... why animals have no religion, because they cannot imagine death; they cannot conceive of death. They live, they die, but death is never a problem for them. It is never comprehended, it is never conceived, it is never encountered as a problem in their consciousness. They don't know death - they are alive or they are dead, but they don't know death. When is death known? How is death known? Death is...

... becomes just a fight with death. The whole of life is just wasted - just wasted in arranging, in making securities - in defense against death. We cannot be alive, because there is death. We cannot live, we cannot live authentically because death will not allow us to live. How can you live when there is death? When you are going to die, how can you live peacefully? How can you live blissfully? Then every...

... escaped in the ways man and the human mind have always tried. This UPANISHAD says that death can be escaped, but you can become deathless. You can know something which is immortal, which will never die. So how to know it? Where to search for it, and how to discover it? Because every effort that we know is just meaningless, irrelevant. The UPANISHAD says: Don't fight with death; rather, know that which...

... suddenly absent, I will die - not for me, but for you. For YOU I will be absent. How I can be absent from myself? - it is impossible. The UPANISHADS say, don't fight death, it is fighting absence; rather, search for the presence which is in you. Who is present in you? - find out. What is present in you which you call life? What is there which you call life? From where does it come in you? What is the...

... because death occurs in a society. Think of it in this way: If you are alone and you have never known any death, will death be a problem for you? If you are alone on an island, have never known any death, never heard about it - will you be aware of death at all? Will you be able to conceive that you are going to die? How can you conceive? - it is a social thing; the society teaches you death. The...

... society shows you that death happens. Alone, you will never be able to know it; alone, you cannot even imagine it. Alone, the very word "death" will be meaningless. And in a certain, subtle way, everyone is deeply aware of this. That's why, howsoever you become aware of death in others, somewhere deep down you continue to think that you are not going to die. Deep down everyone thinks, "...

... immortality, which is non-dying, which has never been born and will not die. Once known, there will be no fear of death. And when there is no fear of death, only then you can live authentically. Then your life will have a different quality altogether. It will be aware, it will be alive, it will be fresh. It will be blissful, it will be a deep ecstasy, a continuous ecstasy. With no fear, with no longing...

.... Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. NEITHER BY WORK NOR BY PROGENY NOR BY WEALTH, BUT BY RENUNCIATION ALONE IMMORTALITY IS ATTAINED. HIGHER THAN HEAVEN, THE ULTIMATE TRUTH ABIDES IN THE CAVE OF THE HEART, SHINING, AND THE SINCERE SEEKER ATTAINS. For religion, death is the basic problem - not life, because life IS. Life is not a problem; you have it, you are it. But death is a...

... problem. Death is not here and yet is here. Death has not occurred to you, yet it has occurred all around; it will occur to you. Life is the present; death is the future. The present is never the problem - the future is the problem, because future has to be tackled, because future has to be encountered, because future has to be transcended. So man is always face to face with death, not with life. That's...

... known - you are alive, you are not dead, but there is death somewhere in the future. A dead man has no problem with death, he is already dead. Then death is not a problem. Alive, death faces us somewhere, just around the corner, waits for us. This waiting death - this constant awaiting, somewhere near, just any moment it can happen - is the problem. So man goes on fighting it, and the whole of life...

... step in life is just a step towards death. Then any movement is a movement towards death, or any movement is a movement of your death coming towards you. Religion has death as the problem - what to do about it? We are doing many things - through wealth, through science, through health, through protection, through medicine, through philosophy, through theology - we are creating many different measures...

... for how to be deathless. We are creating many things, but everything proves futile, meaningless, absurd. Death comes, and every arrangement is just proved futile. It has always been so and it will always be so, because death is not really just in the future, it is also in the past. The moment one is born, death is born within him. Death is not only in the future - if it were only in the future then...

... it could be avoided, but it is part of the past. It is just a process of the same thing which we call birth. Birth is the beginning of death - or, death can be said to be just an ending of the process of birth. So your birth day is also your death day. The beginning is the end, because every beginning implies its end. Every beginning has its end as a seed. If death is just in the future, then it...

... can be avoided. It is not; it is part of you, it is here and now - just in you, progressing, growing. Death is not a fixed point somewhere, it is a growth within you; it is growing constantly. When you are fighting it, it is growing. When you are feeding it, it is growing. When you are escaping from it, it is growing. So whatsoever you do, one thing is constantly going on - that is, you are dying...

.... Whatsoever you do - you are asleep, you are relaxing, you are working, you are thinking, you are meditating - whatsoever you do, one thing is certain: death is growing constantly, continuously. It doesn't need your help, it doesn't need you cooperation. It doesn't care about your defenses; it goes on growing. Why? - because it has come into being with your birth; it is part of birth. So death cannot be...

... is life. Don't try to escape from death; rather, try to enter that which is life. The very flame of life must be entered. Don't create the sort of life which is negative; don't go on trying to avoid death - this is negativity. Be positive and try to know what is life. Really, death is not against life. In the dictionary it is; in existence it is not. Death is not against life; death is against...

..., even when you are not born. You are born because you were there before. And the same is the case with death. If you ARE before birth, then you WILL BE after death, because that which is before birth is bound to be after death. Life is something which happens in between birth and death, and beyond birth and death. We must think of life as a river: in this river one point is known as birth, another...

... point is known as death, but the river continues. The river continues beyond death. The river was continuing before birth. This riverlike life must be penetrated - only then we can know that which is deathless. Of course that which is deathless is bound to be birthless... but our whole focus is just misguided. Our whole focus is on how to escape death, now how to know life. It is against death, not...

... for life. This is the only flaw, and because of this we can never know the deathless. We will go on, continue, constantly searching, discovering new methods, new techniques, new ways of how to escape death. And then death will be coming - and death will come. Know life. Jesus has said, "Search for life, for more life. Don't be satisfied with that which is with you as life. Search more, find out...

... more, find IN more - go for more life. We are for less death, we are not for more life; the whole focus is turned towards death. It is like this: If there is darkness, you can do two things - either you can begin to fight with darkness to destroy it, or you can begin to search for light, which is quite a different search. You can fight darkness directly, but then you will be defeated. And darkness...

... death. Death is not something positive, it is just absence of life. When life goes somewhere else, death occurs. Death is just the going of something; it is not something which comes to you. Death is not something which comes to you; rather, it is only that life goes somewhere else. The river of life begins to flow somewhere else, and death occurs - death is just an absence. The light is not, darkness...

... happens; the light comes, darkness is not there. So find the light, find life; don't fight with death, don't fight with darkness. Don't be negative; be positive. And by positive, I mean always search for something which is present; never go on any search for something which is absent - you will never find it. Death happens daily, but no one has encountered it, no one has known it. No one can know it...

... you encounter it? Death is your absence. When you are absent, death occurs. So allow me to tell you this way, that death is a social phenomenon, not individual. No individual dies - individual rivers continue somewhere else. But when from this crowd the individual river moves somewhere else, then for this crowd someone has died; for this crowd, someone has become absent. If my friend dies, it means...

... he dies for me; not for himself. Death is a phenomenon which happens to ME, not to him. How can it happen to him? Life cannot face death; life is a movement which has moved somewhere else, so WE face it. Death is a social phenomenon, it is not an individual phenomenon. No one has died ever - but everyone dies, we know everyone dies, because someone becomes suddenly absent. We are here. If I become...

... center, the source of it? Go deep into yourself and find the source. The UPANISHAD says, this source is hidden in the heart. This source of life is hidden in the heart. Go in your heart and find the original source. Once you have known that source then there will be no death for you. Then there will be no fear, then there will be no problem. Once you have known life itself, you have become immortal...

.... You ARE - unconsciously, unknowingly, unaware. Everyone is immortal. Nothing dies, nothing can die - but everyone feels the fear. This fear also comes because of the society, because we see - now today "A" has died and tomorrow "B" will die, and yesterday "C" has died. Then we become aware: "I am going to die." I am going to die - this fear grips the mind...

...;Death may occur to anyone else but it is not going to occur to me." That's why so many deaths are occurring yet we continue; we continue to live; otherwise, we would be paralyzed, totally paralyzed. A single death occurring and we would be paralyzed. But somewhere deep down one knows: "It may have occurred to him, but it is not going to occur to me." Everyone goes on deep down believing...

... in something in himself as immortal... it is very unconscious; otherwise, there would be no fear. The UPANISHADS say, make it conscious. Go deep down and know it very consciously: something that is life in you, that flame, will continue; that flame is not going to die. How to go into the heart? How to penetrate it? - the UPANISHADS say, by renunciation. Renounce every outward-going effort, all that...

.... Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. BELOVED OSHO, OF VOLUNTARY DEATH MANY DIE TOO LATE AND SOME DIE TOO EARLY. STILL THE DOCTRINE SOUNDS STRANGE: 'DIE AT THE RIGHT TIME.' DIE AT THE RIGHT TIME: THUS ZARATHUSTRA TEACHES. TO BE SURE, HE WHO NEVER LIVED AT THE RIGHT TIME COULD HARDLY DIE AT THE RIGHT TIME! BETTER IF HE WERE NEVER TO BE BORN! - THUS I ADVISE THE SUPERFLUOUS. BUT EVEN...

....... TO DIE THUS IS THE BEST DEATH; BUT THE SECOND BEST IS: TO DIE IN BATTLE AND TO SQUANDER A GREAT SOUL. BUT EQUALLY HATEFUL TO THE FIGHTER AS TO THE VICTOR IS YOUR GRINNING DEATH, WHICH COMES CREEPING UP LIKE A THIEF - AND YET COMES AS MASTER. I COMMEND TO YOU MY SORT OF DEATH, VOLUNTARY DEATH THAT COMES TO ME BECAUSE I WISH IT. AND WHEN SHALL I WISH IT? - HE WHO HAS A GOAL AND AN HEIR WANTS DEATH AT...

... SPIRIT AND YOUR VIRTUE SHOULD STILL GLOW LIKE A SUNSET GLOW AROUND THE EARTH: OTHERWISE YOURS IS A BAD DEATH. THUS I WANT TO DIE MYSELF, THAT YOU FRIENDS MAY LOVE THE EARTH MORE FOR MY SAKE; AND I WANT TO BECOME EARTH AGAIN, THAT I MAY HAVE PEACE IN HER WHO BORE ME. TRULY, ZARATHUSTRA HAD A GOAL, HE THREW HIS BALL: NOW MAY YOU FRIENDS BE THE HEIRS OF MY GOAL, I THROW THE GOLDEN BALL TO YOU. BUT BEST OF...

.... The depth is that you are no longer your physical body, and you are no longer your mental body either - just a pure awareness, a pure sky without any clouds, unbounded. Even a simple glimpse into it and death becomes a glorious experience. Zarathustra has a few very important things to say about it. MANY DIE TOO LATE AND SOME DIE TOO EARLY. STILL THE DOCTRINE SOUNDS STRANGE: 'DIE AT THE RIGHT TIME...

..., you are dead. In a physical sense you may go on breathing, but your breathing cannot be synonymous with life. It is only vegetation: cabbages and cauliflowers, and the world is so full of cabbages and cauliflowers. Zarathustra says, STILL THE DOCTRINE SOUNDS STRANGE; 'DIE AT THE RIGHT TIME.' One who has lived rightly, intensely and totally, is bound to die at the right time. His death is nothing but...

... a ripening, a harvest. His death is nothing but a fulfillment. He lived so much, he loved so much, he used all his energy in being creative, he enjoyed so much, that a point comes where he wants to rest. His cup of life is full. There is no need to go on lingering on the earth. He has come to the place where he was destined to come. DIE AT THE RIGHT TIME, can be understood only by those who live...

..., and live totally, without any inhibitions, naturally; not according to dead scriptures, but according to the living sources of their own being. They certainly reach a tremendous ecstasy of fulfillment; their death is a completion - the circle has become complete. Their death has brought them back to another birth. Unless you die at the right time, you will never experience the beauty of death. It...

... will remain only a prejudice, an opinion, what you have heard people say about it. But you don't have your own personal experience. DIE AT THE RIGHT TIME: THUS ZARATHUSTRA TEACHES. For Zarathustra, death is the actualization of your whole potential. Now there is no point of being in the body. You can die joyously, with a smile on your face, with a tremendous mystery in your eyes. Your death will not...

... is difficult to say anything about your death, whether you will die at the right time or not. But are you alive at the right time? Or are you continually missing the train? You always reach the platform when the train is gone; you see the last compartment leaving the platform. You are always either late, or too early, but never exactly at the right moment. The reason is that your mind either lives...

... only possibility: the present. In fact, past, future and present are divisions of our mind. Time knows only one tense and that is present. It is always present. Time knows only one place, and that is here. It is always now; it is never then. Those who don't live at the right time cannot die at the right time either, because life and death are not separate. Either death will be an end of an...

... missed life; only death has remained. I was very friendly with one chief minister, the first chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, an old man. He told me that his only prayer to God was that he should die as the chief minister. I said, "What will you gain by that? Death is death, whether you die as a beggar or as a chief minister." He said, "You don't understand. If I die as a chief minister...

... which is a ceremony which is a festival - "the fairest of festivals." TO DIE THUS IS THE BEST DEATH; BUT THE SECOND BEST IS: TO DIE IN BATTLE AND TO SQUANDER A GREAT SOUL. If you cannot be the highest possibility in you, if you cannot be a fulfillment unto yourself, then the second best, Zarathustra suggests, is that at least you can be a warrior. The word warrior has lost its old meaning...

...; In Japan, swordsmanship and archery have become methods of learning meditation. The warrior in the past was a beautiful human being, with a body as beautiful as a wild animal's; with agility and with great art. Zarathustra is remembering that if you cannot die as a sage, then at least die as a warrior. That is the second best death. BUT EQUALLY HATEFUL TO THE FIGHTER AS TO THE VICTOR IS YOUR...

... predicting, but it is not prediction. They know that they have come to fulfillment and there is no more in life and there is no more to be discovered - their journey is complete. Their declaration, "After seven days, or after three days, or tomorrow, I am going to die," is because they are capable of wishing their death. It is not a prediction. But the whole of the East has been in this confusion...

... GLOW LIKE A SUNSET GLOW AROUND THE EARTH: OTHERWISE YOURS IS A BAD DEATH. THUS I WANT TO DIE MYSELF, THAT YOU FRIENDS MAY LOVE THE EARTH MORE FOR MY SAKE; AND I WANT TO BECOME EARTH AGAIN, THAT I MAY HAVE PEACE IN HER WHO BORE ME. TRULY, ZARATHUSTRA HAD A GOAL, HE THREW HIS BALL: NOW MAY YOU FRIENDS BE THE HEIRS OF MY GOAL, I THROW THE GOLDEN BALL TO YOU. BUT BEST OF ALL I LIKE TO SEE YOU, TOO...

... together. By the time you feel fulfilled, you will be able to die totally. You will not cling to life. I have seen many people die. They die like beggars, clinging; they don't want to die because they have not lived yet, and death has come. But when there was life, they wasted it. Now that death has knocked on their doors they have become aware of the wastage of life. But a man who has lived totally will...

... asking his disciples - his time of death had come - and he said, "Before I go I want to discover some unique way to die. You know me. I don't want any repeating, copying, being just a follower of somebody. Tell me, is there some way that I can die uniquely?" One man suggested, "Perhaps you can die sitting in a lotus posture?" But others said, "Many sages have died sitting in a...

... exactly the same: no breathing, no heartbeat. The man must have been waiting at the fourth stage, knowing or watching from that depth what his disciples would do now. And seeing them in a great dilemma, he must have enjoyed it immensely. To die in such a beautiful way, as if you are playing, should be a simple thing for all those who have lived perfectly and totally. Bokoju made death also a beautiful...

...Of voluntary death...

... Osho Zarathustra A God That Can Dance: Of voluntary death Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho Zarathustra A God That Can Dance   Next > Of voluntary death From: Osho Date: Fri, 4 April 1987 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Zarathustra A God That Can Dance Chapter #: 16 Location: am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A...

... THE SUPERFLUOUS MAKE A GREAT THING OF THEIR DYING; YES, EVEN THE HOLLOWEST NUT WANTS TO BE CRACKED. EVERYONE TREATS DEATH AS AN IMPORTANT MATTER: BUT AS YET DEATH IS NOT A FESTIVAL. AS YET, MEN HAVE NOT LEARNED TO CONSECRATE THE FAIREST FESTIVALS. I SHALL SHOW YOU THE CONSUMMATING DEATH, WHICH SHALL BE A SPUR AND A PROMISE TO THE LIVING. THE MAN CONSUMMATING HIS LIFE DIES HIS DEATH TRIUMPHANTLY...

... THE TIME MOST FAVORABLE TO HIS GOAL AND HIS HEIR.... MANY A ONE GROWS TOO OLD EVEN FOR HIS TRUTHS AND VICTORIES; A TOOTHLESS MOUTH HAS NO LONGER THE RIGHT TO EVERY TRUTH. AND EVERYONE WHO WANTS GLORY MUST TAKE LEAVE OF HONOUR IN GOOD TIME AND PRACTISE THE DIFFICULT ART OF - GOING AT THE RIGHT TIME.... I WISH PREACHERS OF SPEEDY DEATH WOULD COME! THEY WOULD BE THE FITTING STORM AND SHAKERS OF THE...

... TREES OF LIFE! BUT I HEAR PREACHED ONLY SLOW DEATH AND PATIENCE WITH ALL 'EARTHLY THINGS'. IF ONE ONLY REMAINED IN THE DESERT AND FAR FROM THE GOOD AND JUST! PERHAPS HE WOULD HAVE LEARNED TO LIVE AND LEARNED TO LOVE THE EARTH - AND LAUGHTER AS WELL!... THAT YOUR DEATH MAY NOT BE A BLASPHEMY AGAINST MAN AND THE EARTH, MY FRIENDS; THAT IS WHAT I BEG FROM THE HONEY OF YOUR SOUL. IN YOUR DEATH, YOUR...

... ALL I LIKE TO SEE YOU, TOO, THROWING ON THE GOLDEN BALL, MY FRIENDS! SO I SHALL STAY ON EARTH A LITTLE LONGER: FORGIVE ME FOR IT! ... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. DEATH IS THE most misunderstood phenomenon. People have thought of death as the end of life. That is the first, basic misunderstanding. Death is not the end, but the beginning of a new life. Yes, it is an end of something that is already dead...

.... It is also a crescendo of what we call life, although very few know what life is. They live, but they live in such ignorance that they never encounter their own life. And it is impossible for these people to know their own death, because death is the ultimate experience of this life, and the beginning experience of another. Death is the door between two lives; one is left behind, one is waiting...

... ahead. There is nothing ugly about death; but man, out of his fear, has made even the word, death ugly and unutterable. People don't like to talk about it. They won't even listen to the word death. The fear has reasons. The fear arises because it is always somebody else who dies. You always see death from the outside, and death is an experience of the innermost being. It is just like watching love...

... from the outside. You may watch for years, but you will not come to know anything of what love is. You may come to know the manifestations of love, but not love itself. We know the same about death. Just the manifestations on the surface - the breathing has stopped, the heart has stopped, the man as he used to talk and walk is no more there: just a corpse is lying there instead of a living body...

.... These are only outer symptoms. Death is the transfer of the soul from one body to another body, or in cases when a man is fully awakened, from one body to the body of the whole universe. It is a great journey, but you cannot know it from the outside. From outside, only symptoms are available; and those symptoms have made people afraid. Those who have known death from inside lose all fear of death...

.... Instead of death being an ugly and fearful thing, it changes into one of the purest, most silent, and most sublime experiences. You experience yourself for the first time without your prison, the body, an experience of absolute freedom... unhampered, uncaged. This kind of death can be known in many ways. One is the usual way - but then you will not be here to report about it. You are gone. You have...

... experienced, but the experience has also gone with you. Fortunately, there are other ways in which you can experience exactly what death is, and yet remain alive. Love is one. In total love, when you are not holding anything back, a kind of death happens. You are no more body, you are no more mind, you are pure spirit. In meditation, the same experience happens of bodilessness, mindlessness, and yet of...

... absolute consciousness, of absolute aliveness. That's why lovers never feel afraid of death. If a lover feels afraid of death, that indicates he has not known love. The meditators never feel afraid of death. If the meditator feels afraid of death it means he has not gone deep into meditation. There is only one depth that has to be touched, whether through love or through meditation or through creativity...

