Only the meditator knows there is no death

Question 1:

Prem Nishi, there are a few important things to be understood. They will become the background and you will be able to understand your question.

My work is not to answer you, but to help you to solve your questions. This is a totally different kind of work.

Our whole education system is based on giving ready-made answers. Because of those ready- made answers you never develop your intelligence; there is no need. You ask the question and a computer teacher answers them.

I cannot do that tremendous harm to your intelligence, so my answers have to be looked at in a totally different way. I will give you the background, all the implications, and the question will be solved by you, not answered by me.

Unless a question is solved by yourself, your intelligence never becomes sharp, your consciousness never becomes alert. You go on accumulating ready-made answers in your mind, in your memory, which is simply a load, of no use. In any situation which is fresh and new you will be at a loss what to do, because you don't have the ready-made answer.

I am working from a totally different angle. I want you to be capable, conscious, alert, intelligent, so whenever a new situation arises - and every day you are going to face a new situation - you are capable to respond with certainty on your own. It is a joy when you find an answer to any question yourself.

This should be the fundamental of all educational systems. It is not. They have chosen the cheapest way, the shortcut: you ask the question and they will give you the answer.

I don't give you an answer while I am answering you; I am trying to put your whole situation before you. If you can become aware of the whole situation the answer will arise on its own, in your own intelligence. It will become a flame within you. And because it is yours, you will have a certainty, indubitability, a tremendous trust in it.

Any answer given from outside - you can believe it, but you cannot trust it. You can manage, you can force yourself to believe it because the person who has given it seems to be the right person.

But all these are guesses - and a belief is not a trust. Belief is always in somebody else; trust is something that arises in you as a fragrance of your being, as your intelligence sharpening, as your consciousness growing.

The question is, "For about six months I have been waking up every morning with a deep fear of death. I must be missing the most important experiences in my meditation to be so afraid of death in my sleep."

The situation is just the contrary: Because your meditation is deepening, that's why your morning is filled with the fear of death, not vice versa.

You say you used to wake up every morning "with a smile and deep happiness that I had found you.

Osho, I am still smiling, and the happiness to be with you has deepened even more - it is just that the mornings are a bit different."

Because your joyfulness, your blissfulness has deepened, because your meditation is going perfectly well, that's why in the morning when you wake up there is a fear of death. It is not a bad sign; it is tremendously important for you to understand that it is absolutely beautiful.

Why does it happen? - because meditation and death are almost synonymous. Meditation brings you the realization of your being, on the one hand; on the other hand it kills your ego, and you have been attached, identified with the ego, not with the being. So the first experiences of deepening meditation feel like you are dying.

And why in the morning only? - because as meditation deepens your sleep deepens. Your sleep becomes more silent, thoughtless, a tremendous serenity. While you are doing meditation with effort, the very effort does not allow it to go deeper. But once you have tasted something of meditation your sleep automatically moves in the direction of meditation. It is so delicious that when there is nothing to do you are relaxed, your consciousness starts slipping into deeper layers of meditation.

In the morning when you wake up a fear arises of death, because meditation is death of the ego. But the death of the ego is the beginning of your authentic life. Once this is understood, slowly, slowly the fear of death will disappear.

Secondly, you being a woman... the fear of death is deeper in woman than it is in man. These are the uniquenesses and differences between man and woman. The woman wants to remain always young, particularly the modern woman. When she is thirty-five, to reach thirty-six takes almost six years. She does not want to grow older, because she knows unconsciously that every growth is going to end up in death. And particularly for a woman - her youth is her life and the modern stupidity has given it more emphasis that a woman's life is just while she is young. The moment she is old, she is a used cartridge, she is of no use.

A young couple was sitting on the beach on a full-moon night and the woman as usual was insisting to get married....

Why are women so insistent to get married? - because they know unconsciously that this beauty, this youth is very momentary, and after it is gone it will be very difficult to find anyone to be married.

It is even difficult when you are young and beautiful to get someone intelligent to get married to you.

The man looked at the woman and he said, "I will marry you, sweetheart, just wait."

The woman said, "I cannot wait anymore. You have been telling me this for almost two years."

The man said, "If you insist we can get married today."

