The first stage, to which contentment and bliss impart sweetness, springs from the innermost recesses of the seeker's heart.

As I said to you, the first is the feeling, the first is the heart. The first stage belongs to the heart and only the heart can know contentment and bliss. If you are in contact with your heart you will know contentment and bliss, just like sweet springs flowing towards you, filling you, over flooding you. But we don't have the contact with the heart. The heart is beating, but we don't have the contact.

You will have to understand it, because just by having a heart, don't go on thinking that you are in contact with it. You are not in contact with many things in your body, you are just carrying your body. Contact means a deep sensitivity. You may not even feel your body. It happens that only when you are ill do you feel your body. There is a headache, then you feel the head; without the headache there is no contact with the head. There is pain in the leg, you become aware of the leg. You become aware only when something goes wrong.

If everything is okay you remain completely unaware, and really, that is the moment when contact can be made - when everything is okay - because when something goes wrong then that contact is made with illness, with something that has gone wrong and the well-being is no more there. You have the head right now, then the headache comes and you make the contact. The contact is made not with the head but with the headache. With the head contact is possible only when there is no headache and the head is filled with a well-being. But we have almost lost the capacity. We don't have any contact when we are okay. So our contact is just an emergency measure. There is a headache: some repair is needed, some medicine is needed, something has to be done, so you make the contact and do something.

Try to make contact with your body when everything is good. Just lie down on the grass, close the eyes, and feel the sensation that is going on within, the well-being that is bubbling. Lie down in a river. The water is touching the body and every cell is being cooled. Feel inside how that coolness enters cell by cell, goes deep into the body. The body is a great phenomenon, one of the miracles of nature.

Sit in the sun. Let the sunrays penetrate the body. Feel the warmth as it moves within, as it goes deeper, as it touches your blood cells and reaches to the very bones. And sun is life, the very source. So with closed eyes just feel what is happening. Remain alert, watch and enjoy. By and by you will become aware of a very subtle harmony, a very beautiful music continuously going on inside. Then you have the contact with the body; otherwise you carry a dead body.

It is just like this: a person who loves his car has a different type of contact and relationship with the car than a person who doesn't. A person who doesn't love his car goes on driving it and he treats it as a mechanism, but a person who loves his car will become aware of even the smallest change in the mood of the car, the finest change of sound. Something is changing in the car and suddenly he will become aware of it. No one else has heard it; the passengers are sitting there, they have not heard it. But a slight change in the sound of the engine, any clicking, any change, and the person who loves his car will become aware of it. He has a deep contact. He is not only driving, the car is not just a mechanism; rather he has spread himself into the car and he has allowed the car to enter him.

Your body can be used as a mechanism, then you need not be very sensitive about it. And the body goes on saying many things you never hear because you don't have any contact....

In Russia a new research has been going on for thirty years. Now they have concluded many things. One result which is very revealing is this: that whenever a disease happens, for six months continuously before it happens the body goes on giving signals to you. Six months is such a long time! A disease is going to happen in 1975; in the middle of 1974 the body will start giving you signals - but you don't hear, you don't understand, you don't know. When the disease has happened already, only then will you become aware. Or even then you may not be aware - your doctor first becomes aware that you have some deep trouble inside.

The person who has been doing this research for thirty years has now made films and cameras which can detect a disease before it actually happens. He says that the disease can be treated, and the patient will never become aware of whether it existed or not. If a cancer is going to happen next year it can be treated right now. There are no physical indications, but just in the body electricity things are changing - not in the body, in the body electricity, in the bioenergy, things are changing. First they will change in the bioenergy and then they will descend to the physical.

If they can be treated in the bioenergy layer then they will never come to the physical body. Because of this research it will become possible in the coming century that no one need be ill, there will be no more need to go to the hospital. Before the disease actually comes to the body it can be treated, but it has to be detected by a mechanical device. You cannot detect it, and you are there living in the body. There is no contact.

You may have heard many stories that Hindu sannyasins, rishis, Zen monks, Buddhist bhikkus, declare their death before it happens. And you may be surprised to know that that declaration is always made six months before it happens - never more, always six months before. Many saints have declared that they are going to die, but just six months before. It is not accidental, those six months are meaningful. Before the physical body dies the bioenergy starts dying, and a person who is in deep contact with his bioenergy knows that now the energy has started shrinking. Life means spreading, death means shrinking. He feels that the life energy is shrinking; he declares that he will be dead within six months. Zen monks are known to have even chosen how to die - because they know.

It happened once: one Zen monk was to die, so he asked his disciples, "Suggest to me how to die, in what posture." That man was a little eccentric, a little crazy, a mad old man but very beautiful.
His disciples started laughing; they thought that he may have been joking because he was always joking. So somebody suggested, "How about dying standing in the corner of the temple?"
The man said, "But I have heard a story that in the past one monk has died standing, so that won't be good. Suggest something unique."
So somebody said, "Die while just walking in the garden."
He said, "I have heard that somebody in China once died walking."
Then someone suggested a really unique idea: "Stand in shirshasana, headstand, and die." Nobody has ever died standing on his head, it is very difficult to die standing on the head. Even to sleep standing on the head is impossible, death is too difficult. Even to sleep is impossible and death is a great sleep. It is impossible - even ordinary sleep is impossible.
The man accepted the idea. He enjoyed it. He said, "This is good."
They thought that he was just joking, but he stood in shirshasana. They became afraid: What is he doing? And what to do now? And they thought he was almost dead. It was weird - a dead person standing in shirshasana. They became scared, so somebody suggested, "He has a sister in the nearby monastery who is a great nun. Go and fetch her. She is the elder sister of this man and may do something with him. She knows him well."
The sister came. It is said that she came and said, "Ikkyu" - Ikkyu was the name of the monk - "don't be foolish! This is no way to die."
Ikkyu laughed, jumped from his shirshasana, and said, "Okay, so what is the right way?"
She said, "Sit in padmasana, Buddha posture, and die. This is no way to die. You have always been a foolish man - everybody will laugh."
So it is said he sat in padmasana and died, and the sister left. A beautiful man. But how could he decide that he was going to die? And even to choose the posture! The bioenergy started shrinking, he could feel it - but this feeling comes only when you have a deep contact not only with the surface of the body but with the roots.