....' When he is saying, MANY DIE TOO LATE, he means they go on living meaninglessly, without any joy, without any song. Nothing blossoms in their life. It seems that they have simply forgotten how to die. They go on living, although life has no juice for them, no excitement, no ecstasy. But they are not brave enough to let the body drop. They live unnecessarily. They live like a burden on the earth. They...

... live like parasites, uncreative, and not only uncreative but destructive, because they cannot live, they don't know how to live. They are very jealous of those who are still singing, still dancing, still loving. They condemn all those who are living. The people who die too late are the condemners. They become saints, they become priests, they become holy, not because they are holy but because they...

... are unable to live, and they don't know how to die: they are in a limbo. And they have to find some excuse. And their excuse becomes a condemnation of the whole world. It is known about a Greek philosopher, Zeno, that he used to teach people that life is useless, meaningless, futile: the only intelligent thing a man can do is to commit suicide. Hundreds of his disciples committed suicide. He lived a...

... are these people who teach, "Renounce life?" They are the people who are not capable of living life, who don't know the art of life. ... AND SOME DIE TOO EARLY. Zarathustra does not mean that they actually die, he means that they go on living a posthumous life: they die at thirty and they are buried at seventy. For all those forty years, nothing happens in their life: it is utterly empty...

.... Find a beautiful place. I have lived beautifully, amongst the mountains, and with the trees and with the wild animals and the meditators." He looked all around and he saw two saal trees, which are very beautiful trees, and very tall. They were almost like twins, standing side by side. Buddha said, "That place seems to be right. I will die there, just between these two saal trees." The...

... way he says it seems to be that death is simply a decision for him. For a man who has lived fully, death becomes a decision: it is up to him. Death does not come to him; he himself makes his body available for death. It is painful when death comes to you and takes away your body, and all your things are incomplete - your children are not grown up, your daughter was going to be married, your business...

... was not going well. Death has knocked on your door, and you cannot welcome him. Even emperors cannot welcome death, because there is so much still to be invaded, conquered. Greed knows no limits. It goes on asking for more and more. That's why death seems to be such an enemy. But to a man like Gautam Buddha it is simply a choice. He went between those two saal trees, sat there, and said to his...

... have taken the fourth step - I have entered into my consciousness." That very moment his breathing stopped, his heartbeat stopped. This is a totally different kind of death - so easy and so relaxed, so fulfilled, so grateful to existence. These are the same steps as those of meditation. That's why I said, if you meditate you can experience death without dying: you can come back. It is a passage...

... would stand up and say, "This is not right. You are condemning me to say that I died at the right time. I am dying and you are making a laughing stock of me." But truthfully, dying at the right time is the most beautiful thing in the world. It is part of a long series of events in your life. TO BE SURE,HE WHO NEVER LIVED AT THE RIGHT TIME COULD HARDLY DIE AT THE RIGHT TIME! You are alive. It...

... only right life, and this kind of life can have a crescendo of a right death. Right death has to be earned by right living. But people are wandering everywhere - in the past, in the future, in memories, in dreams - just missing this small point that this present is the only life you have got. You cannot live your past, it is no more. You cannot live your future, it is not yet. Live that which is the...

... unfulfilled life, of frustration, of despair, of anguish; or it will be a fulfillment of joy, of love, of gratitude, of prayer to the whole existence. BETTER IF HE WERE NEVER TO BE BORN! than not to learn the art of living, than not to reach to the right point of death. Zarathustra says, BETTER IF HE WERE NEVER TO BE BORN! - THUS I ADVISE THE SUPERFLUOUS. Those who don't know life and don't know death, are...

... my death will be celebrated as a royal state thing. There will be a few days of holiday; flags will be flown in my honor; my body will be carried on an army tank; and I will receive my last salutes from the soldiers." I said to him, "It seems you have missed life; otherwise, who bothers when you are dead, whether your body gets salutes from soldiers, respects from flags, a royal reception...

..., a week's holiday in the government offices. What does it matter to you?" I have always remembered, although he became very old, he insisted on remaining the chief minister; and he remained the chief minister and he died as the chief minister. That was all that he was born for - to die as a chief minister, and all those eighty-five or ninety years in between were just empty. These are the...

... when he died, a small news item appeared in the newspapers: "Karensky, who was the prime minister before the Russian revolution, has died." Only his death made people aware that he was alive all this time. The superfluous man has no intrinsic value to his life. That's why he needs something else to give it value - his money, his power, his prestige, something from the outside. Nothing from...

... the outside can make your life richer; nor can it make your death richer. Only the inner, your interior being, your subjectivity, has the power to make your life a dance, and your death the last and the final and the greatest dance. EVERYONE TREATS DEATH AS AN IMPORTANT MATTER: BUT AS YET DEATH IS NOT A FESTIVAL. Perhaps I am the only person, after the twenty-five centuries since Zarathustra, who...

... has made death a festival. Only my people celebrate death; otherwise everywhere it is a mourning. Everywhere it has to be a mourning, because a life unfulfilled, unlived, a wastage.... What is there to celebrate? But if your life has been of love, of creativity, of sharing, of joy, if you have not left any part of your being unlived, your death needs to be a ceremony, a festival. AS YET, MEN HAVE...

... NOT LEARNED TO CONSECRATE THE FAIREST FESTIVALS. I SHALL SHOW YOU THE CONSUMMATING DEATH, WHICH SHALL BE A SPUR AND A PROMISE TO THE LIVING. THE MAN CONSUMMATING HIS LIFE DIES HIS DEATH TRIUMPHANTLY. Death should be a triumph, a victory, a coming home. But for that you have to transform your whole life. You have to live differently - not like a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan - but like a...

... natural human being, without any fear and without any greed. Let this moment be enough unto itself. Don't sacrifice it for something else in the future, and don't waste it in remembering sweet past memories. Create this moment as sweet and as beautiful as you can; and this way, moment to moment, your life will become a garland of flowers. And when the garland is complete it is time for death, a death...

... chimpanzee can push the button; the button is in the White House and a certain missile will start moving, carrying with it death for millions. In the past the warrior was a dignified human being. He was in every way himself a piece of art. His swordsmanship or his archery gave him a certain discipline, gave him a certain flexible body - strong and yet flexible. You can see in the forest, in the deer, how...

... GRINNING DEATH, WHICH COMES CREEPING UP LIKE A THIEF - AND YET COMES AS MASTER. I COMMEND TO YOU MY SORT OF DEATH, VOLUNTARY DEATH THAT COMES TO ME BECAUSE I WISH IT. But if you are not a master of your life, then how can you be the master of your death? It is a well-known fact in the East that most great sages announce their death beforehand, and people have misunderstood it: people think that they are...

...: they think it is a prediction. It is not a prediction at all: they could linger, if they wanted, a little more, but they don't want to overdo anything. When something is done to its completion, even the last touches are completed, then it is time to leave, it is time to say goodbye to the earth. AND WHEN SHALL I WISH IT? - HE WHO HAS A GOAL AND AN HEIR WANTS DEATH AT THE TIME MOST FAVORABLE TO HIS...

... GOAL AND HIS HEIR.... MANY A ONE GROWS TOO OLD EVEN FOR HIS TRUTHS AND VICTORIES; A TOOTHLESS MOUTH HAS NO LONGER THE RIGHT TO EVERY TRUTH. AND EVERYONE WHO WANTS GLORY MUST TAKE LEAVE OF HONOUR IN GOOD TIME AND PRACTISE THE DIFFICULT ART OF - GOING AT THE RIGHT TIME.... I WISH PREACHERS OF SPEEDY DEATH WOULD COME! THEY WOULD BE THE FITTING STORM AND SHAKERS OF THE TREES OF LIFE! BUT I HEAR PREACHED...

... ONLY SLOW DEATH AND PATIENCE WITH ALL 'EARTHLY THINGS'.... IF ONE ONLY REMAINED IN THE DESERT AND FAR FROM THE GOOD AND JUST! PERHAPS HE WOULD HAVE LEARNED TO LIVE AND LEARNED TO LOVE THE EARTH - AND LAUGHTER AS WELL!... THAT YOUR DEATH MAY NOT BE A BLASPHEMY AGAINST MAN AND THE EARTH, MY FRIENDS: THAT IS WHAT I BEG FROM THE HONEY OF YOUR SOUL. IN YOUR DEATH, YOUR SPIRIT AND YOUR VIRTUE SHOULD STILL...

..., THROWING ON THE GOLDEN BALL, MY FRIENDS! SO I SHALL STAY ON EARTH A LITTLE LONGER: FORGIVE ME FOR IT! Zarathustra is incomparable in many of his insights. This can be one of the greatest lessons: that if you want a glorious death, not an ugly and contemptible one, you should start living from this very moment. Totality should be your concern: living totally, burning your torch of life from both ends...

... open the doors, will welcome death, because death is not your enemy. It is simply a change of house: from one body into another, from one form into another or, ultimately, from form to the formless life that surrounds the earth. A religious man not only lives religiously, he dies religiously. A man of art lives artfully, and lives not only artfully, but dies too with great art. One Zen master was...

... lotus posture, so that is not new." Somebody said, "You can die standing." And they were talking as if it was just a playfulness - it should be playfulness - but one man objected. He said, "I know about a sage who died standing." Then somebody else suggested, "Then there is only one way. You stand on your head! Die standing on your head, I don't think anybody has done...

... the bed in a proper way." Bokoju had to; an elder sister cannot be disobeyed. The people could not believe it. They had checked in every way - his breathing had gone, his heart had stopped. He came back and he lay down on the bed and he said to his sister, "Okay, you can go now, I will die in a proper way." The sister went away, and he died in a proper way. They again checked. It was...

.... When you die, that is only one of the forms of death. When your mother dies, that is a death to you too - because the mother was involved in you, she was occupying a great part of your being. And the mother has died - that part inside you has died. Your father will die, your brother, your sister, your friend. Even when your enemy dies, something will die in you, because the enemy was also involved in...

... only take notice of something which happens suddenly, you only take notice of something which is abrupt. And death is continuous - that's why you don't take any note of it. And these are not the only forms of death; there are even more subtle forms of death. When you fall in love you die. Love is death - death in its purity. And only those who are ready to die will be able to love. If you are afraid...

... to die you will also be afraid to love. That's why love is missing in the world. People go on thinking about love - they fantasize about it but they don't move into it. Because love is death. And death frightens you. Lovers die into each other. And only those who are ready to die into each other become lovers. Others are only playing the game. The game of love is not real love, it is phony. And...

... millions of people go on being phony - because they are afraid of death, therefore they are afraid of love too. And love always brings death in. Love is a door for death and death is a door for love. Or when you meditate, then too you die. Hence people are afraid of going into deep meditation. Every day somebody comes to me: 'Now, Osho, it is happening. And I am frightened, I am frightened to my very...

... death. This is one of the greatest problems each single individual has to decide. Don't die an ordinary death - reluctant, fighting, angry, in rage, clinging, greedy for life. Die lovingly. Only then will you be able to understand these sutras of Kabir - they are of immense value and of immense splendor. THE DARKNESS OF NIGHT IS COMING ALONG FAST, AND THE SHADOWS OF LOVE CLOSE IN THE BODY AND THE MIND...

... not so. When death comes your love disappears absolutely. You become dry like a desert, all that is green in you disappears. How can you love when death is coming? Who can think of love when death knocks on the door? How can you afford to think of love when death is so close by? Love is a luxury - when death is far away you can afford it. In fact lovers think that they are not going to die. Lovers...

... and says that within five minutes you are going to die. The beloved will disappear, she will not be there at all. Your hand may still be in the hand of your woman but your hand will not feel anything at all. Your hand will be a dead hand. You will become cold, all warmth will disappear. Death is coming. Who can think of love? That's why only young people can afford to be in love - death seems to be...

... statement is strange and of immense value. He says: THE DARKNESS OF NIGHT IS COMING ALONG FAST, AND THE SHADOWS OF LOVE CLOSE IN THE BODY AND THE MIND. CHHAVAI PREM TAN-MAN MEN. 'My body and mind are becoming over flooded with love.' This is how one should die. If death destroys your love then you have not known real love; then you were really in delusion - that love was not true love. Then you have not...

... into God, what to say about life? It naturally transforms life into great ecstasy. One should learn how to live and how to die. This is the way to die - full of love, full of prayer, ready to go on that adventure called death. The body will be going; you as a separate phenomenon will disappear into the whole. But that is the hankering of love - love WANTS to disappear, love wants to die, love wants...

... known what love is. Death and love go together, they are aspects of the same energy. When death fulfills your love, and when in love you are ready to die - when they have the same taste and the same flavor - then for the first time you have really become aware of the mysteries of life, love and death. OPEN THE WINDOW TO THE WEST, AND DISAPPEAR INTO THE AIR INSIDE YOU. 'Open the window to the west...

... beyond - He cannot be confined in the yes and He cannot be confined in the no. Buddha says 'nirvana'. Nirvana means death - the word literally means 'putting out a lamp'. Nirvana means 'putting out a flame'. Just like that, you disappear in death. Death is God for Buddha. That's why Buddha chose the yellow robe for his monks - yellow is the color of death. The leaves become yellow before they die; the...

...The Sword of Love-and-Death...

... Osho The Revolution: The Sword of Love-and-Death Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho The Revolution   Next > The Sword of Love-and-Death From: Osho Date: Fri, 19 February 1978 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Osho - The Revolution Chapter #: 9 Location: am in Buddha Hall Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video...

... KABIR SAYS, 'FRIEND, LISTEN, THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TO SAY: THE GUEST I LOVE IS INSIDE ME!' FRIEND, HOPE FOR THE GUEST WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. JUMP INTO EXPERIENCE WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. THINK AND THINK WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. WHAT YOU CALL 'SALVATION' BELONGS TO THE TIME BEFORE DEATH. IF YOU DON'T BREAK YOUR ROPES WHILE YOU'RE ALIVE, DO YOU THINK GHOSTS WILL DO IT AFTER? THE IDEA THAT THE SOUL WILL JOIN WITH...

... THE ECSTATIC JUST BECAUSE THE BODY IS ROTTEN - THAT IS ALL FANTASY. WHAT IS FOUND NOW IS FOUND THEN. IF YOU FIND NOTHING NOW, YOU WILL SIMPLY END UP WITH AN APARTMENT IN THE CITY OF DEATH. AND IF YOU MAKE LOVE WITH THE DIVINE NOW, IN THE NEXT LIFE YOU WILL HAVE THE FACE OF SATISFIED DESIRE. THEN PLUNGE INTO THE TRUTH, FIND OUT WHO THE TEACHER IS, BELIEVE IN THE GREAT SOUND! KABIR SAYS THIS: 'WHEN...

... THE GUEST IS BEING SEARCHED FOR, IT IS THE INTENSITY OF THE LONGING FOR THE GUEST THAT DOES ALL THE WORK. LOOK AT ME... YOU WILL SEE A SLAVE OF THAT INTENSITY.' THE greatest mystery in life is not life itself but death. Death is the culmination of life, the ultimate blossoming of life. In death the whole life is summed up, in death you arrive. Life is a pilgrimage towards death. From the very...

... beginning, death is coming. From the morn.en of birth, death has started coming towards you, you have started moving towards death. And the greatest calamity that has happened to the human mind is that he is against death. Being against death means you will miss the greatest mystery. And being against death also means that you will miss life itself - because they are deeply involved in each other; they...

... are not two. Life is growing, death is the flowering of it. The journey and the goal are not separate - the journey ends in the goal. Death has to be taken as the crescendo. Then a different vision arises. then you don't avoid death, then you are not anti-death - then you are thrilled by its mystery and you start enjoying it and contemplating it and meditating on it. And death comes in many ways...

... you. You will miss something, you will lack something, you will never be the same again. So it is not only in your death that death comes; death comes through many ways. Death is always coming. When your childhood disappears and you become a young man or a young woman, can't you see? Death has happened. The childhood is no more there, the childhood has died, that door is closed. You cannot move back...

... a death. You flow between these two banks, birth and death. Your river of life is possible only because of birth and death - and it is each moment that it is happening. It happens very silently. You cannot hear its footsteps, it makes no noise. It goes on happening - and it happens so continuously that you don't see it, it is so obvious. The obvious is forgotten, it becomes part of your life. You...

... roots. Meditation is happening; I feel a kind of disappearance. Now protect me.' He was eager to meditate - when it was not happening he was very worried about it. Now it is happening; that creates worry. And I know why - because when he was reading about meditation and hearing about meditation he became greedy about it, without becoming aware that it will lead one into a deep death. Or you surrender...

... to a master. That is one of the most profound deaths: the ego dies and disappears. These are all deaths, and death is always coming. You must have heard these famous lines of John Donne: 'Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls - it tolls for thee.' Whenever anybody dies anywhere, death knocks at your doors too. And...

... not only a human being: a dog dies, a crow dies, or a leaf becomes pale and dies and drops from the tree - you are dying. Because we are involved in each other, we are parts of each other, we are members of each other. Man is not an island; we are all in a kind of togetherness. And death is happening each moment in millions of ways all around the world. Existence lives through death, existence...

... renews itself through death. Death is the greatest mystery - more mysterious than life, because life is only a pilgrimage towards death. And only those who are in love with death will be able to know what life is. People don't live - they can't live, they are so frightened of death. I have heard: Ludwig Wittgenstein, a great philosopher, was staying at another great philosopher's house - Bertrand...

..., pragmatic, logical. Wittgenstein was also a great logician, greater than Bertrand Russell, but he knew the limits of logic too. He knew that there is something beyond logic and he knew that life reveals its mysteries only in death. And he remained fascinated with death his whole life - he was always contemplating whether to commit suicide or not. By 'suicide' he does not mean the ordinary suicide - he is...

... asking whether to disappear or not. And one can disappear in two ways. One, the ordinary way, the ordinary way of dying - resisting, fighting. The other way is relaxing, enjoying, ecstatic about it. That's what he calls suicide. Voluntarily, dancing, thrilled by the adventure - that's what he calls suicide. Suicide means being ready of one's own accord, taking a few steps to meet death and embrace...

.... A very strange statement. TINVIR SANZ KA GAHIRA AVAI CHHAVAI PREM TAN-MAN MEN. THE night is coming fast, the night is becoming darker and darker, all light is disappearing. Life is being drowned by death, death is coming like a flood - CHHAVAI PREM TAN-MAN MEN. But Kabir says: I am surprised that my body and mind are both so full of love. And death is coming - it should not be so. Ordinarily it is...

... tend to forget about death - they start feeling love is eternal, it is for ever and ever. Love is possible, ordinary love I mean, is possible only when you can think, imagine, that there is no death. Only then is there time and space to show love, to grow love, to reap love. If death is coming... Just think: you are sitting by the side of your beloved holding her hand and suddenly a messenger comes...

... far away, very distant. If it is going to happen it is so far away, there is no need to worry about it. As you grow old, love becomes difficult because death is coming closer in many ways. Your hairs are turning Grey, your face is getting wrinkles, your body is becoming weak, you are losing something every day. And whatsoever you lose cannot be reclaimed again. You are dying. As you become old, love...

... seems to be almost impossible. And if old people are always thinking about young people as fools, they have a reason to think so. The reason is, they can now see the foolishness of love. When death is there, love is foolish, love is absurd. If there is no death then love is possible, then love is beautiful. If death is there, what is the point of love? It is only a kind of hallucination. Maybe love is...

... people as skeletons, he starts seeing people as rotten bodies, as dirty things. How can you fall in love with skeletons? Just think of your beloved as a skeleton. And hug the skeleton. Just think of the bones... No, you need youth to be fool you - that's what the old man starts thinking. He is dying. And when death enters from one door, love disappears through another. That's why I say Kabir's...

... yet found your beloved, then you have not seen God in your beloved. Otherwise, as death comes closer, you will feel full of love - over flooded, overflowing. Why? Because now you as a separate entity are going to disappear completely into the Beloved. Then death is no more death, but God. And this is the miracle of meditation, that it transforms death into God. And if meditation can transform death...

... to become one with the whole. It does not want to remain separate. This longing to be one with the whole is love. Remember, if death reminds you of love then you are on the right track. If love reminds you of death then you are on the right track. If your love is possible only by denying death then your love is false. And if the very idea of death destroys your quality of love then you have not yet...

