring theme in Osho’s teachings, indicating a breakthrough rather than a gradual accumulation.
  • Caution: While “you cannot die just by closing the openings”, indicating a built-in safety, Osho generally advises caution with powerful techniques. If a technique causes extreme uneasiness or unbearable sensations, it might not be suitable for that individual, and other methods should be explored. Tantra emphasizes moving with what feels harmonious and natural.
  • Transformation over Adjustment: Meditation, unlike mere adjustment to society, is a transformation. It reveals the “anarchy,” “madness,” and “dark mess” within, which can be fearful but is a necessary first step.
  • Centering vs. Samadhi: Centering is the path or method, not the ultimate goal of cosmic consciousness (samadhi) itself. Once truly centered, the individual explodes into an oceanic, all-pervading experience where the “center is no more” or “is everywhere”.