The woman asked one question, which perhaps is inside every woman: "You love me so much; will you love me also when I am old?"

The man was shocked with the very idea of her being old. He said, "You are putting me in a dilemma.

Just one thing you have to tell me: when you are old will you look like your mother? If so then I am finished, I don't want to get married!"

But every woman is naturally afraid when she becomes old. Man has reduced woman into a commodity. Fresh, young, juicy, she has a market value; as all these phenomenal, momentary things pass by, her price in the marketplace goes down. In her old age, unless she has attained some insight into her consciousness, which is always young and fresh and which need not be dependent on anybody else, death is really a great horror. The very word death is associated with something terrible.

You need not be worried, Prem Nishi, about death. Meditation is the cure, the cure from the fallacy that one dies. Nobody has ever died, ever. Death is simply the greatest fiction, in which we go on believing because we always see somebody else dying, we never see ourselves dying. So knowingly or unknowingly we go on believing, "It is always the other who dies."

Obviously, when you die you will die to others. And in this continuous flow of millions of years, everybody has only seen somebody else dying. Nobody has seen himself dying, except very exceptional people whose meditation has gone so deep that the moment they are separated from their body they know that the body was always dead, consisted of dead materials; the life that was showing in the body was just the inflow of eternal life that was reflected in the body.

The constant river of eternal life flowing within you makes your body also look alive. The moment the eternal flow has moved, has changed its course, your body comes to its reality. But you never die. And the whole art of meditation is to make you aware and alert that you are not the body.

This is a good symptom, very significant, that as your meditation is deepening, your joy is deepening, your happiness is deepening. Logically you must have thought that when meditation deepens, happiness deepens, joy becomes greater. This is a strange thing: then every morning getting up with the fear of death seems to be absolutely illogical, irrelevant, because even before your meditations, before coming to me, you were getting up without the fear of death. There are millions of people who will get up every day, but they will not be at all afraid of death because their consciousness never goes to that depth where they can feel in their sleep that the ego is dying.

But being a woman, naturally you are more afraid. Meditation will take that fear away and meditation will also take away the idea that one is man and one is woman, because those things belong to the body. The consciousness is transcendental; it is neither male nor female.

"There is only one thing I want," she told him. "All I want is a solid gold boy scout knife."

He offered her yachts, cars, mink coats - but she insisted for a solid gold boy scout knife.

The stunned suitor went away and had one especially made. A week later he brought it, and asked her, "Is this all you want to make you happy? What are you going to do with it?"

She opened a huge chest and put the knife in amongst hundreds of others gold knives.

"Why?" he asked.

The girl replied, "Well right now I am very young and beautiful and everyone wants me. But some day I'm going to be old and ugly - and can you imagine what a boy scout will do for one of these?"

This is the way people live - so unconsciously! The greatest unconsciousness is that which makes you believe that you are what you appear, your body. It does not allow you to know that you consist not of what you appear, but your inner witness. That witness can see the body as separate from itself, it can see the mind as separate from itself, it can see the ego and everything separate from itself.

The moment the witness awakens in you... and meditation is nothing but nagging the witness to wake up. Meditation is a woman! She goes on nagging and finally the poor fellow, the witness has to wake up!

Once the witness has awakened you have come to a point of transformation. Now you will not be identified anymore with all that is mortal. Now you will know from your inner sources with absolute unconditional certainty your eternity, your immortality. And unless a man knows that he is deathless, the fear somehow lurks in his mind. You can try to forget it....

It is easier to forget it when you are young, because you can go on doing all kinds of foolish things when you are young. But when you are old and left alone - because the young fools are doing their own things, nobody takes care of you... Nobody even bothers whether you exist or not - then one finds oneself in a deep depression. Except death, there is no future. Life has passed away; one cannot go back, and ahead... ahead is only death.

Ronald Reagan was addressing a massed gathering of American farmers. He began by telling a couple of jokes to try and get the men of the land on his side. Realizing that this was not working he tried another approach. He drew himself up to his full height and began, "Fellow pioneers! I want you to know that when I became president, the country's economy stood on the edge of an abyss. I am proud to tell you that since then we have made a brave step forward!"

