... we have to protect ourselves against death. This absurd idea creates endless miseries in our lives, because a person who protects himself against death becomes incapable of living. He is the person who is afraid of exhaling, then he cannot inhale and he is stuck. Then he simply drags; his life is no longer a flow, his life is no longer a river. If you really want to live you have to be ready to die...

.... Who is afraid of death in you? Is life afraid of death? It is not possible. How can life 4e afraid of its own integral process? Something else is afraid in you. The ego is afraid in you. Life and death are not opposites; ego and death are opposites. Life and death are not opposites; ego and life are opposites. Ego is against both life and death. The ego is afraid to live and the ego is afraid to die...

.... It is afraid to live because each effort, each step towards life, brings death closer. If you live you are coming closer to dying. The ego is afraid to die, hence it is afraid to live also. The ego simply drags. There are many people who are neither alive nor dead. This is worse than anything. A man who is fully alive is full of death also. That is the meaning of Jesus on the cross. Jesus carrying...

... his own cross has not really been understood. And he says to his disciples, 'You will have to carry your own cross.' The meaning of Jesus carrying his own cross is very simple, nothing but this: everybody has to carry his death continuously, everybody has to die each moment, everybody has to be on the cross because that is the only way to live fully, totally. Whenever you come to a total moment of...

... there is a peak of life there is also a peak of death - they go together. In love you die and you are reborn. The same happens when you come to meditate or to pray, or when you come to a Master to surrender. The ego creates all sorts of difficulties, rationalisations not to surrender: 'Think about it, brood about it, be clever about it.' When you come to a Master, again the ego becomes suspicious...

... WHEN RABBI BIRNHAM LAY DYING, HIS WIFE BURST INTO TEARS. HE SAID, 'WHAT ARE YOU CRYING FOR? MY WHOLE LIFE WAS ONLY THAT I MIGHT LEARN HOW TO DIE.' LIFE is in living. It is not a thing, it is a process. There is no way to attain to life except by living it, except by being alive, by flowing, streaming with it. If you are seeking the meaning of life in some dogma, in some philosophy, in some theology...

... cannot be transferred that way. The greatest Masters have never said anything about life - they have always thrown you back upon yourself. The second thing to remember is: once you know what life is you will know what death is. Death is also part of the same process. Ordinarily we think death comes at the end, ordinarily we think death is against life, ordinarily we think death is the enemy, but death...

... is not the enemy. And if you think of death as the enemy it simply shows that you have not been able to know what life is. Death and life are two polarities of the same energy, of the same phenomenon - the tide and the ebb, the day and the night, the summer and the winter. They are not separate and not opposites, not contraries; they are complementaries. Death is not the end of life; in fact, it is...

... a completion of one life, the crescendo of one life, the climax, the finale. And once you know your life and its process, then you understand what death is. Death is an organic, integral part of life, and it is very friendly to life. Without it life cannot exist. Life exists because of death; death gives the background. Death is, in fact, a process of renewal. And death happens each moment. The...

... moment you breathe in and the moment you breathe out, both happen. Breathing in, life happens; breathing out, death happens. That's why when a child is born the first thing he does is breathe in, then life starts. And when an old man is dying, the last thing he does is breathe out, then life departs. Breathing out is death, breathing in is life - they are like two wheels of a bullock cart. You live by...

... breathing in as much as you live by breathing out. The breathing out is part of breathing in. You cannot breathe in if you stop breathing out. You cannot live if you stop dying. The man who has understood what his life is allows death to happen; he welcomes it. He dies each moment and each moment he is resurrected. His cross and his resurrection are continually happening as a process. He dies to the past...

... each moment and he is born again and again into the future. If you look into life you will be able to know what death is. If you understand what death is, only then are you able to understand what life is. They are organic. Ordinarily, out of fear, we have created a division. We think that life is good and death is bad. We think that life has to be desired and death is to be avoided. We think somehow...

... aliveness, suddenly you will see death there also. In love it happens. In love, life comes to a climax - hence people are afriad of love. I have been continuously surprised by people who come to me and say they are afraid of love. What is the fear of love? It is because when you really love somebody your ego starts slipping and melting. You cannot love with the ego; the ego becomes a barrier. and when you...

