If the whole process that goes on inside the body has to be performed by machines, you will need for a single body a factory so big that you cannot imagine it. It will take one square mile of factory to do all the functions that your body is doing so silently, in such a small space.

The body goes on renewing itself. After every seven years you are a new person, without knowing it. Not a single old cell in your body is there; they have been replaced by new cells. Before they become too old, and can become destructive, they are removed. Your blood is continuously taking out your dead cells and bringing new cells, taking out carbon dioxide, which can become a cause of death if it accumulates in you, and goes on replacing it with oxygen, which is your life. And this all goes on so silently, no noise is made. Still almost all the religions condemn the body, saying that the body is the source of sin.

The body is the source of your whole life. Now what you make of it, that depends on you. You can be a sinner, you can be a saint. The body neither seduces you to be a sinner, nor encourages you to be a saint. Whoever you are, a sinner or a saint, the body continues its own work. Its own work is so vast, it has no time for any other thing. Zarathustra has tremendous respect for the body, because it is the beginning of your being. From the body you can move to the being.

But if the body is condemned, renounced, tortured, which has been done for centuries, then you cannot go to your being. You become unnecessarily involved, entangled, in a fight with the body. Your whole energy is destroyed in this antagonism. The body should be accepted lovingly, thankfully, gratefully, and it can become a stepping stone to your being. In fact that is the intention of nature.

Zarathustra says,

You say “I” and you are proud of this word. But greater than this – although you will not believe in it – is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say “I” but performs “I.”

You say ‘I’…. Have you ever observed that your I goes on changing twenty-four hours a day? In the evening your I decides that, “I am going to get up early in the morning, five o’clock, to meditate.” It is your decision, the decision of your I. But when the alarm clock goes, someone inside you which is now pretending to be your I says, “It is such a beautiful morning, just a little more sleep, it is so cozy….” You turn over, pull your blanket over, and wake up as usual at nine o’clock. And you never have thought about it: that the same I that has determined to wake up at five, cannot cancel it.

Your I is not a single thing; it is a crowd of many Is – almost like a wheel and its spokes. Every spoke has its time when it comes on the top, and then it speaks as if it is your authentic I” You promise and you never fulfill it. You cannot be one I – integrated. You are many Is as far as your mind is concerned.