When you are old, there is no step forward, just an abyss, abysmal.

Only the meditator knows there is no death.

His certainty that there is no death is not based on scriptures, borrowed knowledge, because such things cannot be based on scriptures and borrowed knowledge. Nothing helps except your own realization. And the old woman particularly becomes very frustrated: she was so much loved, so much appreciated; now nobody looks at her. Hence her fear of death becomes many times greater than man's.

Frank was talking to his wife Alice, while the little old lady sat in the living room, knitting.

"Now look, Alice," he whispered, "I don't want to sound harsh, but your mother has been living with us for twenty years now. Isn't it about time she got an apartment of her own?"

"My mother?" gasped Alice. "I thought she was your mother."

They have not even bothered to inquire who's mother she is, and for twenty-five years... This shows a deep ignoring, tolerating.

But, Prem Nishi, this is not going to happen to you! You are already on the right path and the symptom of death arising in the morning is very indicative that your meditation is going deeper and making you aware that the ego is not you. Your sleep is perfectly good, your day is perfectly good; then why is it happening only in the morning?

It is because the whole night you are enjoying a silent, meditative state, but as you wake up the old habit of getting identified with the ego grips you. A silent knowledge that this ego is going to die "and I am this ego!" makes you afraid, worried, anxious.

But the situation is very clear: If you understand what I am saying you should rejoice that this fear of death is coming at the right moment. The morning is the right moment.

In India for centuries we have the word sandhya, for prayer. Sandhya means twilight. In the evening when the day turns into night and in the morning, when the night turns into day, there is such a tremendous change that these are the two points chosen by India to be alert, conscious, because if you can be conscious in these two moments, your meditation will become perfect very easily.

Because of the shifting of gears as the day moves into night, in the night you are no more an ego.

That's why the night is so relaxing, that's why it is so rejuvenating, that's why you feel after a beautiful sleep that you have become again young and fresh. All tiredness is gone and you are again ready to work. Because the ego was left when the sun was setting you were simply pure consciousness.

And in the morning the reverse happens: from simple consciousness you again jump into the old bullock cart of your ego. And for a moment the fear.

The modern, contemporary society is very confused, because people go to sleep in the middle of the night, wake up at eleven o'clock in the morning. They have disturbed the whole harmony with nature. When there was no light, no electricity, no kerosene oil, as the sun was setting people were preparing their beds. There was nothing else to do. It was in a deep synchronicity with nature - nature is going to sleep, the trees are going to sleep, the birds are returning back to their trees and they are preparing to go to sleep, everything is going to sleep, except man.

There are a few men whose real life begins in the night. They are upsetting their balance with nature.

Particularly for the rich people who can afford to sleep the whole day and drink and eat and listen to music or see a dancer, their whole night is an Arabian night. Day seems to be a little stale; it is better to pass it by sleeping.

But even those who are not very rich have forgotten that when the whole of nature is going to sleep it is better to follow it. Don't be left out of nature's harmony. And when the whole of nature is waking up, wake up. With the sunrise you should also rise up - with the birds singing and flowers opening and bees buzzing around the flowers and butterflies opening their wings and the birds moving again into the sunlight to distant places, this is the time for you to wake up!

These two moments... Sandhya means evening, and sandhya also means the meeting of day and night. So there are two sandhyas: one in the evening, one in the morning when the day and night separate. In those gaps you can enter very deeply into meditation, and it is meditation alone which can help your witnessing self to be completely unidentified with all that is ephemeral, dreamlike.

One day it is there, another day it is gone... only fools can go on playing with the ephemeral.

A little intelligence is enough to make you aware that the real search is not for the ephemeral but for the eternal. And unless you have found the eternal your life was a wastage. It was a tremendous opportunity given by existence to you, but you did not use it.

Prem Nishi, your symptom is perfectly good, so rejoice in it. Go deeper in meditation, go deeper in your happiness, go deeper in your dance and the fear of death will disappear. And not only the fear - even death will disappear, because death does not exist.

Question 2:

Prem Parijat, the phenomenon of trust has to be understood a little more clearly; then I can discuss your question.