... want to drop the barrier the ego says, 'This is going to be a death. Beware!' The death of the ego is not your death. the death of the ego is really your possibility of life. The ego is just a dead crust around you, it has to be broken and thrown away. It comes into being naturally - just as when a traveller passes, dust collects on his clothes, on his body, and he has to take a bath to get rid of...

..., doubtful, creates anxiety, because again yhou are coming to life, to a flame where death will also be as much alive as life. Let it be remembered that death and life both become aflame together, they are never separate. If you are very, very minimally alive, at the minimum, then you can see death and life as being separate. The closer you come to the peak, the closer they start coming. At the very apex...

... they meet and become one. In love, in meditation, in trust, in prayer, wherever life becomes total, death is there. Without death, life cannot become total. But the ego always thinks in divisions, in dualities; it divides everything. Existence is indivisible; it cannot be divided. You were a child, then you became young. Can you demark the line when you became young? Can you demark the point in time...

... are life - even if forms change, bodies change, minds change. What we call life is just an identification with a certain body, with a certain mind, with a certain attitude, and what we call death is nothing but getting out of that form, out of that body, out of that concept. You change houses. If you get too identified with one house, then changing the house will be very painful. You will think that...

... you are dying because the old house was what you were - that was your identity. But this doesn't happen, because you know that you are only changing the house, you remain the same. Those who have looked within themselves, those who have found who they are, come to know an eternal, non-ending process. Life is a process, timeless, beyond time. Death is part of it. Death is a continuous revival: a help...

... that invisible thread remains the same. That thread is beyond life and death. Life and death are two wings for that which is beyond life and death. That which is beyond goes on using life and death as two wheels of a cart, complementaries. It lives through life; it lives through death. Death and life are its processes, like inhalation and exhalation. But something in you is transcendental. THAT ART...

... THOU...that which is transcendental. But we are too identified with the form - that creates the ego. That's what we call 'I'. Of course the 'I' has to die many times. So it is constantly in fear, trembling, shaking, always afraid, protecting, securing. A Sufi mystic knocked at the door of a very rich man. He was a beggar and he wanted nothing but enough to have a meal. The rich man shouted at him and...

... light, must originally be of the light.' The ants were not totally convinced yet and were about to resume their dispute, but the sun had come up and the dew-drops were leaving the leaves, rising, rising towards the sun and disappearing into it. Everything returns to its original source, has to return to its original source. If you - understand life then you understand death also. Life is a...

... forgetfulness of the original source, and death is again a remembrance. Life is going away from the original source, death is coming back home. Death is not ugly, death is beautiful. But death is beautiful only for those who have lived their life unhindered, uninhibited. unsuppressed. Death is beautiful only for those who have lived their life beautifully, who have not been afraid to live, who have been...

... courageous enough to live - who loved, who danced, who celebrated. Death becomes the ultimate celebration if your life is a celebration. Let me tell you in this way: whatsoever your life was, death reveals it. If you have been miserable in life, death reveals misery. Death is a great revealer. If you have been happy in your life, death reveals happiness. If you have lived only a life of physical comfort...

... and physical pleasure, then of course, death is going to be very uncomfortable and very unpleasant, because the body has to be left. The body is just a temporary abode, a shrine in which we stay for the night and leave in the morning. It is not your permanent abode, it is not your home. So if you have lived just a bodily life and you have never known anything beyond the body, death is going to be...

... very, very ugly, unpleasant, painful. Death is going to be an anguish. But if you have lived a little higher than the body, if you have loved music and poetry, and you have loved, and you have looked at the flowers and the stars, and something of the non-physical has entered into your consciousness, death will not be so bad, death will not be so painful. You can take it with equanimity, but still it...

... pure awareness, consciousness - then death is going to be a great celebration, a great understanding, a great revelation. If you have known anything of the transcendental in you, death will reveal to you the transcendental in the universe - then death is no longer a death but a meeting with God, a date with God. So you can find three expressions about death in the history of human mind. One...

.... At the moment of death he will try to cling. He will resist death, he will fight death. Death will come as the enemy. Hence, all over the world, in all societies, death is depicted as dark, as devilish. In India they say that the messenger of death is very ugly - dark, black - and he comes sitting on a very big ugly buffalo. This is the ordinary attitude. These people have missed, they have not...