......' This is a metaphor. The east represents the rising sun, the birth. And the west represents the setting sun, the death. Kabir says: Open the window to the west. Now get ready, open the window to the west, the sun is going to set. Be quick, open the window to the west, don't miss this beauty of the sunset. You have seen the beauty of a rising sun, now dance with the setting sun. You have lived your...

... life, now live your death. OPEN THE WINDOW TO THE WEST, AND DISAPPEAR INTO THE AIR INSIDE YOU. The original is: DUBAHU PREM-GAGAN MEN - Disappear in the inner sky of love. Open the door for death and disappear into the inner sky of love. Let there be a meeting of death and love, let death and love become one. And then one knows what God is. Yes, the meeting point of love and death is the experience...

... of God. And you go on asking what God is, and you go on asking about God as if it is a question to be answered by some theologian or a philosopher. It is an EXPERIENCE, and only available to the most courageous - because it is a meeting of death and love. OPEN THE WINDOW TO THE WEST, AND DISAPPEAR INTO THE INNER SKY OF LOVE. Then you will know what God is. God is love from one side, and death from...

... another side. And there are two types of religion in the world - religions which have taken the love side of God and emphasized it, and the religions which have taken the death side of God and emphasized it. Christianity has taken the love side, Buddha has taken the death side. Kabir transcends both sides, and says: There is no need to choose. Let both be there - why choose? Let death and love meet...

.... OPEN THE WINDOW TO THE WEST, AND DISAPPEAR INTO THE INNER SKY OF LOVE. DUBAHU PREM-GAGAN MEN. 'Be drowned by both love and death.' Kabir has a very transcending insight. Jesus says 'God is love' - that is the positive side of God. Buddha takes the negative side of God - his path is the path of the negative, via negative. Christ says yes, Buddha says no. And God is both, yes/no. God is both and yet...

... man becomes yellow, the blood disappears from his face before he dies. Yellow is the color of death. Kabir is both Buddha and Christ. He says 'Why choose? God is both.' But why have Christ and Buddha chosen? Because if you don't choose you look very illogical. God, both love and death? It looks absurd - it does not fit with our categories of thinking. God, both light and darkness? God, both creative...

... in it; you will go on stuffing yourself. You may not have thought about it that way: people are destructive. From where does all this destruction come? So the Christians had to invent the devil. The devil is just a scapegoat to unburden God, so God remains pure love and the devil becomes pure hate. But in life nothing is pure, all is mixed. Life and death are mixed, love and hate are mixed...

.... Kabir is courageous enough to be absurd. He says God is both: love and death. OPEN THE WINDOW TO THE WEST, AND DISAPPEAR INTO THE AIR INSIDE YOU. NEAR YOUR BREASTBONE THERE IS AN OPEN FLOWER. CHET-KAMAL-DAL RAS PIYO RE. Just at the innermost core of your being there is a lotus of consciousness, full of the juice of immortality. NEAR YOUR BREASTBONE THERE IS AN OPEN FLOWER. But that flower can be...

... experienced only when love and death are experienced together - otherwise not. That flower blooms only when love gives it nourishment and death showers on it like rain. When love and death both enter into the flower it opens - otherwise not. The perfect flowering of a human consciousness is of love and death. NEAR YOUR BREASTBONE THERE IS AN OPEN FLOWER. DRINK THE HONEY THAT IS ALL AROUND THAT FLOWER. THE...

... original is very beautiful: CHET-KAMAL-DAL RAS PIYO RE - 'Be conscious of the flower that you have been carrying within yourself for ages. Let death awaken you, and let love give you the ecstasy of awakening.' Both are needed - the shock of death is needed to awaken you, and also the nourishment of love. If there is only the shock of death you may fall into a coma. If there is only the nourishment of...

... love you will go into hallucinations. The shock of death will not allow you to go into hallucinations, into any inner lsd-trip. And love and the nourishment of love will not allow you to dry up because of death. You will remain green because of love and you will remain alert because of death. Have you observed it? Whenever you are in danger you become more aware. In fact that is the reason why people...

... sometimes love to be in danger. When you are driving a car, there arises a longing to go faster and faster. When you are going at a hundred miles per hour there is great awareness. All thinking disappears - when you are going at a hundred and twenty miles per hour, how can you think? Mind stops. Mind cannot afford to think, it is too risky - the thought may distract you, and there is death. You have to be...

... absolutely alert, on guard. That's why people go mountain climbing - it helps awareness. They may not be consciously searching for awareness, but those who know, they say man seeks dangers just to feel the thrill of consciousness. Whenever death is close by you become aware. And whenever there is love you bloom. Alone, love will take you into hallucinations, dreams, fantasies. Alone, death will make you...

... THAT FLOWER. WAVES ARE COMING IN... If you allow these two things - if you allow this paradox, if you allow this absurdity of death and love both throbbing in you, dancing in you hand in hand - then, then you will experience... WAVES ARE COMING IN. The original is far better: LAHAR LEHU YA TAN MAN MEN - 'Let the divine flood this, THIS body.' This very body the Buddha. You need not go anywhere else...

...; you need not have any heavenly body, you need not become an angel. In this very body, in this very ordinary body, the extraordinary happens. Just allow love and death together, and waves start coming in, waves from the beyond. LAHAR LEHU YE TAN MAN MEN. And this very body becomes a dance, a vibration, a streaming energy, a pulsation. Then it breathes in the divine, then it beats in the divine. Then...

... this very body is transformed. Then: This very body the Buddha. WAVES ARE COMING IN: THERE IS SO MUCH MAGNIFICENCE NEAR THE OCEAN. If you allow death and love to happen together, for the first time you will come close to the infinity of existence, to the ocean-like vastness of existence. And waves will come and drown you. And in that drowning you will find yourself. In that disappearing you will...

... SAYS, 'FRIEND, LISTEN, THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TO SAY: THE GUEST I LOVE IS INSIDE ME!' The host is the guest. When love and death meet in you, the host and the guest are known to be as one. The guest is not separate from you. You have been unnecessarily waiting for him, he will never come, because he is already inside you. He cannot come. He has already come; from the very beginning he has been inside...

... you. He is you: the seeker is the sought, the observer is the observed, the meditator is the meditated upon. But the division exists between the meditator and the meditated upon, the seeker and the sought, the knower and the known, the host and the guest. Why this division? This division exists because of an inner and far deeper division, the division between love and death. When that division...

... disappears, all divisions disappear. Let me repeat it: There is only one division in life, and that is the division between love and death. All other divisions are by-products of it. Once the fundamental division is no longer there, all divisions simply disappear on their own accord; they lose all substance. KABIR SAYS, 'FRIEND, LISTEN TO THIS, THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TO SAY: THE GUEST I LOVE IS INSIDE ME!' He...

... is me. I am that. FRIEND, HOPE FOR THE GUEST WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. SADHO BHAI, JIVAT HI KARO ASHA. KABIR says that people are postponing, they live in postponement. People live in the tomorrows - they say 'Yes, when death comes we will try.' But you will not be able to do it when death comes; you will not be prepared for it. And death comes so suddenly. Death is always an accident, because it comes...

... without informing you, without warning you. When it comes, it comes - and suddenly it is there and all is finished. Unless your whole life has been a preparation for it you will miss the point, unless your whole life you have been learning how to die, unless you have not been missing any opportunity to die in love, in friendship, in trust, in surrender. Your mother dies: don't miss that opportunity...

.... When a sannyasin comes to me and says 'My mother is dying, my father is dying' I tell him 'Go and be with your dying father and experience death.' One shrinks away. One wants to think 'My father is dying, not I.' 'Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls - it tolls for thee.' Even in the death of a stranger you are dying...

.... Whenever there is death, go close, get involved, allow it, let it happen to you. When your father is dying, when his breathing is becoming hard, feel it, empathize with him. Feel what he is feeling, become him, and let a death happen to you too. And you will be immensely benefited. You will be thankful to your father for his life and for his death too - he gave you much when he was alive and he gave you...

... even more when he died. When your woman is dying, when your man is dying, be close. Feel the heartbeat of a dying friend, a lover, a beloved - let that experience become your experience too. And, slowly slowly, knowing death in its many aspects, you will come to recognize it as a friend, not as an enemy; as a great rest and relaxation. It is not against life. It is only because of death that life is...

... possible. Without death, life will not be possible. When a rose flower is disappearing in the evening, its petals are falling, sit there and meditate. Feel yourself as a flower with your petals falling. Early in the morning when the sun rises and the stars disappear, feel yourself disappearing with all the stars. And when the sun has risen and the dewdrops on the grass leaves start disappearing, feel...

... yourself disappearing like the dewdrops. Feel death in as many ways as possible. Become a great experience of death. And you have to do the same with love. Not only experience your own love, experience everybody else's love. Two lovers are passing, hand in hand, in a deep deep communion: feel that communion, be thrilled by it. People ordinarily become jealous and antagonistic. Lovers are not allowed. If...

... compared to that light which arises between two lovers. Nourish yourself from all kinds of love experiences. Love and death both have to be experienced and then you will become rich. Then you will attain to great peaks of joy. And finally, only then will you be able to know God - because God is the experience of love and death together, in a single instant. Kabir says: SADHO BHAI, JIVAT HI KARO ASHA...

.... Hope while you are alive. Do something while you are alive! FRIEND, HOPE FOR THE GUEST WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. Don't postpone it. People go on postponing - they say 'Yes, when the time comes we will see; we will pray, we will meditate. And I am still young and death is far away.' And then people have created philosophies. People are more interested in what happens after death than in what happens before...

... death. There are hundreds of books written all over the world in all the languages about the mystery of what happens after death. People are very interested. People come to me, they write letters to me: 'Tell us something - what happens after death?' And I tell them 'First see what happens BEFORE death! "After" is not a relevant question. You are alive: just see what is happening right now...

... controversy; he is controversial. Kabir created much controversy while he was alive - because for centuries the Indian mind has been thinking about what happens after death. The Indian mind has become focused so much on the life beyond death, the afterlife, that it has completely forgotten to live right now. It has completely forgotten how to live in this moment; the afterlife has become its obsession...

.... Kabir says: FRIEND, HOPE FOR THE GUEST WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. Don't think that when you are dead you will go to paradise, to heaven. You will remain the same wherever you are. Death is not going to transform anything, unless you become rich through the experience of life and death every moment. JUMP INTO EXPERIENCE WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. THINK AND THINK WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. JIVAT SAMAZE JIVAT BOOZE. The...

...-standing comes, it is not that you know about love. You become love. That is the difference between knowledge and understanding. When knowledge comes, you remain separate from the knowledge. When understanding comes, you become one with it. 'Understand and be' says Kabir. WHAT YOU CALL 'SALVATION' BELONGS TO THE TIME BEFORE DEATH. Don't look for any salvation in the afterlife. Salvation is HERE, because...

... the good person is never a do-gooder. The good person is one whom good follows just like his shadow. He does not intend to do it, he has no intention to serve anybody, but his life becomes a service. It comes effortlessly. WHAT YOU CALL 'SALVATION' BELONGS TO THE TIME BEFORE DEATH. Because the body is the occasion to experience, the mind is the occasion to experience. These are opportunities, gifts...

.... Those people who go on avoiding errors remain stuck and immature. Growth comes through many errors; errors are part of growth. WHAT YOU CALL 'SALVATION' BELONGS TO THE TIME BEFORE DEATH. IF YOU DON'T BREAK YOUR ROPES WHILE YOU'RE ALIVE, DO YOU THINK GHOSTS WILL DO IT AFTER? If you cannot know truth while alive, how will you be able to know truth when you are dead? Life gives you three-dimensional...

... opportunities - of the body, of the mind, of the soul. Death will take two dimensions away from you - your life will be one-dimensional, of the soul only. This three- dimensional school of life is the greatest possibility to know, to understand, to be. THE IDEA THAT THE SOUL WILL JOIN WITH THE ECSTATIC JUST BECAUSE THE BODY IS ROTTEN - THAT IS ALL FANTASY. WHAT IS FOUND NOW IS FOUND THEN. ABAHUU MILA TO...

... pure like a mirror and nothing is reflected in it. That mirror like consciousness reflecting nothing is spirituality. And that can happen only right now. Now or never. ABAHUU MILA TO TABAHUN MILEGA. WHAT IS FOUND NOW IS FOUND THEN. IF YOU FIND NOTHING NOW, YOU WILL SIMPLY END UP WITH AN APARTMENT IN THE CITY OF DEATH. AND IF YOU MAKE LOVE WITH THE DIVINE NOW, IN THE NEXT LIFE YOU WILL HAVE THE FACE...

... will give you a little glimpse, a little taste, that the truth is inside you: now you need somebody who can throw you into your own inside. On your own it will be very difficult to go into your own inside, because you will be going into love and death - which frightens, which scares. The master does not give. you anything, he simply gives you your own being. He gives you that which you already have...

... psychoanalyzed, no person can be - because psychoanalysis tries to unravel the knot. Mystics believe in drastic methods. The situation is such, desperate, that only a drastic thing can help. A sword is needed. Kabir is a sword. And you can also create your own sword. The sword is created by two energies: love and death. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... life is just a part of death. You are fooled by that. You think it is life and it is nothing but death on its way. A man is born - he is on his way to die. Whatsoever he becomes, whatsoever he achieves, possesses, nothing will help: he is moving toward death. This so-called life is moving toward death. How can we call it life? That is Buddha's question. A life which moves toward death, how call it...

... into the beginning, into the seed, so that you can go beyond - that is tantra's approach. Buddha focuses on death, and he says to meditate deeply on death, move into it and know the whole reality of it. Both are two ends of the same thing. Sex is death, and death is very sexual. It will be difficult to understand. There are many insects which die with their first intercourse. The first sex act, and...

... - you can work on it more deeply - death has to occur. It is still in the imagination; it is not a reality to you. And when you see someone die, you never see death. You see someone dying, never the death - the process which happens to him inside. You cannot see it; it is invisible, it is individual. And the individual himself cannot say anything because the moment he goes through the process he is no...

... same. And because he was insisting, the girl felt it to be a matter of conscience: she insisted to marry. Then they got married. Now, after marriage, the girl is surrounded constantly by death. She is sad; she cannot love the boy. It is easy to die for anyone,.it is very difficult to live. It is very easy to die... to be a martyr is such an easy thing. It is such an easy thing to be a martyr because...

... unfortunate, but it may prove very fortunate. Everyone's husband is going to die, but it is not certain. Everybody's wife is going to die, but it is not certain. Death is certain, only the date is not certain. And who knows, even the date may be certain - you do not know. That is why ignorance is very blissful. She could have loved that boy if still they were ignorant; apparently nothing would be wrong. But...

... now love has become impossible, life has become impossible. Death is always there, constantly present between the two of Them. So I asked her, "Why are you not loving him more because he is going to die? Love him more." She said, "How can I love? We are always three; the privacy is lost. I am there and my husband is there, and between we two, Death. There is no privacy left."...

... is observing your pulse rate. Inside, you just start being angry; you imagine that you are fighting, angry - your pulse rate will go higher. Inside, just imagine you are dying, that you are just going to die. Become silent and feel death descending. Your pulse rate will come down. The pulse rate is a physical thing, and you were just imagining. Imagination is not unreal; it is also real. If you can...

... seem strange - using a method, an imaginary method of death, and then coming to the deathless point. You will come to know suddenly, "I cannot die." You have seen others who have died. What happened to them? Their bodies became dead; that is why you inferred that they were dead. Now you can see that the whole body is lying dead, and you are alive. So bodily death is not your death. The body...

... about one astrologer who had promised to work on my life's birth chart. He died before he had done it, so his son had to prepare the chart, but he was also puzzled. He said, "It is almost certain that this child is going to die at the age of twenty-one. Every seven years he will have to face death." So my parents, my family, were always worried about my death. Whenever I would come to the...

... experience. I died in a way, and I came to realize - now I can tell about it, though at that time it was just a vague experience - I came to feel that death is impossible. This was a feeling. Then at the age of fourteen, my family again became disturbed that I would die. I survived, but then I again tried it consciously. I said to them, "If death is going to occur as the astrologer has said, then it...

... is better to be prepared. And why give a chance to death? Why should I not go and meet it half way? If I am going to die, then it is better to die consciously." So I took leave from my school for seven days. I went to my principal and I told him, "I am going to die." He said, "What nonsense you are talking! Are you committing suicide? What do you mean you are going to die?"...

... it. Then again at the age of twenty-one, my family was waiting. So I told them, "Why do you go on waiting? Do not wait. Now I am not going to die." Physically, someday I will die, of course. However, this prediction of the astrologer helped me very much because he made me aware very early on about death. Continuously, I could meditate and could accept that it was coming. Death can be used...

...Doubt or faith, life or death; the bases of different paths...

... Osho Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Volume 1: Doubt or faith, life or death; the bases of different paths Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Volume 1   Next > Doubt or faith, life or death; the bases of different paths From: Osho Date: Fri, 17 December 1972 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Osho - Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1...

... the intellectual type, many are for the emotional type. But do not think that because you are a mixed type you have to follow both. That will create more confusion, and you will be divided so deeply that you may even go mad, schizophrenic; you may become split. Do not do that. The second question: Question 2: TO KNOW DEATH IS CERTAIN,YOU SAID YESTERDAY. THIS SEEMS TO BE THE APPROACH OF BUDDHA, WHO...

... WAS LIFE-NEGATIVE. BUT TANTRA'S APPROACH IS LIFE AFFIRMATIVE, NOT NEGATIVE, SO HOW CAN THIS DEATH ORIENTATION BE USED IN TANTRA? Buddha is not really life-negative. He appears so: he appears to be live-negative because he focuses on death. To us he appears to be in love with death, but he is not. On the contrary, he is in love with eternal life. To find that life which is deathless, he focuses on...

... death. Death is not his love, he has to focus on death just to find something which is beyond death. And Buddha says that if there is nothing beyond death then life is futile - but only then is life futile. He never says life is futile,.he says that if nothing is beyond death, then life is futile. And your life is futile, he says, because your life is not beyond death. Whatsoever you think is your...

... life? Life which implies death inevitably is just hidden death, not life; it is gradual death. By and by you are dying, and you go on thinking that you are living. Right now you feel you are living, but you are dying. Every moment you are losing life and gaining death. A tree is known by its fruits, Buddha says, so your tree of life cannot be called life because death is the fruit. A tree is known by...

... its fruit, and if on your tree of life only fruits of death come, then you were deceived by the tree. And another thing: if a tree gives a particular fruit, it shows that that particular fruit was the seed of the tree; otherwise that particular fruit could not come out of the tree. So if life gives the fruit of death, death must have been the seed. Let us understand this. You are born, and you think...

... that birth is the beginning - it is not. Before this birth, you died in another life. That death was the seed of this birth, and then again, death will become the fruit. And that fruit will become the seed for another birth. Birth leads to death, death precedes birth. So if you want to see life as it really is, it is rounded on both the sides by death. Death is the beginning and death is again the...

... end, and life is just the illusion in between. You feel alive between two deaths; the passage joining one death to another you call life. Buddha says this is not life. This life is DUKKHA - misery. This life is death. That is why he appears to us who are deeply life-hypnotized, obsessed about being alive in any way, as life-negating. To us, just to be alive seems to be the end. We are so much afraid...

... of death that Buddha appears in love with death, and that looks abnormal. He seems to be suicidal. This is what many have criticized Buddha for. Albert Schweitzer has criticized Buddha because he feels that Buddha is obsessed with death. He is not obsessed with death: we are obsessed with life. He is simply analyzing things, finding out what are the facts. And the deeper you go, the more you will...

... find he is right. Your life is just false, fake, overtaken by death, just a clothing - inside there is death. Buddha focuses on death because he says, "If I can find out what death is, only then can I find out what life is. And if I can know what both death and life are, then there is a possibility that I may transcend both and know something which is beyond birth and death, beyond both."...

...; He is not negative, not life-denying, but he appears so. Tantra appears life-affirmative, but that again is our interpretation. Neither is Buddha life-denying, nor is tantra life-affirmative; the source is the same. Buddha focuses on death, tantra focuses on life. And both are one, so wherever you want to start, start. But go so deeply that you come to know the other also. Buddha focuses on the end...