First, trust has to be unconditional, not just that nature goes on fulfilling your needs, existence goes on giving you help, supports you.... What about if it doesn't support you? What about if it creates hindrances on your path? Your trust will disappear. This trust is not very authentic.

And another thing to remember: the trust in existence can only be real if you trust in yourself, because you are the closest experience of existence. Otherwise, when things are going right you will trust; when things are not going right the trust will start disappearing.

One man once came to me and he said, "I trust in God absolutely."

I said, "How have you found absolute trust in God? I have not even found God yet!"

He said, "I have been married for seven years and no child was coming our way. Finally somebody suggested to me, "It is your irreligiousness. Trust God and you will have a child.'"

And the man said, "I was suspicious, but I said, 'What is the harm in trying? At the worst there may not be any child - and anyway it is not coming.' So I started worshipping the elephant god Ganesha, whose temple was just close to my house. Strangely enough, after nine months my wife gave birth to a beautiful child. I trust in God absolutely, particularly the elephant god."

I said, "As far as I know, you are a lecturer of science in a college."

He said, "That's true."

I said, "Then a simple thing has to be understood: no scientific experiment is thought to be conclusive unless you make many experiments and always come to the same conclusion, without exception."

He said, "That's true."

So I said, "You start now with your elephant god a few other things." He was a little afraid. I said, "Don't be afraid; absolute trust knows no fear! Now start asking the elephant god for a girl. You have got a boy; you need a girl too."

He said, "My wife also insists for a girl."

So I said, "Try it! It is only a question of nine months, and then I will give you another experiment."

Nine months passed, ten months passed, and the man did not turn up, so I had to go to his home. I knocked on his door saying, "What happened? What happened to your elephant god?"

He said, "Forget all about this god. That was just accidental, just a coincidence, because I have been praying and praying, morning and evening and ten months have passed, and my wife is not even pregnant!"

I said, "Just one failure and your trust has disappeared?"

When everything is going smoothly and beautifully, you can trust. But you are trusting somebody else - God, God's only begotten son, any messenger of God, a prophet, a tirthankara or a Gautam Buddha, it does not matter. You are trusting somebody else and things can go wrong any moment.

The basic trust has not to be in existence, it has to be within you.

You should learn to become more conscious and alert to trust yourself. Do you trust yourself? If you trust yourself, that cannot be for any particular reason. That will be unconditional trust. And out of that unconditional trust will grow many branches: you will become a huge tree with great foliage.

You will trust love, you will trust the truth, you will trust godliness, you will trust beauty; you will simply trust because your heart is full of trust and there is not even a shadow of distrust. Even if you want to distrust, you cannot.

Only when you cannot distrust, even if you want, have you come to the very center of your being, from where arises the trust in existence, in life, in people, in trees.

And that is not because of any conditions; trust itself is such a blessing, in itself such an ecstasy!

Once you have tasted it within yourself you would like to taste it in the whole cosmos. If it is so great just within you, how much greater it will be when you trust everything. It does not depend on any condition to be fulfilled.

You say, "Since I have been able to trust more and more in existence..." How do you manage to trust more and more in existence? On what grounds? The existence gives you birth, which is a pain; the existence gives you life, which is nothing but misery; the existence gives you hopes which are never fulfilled; the existence gives you promises and the goods are never delivered; and finally the existence makes you old, and then one step more - Ronald Reagan's step forward - and you are finished.

What has been able to create in you more and more trust in existence? And remember there are things which either you have or you don't have; you cannot have them more or less.

Love is another dimension of trust. Have you ever thought about it? People go on saying, "I love you more and more." But love does not know any quantities; it is a quality, you cannot measure it less or more - one kilo or two kilos or three kilos. It is good that people don't use that: "I love you two kilos, and it is growing. Don't be worried, soon you will see I will be loving you three kilos."

It is not a quantity, it is not part of the world of quantities, it is not matter that it can be measured into more or less. Trust is the highest fragrance of love. You cannot say, "I have been able to trust more and more." You are saying it because existence - perhaps just by coincidence - has been of great support to you, or perhaps you are imaginative enough that whatever existence brings to you, you start imagining, "This is what I always wanted.

In either case it is not trust, so first I would like you to see that trust is not a quantity, but a quality.