... been able to know all the dimensions of life. They have not been able to touch the depths of life and they have not been able to fly to the height of life. They missed the plenitude, they missed the benediction. Then there is a second type of expression. Poets, philosophers, have sometimes said that death is nothing bad, death is nothing evil, it is just restful - a great rest, like sleep. This is...

... better than the first. At least these people have known something beyond the body, they have known something of the mind. They have not had only food and sex, their whole life has not been only in eating and reproducing. They have a little sophistication of the soul, they are a little more aristocratic, more cultured. They say death is like great rest; one is tired and one goes into death and rests. It...

... is restful. But they too are far away from the truth. Those who have known life in its deepest core, they say that death is God. It is not only a rest but a resurrection, a new life, a new beginning; a new door opens. When a Sufi mystic, Bayazid, was dying, people who had gathered around him - his disciples - were suddenly surprised, because when the last moment came his face became radiant...

... closed his eyes, his breathing stopped. But at the moment his breathing stopped there was an explosion of light, the room became full of light, and then it disappeared. When a person has known the transcendental in himself, death is nothing but another face of God. Then death has a dance to it. And unless you become capable of celebrating death itself, remember, you have missed life. The whole life is...

... a preparation for this ultimate. This is the meaning of this beautiful story. WHEN RABBI BIRNHAM LAY DYING, HIS WIFE BURST INTO TEARS. HE SAID, 'WHAT ARE YOU CRYING FOR? MY WHOLE LIFE WAS ONLY THAT I MIGHT LEARN HOW TO DIE.' His whole life had been just a preparation, a preparation to learn the secrets of dying. All religions are nothing but a science - or an art - to teach you how to die. And the...

... only way to teach you how to die is to teach you how to live. They are not separate. If you know what right living is, you will know what right dying is. So the first thing, or the most fundamental thing is: how to live. Let me tell you a few things. First: your life is your life, it is nobody else's. So don't allow yourself to be dominated by others, don't allow yourself to be dictated to by others...

...? Talking about it or thinking about it?' That's all. Don't become a language professor, don't become a parrot. Parrots are language professors. They live in words, concepts, theories, theologies, and life goes on passing, slipping out of their hands. Then one day suddenly they become afraid of death. When a person is afraid of death, know well that that person has missed life. If he has not missed life...

... there cannot be any fear of death. If a person has lived life, he will be ready to live death also. He will be almost enchanted by the phenomenon of death. When Socrates was dying he was so enchanted that his disciples could not understand what he was feeling so happy about. One disciple, Credo, asked, 'Why are you looking so happy? We are crying and weeping.' Socrates said, 'Why should I not be happy...

...? I have known what life is, now I would like to know what death is. I am at the door of a great mystery, and I am thrilled!I am going on a great journey into the unknown. I am simply full of wonder! I cannot wait!' And remember, Socrates was not a religious man; Socrates was not in any way a believer. Somebody asked, 'Are you so certain that the soul will survive after death?' Socrates said, 'I...

.... Otherwise you have not been able yet to decode life. This is the message. The whole life is pointing at one thing, continuously - that you are gods. Once you have understood it, then there is no death. Then you have learned the lesson. Then in death gods will be returning back to their homes. WHEN RABBI BIRNHAM LAY DYING, HIS WIFE BURST INTO TEARS. HE SAID, 'WHAT ARE YOU CRYING FOR? MY WHOLE LIFE WAS ONLY...

... THAT I MIGHT LEARN HOW TO DIE.' The whole life...just a training for how to go back home, how to die, how to disappear. Because the moment you disappear, God appears in you. Your presence is God's absence; your absence is God's presence. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... living. The capacity to live, the capacity to live at the maximum, comes only when you are ready to die, and ready to die at the maximum. It is always proportionate. If you live in a lukewarm way you will die in a lukewarm way. If you live intensely, totally, dangerously, you will also die in a deep orgasm. Death is the crescendo. Life comes to its peak in death. The orgasm that you know through love...

... is nothing compared to the orgasm that death makes available. All the joys of life simply are pale compared to the joy that death brings. What exactly is death? Death is the disappearance of a false entity in you - the ego. Death also happens in love, on a smaller scale, in a partial way. Hence the beauty of love. For a moment you die, for a moment you disappear, for a moment you are no more, and...