... - death. Tantra focuses on the beginning-life. That is why Buddha seems to be too much in love with death and tantra seems to be too much in love with sex, love, body, life. In the end there is death and in the beginning there is sex. Because tantra focuses itself on the beginning, sex becomes very important. So how to go deep and know what sex is, how to reveal the mystery of love, how to penetrate...

... death occurs. There is a species of spider in Africa in which the male dies in copulation. He cannot come down from the copulation; he is just on the female, and he dies there. The first copulation becomes death, and it is very horrible. At the moment of ejaculation he dies. Actually, he is not even really dead: he is still in the pangs of death. The moment the spider, the male spider, ejaculates...

..., death starts and the female starts eating him. He never dismounts. The female starts eating him, and by the time the sexual act is finished, he is half eaten. Sex and death are so interconnected. Because of this, man became afraid of sex. Those who want to live more, who are fascinated with long life, they will be always afraid of sex, and those who think that they can become immortal, BRAHMACHARYA...

... celibacy will be their cult. No one has yet been immortal and no one can be because you are born out of sex. If you were born out of BRAHMACHARYA, then it could be possible. If your father and mother were celibates, then, then only could you be immortal. Sex has already entered with your birth. Whether you go into sex or not makes no difference: you cannot escape death. Your very being starts with sex...

..., and sex is the beginning of death. Because of this Christians say Jesus was born from a virgin mother. Just to say that he is no mortal, no ordinary mortal, they say he was born to a virgin mother. "He is no ordinary mortal"... just to say this, just to say that death has no power over him, they had to create this myth. This is a part of a long myth. If he was born out of sex, then death...

... would have its power over him. Then he could not escape death, as with sex, death enters. So they say that he was born without any sex act; he was not a by-productof sex. They say that because he was the son of a virgin mother, he could revive again - resurrect. They crucified him, but they could not kill him. He remained alive because he was not a by-product of sex. They could not kill him. If really...

... Jesus was born out of a virgin mother, it is impossible to kill him. It is impossible to kill him! Death is impossible! When the beginning is not, how can the end be? If he was not born out of a virgin mother, then death will be the certain, inevitable end. So the whole myth has to be maintained. If you say that he was not born out of a virgin mother, then the second part of the myth, resurrection...

..., becomes false. If you say he resurrected, that he denied death, escaped death, that death could not kill him, that he could not be crucified really, that those who were crucifying him were deceived, that he was alive and he remained alive, then you have to maintain the first part of the myth. I am not saying anything for or against, I am simply saying that the WHOLE myth has to be maintained, one part...

... only cannot be maintained. If sex is there before birth, then death will be there. Because of this deep association, many times many societies have become afraid of sex. That fear is of death. Even if you accept sex, a certain fear remains there. Even if you move into sex, a certain fear remains there. No one allows himself a total let-go in it. The fear is there, you are on guard. You cannot go into...

... it totally; you cannot let yourself go completely because that let-go is just like death. Neither is tantra for your idea of life, nor is Buddha against the real life. Tantra starts from one part - the beginning; Buddha starts with the end. And tantra is more scientific than Buddha, because it is always good to begin at the beginning. You are already born; death is far away. Birth has occurred...

... more. He cannot come back, he cannot step back and tell what has happened. So whatsoever is known about death is just inference. No one knows anything about death actually. Unless you can remember your past lives, you cannot actually know anything about death. You have died many times; that is why Buddha had to revive many techniques about remembering past lives. Because your death of this life is in...

... the future, how can you concentrate on it? How can you meditate on it? It has not happened yet. It is very vague, dark, unknown. What can you do? You can only think about it, but that thinking will also be borrowed. You will be repeating what others have said. Someone has said something about death, and you will be repeating it. How can you meditate on death? You can see others dying, but that is...

... the death of this life has not come yet. It always happens to others; it has not happened to you yet. It is difficult to meditate on death. As a base, you will have to move into past lives, you will have to go digging into past memories. Buddha, Mahavir, they both used the technique of JAATI SMARAN - the technique of going into past lives. Only then can you meditate on death. Tantra is more...

... scientific. It starts with life, with birth, with sex, which is a fact to you. Death is still a fiction. But remember, the end of both is the same. They both are in search of eternal life - life which is deathless. Either transcend the beginning or transcend the end, either jump from one pole or from another. And remember, you can jump out of it only from a pole, you cannot jump from the middle. If I want...

... to jump out of this room, either I have to move to this side to the extreme, or to that side to the extreme. I cannot jump out from the middle of the room, because jumping is possible only from the extreme pole. And there are two extreme poles in life - birth and death. Tantra starts from birth. It is more scientific, more real. You are already in it, so you can meditate upon it. Sex is a fact, so...

... you can meditate upon it: you can move deep within it. Death is not a fact. A very rare mind is needed to conceive of death; a very keen intellect is needed to penetrate into the future. Rarely, it happens that a buddha will conceive of death so deeply that the future becomes the present. But it is always for rare individuals. Tantra can be used by anyone who has any interest, who has any desire to...

... search in order to know what real life is. But tantra also uses death just to help you move inwards - not for you to meditate on it, not for you to jump out of it, but to help you move inwards. Buddha also talked about birth just to make it a part of the meditation on death. The other part can be used as a help, but is not the center. Tantra says, if you can think about death, your life will take a...

... different meaning, shape and significance. Your mind will start thinking in new dimensions which without death would be difficult or even impossible. The moment you begin to feel that this life is going to end in death, death becomes a certainty and you cannot cling to this life: mind starts moving beyond. That is what I was saying yesterday. If you think about just this life, your mind will go outwards...

...: it will go out and out and out to the objects. If you begin to look and see that death is hidden everywhere, then you cannot cling to objects. Your mind will start moving inwards. Just the other day a young girl came to me. She is an Indian girl who fell in love with an American boy. But after she fell in love and they were just thinking and planning to get married, the boy fell ill and it was...

... discovered, diagnosed, that he had a certain type of cancer that is incurable. Death was certain. He could be alive two or three or four years at the most. The boy tried to persuade the girl not to marry him now. He said, "Death is so certain, why waste your life with me?" But the more he insisted - this is how the mind functions - the more the girl became adamant about wanting to marry him. This...

... it is a momentary thing: you can do it in a single moment. If you love me and I say, "Jump out of this building," you can jump because you feel you love me. But if I say, "Okay, now live with me for thirty years," it is very difficult - VERY difficult! You can become a martyr in a single moment. To die for someone, for something, is the easiest thing in the world; to live for...

... something is the most arduous and difficult thing. She became a martyr, but now she has to live enclosed in death's presence. She cannot love. She cannot see the face of her husband, because the moment she sees it the cancer is there, the death is there just by the corner. Any moment it can happen, so she is in constant agony. What has happened? Death has become a certainty. Now life has no interest for...

... her, everything has dropped and has become death. She came from America just to meet me . She wants to meditate because life seems futile. Life has become equivalent to cancer, so now she has come here to ask me, "Teach me meditation. How can I move beyond life?" Unless life becomes futile you never think about moving beyond it. I told her that apparently her marriage looks very...

...; Death is too much; it is impossible to live with. It can become a turning. If you can become aware of death, says tantra, use it as a turning inwards. No need to go into details about death, no need to go on contemplating about it. Do not make it an obsession. Just the awareness that death is there will help you to move inwards, to be meditative. The third question : Question 3: HOW CAN THE MIND BE...

... TRANSCENDED AND TRANSFORMED ONLY BY BRINGING THE BODY TO A DEATH-LIKE STATE? The mind is constantly active. While you are active meditation is impossible, because meditation means a deep inactivity. You can know yourself only when everything has become still, silent and quiet. Only then, in that silence, do you happen to encounter yourself. Otherwise, in activity you are so much occupied with something or...

... yourself. That is why in many techniques it is suggested to make your body as if it is dead. It means simply being inactive like a dead man. While you are meditating, let your body enter death. It will be imagination, but even that will help. Do not ask how imagination can help. Imagination has its own function. For example, now scientific experiments are done... You sit down, there is a doctor, and he...

... really imagine, even real death can occur. If you can really imagine, you can affect physical things. You might have observed some display of hypnosis. Or if not, you can do this easily at home; it is not difficult, it is very easy. Use your child as the medium. If the child is a girl, it is better than using a boy, because a boy is more doubting than a girl, and a boy is always in a fighting mood...

..., they say that imagination is as real a fact as anything. Imagination is not JUST imagination, because it results in actual fact. Do this experiment... Fall down on the ground, lie still and feel you are going to die. The body is becoming dead. By and by you will feel a heaviness coming over the body. The whole body will become a dead weight, a lead weight. Tell yourself that "Even if I want to...

... centered at the heart, and look around at your body, move. Two things will happen. One: you will not feel now that you are the body - you cannot feel it. You are the observer, one who is aware, alert, looking at, not being looked at. For the first time the body will become just a clothing; you will be different from it. And the second thing: immediately you will feel, "I cannot die." This will...

... end of a seven-year cycle, they would become afraid. And he was right. At the age of seven I survived, but I had a deep experience of death - not of my own, but of the death of my maternal grandfather. And I was so much attached to him that his death appeared to be my own death. In my own childish way I imitated his death. I would not eat for three days continuously, would not drink water, because I...

... felt that if I did so it would be a betrayal. I loved him so much, he loved me so much, that when he was alive I was never allowed to go to my parents. I was with my maternal grandfather. He said, "When I die, only then can you go." He lived in a very small village, so I couldn't go to any school because there was no school. He would never leave me, but then the time came when he died. He...

... was part and parcel of me. I had grown with his presence, his love. When he died I felt that it would be a betrayal to eat. Now I didn't want to live. It was childish, but through it something very deep happened. For three days I remained lying down: I would not come out of the bed. I said, "Now that he is dead, I do not want to live." I survived, but those three days became a death...

...; I told him about the astrologer's prediction that the possibility of death would confront me every seven years. I told him, "I am going into retreat for seven days to wait for death. If death comes, it is good to meet it consciously so that it becomes an experience." I went to a temple just outside of my village. I arranged with the priest that he should not disturb me. It was a very...

... lonely, unvisited temple - old, in ruins. No one ever came to it. So I told him, "I will remain in the temple. You just give me once a day something to eat and something to drink, and the whole day I will be lying there waiting for death." For seven days I waited. Those seven days became a beautiful experience. Death never came, but on my part I tried in every way to be dead. Strange, weird...

... feelings happened. Many things happened, but the basic note was this - that if you are feeling you are going to die, you become calm and silent. Nothing creates any worry then because all worries are concerned with life. Life is the basis of all worries. When you are going to die anyway one day, why worry? I was lying there. On the third or fourth day a snake entered the temple. It was in view, I was...

... seeing the snake, but there was no fear. Suddenly I felt very strange. The snake was coming nearer and nearer, and I felt very strange. There was no fear, so I thought, "When death is coming, it may be coming through this snake, so why be afraid? Wait!" The snake crossed over me and went away. Fear had disappeared. If you accept death, there is no fear. If you cling to life, then every fear...

... is there. Many times flies came around me. They would fly around, they would creep over me, on my face. Sometimes I felt irritated and would have liked to throw them off, but then I thought, "What is the use? Sooner or later I am going to die, and then no one will be here to protect the body. So let them have their way." The moment I decided to let them have their way, the irritation...

... disappeared. They were still on the body, but it was as if I was not concerned. They were as if moving, as if creeping on someone else's body. There was a distance immediately. If you accept death, a distance is created. Life moves far away with all its worries, irritations, everything. I died in a way, but I came to know that something deathless is there. Once you accept death totally, you become aware of...

... for deep meditation because then you become inactive. Energy is released from the world; it can move inwards. That is why a death-like posture is suggested. Use life, use death, for discovering that which is beyond both. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... there the river will die and become something greater. It is a jump, a jump from the finite to the infinite: the river losing itself, its identity, and becoming the ocean. Nothing is lost and everything is gained. But a pond drying up, not reaching anywhere, a no ocean anywhere, just drying in itself, is also dying. You are like a pond. That's why there is the fear of death. Be like a river, and then...

... go. I know a person who is so afraid of death that he cannot sleep, because he is afraid that he may die in his sleep. He tries to remain awake - he talks, reads, listens to music, but he is afraid of going into sleep. And if you are afraid for many, many days, it becomes a habit; unknowingly you create a barrier against sleep. In the West people are afraid of death, and if they are afraid, how can...

... love. Because love also is like death - you die in it. That's why people cannot love. They talk about it, they fantasize, they imagine, but they never fall in love. Even if they try, they try to manipulate the phenomenon, not allow it, because love is so much like death. Four things are similar: death, love, sleep and meditation; their qualities are similar. And the basic similarity is that you have...

... wings. The day you are born, that same day you start to die. It is a process; you inhale - it is life, you exhale - it is death. In the morning you get up - it is life, in the evening you go to bed - it is death; you work, act - it is life, then you relax - it is death; it is continuous, every moment it is there. And if you avoid death you will also be avoiding life. If you don't want to exhale deeply...

.... Then rather, on the contrary, you are thankful to death, because life becomes possible only because of death. Through death, life becomes possible; through dying everything is renewed. So death is not against life, it is not the opposite, it is not the enemy. It is through death that life becomes possible - you are alive because you can die. If you cannot die, you will not be alive at all. You don't...

...-like phenomenon or a flower-like phenomenon? Why does the flower die so soon? - because it is so alive, so intensely alive that death comes quickly; it doesn't linger on. The flower was not dragging; it lived the moment, it lived totally - it danced under the sky, it enjoyed the sun, the breeze. For a moment it was eternity. The flower laughed, the flower sang, the flower did whatsoever was to be...

... done, and by the evening, the flower was ready to die - and without a single tear in her eyes, without weeping and crying. Look at a dying flower - the petals have already fallen on the ground but you can never say that it is ugly - it is beautiful in death also. Then look at a man dying; he becomes ugly. Why? - because of the fear. Fear makes you ugly. If you are too afraid you will become more and...

... SAID. Death is coming near, death is going to knock at the door, and the Master says: How shall I receive it? - the guest is coming; how shall I be the host, how shall I receive it? You die, a Master receives death. You die clinging to life, not ready to die. You have to be snatched away and that's why your whole being becomes ugly. A Master prepares; he is even asking for the posture: What posture...

... shall I die in? Because death should be received in a unique way. It doesn't come every day; it is a rare guest. One should prepare, one should be ready. And what type of Master was this Teng to say: I have seen monks die sitting and lying.... Ordinarily, people die lying on their backs, not even sitting. Only a few people, those who die in meditation, who die meditatively, die sitting. Otherwise...

... on your body you will feel a certain electricity created in the clothes. The body is electric and when the body dies the electricity leaves the body; it is pulled upwards. Just with that flow those clothes might have risen. There is no need to think about it as a myth or a story - it is possible. SO TENG DIED STANDING ON HIS HEAD. Is death so easy that you can die upside-down? Yes, death is easy if...

... abode - it is not you. A Master is unidentified with the body, unidentified with the mind; he can decide. So Teng stood on his head and died. Even this impossible posture of standing on one's head can be used. If you know how to live, you know how to die, because they are both one. Another thing to be understood is why was he joking about death? Death is a serious affair and he is making fun of it...

...! Standing on his head, he is making fun of death. He is saying that if you have lived, lived a life of celebrations, then you can die celebrating - it is fun. When you know that you are not going to die, that something in you is eternal, then the whole of life becomes fun. It is a great cosmic joke and you can play with it. In his death, Teng was giving a message to his disciples: Everything is fun, don't...

..., he enjoys it, he thanks God for it, he is grateful. Where is the fear of death if at this moment you are alive? Here at this moment, you are alive - where is the fear of death? Don't try to get ready to die, just live. And I tell you, everybody, as he is, is ready to live this very moment. Don't miss this moment, and don't ask for long preparations. That way you will never be ready. And the mind...

... you can live the moment of death, how can you die? Then you change your death also into life. Just the opposite is happening to you right now: you are changing your life into death because of postponement. Tomorrow, always getting ready, ready, ready, and when the moment comes your mind is still getting ready. Drop all postponements, knock at the moment, and you will be as beautiful as the lilies in...

.... Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. WHEN TENG YIN FENG WAS ABOUT TO DIE HE SAID TO THE PEOPLE AROUND HIM: I HAVE SEEN MONKS DIE SITTING AND LYING, BUT HAVE ANY DIED STANDING? 'YES, SOME,' THEY REPLIED. 'HOW ABOUT UPSIDE-DOWN?' ASKED TENG. 'NO, NEVER SUCH A THING,' THEY SAID. SO TENG DIED STANDING ON HIS HEAD AND HIS CLOTHES ALSO ROSE UP, CLOSE TO HIS BODY. IT WAS DECIDED TO CARRY...

.... THEN THEY WENT OFF TO THE CREMATORIUM. Death is the root of all fear, and if there is fear, you cannot live. With fear there is no life. If there is fear you are already dead. This is the vicious circle - you are afraid of death, and because of fear you cannot live, you are already dead. Then you become more afraid and the fear creeps into your very center; you become just a trembling. As I see you...

..., you are just a trembling. If you dig deeply, you will always find the fear of death. This fear is the root of all fears. In any fear, whatsoever the form of the fear, somewhere the fear of death is hidden. Why are people so afraid of death? Is death really a phenomenon to be afraid of? The first thing to remember is that you don't know death. You have not known it, so how can you be afraid of...

... something that you don't know? that's impossible. You can be afraid of something you know, but of something that is totally unknown, absolutely unknown how can you be afraid? Fear needs an object to be afraid of. You cannot really be afraid of death, you must be afraid of something else. That something else is an unfulfilled life - you have not been able to live, you have not been able to achieve a...

... fulfillment, you have not been able to overflow, you have not been able to celebrate. Your life has been an emptiness, a hollowness, a nothing. Death is coming near and you have not been able to live yet - this creates the fear. Death is coming near and you will be no more, the opportunity is being taken away. Every moment you are losing life and you have not lived yet - this creates the fear. Death is...

... approaching - that is not the fear, The fear is that you have not lived yet and death is knocking at the door; the time to leave has come and you are yet unfulfilled. If you have lived, you have a fulfillment, a contentment, a deep gratitude. You have flowered - there is nothing more to achieve. Then you are not afraid of death; rather, you welcome it. You have achieved: now death comes like a deep sleep...

... after the day's labour - a whole day of achievement, of fulfillment, of reaching, of meeting, of encountering, of flowering, and then death comes like a deep sleep. You welcome it. When the tree has flowered, death is welcome; when the tree is still struggling to flower, there is fear. If you are afraid of death that is simply one indication that your life has been a wastage. It has been like a desert...

..., nothing has flowered in it. It has been like a pond, closed in itself and not moving anywhere. It has not been like a river - flowing, dancing, running towards the Ultimate. When a river reaches to the ocean there is a death. When a pond dries, becomes more and more dirty, evaporates, that too is death, but both are so absolutely different. When a river reaches to the ocean it is a fulfillment because...

... there is no fear of death. Death itself is like a sleep. Sleep is a temporary death, so if a person becomes very afraid of death he is also bound to become afraid of sleep. In the West, insomnia has now become a common phenomenon; almost everybody is suffering from it. It is not only because of mental tensions that insomnia exists. Deeper than the tensions, is fear, the fear of death. You cannot let...

... they go into sleep? Sleep is like death, so logically they are right - if you are afraid of death, you should also be afraid of sleep. They are similar phenomena; sleep is a temporary death. After the day's labour, the work, you are exhausted - you need a death so that you can be reborn, so that in the morning you are again rejuvenated, fresh, young. And in sleep, death is exactly what happens. Have...

... why it is so refreshing, because you get rid of yourself. You are like a burden - you leave it at the door and you fall into sleep. Sleep opens a different dimension where identity, ego, nothing of this world exists. That's why it is so fresh, so refreshing in the morning you come back to life, a new day starts, a new life. The fear of death will automatically create a fear of sleep and a fear of...

... to dissolve - and people are afraid of all of them. If you are afraid of death you will be afraid of sleep, of love, of meditation. Many come to me and they say: How to love? It is not a question of how, and when you ask 'how', you are trying to manipulate - you would like to remain in control, so whenever you Want you can push the button on or off. You would like to remain the master of the whole...

... young. Why does it happen? - for this very reason: you can allow a let-go; you move to the original source of energy where rebirth is possible. You only touch the deathless core when you are ready to die. That is the paradox - you touch the deepest core when you are ready to die. If you cling to the surface and you are afraid, afraid to let go, then you remain on the surface; and the surface is the...