Either you have it in total or you don't have it in total; either it is nil or it is one hundred percent. You cannot divide it in slices; it is indivisibly one, organically one.

But I can understand why you say "more and more" - because every day you find everything is going so easily. But everything is not going so easily in Ethiopia. Everything is not going so easily for the millions of poor on the earth. Everything is not going so easily for the millions who are sick and ill and just on the waiting list of death.

What is going easily? You cannot find a more insane world than that which surrounds you. There are millions of people behind bars in the jails; things are not going easy for them. And there are millions of people who cannot manage even a single meal in a day; things are not going easy for them. And don't be so egocentric as to say that if they are going easy for you then you can trust existence.

What about the whole world? How many people are committing suicide? How many people are murdering each other? How many people are insane? Things are not going easy for them. If that is your criterion of trust, soon it will disappear. A small accident, a car crash and things are no more going easy.

One of my old sannyasins and a man who has reached very close to enlightenment - any day he will explode into luminosity - is sitting here, Pungalia. He was the man who invited me to Poona twenty-five years ago. In these twenty-five years many have come and gone, but he has remained unwavering and is going deeper and deeper into meditation. Such a man can say that he trusts in himself, because every moment and every day he is reaching closer to the light that has been searched for by all the seekers of the world.

Because of his inner experience and the blissfulness and the peace and the silence, he can spread his wings towards existence, towards people, and can find trust. But it will not be more and more; it will come on its own accord the day the small distance that has remained is crossed.

It often happens when the caravan reaches to its destination after crossing miles and miles of desert and sand, tired and tattered, but the hope of reaching to the goal... But just as they come close to the goal, everybody wants to relax a little. Now that they have reached there is no hurry; they suddenly feel tired because now there is no question of hope keeping them together. The destiny has arrived.

So just before they take the last few steps and enter into the temple, they sit outside the temple; they are so tired.

This happens to every traveler in the inner world. Those few steps when you have reached seem to be the longest steps. But as you get relaxed and as you see the light radiating from the temple, as you hear the celestial music, as you hear some beautiful dance going inside, you cannot remain outside long; you will have to stand up and enter into the temple.

The moment somebody enters in his own temple of being he knows there is no death, he knows there is no disease, he knows there is no problem. Then the trust arises. Then the trust in the master who has helped for no other reason than simply that he loved and loved abundantly. Then love arises towards all those who have helped, the friends and the enemies both. And then a trust arises in the whole existence, because it is the whole existence that has brought you in different ways to the highest peak of consciousness. There is nothing else than gratitude.

You say, "Everything is going so easily, so softly, so beautifully." It is good, but don't depend on this.

What is beautiful today may become ugly tomorrow, and what is smooth today may become very tough tomorrow, and what is so soft may become the greatest hindrance. One never knows about tomorrow.

Rather than focusing your eyes on the trust in existence, first find your center, because that is the only guarantee that the trust in existence will be unconditional; whatever happens, there is not going to be any change in your trust.

You are saying, "I get everything I need. And even when something goes wrong, after a while I can see its sense. I feel so thankful that I can see that existence is always providing the right thing for me. It gives me so much trust. Would you please talk about it?"

Prem Parijat, you are living in an illusion. You don't mention any trust in yourself, and a man who has not experienced it in his own being can only imagine. And you have tremendous capacity of imagination: if things are going good, naturally anybody howsoever stupid will trust. When things go wrong your trust must be wavering a little, but you wait - perhaps finally, in the end, what looked wrong is not wrong. Then again the trust settles more deeply. But this trust is not going to transform your being, because this is a secondary trust, it is not the primary trust.

You are making a castle of sand. Everything is going right, the castle is coming up and you trust in existence that no disturbance... But you never know! Just a strong wind may disturb your castle, destroy it, or just a small child out of joy may come and jump on your castle and it will be finished.

There are a thousand and one possibilities of the castle being destroyed. Perhaps you will console yourself that "there must be something good for me in the destruction of the castle. Perhaps it is time to go back home. I'm feeling so hungry; that's why existence destroyed the castle. Go back home and eat something. Existence is taking so much care...."