..., death is the greatest friend. Death has to be welcomed, death has to be waited for with a loving heart. If you think of death as the enemy, you will die - everybody has to die, your thinking will not make any difference. But you will die in agony - because you will be resisting, you will be fighting. In resistance, in fight, you will destroy all the joys that death, and only death, can deliver to you...

.... The death that could have been a great ecstasy will be just an agony. And when something is too much of an agony one falls unconscious. There is a limit to tolerance, one can bear only so much. Hence ninety-nine out of a hundred die in a state of unconsciousness. They struggle, they fight, to the very end. And when it becomes impossible to fight any more - they have put all their energies at stake...

... - they fall into a kind of swoon. They die an unconscious death. And to die an unconscious death is a great calamity, because you will not remember what has happened. You will not remember that death was a door into the divine. You will be carried through the door, but on a stretcher, unconscious. You have missed a great opportunity again. That's why we go on forgetting about our past lives. If you die...

... the same mistakes are no more committed. Slowly slowly, mistakes disappear. Slowly slowly, you become aware of the vicious circle; slowly slowly, you become capable of getting out of it too. If you die unconsciously you will be born unconsciously - because death is one side of the door, birth is the other side of the same door. From one side the door says "Death", from another side it says...

... you were born, you died - because in the birth, death is determined. If you really want not to die again then you will have to do something so that you are not born again. That is the whole Eastern approach: how not to be born again. There are ways not to be born again. If desire disappears you will not be coming again. It is desire that brings you into the body; desire is the glue that keeps you...

.... Because you never really die, only the ego dies. And if you accept death totally, you have renounced the ego on your own. Then there is nothing left for death to do; you have done its work on your own. What can death take from you? It will take your money, it will take your wife, it will take your husband, it will take your relationships, it will take your world. DON'T be attached to these things - then...

... THINGS? - MY HATE FOR DEATH AND MY EXTREME PAIN WHEN I REALIZE THAT I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO THANK YOU. Yes, there is a connection, because both are deaths. And the first is not such a great death as the second. The disciple has to die in the master - and then there remains nobody to be grateful. That is enlightenment, when there is nobody found inside you. Who is going to be grateful? and to whom? The...

... Available: N.A. Length: N.A. The first question: Question 1: THE STRONGEST EMOTION THAT I HAVE IS HATING DEATH. I WANT TO KILL IT! ONCE AND FOR ALL! THE SECOND THING IS: I FEEL EXTREME PAIN WHEN I REALIZE THAT I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO THANK YOU. IS THERE A CONNECTION? DEVA BHAKTA, TO HATE DEATH IS TO HATE LIFE. They are not separate and they cannot be separated. Death and life exist together, there is no way...

... to separate them. The separation is just an abstraction in the mind; it is utterly false. Life implies death, death implies life. They are polar opposites, but complementary to each other. Death is the pinnacle of life. If you hate death how can you love life. And that is a great misunderstanding. People who think that they love life always hate death - and by hating death they become incapable of...

... the whole possesses you. You disappear as a part, you become rhythmic with the whole. You DON'T exist as a ripple in the ocean, you exist as the ocean itself. That's why all orgasmic experiences are oceanic experiences. The same happens in deep sleep; the ego disappears, the mind functions no more, you relapse into the original the joy. But these are nothing compared to death. these are partial...

... things. Sleep is a very tiny death, each morning you will be awake again. Still, if you have slept deeply, the joy lingers on the whole day - a certain quality of tranquillity continues deep in your heart. You live differently that day when you have slept well. If you have not been able to sleep well, the day is disturbed. You feel annoyed, irritated, for no reason at all. Small things become great...

... disturbances. You are angry - not at somebody in particular, you are simply angry. Your energy is not at home, it is distracted. You feel uprooted. Death is a great sleep. The whole turmoil of life - seventy. eighty or ninety years' turmoil - and all the miseries of life and all the excitements and the distractions and the anxieties, simply disappear, are no more relevant. You fall back into the original...

... unity of existence. You become part of the earth. Your body disappears into the earth, your breath disappears into the air, your fire goes back to the sun, your water to the oceans, and your inner sky has a meeting with the outer sky. This is death. How can one hate death? You must be carrying a misunderstanding. You must have been carrying the idea that death is the enemy. Death is not the enemy...

