The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 103 of 125
Osho's fourth body
Earlier we saw that Advaita Vedanta was putting down roots in the West and beginning to develop into a new nondualistic philosophy. This is the context in which I’d like—very briefly—to prospect a possible psychedelic/spiritual interface, particularly in terms of the two spiritual teachers perhaps most characteristic of the late twentieth century, Osho and Adi Da. Much of The Mystic Experience, Osho’s first and most closely argued book, revolves around demystifying Hindu Tantra. Obviously I can only touch on the subject here, but one of the main themes Osho pursues is the nature of kundalini energy and the meaning of the Tantric chakras. The chakra system, he suggests, is a blueprint of humanity’s possible evolution. The first three chakras (technically muladhar, swadhishtan, and manipur) symbolize the physical body, the emotions, and the intellect, respectively. Evolution-wise, these three chakras, or “bodies” as Osho prefers to call them, are already in existence and functioning, albeit erratically. And, like Gurdjieff before him, Osho argues that the first step in spiritual life lies in their integration: in getting body, heart, and mind to function harmoniously. In the measure that this begins to take place, anahat, the fourth chakra or evolutionary level, starts to become active. And it is with Osho’s descriptions of this “fourth body” that we are concerned here, for they bear very close resemblance to Grof’s descriptions of the transpersonal.