In this sense your trust is not very trustworthy. It may give you a few beautiful moments, but they are like a dream. I would like you to have a trust so solid that whatever changes it will remain with you without any change. But the beginning has to be from within. From within you can reach to the without, but not vice versa.

It is good that you have been thinking of trust. It is good that trust - the very idea has been surrounding your mind and its atmosphere. Don't feel hurt if I say to you that this is the time you should turn your trust, the arrow towards yourself. Do you trust in yourself? And you are the closest to existence; existence penetrates you to your very being.

You should begin from ABC, not from somewhere in the middle or somewhere at the end. You are beginning almost at the end, XYZ. This is not a right way of progression; there is danger because the whole alphabet is missing. Start from ABC and let it grow spontaneously to XYZ. It will grow, it certainly grows. Your being is an immense potential of growth. Start from the being.

All the religions of the world have been distracting man from himself. They say, "Pray to God, believe in God, trust in God; he will take care." And we know that for thousands of years, nobody has taken care of this world. If God was taking care then there was no need of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane and Nadirshah and Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and Ronald Reagan - no need at all. If this is what you think of as caring about existence then there would have been no Hiroshima, no Nagasaki.

In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars: certainly nobody is taking care.

All kinds of diseases go on growing. When I was a child tuberculosis was the greatest disease; now it is just like the common cold. Nobody is too much worried if you have tuberculosis; there are medicines available. But those medicines have not been given by any God; they have been given by science, they are man-made.

Then came cancer, and now has come an utterly ugly disease, AIDS. Right now on the earth there are ten million people who are suffering from AIDS. And this is not the total survey of the whole earth; it is the survey only of the Western countries.

Just to give you a total view, I can say that if the Eastern countries are also surveyed, where homosexuality has existed longer than in the West, there may be at least twenty million people suffering from AIDS - which has no cure. Is existence taking care? Is God taking care? And these ten million people are the courageous people who have allowed themselves to be examined. There may be many more who are hiding out of fear, because the moment a man is found with AIDS he becomes dangerous to everybody. Friends turn into enemies, lovers forget all about love, his own family closes their doors, he becomes an outcast. This is a double calamity - a certain death in from six months to two years, and the people for whom he has lived, even his own children, his wife, his parents, his friends have thrown him away: "Even to touch you is dangerous."

The AIDS virus can come from any liquid coming out of the body, even perspiration, saliva, tears - anything coming out of the body can carry the virus. And the virus seems to be immortal; no medicine kills it. It becomes immune to all kinds of treatment. Who is caring for this existence?

So don't just feel that your life is going goody-goody. You can trust existence - I'm not against trust, but it should grow roots within your being and then it should spread its branches all around.

Then perhaps you will have the perceptivity that existence is taking care. Even in a calamity like the disease AIDS perhaps existence is taking care to make man aware that no sexual perversion should be permitted. Existence is telling all the religions, You are responsible for creating homosexuality.

Homosexuality was born in monasteries, in monks, in nuns, because men and women were separated. That was unnatural.

You may have the perception that existence is not against; it is simply trying to clean all the crap that has gathered into human mind, human beings, so much that it has to be taken out.

But to have that perception you need a trust in yourself. And how will you find this trust? It is not a belief; it is not just a Christian sermon from any stupid missionary who knows nothing about religion at all, but has crammed beautiful phrases from the BIBLE and is telling you things which have created all the troubles in the world. More people have been killed by religious wars than by political wars. In the name of God, in the name of religion there have been so many crusades, jihads, religious wars, that one can not believe that these people are going to bring a better humanity, a loving earth.

If you have the perceptivity that arises out of trust within yourself, it is not a belief. The Christian missionary and all other missionaries of other religions only create belief. Belief is a fake trust; trust cannot be created in you by anyone.

You will have to dig deep through meditation to find the pure waters of trust within your being. It is going to be your own work on yourself. It is going to be your own creative exploration, adventure.

Yes, Buddhas can show you the path, but they cannot help you in any other way. I can tell you about meditations, but I cannot do meditations for you. Except through meditation you will not be able to find trust in yourself.

And the day of finding the trust in yourself is the greatest day in your eternal life. It changes all the vision, all perception, all judgment about existence and about other people. The trust goes on growing and spreading all around you. Only then will you have unconditional trust in existence.