... by your birth trauma. That trauma has to be understood. But the only way to understand it is to remember it. And how to remember it? You are so afraid of death, you are so afraid of birth, that the very fear prevents you from going into it. Devabhakta, you say: THE STRONGEST EMOTION THAT I HAVE IS HATING DEATH. It is your hating life. Love life, and then a natural love for death arises too. Because...

... it is life that brings death. Death is not against life, death is the flowering of all that life contains in it as a seed. Death does not come from the blue - it grows in you, it is your flowering, you bloom. Have you ever seen a real man dying? It is very rare to see a real man dying, but if you have, you will be surprised that death makes the person so beautiful. He has never been so beautiful...

... before - neither in his childhood, because then he was ignorant, nor in his youth, because then passion was too much of a fever. But when death comes, all is relaxed. The foolishness of childhood is no more there, and the madness of youth is also gone, and the miseries of old age, the illnesses and the limitations of old age, are also gone. One is being freed from the body. A great joy arises from the...

... innermost core, spreads all over. In the eyes of the real man dying you can see a flame which is not of this world. And in his face you can see a grandeur which is of God. And you can feel the silence, the non-struggling silence, the non-resistant silence of the man who is slipping, slowly slowly, into death with a deep gratitude and acceptance, for all that life has given to him and for all that God has...

... been so generous with. A gratitude surrounds him. You will find a totally different space around him. He will die as one SHOULD die. And he will release such freedom that those who are close by will be simply stoned on that freedom, will be transported. In the East, it has always been a great point: whenever a master dies, thousands, sometimes millions of people gather to watch that great phenomenon...

... released when the body and soul are divided. They have been together for millions of lives - now suddenly the moment has come when they will be divided. In that division, great energy is released. That energy release can become a tidal wave for those who want to ride on it. They will have great ecstatic experiences. DON'T HATE DEATH. And I know, it is not only Devabhakta who hates death, it is almost...

... everybody. Because we have been taught a very wrong philosophy - we have been told that death is against life. It is not. We have been told that death comes and destroys life. That is utter nonsense. Death comes and fulfills life. If your life has been beautiful, death beautifies it to its ultimate. If your life has been a life of love then death gives you the MAXIMUM experience of love. If your life has...

... been a life of meditation then death will bring you to samadhi. Death only enhances. Of course if your life has been a wrong life then death enhances that too. Death is a great magnifier. If you have lived only in anger then in death you will see just hell inside you, just fire. If you have lived in hatred then death will magnify hatred. What can death do? Death magnifies, it mirrors - but you are...

... the culprit. Death is just a mirroring phenomenon. DON'T hate death. Otherwise you will miss death and you will miss life too. You say: THE STRONGEST EMOTION THAT I HAVE IS HATING DEATH. You are wasting your strongest emotion unnecessarily. Love life. Never be negative, negatives lead nowhere. DON'T hate darkness, love light. Put your total energy into loving. And you will be surprised, you will be...

... affirmation, total affirmation, brings you to reality. You say: THE STRONGEST EMOTION THAT I HAVE IS HATING DEATH. I WANT TO KILL IT! ONCE AND FOR ALL! You cannot do it. Nobody can do it - it is impossible, it is not in the nature of things. The day you were born, death became absolutely certain. Now there is no shirking. Death can be dissolved only when you dissolve birth. You have already died. The day...

... glued to the body. One body disappears, and desire creates another body, and so on and so forth. Dissolve desire, so you will not need any birth. If birth disappears, death disappears of its own accord. Then there is life eternal - no birth, no death. Ikkyu says this is the greatest medicine - the medicine of no birth, no death. This is the taste of the whole Eastern approach, Eastern realization...

..., Eastern insight. But remember, you cannot fight death. YOU can dissolve birth, and then death is dissolved. But what happens is that ordinarily we love birth, we love life and that's why we hate death. Now you are going into an impossibility - you will drive yourself crazy. I WANT TO KILL IT! If you really want to kill death, accept it. Accept it totally - and in that very acceptance death disappears...