.... It is like a madness, it is like a sleep, it is like meditation, it is like death. So even in sex, you let go up to a point, but you don't allow totality, because if you allowed totality then the ego could not exist. And this is the problem - you are afraid of death because you are not capable of living totally. Love, meditation, sleep; nothing is total. In your activity you are also not total...

... conscious of yourself; you are aware but there is an ego. You are aware of the total - the trees, the sun's rays, the breezes blowing, the birds singing, your activity - the digging of the hole, the mud coming out - you are aware of everything except yourself. If you became conscious of yourself, in that moment an orgasmic feeling would happen. It is like deep love, it is like sleep, it is like death. You...

... will come out of it totally different and new. If you don't move into a let-go, life cannot happen to you. It happens through that passage when you are not. When you are not standing in the way, then life happens to you, then you feel fulfilled. When you are fulfilled there is no fear of death. When there is no fear of death, you become more and more capable of let-go. And if you have really known...

... what life is, who bothers about death? If you have really known what life is and celebrated it, then death is not the end - then death is the culmination, the peak, the highest let-go. Then love is nothing, a sexual orgasm is nothing, sleep is nothing. If you have lived life rightly, fully, then death is the greatest bliss, because it is the greatest let-go. The more intense and total the let-go, the...

... more the bliss. This is the rule, this is the law. So what to do? If you want to live, allow death also - it is like having two wings. It is not a thing somewhere in the end, it is a process: the day you were born you began dying. It is not life here and death there, life now and death then, no. You cannot divide them; they are together, they have to be. Life is death. Life and death both are two...

... either case, being dead totally, you will attain to a greater living totally, you will attain to a greater death, because they are two aspects of the same coin. Once you can see that life implies death, that every act of being alive is also an act of dying, you have seen the Total. Then life is not serious, then it is fun. It becomes serious because of the fear of death. You cannot laugh loudly because...

... of the fear of death; you cannot enjoy because of the fear of death; you cannot do anything - because of the fear of death. Death is always around the corner like a black shadow following you. It doesn't allow you to do anything. Then you become serious and you start thinking: How to attain the deathless? Then you start searching for how to become immortal, how to find the secret, the elixir. These...

... are all nonsense searches, it is not true seeking. Nowhere does there exist something chemical, alchemical, like elixir, ambrosia - no. The secret is in seeing life and death as a single process. You cannot find the secret anywhere - the philosopher's stone exists nowhere, it exists in this fact: that life and death are together. They are one process, a unitary phenomenon. Then you are not afraid...

... more ugly. The flower is fulfilled; now the time to rest has come and the flower is going to rest, and when the rest is over the flower will come back. Again and again.... Life is an eternal recurrence, death is just a rest. You need not be worried about it, you simply live. And if you live then you are not serious. If you are afraid of death, then you are serious. To be sincere is one thing, to be...

... serious is another. A man who loves life is sincere, authentic, but never serious. Life is not like an illness. If you are looking at death and are obsessed with death, then life is just serious - then you will become a long-face. You may move to the monasteries, to the temples, go to the Himalayas, but you will remain a long-face. It is fear that has taken you to the monastery. Remember, an authentic...

... say it the 'I' drops. And unless you can say that you don't know, you will never be wise. Only through ignorance does the ego drop, and when there is no ego you have attained to a second childhood. You will not be able to understand this Zen Master if you can't see this quality of a wise fool, of foolishness in one's wisdom - a man who takes life as fun. When he takes life as fun he also takes death...

... as fun. Nothing is a problem to him - he accepts everything, he is playful. Now try to understand this beautiful story. WHEN TENG YIN FENG WAS ABOUT TO DIE - he was a Master, a very well known Master - HE SAID TO THE PEOPLE AROUND HIM: I HAVE SEEN MONKS DIE SITTING AND LYING, BUT HAVE ANY DIED STANDING?' YES, SOME,' THEY REPLIED.'HOW ABOUT UPSIDE-DOWN?' ASKED TENG. 'NO, NEVER SUCH A THING,' THEY...

..., ninety-nine percent of the people die on a bed. ... BUT HAVE ANY DIED STANDING?' YES, SOME,' THEY REPLIED. A few people, a few rare persons have died standing. They too die standing because they are very meditative. There are certain techniques which can only be done standing. For example, Jain techniques, Mahavir and his techniques, all have to be done standing. He meditated standing for years; he...

... explanations for it. It is possible because the body is electricity, it is nothing but bio-electricity. When somebody dies, the body becomes a pillar of energy and that pillar leaves the body. If it is very magnetic energy, as it has to be with a Master, the clothes will just be magnetized. Not only did Teng die upside-down, but his clothes rose with his body, they clung to the body. If you rub your clothes...

... you have lived. Then you can choose the right moment to die. You must have heard about many saints making a prediction that they will be dying on a certain day, a certain time. People think that they know how to read the future. That is nonsense, nobody can read the future. Future means that which remains invisible. Then what do they do? If I say to you: After seven days pass I will be dying in the...

... morning at six o'clock sharp - so don't miss it, then what will you think? You will think: How is it possible? To the mind, the only possibility seems to be that somehow I know the future. That is not the truth, nobody knows the future. But a man who has lived totally can decide when to die. He is not predicting, he is simply saying that he has decided to die on a certain day at six o'clock in the...

... all around you. It is not an effort to know, it is an effort to be, to be a participant. Then everything is beautiful - life is beautiful and death is beautiful, and you can play a joke. A rare man this Teng was. The disciples were very afraid of what to do. Never before had there been such a precedent; nobody had died standing on his head. What to do with such a man? IT WAS DECIDED TO CARRY HIM TO...

... THE BURNING GROUND, BUT HE STILL STOOD THERE WITHOUT MOVING. If you have been an energy pillar in life, an unmoving pillar, if you have attained anything in life that has become crystallized, then you can even use your death. There are many versions of this story. In one version the sister came and said: Why are you making a fool of yourself? Teng laughed and fell dead. PEOPLE FROM FAR AND NEAR...

..., YOU'RE MAKING A NUISANCE OF YOURSELF. This Teng is one of the rebellious Zen Masters. He lived a life without any laws and without any regulations. He lived a life without any enforced discipline. Not that he was not disciplined, he was absolutely disciplined, otherwise how could he have stood on his head and died? He was not only disciplined in life, he was disciplined in his death. You cannot find...

... Enlightened woman, otherwise she would have been crying and weeping. She is not crying and weeping; on the contrary, she is giving right advice to this dying man - a fool who was always a nuisance. Now, even in death, the sister is a totally different type. This has been my feeling: that women are the types who will need an outer discipline. In that fifty percent of people, forty per cent will always be...

..., because the boy starts kicking in the womb. You can feel the girl remain absolutely silent and relaxed, but the boy starts kicking. Even in the womb the male energy is different from the female energy. This sister must have been always telling him: You are wrong. But he was true to himself even in his death. He was true to himself when he was alive and he is true to himself when he is dead. He had...

... customs. And now, even in your death, you are a nuisance to yourself. SE THEN PRODDED HER BROTHER WITH HER FINGER AND HE FELL DOWN WITH A BANG. THEN THEY WENT OF TO THE CREMATORIUM. Both of them knew that there is no death. It is said that when the brother fell down with a bang, the sister just went back to her monastery. If you take life easily, if you enjoy life, if your life by and by becomes a...

... fulfillment, the same will be your death. What are we doing? We are not enjoying life, we are only preparing to enjoy it - and life is here and now, no preparation is needed. I see people always preparing - they are preparing to live a great life somewhere in the future. They will be afraid of death because in the future death is waiting. And your life is also in the future. You are making a house...

..., purchasing a car, and this and that, accumulating things; just getting ready to live. You will never be ready, and by the time you are ready, death will knock at your door. That's the fear: that death may come before you are ready. A man of understanding lives life here and now, every moment he lives it. For him there is no death because there is no future life. He exhausts the moment, he lives it totally...

... gets a habitual form: always thinking of tomorrow, tomorrow - it becomes fixed. By the time you have accumulated wealth the mind will again be telling you: Tomorrow, tomorrow. 'Tomorrow' is the disease of the mind. A new life comes into existence when you live now. A new life is a 'now' life. Then where is the fear? Who is worried about death? Then you can play a joke in the end. And if you live, you...

... start feeling what life is. It is felt only through living; there is no other way to feel it. It is just like swimming - you swim and you learn; swimming comes through swimming, life is felt through living. You postpone, you don't feel life; you feel death all around. Through postponing you will feel death, through living you will feel life. If you feel life, it is eternal. It has no death to it, it...

..., live! - don't postpone. This is the whole message of all those who have become awakened: Today is enough, tomorrow will take care of itself. And tomorrow never comes; it is always today. If you know the knack of living here and now, you will be able to live every moment that comes. Even at the moment of death, you will be able to live. This is what this Teng did - he lived the moment of death. And if...

... central Brahman attains to immortality." But the expanded Brahman is an enclosure containing death. Death is bound to happen in it. The circle will have to complete itself. If there is birth, death will surely follow it. Then why does the sage say that such a person conquers death? What does overcoming death mean? Do the sages not die? All the sages die. All enlightened people die. For sure...

..., overcoming death does not mean not to die. The sage who sang that he who has known manifest Brahman overcomes death, is no more. So either he said this unknowingly or falsely - if the statement was correct he should not have died! No, overcoming death means something else. The person who knows and experiences deeply that death is already linked with birth and unavoidable, becomes free from the fear of...

...? If a tree is not hidden in a seed, there is no way for it to spring forth - to be born. If I die, I must be living first; otherwise whose death will it be? My birth could take place because I was before the birth. I will also be after death; then and then only, death can take place, otherwise whose death will it be?" Death is not the end for one who knows. It is only a happening which took...

..., "I am dead. How can I retaliate now?" The shopkeeper was surprised and said, "Are you a dead man? You look absolutely living." Then Bokoju said, "What value will there be in my physical death? When I die, I shall die as all die; but now I am dead when alive: this has some value." Birth happens unknowingly, and now there is no way to go into it. But death is still ahead in...

... immortality. He who knows the manifest conquers death, and he who enters the unmanifest attains to the immortal." Remember, the immortal can be known only by entering death, because when we enter death totally, when we die in all ways and yet find we did not die, then immortality is attained. So when someone abuses you and you behave like a corpse and yet remain conscious of yourself, then you will not...

... without losing consciousness. But the greater possibility is that you would spend the time in a coma, and ultimately die in that condition. So it would probably turn out to be quite fruitless for you to receive an intimation of your time of death. Sannyas means to inform ourselves, to understand and to tell ourselves that, "The church bell tolls for me. The corpse being taken to the graveyard is my...

...Let Us Die...

... Osho The Heartbeat of the Absolute - Ishavasya Upanishad: Let Us Die Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho The Heartbeat of the Absolute - Ishavasya Upanishad   Next > Let Us Die From: Osho Date: Fri, 4 April 1971 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Osho - Upanishads - The Heartbeat of the Absolute Chapter #: 15 Location: In Mt. Abu, Rajasthan...

..., India Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. ONE WHO KNOWS THE UNMANIFEST BRAHMAN AND AT THE SAME TIME THE MANIFEST BRAHMAN, HAVING OVERCOME DEATH BY THE WORSHIP OF THE MANIFEST BRAHMAN, ATTAINS TO IMMORTALITY BY THE WORSHIP OF THE UNMANIFEST BRAHMAN. We cannot draw a circle without a center. The circumference is drawn all around the center. As...

... end? Where will life stop if it goes on expanding and does not return to the point of death? So Indian thinking says that this manifest Brahman, in its expanding process, will pass through childhood, youth and old age and again return to fall into unmanifest Brahman. It will again be zero and void. It will return to the original source from where it began its journey. Its circle will be a huge one...

.... The span of our life-circle will be of seventy years. There are lives that revolve through small circles. A butterfly is born in the morning and its life-circle is complete in the evening. And there are circles smaller than this, too. There are animals who live only for a few moments. They are born at the beginning of a moment and die by the end of that moment. But do not be under the impression...

... of seventy years cannot be called a large circle. Scientists say that our earth was born some four thousand million years ago. We have no means to find out in which stage of its life the earth is now, but from certain considerations it appears it is in old age. The production of food is decreasing, and the world population is increasing. Death seems to be near. All things necessary for life are in...

... deficiency. Coal, petrol and food are in short supply, all the chemicals of the earth are in short supply. The earth is getting old, so it may die soon. What does 'soon' mean? The word soon is not to be understood from our personal point of view; if the earth has taken four thousand million years to grow old, what is another four thousand million years? But we cannot make any estimate about the earth...

.... There are about seventy million cells in each human body. Those cells have no idea at all that you are also there, and though these seventy million microscopic cells live in your body, you do not know anything at all about them. Within your body they are born, grow up, become old, leave children behind them, and die, making their graves in your body - and yet you will know nothing about them. During...

... seventy years of your life, millions of these organisms will be born and will die. In a similar way, the earth does not know anything about us and we do not know anything about the life of the earth. Its life of millions of years is on a circle. It is difficult to determine the age of the entire universe, the entire manifest Brahman, but one thing is certain - there is no transgression of the law in...

... death. He knows that birth is the beginning of the circle and death its end. So he who knows so deeply, so profoundly that death is an unavoidable destiny, becomes free from the fear of death. Why should one fear the unavoidable? Why should one worry about what is sure to happen? Worry is only for that which can be changed or altered. So it is interesting to observe that there was never so much worry...

... about death in the East as in the West, and there are good reasons for this. The West feels that it has the remedy to conquer death; the East never felt it had the remedy to conquer it. If it is felt that death can be changed, then worry is bound to come. There will always be cares and worries for a thing which can be changed. There is no cause for anxiety when a thing cannot be altered. Why worry? If...

... death is certain, if it is linked with birth, then there is absolutely no cause to worry about it. When soldiers are on their way to the battlefield, and as long as they have not reached it, they remain worried and afraid, but once on the battlefield all their worries are over in a day or two. After reaching the battlefield, even the most timid soldier becomes a brave person. What is the reason...

.... It is the desire for change that creates anxieties and worries. When the sage says, "After knowing the manifest Brahman, the wise man conquers death," it means death holds no fear for him. If death approaches him, he is not afraid. There is an interesting small story about Panini. He is one of the sages who compiled these sutras. He was teaching grammar to his pupils in his forest ashram...

... lion devoured him, he expounded on the grammatical form of, "The lion kills the man." Our immediate thought is that Panini could have run away and saved himself. Something could have been done, but people like Panini think thus - that death is certain, whether it comes today or tomorrow; then what difference does it make if it is today or tomorrow? Such people accept death unwaveringly...

... because it is a certainty - whether it comes today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Here is the victory. In this acceptance we have accepted death along with birth. We have accepted the withering along with the blooming, the expanding. In the time of our blooming we knew that we would wither one day. On the day of our unfolding, our birth, we knew that we would one day be hidden again. The circle...

... is bound to be complete. In such an acceptance lies freedom from death. Then where is death? Such a person has overcome death. He is free from the attraction of birth as well as from the fear of death. He is beyond both. Bear in mind, for the rest of us death and birth are the two ends in our life, and they are outside life. Birth is outside our life, because before birth we were not. Death is...

... outside our life, because after death we will not be. Death is the borderline. But it is not a borderline for one who knows. To him, death and birth are two happenings taking place in the midst, in the course of life. He will ask, "Whose birth? I was before, hence I could be born; otherwise how could birth take place? I was unmanifest, hence I could be manifest; otherwise how could I be manifest...

... place in his life. Birth is also a happening taking place in one's life, it is not a beginning. The life which is beyond this circle is the unmanifest. It is hidden, unexpressed. That unmanifest life - existence - becomes manifest in birth and again becomes unmanifest in death. So one who knows this cycle of the manifest world is untroubled by it; the pattern does not cause him any unhappiness...

... often bemoan the fact that the wall is not the door. If you know the door, then the wall is a wall and the door is a door to you. Thus one who knows fully the arrangement and the gestalt becomes free from that gestalt. He knows that where birth is, there death will also be found. But one who knows it incompletely - not in its full significance - comes into conflict and difficulty. This knowledge is so...

... is now no place for despair. Death is; it is unavoidable. Where, then, can there be any misery in it? Where is the suffering in that? Misery and suffering are there only as long as there is no acceptance. Buddha used to say, "What is made will be unmade, what is had will be lost." Be aware! - in the moment of meeting our loved ones, we create our separation from them; it is bound to...

... someone says, "With this birth death has entered," we are deeply shocked and tell him not to talk of such inauspicious matters at this moment of rejoicing. But when Buddha says there is already a moment of separation in the meeting of dear ones, he is not destroying the happiness of meeting; he is only destroying the pain of separation. Try to understand the difference between the two...

... situations. The fool will destroy the happiness of meeting, and the wise will cut the pain of separation. The wise will think, "How can there be any pain of separation when it is already present in the meeting itself? When meeting was longed for, then separation was also desired. When death is present in birth, then how can there be any sorrow over death? When the birth of a child was wished for...

..., death was included in that wish." The fool will destroy the happiness of birth, and the wise will destroy the pain of death. Having known the manifest Brahman, the expanding Brahman, an individual overcomes death. He remains unaffected by the miseries, pain and suffering caused by death. Bear in mind, misery, pain and worry are the shadows of death. The person who has thus freed himself from...

... death has no misery, no worries and no pain. You perhaps have not considered this - that when you become worried, then death is standing somewhere near you. Suppose a man's house catches on fire; he will at once be worried and miserable. As soon as a man finds himself bankrupt, he becomes anxious and worried. Why? - because now, being bankrupt, his life becomes full of difficulties, and death has...

... moved a little closer. When the house is destroyed by fire his life becomes insecure and unprotected - and death comes a little closer. This is the way man's mind works in such circumstances, and so he becomes sad and anxious. A man standing alone in darkness is frightened and worried because nothing is visible in that darkness, and if death attacks him he will not be able to see it. So wherever you...

... become worried, be alert at once; you will find death standing somewhere near you. Worry, anxiety, is the shadow of death. Whenever and wherever your mind is caught in miseries and pain, recognize at once that there is some foolishness on your part in interpreting the manifest Brahman. You believe unavoidables are avoidables; your miseries begin from the very point of the belief. You hope that that...

... said that there is liberation from death after knowing the manifest Brahman. But this is half the story; the sutra is not yet complete, only half so. There is still one more thing for us to know which is not said in the first half, and is very subtle and deep. As long as we are unable to see it, we are perplexed and harassed, and in our ignorance we stumble about, bumping our heads against the walls...

... able to understand this manifest Brahman? It is absolutely unfolded before us: is there anything more manifest than death? Yet we continually deceive ourselves. When someone dies, we sympathetically say, "The poor fellow died." It does not occur to us to regard death as a reminder of our own death. I remember a line of a poem by an English poet. When somebody dies, the church bell tolls...

.... The poet has said, "Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." That is, without making any inquiry, know that it is for you. Concealing a phenomenon as great as death, we behave in such a manner that if a traveler from Mars were to come and be our guest for two or three days, there are two things he would not discover about us, and these two are linked together. That traveler...

... would not know that there is death or sex on this planet, because we keep these two concealed. Bear in mind, sex is the originator of birth, it is the first step; and death is the last step of the manifest Brahman. The suppression of sex, the first step, begins with the fear of death, the last step. If we wish to suppress death, we will have to make ourselves forget also the process of birth, because...

... death is linked with birth. Therefore we hide the birth process in darkness. The birth process is performed behind a curtain. And death we drive out to the limits of our villages. There we reserve a place for a graveyard, because we are very much afraid of death. We scatter flowers on the graves so that whoever passes those graves by chance may not see them. When a dead body is taken to the graveyard...

... away from town we keep the graves, deaths will happen in towns and not in graveyards. We suppress sex and hide it because it is the source of birth. Our unconscious reason for keeping it suppressed and hidden is that it is the first step. If it is unveiled and brought into the open, then death will also be unveiled; it will no longer be possible to conceal death. So it is interesting to notice that...

... societies where sex is not suppressed become more concerned and worried about death, and the societies which have suppressed sex totally, ignoring it as though it does not exist, have suppressed death also. I have heard this story. A Jewish child one day returned home from school having learned in school how children are born. He was much pleased with his new information and very eager to show his...