Prem Parijat, you are groping for the right thing, but in the wrong direction. Change your direction:

grope within. You will find it. If your longing and your thirst are strong enough, there is no reason why you cannot find it. It is just there within your being, not far away.

You don't have to climb Everest; you have just to settle into your own center, unwavering, undistracted, in utter silence and peace, and the trust will grow out of it without any of your effort.

Only that trust is trustworthy. Then no changes in the world, no changes in people are going to make even a dent in your trust; otherwise just a small thing and all your so-called believing, trusting disappears.

I remember the attorney-general in Madhya Pradesh came running to me one day and he said, "You are immediately needed. My father had a heart attack and he loves you so much." His father was an all-India figure, Dada Dharmadhikari, a very intelligent person who had been in deep contact for almost forty years with J. Krishnamurti.

Whenever he used to come to visit his son he would always come to me, and I was telling him, "All your J. Krishnamurti jargon is only intellectual. It won't help you at the right time."

He said, "No, in forty years it has reached to my bones, to my blood, to my marrow. There is no question that it can be shaken by anything."

I went to his home; they had arranged for him to relax in a dark room. I entered without making any noise because I heard somebody saying, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama."

I said, "Dada Dharmadhikari cannot say that - and there is nobody else." As my eyes became accustomed to the dark room I went close, without making any noise. Very silently he was whispering, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama."

I shook him and I said, "Dada, what are you doing? This goes against your J. Krishnamurti completely. Have you joined the Hare Krishna, Hare Rama movement so suddenly? I had seen you yesterday and you were a Krishnamurti-ite."

He said, "Don't harass me at this moment. I know there is no God and I know this Hare Krishna, Hare Rama is just foolish. But just in case... who knows if God exists? And what is the harm? I'm lying down and just repeating my childhood mantra that has been given to me by my traditional guru who said, 'In any difficulty, repeat it and you will be helped.' I'm dying; this is not the moment to discuss."

I said, "This is the moment to discuss, because I have been telling you for almost twenty years that all your Krishnamurti jargon is intellectual. At the right moment it will disappear. Now this is the moment: now say to me, There is no God!'"

He said, "At this moment I cannot say that, it is too risky. You just leave me alone, because only a few minutes are left and perhaps maybe not even a few minutes. Let me repeat my mantra. If he is, I will tell him, 'I repeated the mantra. Forgive me for all my stupidity when I used to tell people that there is no God and things like that.' If he is not, there is no problem - but I can't take a chance."

But he did not die; it was only the first heart attack. People die almost always when the heart attack comes for the third time. He survived, and after four or five days I went to see him. He was sitting in the garden, in the sun.

I said, "What about Hare Krishna, Hare Rama?"

He said, "All that is nonsense."

I said, "Have you forgotten?"

He said, "No, I have not forgotten, but in weakness, in helplessness one starts looking for some help from the beyond."

I said, "Then all your intellectual, philosophical argumentation is only superficial. If it can't help you in your helplessness then it is of no use."

You can trust existence as an intellectual effort, and you can go on managing your intellectual effort.

But in any helpless moment you will start forgetting about it all, and you will come to your reality which you have been hiding. I would not like to put you in such a mess as Krishnamurti has put millions of people. I have come across many of them; just their intellect is full of the answers that Krishnamurti has been repeating continuously almost for seventy years.

Krishnamurti lived long, ninety years, and he started speaking when he was twenty. I think nobody else has ever conditioned people's minds for seventy years - and he was against conditioning people's minds. He conditioned them so much - and he was a great intellectual, a great rationalist.

He could convince people very easily, and he convinced them. But all that conviction melted immediately when a person was dying. Dada Dharmadhikari was one of his very close friends.

Never start from the secondary; always remember as a fundamental rule to start from the primary.

And the primary reality and existence is you.

Hidden within you is satyam, shivam, sundram - the truth, the godliness and the utter beauty of it. That is the seed; take care of it, and you will soon have a vast tree arising in you, spreading its branches in all directions with millions of flowers.

But the beginning is you, and unless you begin right from the interior of your being, all your beginnings are wrong.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.