... what is left for death to take from you? It will take your ego, your self-identity. The idea that "I exist as a separate being" - death will take it away. You can dissolve it. That's what meditation is all about. That's what sannyas is: a conscious, voluntary decision that "I will dissolve this ego, I will not cling to it." If you DON'T cling to the ego, what is left? You have...

... died already. And only those who have died already, conquer death and attain to life abundant. THE SECOND THING IS, you say, I FEEL EXTREME PAIN WHEN I REALIZE THAT I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO THANK YOU. THAT TOO IS PART OF THE EGO. Why should you be worried about thanking me? Your realization will be enough gratitude, you need not use words. Words are very tiny, trivial, mundane. They can't express...

.... He has no anxiety. If it is wrong, the master is responsible. If it is right, the master knows. He is just to follow. His is not to ask why - he has to do and die. He is a mechanical robot. I have heard: In the novel MOTHER NIGHT Kurt Vonnegut portrays the desperate woman Resi beseeching her lover thus: "Then tell me what to live for - anything at all. It does not have to be love. Anything at...

... THE SAME OLD WAYS? THE OLD HABITS DIE HARD. Just becoming a sannyasin on the outside is not going to change your inner patterns of living, thinking, being. The outer sannyas is only a gesture - a beginning, not the end. You will have to do much. The outer sannyas is only a gesture that you are ready to change. Now much work is ahead of you. Old habits are not just on the surface. It is not only a...

... ground, the other two partners could hear his haunting voice, crying: "Nathan! Sam! Cut velvets!" Now, he is dying... But the old mind, even at the moment of death, persists. The mind does not leave you so easily. How can it leave you so easily? - you have been cultivating it for so long; your whole life has been a cultivation of it. Slowly slowly, you have to become aware of your old...

.... Certainly that could put a man off. Then he heard the telephone operator tell her customer, "Sorry sir, your three minutes are up." Her attitude was even worse. Then he listened in on the school teacher, and heard, "No, no, no! You'll have to do it over and over until you get it right!" Habits die hard. You may have become a sannyasin - DON'T think this is the end. This is the...

... never die. And the person who dies, dies only in the eyes of those who are standing outside, not - if he is aware - in his own eyes; he simply moves from life to life, ultimately melting into the whole existence. But death has tortured man. There are many who have avoided to ask even the question, just out of fear; they don't even pronounce the name of death. And it is not only ordinary people: a man...

..., and beyond death is nothing but an unknown world, unfamiliar - no friends, no family, no society. You don't know what is going to exist for you, because you have always been in the crowd. Death will make you alone. So only those who know the art of being alone while they are alive, remain conscious when they die; otherwise, the shock is so much that before death ninety-nine percent of people, or...

... perhaps more, become unconscious. And to die unconsciously is to miss such a great opportunity, because death reveals to you life in its utter nudity. This is one of the most important questions anybody can raise. A few things before I speak about Kahlil Gibran; they will help you to understand his statements. Death is not an accident. It is not that suddenly one day, out of the blue, death comes and...

... symptoms - the man stops breathing, the heart stops beating, the pulse is no longer there. These are symptoms, because consciousness does not need breathing, neither does it need the heartbeat, nor the pulse. There was one man, Brahmayogi, who used to die for ten minutes. His whole life, he trained for only one thing. He used to be a doctor, but he was not satisfied with the definition of death, because...

... Available: N.A. Length: N.A. BELOVED OSHO, THEN ALMITRA SPOKE, SAYING, WE WOULD ASK NOW OF DEATH. AND HE SAID: YOU WOULD KNOW THE SECRET OF DEATH. BUT HOW SHALL YOU FIND IT UNLESS YOU SEEK IT IN THE HEART OF LIFE? THE OWL WHOSE NIGHT-BOUND EYES ARE BLIND UNTO THE DAY CANNOT UNVEIL THE MYSTERY OF LIGHT. IF YOU WOULD INDEED BEHOLD THE SPIRIT OF DEATH, OPEN YOUR HEART WIDE UNTO THE BODY OF LIFE. FOR LIFE AND...