So first try to be more and more sensitive about your body. Listen to it; it goes on saying many things, and you are so head-oriented you never listen to it. Whenever there is a conflict between your mind and body, your body is almost always going to be right more than your mind, because the body is natural, your mind is societal; the body belongs to this vast nature, and your mind belongs to your society, your particular society, age, time. Body has deep roots in existence, mind is just wavering on the surface. But you always listen to the mind, you never listen to the body. Because of this long habit contact is lost.

You have the heart, and heart is the root, but you don't have any contact. First start having contact with the body. Soon you will become aware that the whole body vibrates around the center of the heart just as the whole solar system moves around the sun. Hindus have called the heart the sun of the body. The whole body is a solar system and moves around the heart. You became alive when the heart started beating, you will die when the heart stops beating. The heart remains the solar center of your body. Become alert to it. But you can become alert, by and by, only if you become alert to the whole body.

While hungry, why not meditate a little? - there is no hurry. While hungry just close your eyes and meditate on the hunger, on how the body is feeling. You may have lost contact, because our hunger is less bodily, more mental. You eat every day at one o'clock. You look at the watch; it is one - so then you feel hunger. And the clock may not be right. If somebody says, "That clock has stopped at midnight. It is not functioning. It is only eleven o'clock," the hunger disappears. This hunger is false, this hunger is just habitual, because the mind creates it, not the body. Mind says, "One o'clock - you are hungry." You have to be hungry. You have always been hungry at one o'clock, so you are hungry.
Our hunger is almost ninety-nine percent habitual. Go on a fast for a few days to feel real hunger, and you will be surprised. For the first three or four days you will feel very hungry. On the fourth or fifth day you will not feel so hungry. This is illogical, because as the fast grows you should feel more and more hungry. But after the third day you will feel less hungry, and after the seventh day you may completely forget hunger. After the eleventh day almost everybody forgets hunger completely and the body feels absolutely okay. Why? And if you continue the fast.... Those who have done much work on fasting say that only after the twenty-first day will real hunger happen again.

So it means that for three days your mind was insisting that you were hungry because you had not taken food, but it was not hunger. Within three days the mind gets fed up with telling you; you are not listening, you are so indifferent. On the fourth day the mind doesn't say anything, the body doesn't feel hunger. For three weeks you will not feel hunger, because you have accumulated so much fat - that fat will do. You will feel hunger only after the third week. And this is for normal bodies. If you have too much fat accumulated you may not feel hungry even after the third week. And there is a possibility to accumulate enough fat to live on for three months, ninety days. When the body is finished with the accumulated fat, then for the first time real hunger will be felt. But it will be difficult. You can try with thirst, that will be easy. For one day don't take water, and wait. Don't drink out of habit, just wait and see what thirst means, what thirst would mean if you were in a desert.

Lawrence of Arabia has written in his memoirs: "For the first time in my life, when I was once lost in the desert, I became aware of what thirst is - because before that there was no need. Whenever my mind said, 'Now you are thirsty,' I took water. In the desert, lost, no water with me and no way to find an oasis, for the first time I became thirsty. And that thirst was something wonderful - the whole of the body, every cell, asking for water. It became a phenomenon." If you take water in that type of thirst, it will give you a contentment that you cannot know just by drinking through habit.

So I say to you that Mahavira, and people like Mahavira, have known the real taste of food. You cannot know it... because for three months Mahavira would fast, then he would go begging. And he would go begging only when the body would say so, not the mind. When the body would say, "Now I am exhausted completely," and the hunger gripped the whole body and every cell of it asked, then he would go begging. He would not listen to the mind. He must have tasted food as no one has ever tasted on this earth. But Jainas think completely differently; they think that he was tasteless, they think that he had no taste. My feeling is, only he knew what taste is, and he knew it with his whole body, his whole being.

You know only by your tongue, and that tongue is very deceptive. That tongue has been serving the mind so long it is no more serving the body. The tongue can deceive you, it has become a slave of the mind. It can go on saying, "Go on eating. It is very beautiful." It is not serving the body any more, otherwise the tongue would say, "Stop!" The tongue would say, "Whatsoever you are eating is useless. Don't eat!" Even the tongues of cows and buffaloes are more body-rooted than your tongue. You cannot force a buffalo to eat any type of grass - she chooses. You cannot force your dog to eat when he is ill - he will immediately go out, eat some grass and vomit. He is more in contact with his body.

First one has to become deeply aware of this phenomenon of the body. A revival of the body, a resurrection, is needed - you are carrying a dead body. Then only will you feel, by and by, that the whole body with all its desires, thirsts and hungers, is revolving around the heart. Then the beating heart is not only a mechanism, it is the beating life, it is the very pulsation of life. That pulsation gives contentment and bliss.

From: Osho, Vedanta Seven Steps to Samadhi