... generation, and the exasperated mother said, "Look, can't you see there is only one answer to your question?" Then the boy exclaimed, "What! You mean that for the last seven generations there's been no sex in our family?" No, there is a great unconscious need to suppress sex. It is the first step of birth. If it is opened and made manifest then death will also be manifest. As long as...

... than that concerning death. So at one end sex is suppressed, and at the other end death: look for the graveyard beyond the village limits. Thus we live in darkness between two ends, and we live in great fear. There has to be fear, because we know neither what birth is, nor what death is. When we try to falsify even the manifest Brahman which is so open and clear, then what to say about the unmanifest...

... Brahman which is hidden and unrevealed? How can we possibly go into that? Understand these two happenings - birth and death - properly. They are the two ends of one phenomenon. Birth is the beginning and death is the end of one and the same circle. Death happens at that place where birth happens. The happening of death and that of birth are parts of one happening. What happens in birth? A body is...

... convenient to itself. What happens in death? Those two merged parts of the element begin to scatter and break off. Nothing else but this happens. The link within begins to weaken and loosen. Old age means the weakening of the link. This composite body begins to decompose. The way in which the link fractures was laid down at the moment of conception. This was not determined astrologically but scientifically...

... the strain of air, water, heat, rains, miseries, pains, conflicts, meetings, separations, friendship, enmity, hopes and frustrations, days and nights and all such things. They thus determine when the link will falter in the process of bearing and resisting the strain, and when these united cells will fall apart. On their separation the soul will have to leave that body. Death and sex are the two...

... ends of one and the same thing. The things joined by sex are separated by death. Sex is synthetic, death is analytic. Sex joins, death separates. The happening is the same, there is no difference in it. He who knows fully this manifest Brahman succeeds in accepting it. Acceptance is the victory. You become the master of a thing when you have accepted it. Even if you accept slavery, then you become...

... total master of yourself. Total acceptance is the liberation. The total acceptance of any fact is freedom. When a person truly knows manifest Brahman he attains total acceptance, and thus is liberated from death. Let us now consider the second point, though it is difficult to grasp. It is enough if the first point is properly grasped. To know the unmanifest Brahman is a matter of still deeper and more...

... subtle experience. To know it, one has to go either before one's birth or to go beyond one's death. There is no other way except this. That is why the Zen master in Japan asks the seeker who approaches him to meditate and find out what his face was before his birth - to find his original face. The face you have now is no more your original face than the face you wore yesterday. The face which is seen...

... months was not his, but that the face he had before and after those six months was his. That face is also not his. His six-month face was given him by scientists, and this 'original' one he got from his parents is also not his. It is not his own. One's own face can be encountered either before birth or after death. To seek before birth is very arduous; it is very difficult to know the unmanifest...

... Brahman before birth. I told you before that compared to the manifest Brahman, it is very difficult to know the unmanifest Brahman. Now I tell you again, there are two ways. Regress beyond birth; go so deep in meditation that you can regress beyond birth, so that you will be able to know the unmanifest Brahman. The other way is to go further and further in meditation so that you may die and go beyond...

... death; then too you will experience the unmanifest Brahman. Of these two ways, the experiment with dying is easy, because it is related to a future happening. To regress is very difficult, to go forward is easy. You can take a jump forward. To go back is very difficult. To put on the clothes of childhood again is very difficult. To return to the womb is extraordinarily arduous, because the path...

... becomes narrower and narrower. But the loose clothes of death are easy to put on. The path grows wider and wider. Remember, the door to birth is very small; that to death is very large. To go beyond death is easy. It is possible to go back beyond birth. There are processes and techniques to do that, but they are very difficult to practice and follow. The meditation I am talking about is an experiment...

... with death. It is a jump into death. Through entering death willingly, it is an exercise in seeing. It is to practice being as if dead. If this happens and you enter death consciously and become as if you are not, then the face of the unmanifest Brahman will be visible. That face will be seen which is before birth and is also after death. The processes may be two, but that center is one and the same...

.... You can see that center either by regressing or by going forward. But the path of going forward is easy, so I insist on the path of death. I do not advise you to regress before birth to see that face; I advise you to go forward beyond death to see that face. Such a willing and accepted death becomes meditation. And if an individual wishes to live in such a death not for just a few seconds but for...

... the future, and you can pass through it knowingly. The opportunity to know your original face through birth is now lost, but the opportunity exists to know it through death. But bear in mind that you may miss this opportunity also. If death comes as accidentally to you as birth came, then you will miss the opportunity to know. But if you prepare yourself to welcome death, if you go on dying often...

..., then you will know. This is the meaning of sannyas - voluntary death. To go on dying, to go on becoming as if dead. If someone abuses you, think that you are dead. What will you do when you are physically dead if someone stands on your grave and abuses you? Begin now. Begin to do that which you will do when your skull is lying somewhere and someone kicks it. This is the true significance of sannyas...

.... Thus you shall be able to enter the unmanifest Brahman. Otherwise you will miss the opportunity of death also. And it is not that you are missing it for the first time; you have already missed many times. Similarly, you have missed the opportunity of birth many times. This opportunity is now lost to you, and before it also many opportunities of other births and deaths. You are so accustomed to this...

... process that you are addicted to it. You have already gone through this one process again and again. Now you need to make a decision about whether to go any further with this process or not, since we all have the chance to avail ourselves of the opportunity of death yet again. Why not take this opportunity to enter the unmanifest! The sage declares, "He who enters the unmanifest attains to...

... react to the abuse. If someone cuts your hand, or even your throat, and while it is being cut you remain conscious of yourself, then the door of immortality is open for you. He who tries to save himself from death will not achieve immortality, and he who enters death will taste the nectar of immortality. To know the unmanifest Brahman is to find immortality, because the unmanifest is the immortal...

.... Existing before birth and after death, it is the immortal. It is never born so it never dies. We are also the same. Only the body takes birth; it is a composite, derived from the parents. We come from very, very ancient times. We were when the body was not. On entering a body an identification with it takes place, and when the body dies it seems that, "I am dying." When death comes unexpectedly...

... - and generally it comes unexpectedly, with no prior intimation - it shows you a kindness. If it were to intimate its arrival you would be in great difficulty; it is an act of mercy on the part of death that it does not inform you beforehand. Suppose death were to inform you, twenty-four hours before, of its arrival: what would happen? Whatever is going to happen after twenty-four hours will surely...

... happen, but it is difficult to imagine how miserable you would be during that period. You would be miserable and uneasy waiting for the appointment, though in fact you now have a chance to pass through death consciously. To live time second by second would be found to be very difficult. You might pass out, you might lose your senses. It may also happen - there is a possibility - that you pass this time...

... their deaths. Even now some of these rituals are observed, because the person entering sannyas is dying to his worldly relations and connections. The weeping of the relatives will cease in a day or two, as they see that though this man has decided to die to the worldly relatives, he is still living. This is good in a way. The sannyasin allows his relatives to pass through the pain and misery of his...

... death in his presence; when he actually dies he will not be there to console them in their misery. In those ancient days they used to put a new initiate on a funeral pyre. Those were very innocent days. After putting him on the pyre they set fire to the pyre. Then the guru would shout, "You are dead! Remember, you are dead!" Then the man was lifted away from the burning pyre and given a new...

.... Now let us begin our journey to the unmanifest. Let us die. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... is the greatest fiction. This realization is called "the great death." Everybody dies, but the small death; only very blessed ones have died the great death. It simply means they die with total awareness, seeing body and mind separating from their consciousness. But the consciousness, the flame of their being is eternal. It goes on moving into new forms and ultimately it moves into the...

... formless. This small anecdote is about the great death. Zen is always special in its expression. Joshu calls it the great death because it is not death. The great death in reality is the great life. Only the small death is death. The difference is of consciousness and unconsciousness. You die unconsciously - this is the small death; you will have a small rebirth. Neither will you know your death nor will...

... you know your birth. If you die meditatively, alert, aware, it is the great death - and great death is followed by great birth. Knowingly you die, and because knowingly you die... how can you die? Your knowing, your consciousness continues - knowingly you are born. There is no discontinuity between your death and your birth. Your realization of this ordinarily would be called "the great life...

... in the anecdote and is not commented upon by Setcho either. But without bringing in another distinction the experience remains incomplete; it is not entire. There is death there is the great death and there is the greatest death. In death you die unconsciously. In the great death you die consciously, but you are born again. In the greatest death you only die; you are not reborn, you simply...

... the great death, that you die consciously, but what about a man dying consciously and coming back to life again?" He is asking about the third distinction, because we have known of many people simply disappearing into air and they never come back again - and there are millions who go on coming back. They never learn their homework; their lives remain mundane and unconscious. But even if...

..., but I would rather call it ultimate life. That's where my expression and Gautam Buddha's expression differs. I don't think that his path of negativity has helped humanity very much; in fact, who wants to die? Have you ever asked yourself - do you want to die? An ultimate death, with no possibility of turning back? And for this ultimate death making all kinds of disciplines, rituals, following a...

...The great death...

... Osho Live Zen: The great death Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho Live Zen   Next > The great death From: Osho Date: Fri, 4 May 1988 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Live Zen Chapter #: 13 Location: pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. BELOVED OSHO...

..., JOSHU ASKED TOSU, "WHAT IF A MAN OF THE GREAT DEATH COMES BACK TO LIFE AGAIN?" TOSU SAID, "YOU SHOULD NOT GO BY NIGHT; WAIT FOR THE LIGHT OF DAY AND COME." SETCHO COMMENTS: OPEN-EYED, HE WAS ALL THE MORE AS IF DEAD; WHAT USE TO TEST THE MASTER WITH SOMETHING TABOO? EVEN THE BUDDHA SAID HE HAD NOT REACHED THERE; WHO KNOWS WHEN TO THROW ASHES IN ANOTHER'S EYES? OSHO, YOU ARE ONE WHO...

... HAS COME BACK TO LIFE FROM THE GREAT DEATH. YET WE WHO HAVE NOT DIED ARE NOT NEARLY SO ABUNDANTLY ALIVE AS YOU. WOULD YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT THIS? AND QUESTION TWO: YOU ARE LIKE AN EXOTIC FLOWER OR RARE SPECIES OF CREATURE WHOM I HAVE WATCHED AND LISTENED TO AND TRIED TO FIND WORDS TO DESCRIBE FOR THE PAST FOURTEEN YEARS. TO HEAR YOU TALK OF THE STATE YOU ARE IN IS TO FEEL ENDLESSLY IN AWE. ONE OF...

... THE MOST INTRIGUING THINGS ABOUT YOU IS THAT YOU ARE ALWAYS SO ABSOLUTELY PRESENT AND AT THE SAME TIME SO TOTALLY ABSENT. WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT? AND THE THIRD: OSHO, OKAY... I'M GOING TO LIGHTEN UP.... FOR A MASTER OF YAA-HOO AND YAA-BOO WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE TABOO? The death we know is always somebody else. Once we know our own death, pass through it, a tremendous realization arises that death...

...," but there is some reason why Zen has chosen to call it the great death. The reason is that the great death comes first; behind it is revealed the great life. Unless you open the door of the great death, you won't enter into the space of great life. JOSHU ASKED TOSU, "WHAT IF A MAN OF THE GREAT DEATH COMES BACK TO LIFE AGAIN?" Now another distinction has to be made which is not clear...

... not yet ripe enough to disappear into the cosmos. They have not learned the whole secret and mystery of life; they have to go on the pilgrimage a little more. Joshu's question is, "WHAT IF A MAN OF THE GREAT DEATH COMES BACK TO LIFE AGAIN?" His question seems to be relevant, because there is no precedence in which a third kind of death is recognized. He is asking: "I can understand...

... sometimes a few people become a little bit conscious, it is better than not being conscious at all. These people will be born - and from their very birth they will show distinctions, uniquenesses, which ordinary children are not supposed to show. But this is not the ultimate death which everybody is seeking. Only in ultimate death do you relax totally into existence, not to come back. This coming back is...

... not something great; it is coming back to the prison. TOSU SAID, "YOU SHOULD NOT GO BY NIGHT; WAIT FOR THE LIGHT OF DAY AND COME." Slowly, slowly you will be getting the taste of the language of Zen. Rather than saying, "You should not die unconsciously," he says, YOU SHOULD NOT GO BY NIGHT - don't go in darkness, don't go blind - WAIT FOR THE LIGHT OF DAY... Wait for...

... consciousness, wait for witnessing. Wait for meditation to grow in you and then you can come. SETCHO COMMENTS: OPEN-EYED, HE WAS ALL THE MORE AS IF DEAD. That's how a great master is. In his being, death and life have become one. There is no separation between death and life. OPEN-EYED, HE WAS ALL THE MORE AS IF DEAD; WHAT USE TO TEST THE MASTER WITH SOMETHING TABOO? Such questions should not be asked...

...? Setcho is saying, "Buddha is simply throwing ashes into the eyes of the questioner." You cannot deceive an authentic questioner, because the authentic questioner himself knows it a little bit - that death is a fiction, that life is eternal. But even Buddha is trying to throw ashes into the eyes of the questioner. It must be out of compassion. He does not want you to think much about death; he...

... wants you to think much about life. He wants you to go deeper into life, and death will disappear on its own accord. The more alive you are, the farther away death is. When you are totally alive, there is no death for you. Of course you will not be in a form, you will be a pure isness spread all over the existence. Not confined in a body of any species, just a white cloud floating in the open sky...

..., unconfined to any form. Have you ever watched a cloud moving in the sky? It has no form, because its form goes on changing. It is free of any bondage to remain in the same form. It is free as far as form is concerned. It is freedom. Question 1: Maneesha's first question is: "OSHO, YOU ARE ONE WHO HAS COME BACK TO LIFE FROM THE GREAT DEATH. YET WE WHO HAVE NOT DIED ARE NOT NEARLY SO ABUNDANTLY ALIVE AS...

... beautiful gardens, in palaces, surrounded by beautiful women, song, dance... He was tired of it. It all created a kind of negativity because he knew that this is not life. I was not there to teach him that this in itself is not life, but if you just add a little awareness to it, it is life - more life. There is no need to go on a desert path. I am teaching you to reach to the same goal of ultimate death...

... thousand and one rules - you will certainly think that this is mad. If in the end you are only going to gain the ultimate death... It doesn't seem right. And that's why Buddhism has not been of as much help as it could have been. But it was Buddha's individual necessity. He had lived the life of immense luxury - he was tired of it. If this is life then he does not want to live. He moved in the opposite...

... direction to find the truth. But you have not lived the life of Buddha, the luxury that was available to him. You need not be, and you cannot be negative in your approach. Your approach can only be positive. And if dancing you can reach to the ultimate, laughing, if you can reach to the ultimate, then why unnecessarily go with a British face? There are other faces also! Don't be serious. But death... the...

... very word makes people serious. I want you even to dance in your death, to dance and celebrate even in the death of your loved ones. Life and death both should be part of a single festival without any discontinuity. Question 2: Your second question is: "OSHO, YOU ARE LIKE AN EXOTIC FLOWER OR RARE SPECIES OF CREATURE WHOM I HAVE WATCHED AND LISTENED TO AND TRIED TO FIND WORDS TO DESCRIBE FOR THE...

..., as it is, then the whole of life becomes a preparation, a training for it - a discipline in how to die rightly and how to die totally and utterly. The whole of life consists in learning how to die. But somehow a wrong conception about death has entered humanity, the conception that death is the enemy. This is the basis of all wrong conceptions, and this is the basis of humanity going astray from...

... life time consciousness simply disappears. Why in the West and now in the East is there so much anxiety about death, so much so, that life cannot be enjoyed at all? Living in a timeless world rocks are more happy than man; living in a world where death is not known the trees are more blissful than man; not that they don't die, but death is not known. Animals happy, celebrating, birds singing, the...

... moment man becomes conscious he becomes conscious of the end also - that he is going to die. He becomes conscious of tomorrow, conscious of time, conscious of the passing of time - then sooner or later the end will come near. The more he becomes conscious, the more death becomes a problem, the only problem. How to avoid it? This is using consciousness in a wrong way. It is just as if you have given a...

... creates a continuous escaping within you. Then you are escaping from life; wherever there is life you are escaping because wherever there is life a hint, a glimpse of death comes. People who are too afraid of death never fall in love with persons, they fall in love with things - things never die because they have never lived. You can have things for ever and ever and, moreover, they are replaceable. If...

... this security they feel a certain security, but that is foolish, stupid. Nothing can save them; death will come and knock at their doors and they will die. Consciousness can take two views. One is to be afraid of life because through life comes death. Another is to love life so deeply that you start loving death also, because it is the innermost core of it. The first attitude comes from thinking, the...

... were very hungry because of the harsh winter, passed by. Thinking that Mulla was dead they jumped on his donkey and ate it. 'Such is life,' thought Mulla. 'One thing is conditional upon another. If I had been alive you would not have taken such liberties with my donkey'. Death is passivity. You cannot do anything. If one is trying to learn how to die - and that is the same as trying to learn, they...

... agony on the face. The face becomes ugly. Death is the criterion. If you die beautifully and I don't know anything about your life, I know only your face in death, I can write your whole biography. Because in death you cannot deceive - in life you can. In life you can smile when there is anger within, you can give a false appearance, but in death nobody is so cunning. Death reveals the true. Death...

... brings your reality to the very surface of your face. So whenever you die, your death will show how you lived, whether your life was a real life, authentic, or an ugly dishonest life. A saint is not known in life, because he may be just posing; a saint is known only in death, because then you cannot pose. TO RETURN TO THE ROOT IS REPOSE. A saint dies in grace, death becomes the very crescendo of the...

... BACK TO ONE'S DESTINY. GOING BACK TO ONE'S DESTINY IS TO FIND THE ETERNAL LAW, TO KNOW THE ETERNAL LAW IS ENLIGHTENMENT. AND NOT TO KNOW THE ETERNAL LAW IS TO COURT DISASTER. Death is destiny. It has to be so because it is the origin - you come from death and you go to death. Life is just a moment between two nothingnesses, just a flight of a bird between two states of non-being. If death is destiny...

... the eternal law, from Tao. How has this happened? It has to be understood. Man has taken death as the enemy of life, as if death is there to destroy life, as if death is against life. If this is the conception then of course you have to fight death, and life becomes an effort to survive death. Then you are fighting against your own origin, you are fighting against your destiny, you are fighting...

... against something which is going to happen. The whole fight is absurd because death cannot be avoided. If it were something outside you it could be avoided, but it is inside. You carry it from the very moment you are born. You start dying really when you start breathing, at the same moment. It is not right to say that death comes in the end, it has always been with you from the very beginning. It is...

... part of you, it is your innermost center, it grows with you, and one day it comes to a culmination, one day it comes to flowering. The day of death is not the day of death's coming, it is the flowering. Death was growing within you all this time, now it has reached a peak; and once death reaches a peak you disappear back into the origin. But man has taken a wrong attitude and that wrong attitude...

... creates struggle, fight, violence. A man who thinks that death is against life can never be non-violent. It is impossible. A man who thinks that death is the enemy can never be at ease, at home. That is impossible. How can you be at ease when the enemy is waiting for you any moment? It will jump on you and destroy you. and the shadow of death is always falling on you? It can happen any moment. How can...

... you rest when death is there? How can you relax? The enemy won't allow you to relax. Hence the tension, the anxiety, the anguish of humanity. The more you fight with death, the more anxiety-ridden you will become, you are bound to become. It is a natural consequence. If you fight with death you know that you are going to be defeated. How can you be happy with a life which is going to end in defeat...

...? You know that whatsoever effort you make, nothing is going to succeed against death. Deep down you are certain about only one thing and that is death. In life everything else is uncertain, only death is certain. There is only one certainty, and in that certainty you have an enemy. Fighting with certainty and hoping for uncertainties how can you be in a repose? How can you be relaxed, calm, collected...

...? Impossible. People come to me and they say they would like to be at peace, they would like to be at home in the world, they would like to be silent, they need a certain relaxation. But I look into their eyes and the fear of death is there. Maybe they are just trying to be relaxed to fight against death more easily; maybe they are trying to find a repose so that they can become stronger against death. But...

... if death is there how can you be relaxed, silent, at peace, at home? If death is the enemy, then basically the whole of life becomes your enemy. Then every moment, everywhere, the shadow falls; then every moment, from everywhere, death echoes. The whole life becomes inimical, and you start fighting. The whole concept of the Western mind is to fight to survive. They say, 'survival of the fittest...

...', 'life is a struggle'. Why is it a struggle? It is a struggle because death is taken as the opposite. Once you understand that death is not the opposite of life but part of it, an intrinsic part of it, which can never be separated from it - once you accept death as a friend, suddenly a transformation happens. You are transfigured, your vision now has a new quality in it. Now there is no fight, no war...

..., you are not fighting against anybody, now you can relax, now you can be at home. Once death becomes a friend only then does life become a friend also. This may look paradoxical but it is so, only the appearance is paradoxical. If death is the enemy, then deep down life is also the enemy, because life leads to death. Every type of life leads to death - the poor man's life, the rich man's life, a life...

... of success and a life of failure, the life of the wise man and the life of an ignorant one, the life of a sinner and a saint. All sorts of lives, whatsoever their differences, lead to death. How can you be in love with life if you are against death? Then your love is just nothing but a possessiveness, your love is nothing but a clinging. Against death you cling to life, but you can understand that...

... this very life is bringing death nearer every day. So you are doomed, all your efforts are doomed. And then anxiety arises, the whole being trembles. You live in a trembling and then you become violent and mad. In the West the proportion of mad people is much higher than in the East. The reason is clear. The West takes death against life but the East has a totally different standpoint - life and...

... death are one, two faces of the same phenomenon. Once you accept death many things are immediately accepted. In fact if you accept death as part of life, then all other enemies are also accepted as part of friendship because the basic duality dissolves, the duality of life and death, being and non-being. If the basic duality is resolved, then all other dualities are just superficial, they dissolve...

.... Have you observed that in the West there is much time consciousness but in the East it is not so much, and even if it is, it is only in the cultured, educated parts? If you move to the villages there is no time consciousness. In fact, time consciousness is death consciousness: when you are afraid of death then time is short. With so many things to do and so little time given, you are conscious of...

... every second passing. Life is being shortened so you are tense, running around, doing many things, trying to enjoy the whole of it, running from one place to another, one enjoyment to another - and enjoying nothing because you are so time conscious. In the East people are not so time conscious because they have accepted life. You may not be aware that in India we have named death as time. We call...

... death 'kal', and we also call time 'kal'; kal means time and kal means death as well. To use the same word for both means a very deep understanding, it is very meaningful. Time is death, death is time: the more death conscious you are, the more time conscious you will be, the less death conscious, the less time conscious. Then there is no question of time. If you have completely absorbed death into...

... whole existence except man is blissfully unaware of death. Only man is aware of death and that creates all the other problems; that is the source problem, the basic rift. It should not be so because man is the highest, the most refined, the peak of existence - why should it be so with man? Whenever you attain to a peak, almost side by side the valley becomes deeper. A high peak can exist only with a...

... are time conscious gain something in comparison to people who are not time conscious. People who are death conscious attain many things in comparison to those who are not death conscious. That's why the West goes on accumulating material wealth and the East has remained poor. If you are not death conscious, who bothers? People live moment to moment as if the tomorrow doesn't exist. Who accumulates...

... deeply can become deep meditators; those who have loved in a relationship are now in a position to be by themselves. Now they have become mature, now the other is not needed. If the other is there they can share, but the need has disappeared; now there is no dependence. Consciousness becomes conscious of death in the end. If consciousness becomes conscious of death in the end a fear arises. That fear...

... have. The wound remains, it cannot be healed. People who are too afraid of death become afraid of life. Then they accumulate things: a big palace, a big car, millions of dollars, rupees, this and that, things which are deathless. A rupee is more deathless than a rose. They are not bothered about roses, they only go on accumulating rupees. A rupee never dies, it is almost immortal, but a rose.... In...

..., with no clinging; for not even a single moment do they try to cling. A breeze just comes and the whole flower has gone to the earth, returned to the source. A man who is afraid of death will be afraid of life, will be afraid of love, because love is a flower - love is not a rupee. A man who is afraid of life may get married but he will never fall in love. Marriage is like a rupee, love is like a rose...

... presidents, they cannot protect. Love comes and goes, marriage simply comes. It is a dead phenomenon, it is an institution. It is simply unbelievable that people like to live in institutions. Afraid, afraid of death, they have killed all possibilities of death from everywhere. They are creating an illusion around them that everything is going to stay as it is. Everything is secure and safe. Hidden behind...

... down all that has frozen, all the thoughts.... That is what meditation is all about: it is an effort to defreeze all thoughts. They can be converted again into consciousness. Then the river flows, then the river has a flow to it, and alive, vibrant, dancing, it moves toward the sea. Why do people like to be frozen? Because a frozen river cannot move to the sea. Sea means death. The river will...

... hinders it, it moves unhindered towards the sea. If consciousness becomes meditative then you accept death, then death is nothing apart, it is you. Then you accept death as repose; then you accept death as a final relaxation; then you accept death as a retirement. You retire. The whole day you have worked hard, in the evening you come home, and then you go to sleep, you retire. Life is like the day...

..., death is like the night.Again you will come, many mornings will come, in different forms you will be here again and again and again, until the absolute death happens. That absolute death is for those who have become absolutely without thoughts. It is for those who have known absolutely that death and life are two aspects of the same coin, who are now no longer afraid of death - have not even a slight...

... fear - and who are now no longer attached to life. So there are two stages of the final disappearance. The first one is not to be afraid of death. And once you are not afraid of death the second step is not to have any deep lust for life. Then you go beyond. And Lao Tzu said this is the eternal law - to know it is to be enlightened, not to know it is to court disaster. Now the sutra: ATTAIN THE...

.... And not to know the Eternal Law, Tao, Is to court disaster. Now many things have to be understood. First, THE UTMOST IN PASSIVITY. Death is a passivity. Death is the utmost in passivity. You will not be able to do anything. That's how we judge when a man is dead - he cannot breathe, he cannot open his eyes, he cannot talk, he cannot move. How do you judge when a man is dead? He cannot do anything...

... hands and feet are quite cold you will know that he is dead. A few days later, Nasrudin was cutting wood in the forest when he realized that his extremities were almost frozen by the bitter cold. He said: Death now seems to be upon me. But the dead do not cut wood, they should lie down, respectably, because they don't need physical movement. He lay down under a tree. Just then a pack of wolves, who...

... day how can you sleep in the night? Life moves into polarities. That's why I say: Love if you want to be alone; move into the other if you want to be totally, utterly alone. Be active if you want to be passive. Don't be afraid of the polarity, life is a polarity. That's why life is both life and death - death is the other polarity of it. ATTAIN THE UTMOST IN PASSIVITY. Learn how to be passive. Don't...

... done anything about it, you have not earned it. And death will happen - you cannot do anything about it. All that is beautiful, profound, deep - happens. Only futile things are done by man. You cannot even do breathing, that too happens. Get in tune with the world of happening. If you ask me, the material world is the world of doing and the spiritual world is the world of happening. Do, but then you...

... returns back - the circle complete, it disappears into the soil again. Man is not an exception. Nothing can be an exception. As animals go back, trees fall back, rivers move back, so does man. TO RETURN TO THE ROOT IS REPOSE. Life is an activity, action; death is passivity. TO RETURN TO THE ROOT IS REPOSE. It is beautiful. Whenever a man who has lived rightly and understood rightly, dies, you will see...

.... Life is a circle. When life is a circle you know death is repose: it is coming back to the same point, falling back to the mother earth, falling back to the universal consciousness, falling back to the same source from where you have come. Then there is no struggle against it, no conflict, you simply accept. Acceptance becomes your life and through acceptance happens contentment. TO RETURN TO THE...

... strangers here. Existence has given birth to you; existence has mothered you. So when you die, you simply go back to the original source to rest and to be born again. Death is like a rest. Life is activity: death is rest. And without rest activity is not possible. Life is like the day and death is like the night. And without the night, the day cannot exist on its own. It is night that prepares you for the...

... day, it is night that rejuvenates you, gives you energy back. You move in your deep sleep to the very point where death will lead you. Every night you go into death - it is a small death - hence in the morning you feel so alive. Unfortunate are those people who don't die every night. In the morning they are more tired than they were when they went to bed. They were dreaming, they were still clinging...

... fulfills it. Hence, I repeat: death is not the enemy. Death is your home where you come after many many journeys - tired, frustrated, exhausted - to seek shelter, to seek rest, to gain again the lost vitality. One thing. Second thing: life and death are not so much apart as we think. You think life happened the day you were born, and death will happen the day you die. So there is a seventy or eighty or...

... has to be destroyed. In the East, people are sex-against. They look only into the valley. They don't look at the peak; they say the peak is just illusory. Because they look into the valley, they have become more and more death-prone, ready to die. In fact, waiting to die; in fact, hoping to die, desiring to die, dreaming to die. In the East the greatest ideal is how to die so utterly that you are...

... never born again. That is the ultimate death. In the West the idea is how to create a situation where yoU don't die at all; you go on living - on and on and on. Both attitudes are lop-sided. Both attitudes create a kind of imbalance in you, and that imbalance is the misery of man. A real man, an authentic man, will face all; he will not choose. He will not say, "I will see only the valley and I...

... you can do it, then there is no death for you; then there is no need for death. If a man can clean his consciousness through meditation, then he will never die. I'm not saying that he will not die in the body - that is a natural thing. But he will never come across death. Death happens only to the dust that collects on the mirror. The mirror never dies! The mirror itself is undying. This witnessing...

... age of ninety-six and no longer able to teach or work about the monastery, Zen Master Yamamoto decided it was time to die, so he stopped eating. When asked by his monks why he refused his food, he replied that he had out-lived his usefulness and was only a bother to everybody. Now ninety-six... it is enough. And the old man thinks that now it is time to die, so he stops eating food. Death is just a...

... of the cold. You will be dying, it is January and much too cold, and you will be a greater nuisance to all of us. We will have to go to your funeral - so start eating." This can happen only in a Zen monastery with a Zen Master and Zen disciples. Nobody is worried about the death. Death is okay. The Master is ready to die, but look at the disciples. Those disciples are also very close to...

... to die - that's why they could joke with the old man, and the old man laughed. He was not offended. Just think of the disciples saying, "This will be a nuisance, sir, dying in the middle of January. It is so cold and it will be a great bother for all of us to go to the funeral." Just see the point of it, the humour of it - as if life and death are nothing but jokes, as if the old man is...

... reality remains as it is. Your consolations don't change it, they cannot change it. Consolations are toys given to children. The Zen Master Bassui writes to one of his disciples who is about to die: now this is a great moment. Death is a great moment. It should be used to its total capacity. Death is such a great opportunity, such a creative possibility, that one can be enlightened through it. If you...

... have missed life, okay, but don't miss death. Use the door to look into the divine. The Master wrote: "THE ESSENCE OF YOUR MIND IS NOT BORN, SO IT WILL NEVER DIE.... " The essence of your mind - that's what I call the mirrorlike quality. That is the very essence of your mind. Why do we call it the fundamental, the essential? Because it persists. Watch.... You were a child. The first time...

... has given it to you - that is essential nature. And that is your soul. To find it in oneself is to find something which is beyond birth and beyond death. "THE ESSENCE OF YOUR MIND IS NOT BORN," says the Master, "SO IT WILL NEVER DIE." Only that which is born dies; only that which begins ends. If you have one polarity, the other will follow; but if the first polarity is missing...

..., infinite. Death, if you cling to life, will look like death. If you don't cling to life, death will look like a transformation, a freedom. You are freed from the imprisonment of form, you become formless. Then there is great joy. A man who can die like a snowflake disappearing in the pure air is blessed. There is great ecstasy, great silence and peace, utter joy. There is celebration in the very heart of...

... Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. BASSUI WROTE THE FOLLOWING LETTER TO ONE OF HIS DISCIPLES WHO WAS ABOUT TO DIE: "THE ESSENCE OF YOUR MIND IS NOT BORN, SO IT WILL NEVER DIE. IT IS NOT AN EXISTENCE, WHICH IS PERISHABLE. IT IS NOT AN EMPTINESS, WHICH IS A MERE VOID. IT HAS NEITHER COLOUR NOR FORM. IT ENJOYS NO PLEASURES AND SUFFERS NO PAINS. "I KNOW YOU ARE...

... VERY ILL. LIKE A GOOD ZEN STUDENT, YOU ARE FACING THAT SICKNESS SQUARELY. YOU MAY NOT KNOW EXACTLY WHO IS SUFFERING, BUT QUESTION YOURSELF: WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF THIS MIND? THINK ONLY OF THIS. YOU WILL NEED NO MORE. COVET NOTHING. YOUR END WHICH IS ENDLESS IS AS A SNOWFLAKE DISSOLVING IN PURE AIR." DEATH IS NOT THE ENEMY. It appears to be so because we cling too much to life. The fear of death...

... arises out of the clinging. And because of this clinging we are unable to know what death is. Not only that, we are unable to know what life is too. The man who is not able to know death will not be able to know life either, because deep down they are two branches of the same tree, If you are afraid of death, basically you will remain - because it is life that brings death. It is through living that...

... you come to dying. You would like to become stagnant frozen, so that you don't flow, so that death never happens. You would like to get stuck somewhere on the way, so that you never come to the ocean and disappear. A man who is afraid of death clings to life too much; but the irony is that even if he clings too much to life, he is not able to see what life is. His clinging to life becomes a barrier...

... to understanding life too. He cannot understand death, he cannot understand life; he remains in a deep misunderstanding, in a great ignorance. So this is one of the most fundamental things to see: that death is not the enemy. Death cannot be the enemy. In fact, the enemy exists not. The whole existence is one. All is friendly. All is yours, it belongs to you and you belong to it. You are not...

... to life in their dreams. They didn't go in a let-go. They didn't allow death to take possession of them and mend many things and give rest, relaxation, new energy. These are the unfortunate people. The fortunate people are those who go into a tremendously deep sleep, a dreamless sleep. In the morning they are again alive, ready to face life in its manifold forms, full of joy, full of response...

..., ready to take any challenge that life proposes. Death is like the night. Life is yang and death is yin. Life is male, death is female. Life is aggression, ambition - a great effort to conquer many things. And death is relaxation from all aggression - an inward journey. One relaxes into oneself. Zen people call it 'the asylum of rest'. Life is an adventure; you go away from yourself, you go farther and...

... brings misery. One day you are fed up and tired and bored. That adventure no longer appeals. You relax into yourself, you come back. The closer you come to yourself, the more happy you become. The more you forget about happiness, the more happy you become. The day you stop seeking and searching for happiness, you are happy. Life is a promise for happiness, but only a promise. It never fulfills. Death...

... one hundred years' gap. It is not so. Birthing and dying go on together your whole life. The moment you start breathing you start dying too. EACH moment there is life and there is death - two wheels of the same cart. They go together. They are simultaneous. You cannot put them so far apart - seventy years is too much distance. You cannot put them so far apart - they are there every moment. Every...

... to come home. After seventy years you slip into deep rest. But dying and living continue together. To see it in that light will bring great insight to you. Each moment both are there. So there is no need to be afraid. It is not that death is going to happen somewhere in the future. The future creates problems: It is going to happen somewhere in the future - how to protect yourself? How to create...

... the very process of life. For example, it comes very very prominent and loud and bold when you make love. Naturally, because love gives you the feeling of life. But have you watched? After each love act you become depressed. Relaxed, silent, but a kind of frustration is also there. At the peak of your love you are at the peak of life, and then suddenly you fall into death. Each love act brings life...

... to a peak, and, naturally, gives you a glimpse into the abyss of death that is surrounding it. The valley of death is very clear when the peak of life is very high. Out of this experience, two types of culture have arisen in the world. One is sex-against, and one is death-against. The sex-against culture emphasizes more the frustration that follows the sex act. It is more concerned with the valley...

... miserable wheel, how to get out of this vicious wheel. The idea of celibacy and BRAHMACHARYA has arisen because of that second part. It is there! People who are sex-against see only it. People who are death-against don't see it. People who are death-against, they simply see the peak, they don't look into the valley. Once the peak is there, they close their eyes and go into sleep. They don't think about...

... the valley. The valley is there, but they have chosen only the peak. But see, there is a corollary to it. If you only see the peak then you will be very much afraid of death, because you will not have any experience of it. Then death will remain unknown forever. Only when you are dying, then you will come across it. Then it will be too much and too new, and too unfamiliar and unknown, and it will...

... shock you very much. So the people who are death-against and only see the peak of life, the orgasmic peak of the sex act, will avoid the valley, they will not look into it. Then ultimately, one day, that valley is there. They are very afraid. Hence, in the West, where sex has become more free and people are less sex-against, they are more death-against. They are fighting against death. Somehow death...

... will be oblivious of the peak," or "I will only see the peak and I will remain oblivious of the valley." He will see both as they are. He will not choose. Not to choose is Zen. To be choiceless is Zen: to see things as they are in their totality - good and bad, heaven and hell, life and death, day and night, summer and winter - to see them as they are. Zen is not an either/or...

... ready - some day, in a weaker moment, it will explode with a vengeance. So the man who is sex-against is always afraid of the vengeance of sex - it can explode any moment. And the man who is afraid of death, death-against, is naturally always trembling death is coming. He knows, there is a tacit understanding. Whether you see it or not, it makes no difference. Just not seeing it will not make it...

... disappear. It is there. You know it is there and it is coming. And it is coming closer every moment. The man who is sex-against will be afraid of sexuality erupting any moment in his consciousness. And the man who is death-against will be afraid of death coming any day and possessing him and destroying him. Both kinds of people remain fear-oriented; and both kinds of people remain in a fighting state...

... reality. The unchosen part of reality will remain hanging around you, waiting to be accepted. It cannot disappear, there is no way for it to disappear. If you love life too much and you don't want to see the fact of death... death is there hanging around like a shadow. Zen says: See both - they are one piece, they are together. Seeing them together, without any choice, without any prejudice, you...

... transcend them. Seeing them together, you are no more identified with life and no more identified with death. When you are not identified, you are free, you are liberated. Identification is what imprisonment is. Let this be understood perfectly, because that is the root cause of all our misery, slavery. Identification - this word is very significant. It means you get identified with a part. You become one...

... with it, you will be a winner; if you are against it, you are going to be a loser. And we are all losers, we have been fighting. We choose a small part and claim that this is the whole. We choose life, we take life out of its basic context - death - and we say, "This is me. I am life." Now you are getting into trouble. You will be encaged in this identification. How will you manage death...

..., once you don't get identified with anything, you simply remain a witness - not saying, "THIS I am" or "THAT I am." You simply remain a witness. You see life as passing, you see death as passing, you see sex as passing, you see frustration, joy, success, failure. You go on seeing; you remain a pure seer. You don't get hooked with anything; you don't claim "I am this."...

... - many times you will succeed, many times you will fail. Many times you will be depressed, and many times you will feel very high. Watching all this duality, by and by you will see that you are beyond all these dual pairs of things. And so is a pair - life and death. And so is a pair - mind and body. And so is a pair - the world and NIRVANA. ALL are dual pairs. When you can see thoroughly, when you can...

... see transparently, and you don't choose, you are something transcendental - the witness. That witness is never born and never dies. Death and life come into that witness' vision, but that witness is eternal. It was there before you were born, and it will be there when you are gone. You have been coming into the world millions of times, and you may yet be coming - and still you have never come. The...

... should not allow anybody to rob me of it; it is very valuable." That's how you have become attached to life. You think it is very valuable. And because you become attached, you think of death as the enemy, the robber. Death is coming and it will rob you of ALL your gold, of all the precious stones that you have carried all along. It will take all the dust off your mirror - and that's all you have...

... been thinking is YOUR LIFE. Hence, you are afraid. If you see the point, death is a friend. In fact, a far greater friend than life itself. Why do I say so? I say so because in life you get attached, you collect dust. Death takes all your attachments and all your dust away. If you can see the point, you will feel tremendously grateful to death. What you cannot do, death does for you. That's why if...

... valuable. There are people who are afraid of meditation because meditation is a shower. It takes all the nonsense thoughts that you have collected, accumulated - all the junk that you go on carrying in your head. And your head is suffering, is very heavy, and you are miserable, but still you go on carrying it thinking that it is valuable. Death is a great friend, it unburdens you. It unburdens you of all...

... that you have accumulated. Once this unburdening is allowed voluntarily, death becomes samadhi. If you don't allow it voluntarily, then death is not a samadhi, it is a pain. Now see the point. The same thing can be utter pain, and the same thing can be utter joy. It depends on your interpretation - how you look at things, how you penetrate a certain experience, how deep you go into it. If you are a...

... clinger, very possessive, then death will be very painful and will be a great anguish. You will suffer. You will not suffer because of death, you will suffer because of your clinging, because of your possessiveness, because of your attachments, because of your greed, and all that. But if you are not a clinger, you are not very possessive, you are not greedy, you are not egoistic, you are not aggressive...

..., suddenly death's quality has changed. It comes like a fresh breeze of God. It comes and cleanses you. It gives you a great rest much needed. It purifies you. It takes you into the eternal source from where you will rise again. If you go voluntarily into it you will rise in a better form, because you have learned something from the last form. If you don't go voluntarily, then too death will throw you into...

... learned the lesson. Then he disappears. Then death becomes nirvana. Then he spreads all over existence, then he becomes a fragrance. Then he enters the cosmic form. Now small forms are no more needed. He has learned all that was there in those small forms. All that was contained in those small forms he has decoded. He has become a grown-up. Now there is no need for him to go back to school. He becomes...

... part of the whole. He spreads over the whole. Then he is a song in the heart of the cosmic mind, a blessing, a peace. He does not come any more, he has gone beyond the point of return. This is the ultimate learning. But one has to go through all the forms. And death brings a great lesson, far greater than life. And death brings a very intense possibility to understand, because life is spread long...

... range - death comes in a very very potential way in a very short time. In a single moment it shakes you. If you are not alert you will miss that moment, the moment is very tiny. If you are alert, then that very moment becomes a door into the divine. ONCE YOU ARE NOT ATTACHED TO DEATH, once you are not afraid of death, death becomes a game, a play. Listen to this beautiful story: Almost blind at the...

... rest. It is time to rest. He starts preparing to retire. This is the understanding that is needed. The disciples told him, "If you die now" - it was January and very cold - "when it is so cold, everybody will be uncomfortable at your funeral and you will be an even greater nuisance, so please eat!" Those were also great people. Mm? - the reason they give: "Please just think...

... enlightenment. They say, "Stop your nonsense! Right now it is not a good time. Why do you want to create trouble for us? Yes, you are a bother - ninety-six years old - but that will be even more bothersome, dying in the middle of January. Please eat!" So the old man laughed, he resumed eating, but when it became warm again he stopped, and not long after quietly toppled over and died. Death, too, is...

... then a game, something to be played with. Then you are not afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of. Then you are not even serious. Look at the non-seriousness of the whole thing. Can you think of something like this happening in the West? Impossible! It can only happen in the East where people have accepted life and death both, as they are. And this can happen only when you know that nobody is going...

... just going to play an act, as if it is not truth! That's how it is. SIMPLY as if he is going to play an act. "Please don't play it right now, later on you can do it when the days are warmer." The old man laughed, he didn't feel offended. He must have enjoyed it tremendously. This was a great insight in his disciples. Now they even take death humorously. When you start taking death also...

... humorously, you are a man of under-standing. You are, by and by, turning into The Man of No Title, the REAL Man of No Title. When you take death also with humour, you have already gone beyond it. And to go beyond life and death is to go into your reality. Another anecdote: When Tozan was dying a monk said to him, "Master, your four elements are out of harmony, but is there anyone who is never ill...

...;Does this one look at YOU?" asked the monk. "It is my function to look at him," answered Tozan. "How about when you yourself look at him?" asked the monk. "At that moment I see no illness," replied Tozan. In you there are two worlds: the world of birth and death, and the world that is transcendental. Yes, the body can be very ill, and yet there may be no illness in...

... whatsoever is the case. But EACH time you get identified. Stop this identifying yourself with things that are standing in front of you, and suddenly you will see you have never been ill and never been hungry and never been born, and never are you going to die. You are the very source of eternity. You are eternal. Now this story: BASSUI WROTE THE FOLLOWING LETTER TO ONE OF HIS DISCIPLES WHO WAS ABOUT TO DIE...

...: ORDINARILY WHEN YOU WRITE TO SOMEBODY who is about to die, you write some consolatory things - you think he will need consolation. And all your consolations are false; all your consolations are lies. But when a Zen Master writes a letter to somebody who is dying and who has been a disciple to him, he simply states the truth. In fact, when somebody is dying it is time to state the truth, because there may...

..., the other cannot be there. If something is there in you which was not born, which was there even before birth, then it will be there even after death. This mirrorlike quality has nothing to do with anybody, nobody has given it to you. It is you, your authentic being. This is the real Man of No Title. The mirror is going to learn many things, is going to be conditioned in many ways - all that will be...

... not it." "YOU MAY NOT KNOW EXACTLY WHO IS SUFFERING, BUT question yourself..." Question yourself: Who is suffering? Who is dying? Who has become old? Question, go on questioning, and by and by you will see, "The one who is suffering is not me, the one who has become old is not me, the one who is going to die is not me." And remember, this has not to be supplied; this answer...

... the old identity with the body and the illness and the mind is broken, and then you have come to have a look at your innermost core. Now ask: What is this essential mind? "THINK ONLY OF THIS." And this message is to a dying man, remember. The Master is saying, "While you are dying, think only of this. Before death, solve one thing: that you are not suffering. And then when you are...

... entering into death, go on questioning, 'Who is this who is not suffering?"' "Who am I?" as Raman Maharshi used to say: "Who am I?" Think only of this while death happens, because death will take EVERYTHING away. If only THIS question can be carried into death, if this inquiry can be carried while you are dying, you can attain to samadhi, you can attain to the great fruit of...

... disappear like a snowflake in pure air. You are not going to die, you are only going to disappear. Yes, you will not be found in the individual form. The form will disappear into the formless - the snowflake into the pure air. But you will be there and more so. When the river disappears into the ocean, it is not dying - it is becoming the ocean, it is spreading, it is becoming bigger, huge, enormous...

... your being. Life has to be used, death has to be used. Everything has to be used to come to this essential mind, because this essential mind IS SATCHIDANANDA - it is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss. IT MAY LOOK SOMETIMES VERY CRAZY that one has to drop all attachments, even attachment to life. It may look very crazy that one has to transform even death into a love affair. It may look very...

... crazy, but life IS crazy, life is a paradox. John Wheeler has said: "We are talking about things that are absolutely crazy. Can anything that is LESS crazy be right?" Zen is right because it is utterly crazy. Zen is right because it is so paradoxical. Life is a paradox. Anything that is true to life is going to be a great paradox. Yes, life has to be lived, and death to be died. Living...

..., penetrate into the deepest core of life. Dying, penetrate again to the deepest core of death. And the deepest core is the same - it is the essential mind. 'Life' is not a noun, remember; neither is 'death' a noun. 'Life' and 'death' are both verbs. 'Existence" is a verb, it is not a noun. Life is a process, death is a process. And who is being processed? Who is moving in this cart of two wheels? Who...

... can die, that's why you can live. Life and death are not two things but two wings - two wings of the same phenomenon. Science has always thought that religion talks in paradoxes, is irrational, illogical. But just within the past few years in science, particularly in physics, a phenomenon has arisen which can be very helpful to understand this meeting of being and non-being. The phenomenon is called...

... themselves as easily as the Japanese, because they have found the exact point of death. With a small knife, they simply penetrate the hara; not even a single drop of blood comes out. The suicide is bloodless, and no pain at all is felt, no suffering - life just disappears. They have touched directly the black hole in the body, the point of death. If you cut your throat you will die, but there will be much...

... real sexual experience is also an experience of death: you die. That's why people are so afraid of sex, so afraid of women; I have not come across many people who are not afraid of women. Fear... woman has given you birth, she must be carrying your death also. Look at the Hindus' conception of Kali, Mother Kali. She is both life and death, the giver and taker. A beautiful woman, but black, black like...

... you whole. Remember, until you die you cannot be reborn. As you are you have to pass through death. And you are clinging too much to life. That won't help - death will come. But death comes in two ways. One way, the usual way it comes: you are clinging to life and it comes as the enemy; you fight with it, you resist it, you do everything that you can do to avoid it. But how can you avoid it? The day...

... sea, and then the form drops, dissolves into the formless again. The name arises out of the nameless, falls back, returns to the original source, becomes nameless again. Life arises out of death and moves to death again. The very basic thing to remember is that these opposites are not opposites, they are complementary. Death is not against life, nonexistence is not against existence, non-being is...

... able to separate them right now - in fact nobody can ever separate them because they are not separate. " Water and sugar can be separated - that was just a device to make the child understand - but non- being and being cannot be separated, life and death cannot be separated. It is impossible. They are not separate, how can you separate them? They always exist together. In fact to say that they...

... nothingnesses arises being. The river of being flows between two banks of nothingnesses. Being is beautiful, but non-being is also beautiful. Life is good, but death is also good - because life cannot exist without death. Ordinarily you think that death is against life, that it destroys. No, you are wrong. Without death life cannot exist for a single moment. It supports it. It is the very base. Because you...

... the black hole. Science has come somehow to feel that in space there exist a few spaces which are holes, black holes - non- beings. In the beginning it was difficult to conceive of it but now, by and by the concept is becoming clearer and clearer - because science also feels that everything exists with its opposite. How can existence exist without nonexistence? Life exists with death, love exists...

... a floating black hole. That is happening every day, but when things happen every day you become oblivious of them. Suddenly a man dies. What has happened? He has entered the black hole. Just a minute before he was okay - breathing, talking, alive, conscious - and just a second afterwards nothing is left, just a deteriorating body. What has happened? Something has gone into nonexistence. Death is...

... the black hole. Scientists say that stars are also born and die. They live millions of years, but that is not the question. They are born - from where do they come? Right now many stars are being born. Just as many children are being born in maternity wards, many stars are being born. They are coming out of nothingness. No matter existed before; it was a vast space, then suddenly a nebula comes into...

... bigger than the earth. If our sun - sixty thousand times bigger than the earth - dies... and it will die one day. Scientists say that it seems nearabout four thousand years more it can be alive. Because it is already old, ill, has to be hospitalized - but there exists no hospital for stars. It is dying. Four thousand years it will take, then one day it will be no more. First the light will disappear...

... idea, that somewhere in the body death must have a home. Death doesn't come from the outside, it is not an accident as people think. People say death is coming. No, death is not coming, death is growing within you; it is not that somewhere on life's path you meet death suddenly. If it were so, then methods could have been devised to avoid death, to deceive it, or not to go to that point where death...

... waits for you, to bypass it or to send somebody else instead of you. There would be such a possibility if death were an outward phenomenon, happening to you from the outside. But death is carried within you like a seed. It comes into existence when you come into existence, in fact it existed even before you. You have come out of it. Death must have somewhere a point within your body. So the Japanese...

... searched the body to find out where the black hole exists. It is just below the navel. Two inches below the navel exists the point of death. It is a very subtle point. You must have heard the word harakiri; the word comes from hara. hara means the black hole inside the body, and harakiri means suicide, to use that black hole. The Japanese have become very efficient in killing themselves; nobody can kill...

... suffering - because from the throat to the hara there is much distance; that distance death will have to travel. So if somebody's head is cut off, the body remains alive for a few minutes; it goes on trembling and throbbing because you have not penetrated the hara directly. The Japanese can kill themselves so easily and so silently that when you see a man who has done harakiri, who has committed suicide...

..., you will not see any sign of death on his face; his face will look as alive as ever. He has simply disappeared into the black hole with no struggle. That hara in the body is non-being. It is absence, it is a nothingness. And the whole of Taoist practice is to be alert to the hara. They have created a different type of breathing for it; they call it belly-breathing. You cannot find a more silent man...

... than a Taoist who has been doing belly-breathing and has become attuned to it. You breathe from the chest. All over the world chest breathing, which is a shallow breathing, exists. Maybe it is because of the fear of death that you don't breathe from the belly, because when you breathe from the belly the breath goes deep down to the hara. Then you touch death. Afraid of death, you practice shallow...

... breathing. Remember, whenever you are afraid your breathing will become shallow. Whenever fear takes you you will not be able to breathe deeply - immediately the breathing becomes shallow. Every fear is basically a fear of death; you may not be consciously aware of it, but your body knows where death is: don't go that way. Your body is wise, wiser than your mind - has to be, because mind is a very new...

... comer. Body has existed longer than mind, has passed through millions of lives, mindless lives, and has accumulated much wisdom. Whenever you are afraid you stop breathing or you breathe very shallow, afraid to come nearer to death. Deep breathing absorbs death into life, deep breathing creates a bridge between life and death; the fear disappears. If you can breathe deep down through the belly, then...

... fear will disappear completely. That's why the Japanese can commit suicide more easily than anybody else in the world. It looks like a game. They can commit suicide for such simple things that nobody can understand what the need was, because they know life and death are not separate, they are one. Death is also life - the other aspect of the same coin. It is rest. If you breathe deeply you will feel...

... it has nothing to do with breathing. But there are many problems: the fear of death - you cannot breathe deeply, the hara is there. And, just near the hara is the life-point, which you call the sex center - that too is a fear. If you breathe deeply then sex arises. So people who have become afraid of sex cannot breathe deeply. If you breathe deeply immediately you will feel that suppressed sex has...

... become again alive, it starts flowing into your veins and into your blood. And of course it is as it should be: the center of life should be just near the center of death. hara, the center of death, and sex, the center of life are just so near, so close that they almost touch each other - two aspects of the same coin. That's why in sex also people are afraid, because death starts throbbing with sex. A...

... death; a beautiful woman, but very dangerous - so dangerous that she is dancing on the body of her own husband, almost killing him. Shiva is lying there and she is dancing on his body almost crushing him. And she wears a garland of skulls, and in one of her hands she has a cut head, freshly cut with blood dripping from it. In the West they cannot understand why a mother should be so dangerous, why a...

... beautiful woman should be depicted in such a dangerous and terrible and horrible way. Hindus know better. They have penetrated the mystery of life better than anybody else. They know that sex and death are so close, so close that they are almost one. And when the sex center starts throbbing and spreading its waves over your body, the death center also starts throbbing. That's why orgasm has become just a...

... word. You don't achieve orgasm in sex - you cannot. Unless you accept death you cannot achieve orgasm, because orgasm means losing all control, orgasm means losing all mind, orgasm means the whole body throbs in ecstasy, every fiber and every cell of It. The whole body celebrates in an unknown bliss and the mind is no more the controller and the manipulator. Man can achieve only a local orgasm...

... - which is nothing but ejaculation, not an orgasm at all. Because if orgasm takes over then you are no more there - you are possessed by life and death both. And fear takes over. For thousands of years women have not achieved orgasm. Even now in India, I don't see that even two per cent of women achieve orgasm. Only in the past few years has man become aware that women can also achieve orgasm - it has...

... can achieve multiple orgasms and a man can achieve only one. A woman can achieve within minutes at least six orgasms - six to sixty. It will be impossible for any man to satisfy a woman, and she will go so mad because she is so natural - it is better to suppress her. Sex has been suppressed as part of death. Only two things have been suppressed in the world, sex and death. And this has been my...

... observation: that whenever a culture suppresses sex it does not suppress death so much, because there is no need - the suppression of sex alone will do. Whenever a culture suppresses death it does not bother to suppress sex, there is no need - the suppression of death alone will do. If you suppress one both are suppressed, because both are together - and both have to be freed. Then you live tremendously...

..., but you always live on the verge of death. You become a being, but you are always looking into the non-being. And that is the beauty of it, and the horror also. In fact, all natural, beautiful things are also terrible. God is not only beautiful, God is also terrible. He is not only a mystery, he is not only mysterium, he is also tremendum; he is not only life, he is also death. And once you suppress...

... your own being or your nonbeing you drop the bridges; then you cannot reach the existence. Be like the existence, only then the bridge is there; then you are connected and joined with it. In the West, after Freud, they have allowed sex a little freedom, but now they have become more suppressive of death. In the West nobody talks about death - as if it doesn't happen. Even professionals exist who work...

... on the dead body so that it appears alive - painted, colored. A woman dies; her face is painted, lipstick is used, beautiful clothes, a beautiful coffin, and she is carried as if she has gone into deep sleep, not death. This is the fear of death: you don't want to look into the face of it. Cemeteries are built outside of the town and you put beautiful marble stones on them; you decorate them. You...

... decorate death so that you can avoid it, so that there is no need to encounter it - and death is the very source of Life. Use life, use death also: that is the message. Use being, use non-being also. And don't be afraid of anything because nothing that is yours can be taken away; nothing that you have can be taken away. And that which you don't have, you don't have; it has already been taken away, you...

... choiceless is holy. Holy comes from the same root as whole. If you are whole you are holy, and if you are whole it means you are at the same time life and death also. You don't hide the fact of death and you don't try to hide your inner hollowness, emptiness. You don't try to fill it with rubbish. You enjoy the purity of emptiness also. Nothing is as pure as emptiness, nothing can be - because whenever...

...-gazers. People laugh in the West; whenever somebody meditates they say, "Have you become a navel-gazer?" Hindus know in the body... the point of death that the Japanese call hara Hindus call the temple of the body. They close their eyes and they bring their consciousness to the temple of the body. Your body is a temple because it carries you. And from that temple you enter deeper, and then...

... being, and the wheel is of non-being. Non-being is just the aura or your being, the light of your being, the space of your being, the territory of your being. And it is beautiful because it is absolutely empty; it is pure because it is absolutely empty - don't be afraid of it. In the beginning it looks like death; if you allow it, it becomes resurrection. After every inner death there is resurrection...

.... That is the meaning of the story of resurrection in Jesus' life - not that he was physically resurrected but that he passed through death, the cross, and he came to the innermost life. You have to pass the emptiness - that is the cross. Everybody has to pass it. Nobody else can carry that cross for you, you have to carry your own cross. And unless you do, unless you pass the emptiness, you will not...

... empty. Just sitting empty one comes to the greatest encounter of life - one encounters one s own death. If you can pass that, if you can pass that dancing, happy, enjoying it, if you can be nourished even by emptiness, then nothing can destroy you - you have attained to the eternal, the non-destructible, the deathless. That's why my insistence is always on a dancing meditation. It is not only an...

... outward dance. The outward is nothing but a training for the inner. You dance outwardly, you go on dancing outwardly - by and by an inner dance arises and then you can dance inwardly and move towards the innermost center, the very core of being. Remember - death can be crossed only by dance, death can be won over only by a deep laughter. One can carry one's cross only happily, blissfully, ecstatically...

... bubbling of bliss, an inner throbbing of bliss. Only on that boat can the part which is very very difficult for you to cross be crossed. Otherwise one escapes. The moment you face your inner emptiness you escape, you become scared to death. That's why so many people never think about themselves. They think of the whole world, they worry for the whole world, but they never think about themselves, because...

... that point seems to be touching a wound inside. They are afraid. Don't be afraid. The existence of things is good; you can profit by it, but it is not enough. Unless you learn now to be served by emptiness also you have not learned the art, the total art. If you know only how to live, you know only half the art; if you know also how to die, then you know the whole art - and the whole art will make...

... you were born death became certain; every birth carries the seed of death. In fact, in life nothing else is certain but that. Everything is at the most probable, but death is certain. It will happen. You can avoid it, you can postpone it a little, but that doesn't change the situation. It will happen. One way to face death is as the enemy, which is the way ninety-nine per cent of people face it...

... - and miss it. Because of their enmity they cannot use it, they cannot be profited by it, they cannot be served by death. There is another way: to accept death as a friend, to accept it as an innermost part of your being, to enjoy it, to welcome it, to be ready for it and when it comes to embrace it. Suddenly the quality of death changes. It is no more death, it becomes a door. It no longer destroys...

... you; on the contrary, you are served by it. It leads you to the deathless. Die - you will have to die. But die gracefully. I am not saying die like a stoic, I am not saying die like a very controlled man. No, I'm saying die gracefully, beautifully, as if a friend is coming, knocks at your door, and you are happy. And you embrace the friend and invite him in, and you have been waiting for him so long...

....... If you can love death you become deathless; if you can understand non-being then your being becomes the very ground of being-hood, the very ground of God. If you can love non-being then nothing can destroy you, you have transcended time and space. Then you have become one with the total, and this is what holiness is - to become whole is to be holy. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...