... DEATH ARE ONE, EVEN AS THE RIVER AND THE SEA ARE ONE. IN THE DEPTH OF YOUR HOPES AND DESIRES LIES YOUR SILENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE BEYOND; AND LIKE SEEDS DREAMING BENEATH THE SNOW YOUR HEART DREAMS OF SPRING. TRUST THE DREAMS, FOR IN THEM IS HIDDEN THE GATE TO ETERNITY. YOUR FEAR OF DEATH IS BUT THE TREMBLING OF THE SHEPHERD WHEN HE STANDS BEFORE THE KING WHOSE HAND IS TO BE LAID UPON HIM IN HONOR. IS THE...

... SHEPHERD NOT JOYFUL BENEATH HIS TREMBLING, THAT HE SHALL WEAR THE MARK OF THE KING? YET IS HE NOT MORE MINDFUL OF HIS TREMBLING? FOR WHAT IS IT TO DIE BUT TO STAND NAKED IN THE WIND AND TO MELT INTO THE SUN? AND WHAT IS IT TO CEASE BREATHING BUT TO FREE THE BREATH FROM ITS RESTLESS TIDES, THAT IT MAY RISE AND EXPAND AND SEEK GOD UNENCUMBERED? ONLY WHEN YOU DRINK FROM THE RIVER OF SILENCE SHALL YOU INDEED...

... SING. AND WHEN YOU HAVE REACHED THE MOUNTAIN TOP, THEN YOU SHALL BEGIN TO CLIMB. AND WHEN THE EARTH SHALL CLAIM YOUR LIMBS, THEN SHALL YOU TRULY DANCE. Death is one of the most mysterious, and yet the most false, things in existence. Everybody dies, and yet I say unto you: nobody ever dies. Death is an appearance, an appearance from the outside. That's why it is always somebody else who dies; you...

... of the caliber of Sigmund Freud was so afraid that it was banned by his friends and followers... nobody was allowed to speak of death before him. Three times it happened that accidentally somebody started talking about death - and Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, fainted, became unconscious. The fear must have been very great. We make our graveyards outside the city, so that we don't...

... learned much, following many people who have died. The strangest thing I have learned is that even when the man is on a funeral pyre, those who have come to say good-bye to him are not even sitting looking at the funeral pyre. Their backs are towards the funeral pyre, and they are talking about all kinds of things, except death - because it is difficult to avoid the question that if everybody dies...

... sooner or later my number is also going to come. A famous poetic statement is: "Never ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." When somebody dies and the church bell tolls, "Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Every death reminds you that you are here only for a few days, perhaps tomorrow will not come for you. The end is coming closer and closer every day...

... you are finished. No, death grows with you, side by side, just like your shadow. The day you were born, you started dying too. Death and life are two aspects of the same coin, two wheels of the same cart. You become so enchanted with life that you never see that death is also growing with you. It is a growth; just as life will take seventy years to come to its climax, death will also take seventy...

... years to come to its climax. And only in the climax, do they meet. They have been always moving together, but in the crescendo of your life they are not even together - they are one. Those who want to understand life have to understand death, too. Those who do not understand death can never understand life either, but we have been brought up with such a great fear of death. I have seen people closing...

... paranoid about death, that after death... particularly the religions that have been born outside of India; they are not very old, and they don't have that depth or insight that religions born in India have. Christianity is only two thousand years old, Judaism is only four thousand years old, Mohammedanism is only fourteen centuries old... compared to Hinduism. One great scholar from this very city, Poona...

... years before. Perhaps Jainism is the world's most ancient religion. Naturally, these religions have worked in depth on every human problem. All three religions born outside of India - Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism - believe in only one life. That shows they have not explored life in its totality, before birth and after death. Their span is very small - this very life. There is a frame to...

... represent reality." But the religions who have looked only at this life are very shallow, and for them death is a tremendous fear - for the simple reason that with death, everything ends. After death there is only the judgment day. Nobody from these religions has ever inquired about what was before life. Has life come out of nothingness? It is not possible. Before life.... There have been lives from...

... the very beginning, if there was any beginning - otherwise, always. And after death, nothing ends; the caravan of life continues - in different forms, in different bodies - until it reaches to the ocean, until it comes to the understanding of universal existence. Then there is no need for having a small body with consciousness encaged in it; then you can live as pure consciousness, part of the whole...

... the three religions born in India - Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism - differ on everything except on one thing. They have been arguing on every point, and the exceptional point is the agreement that life is eternal; there is no judgment day, and this small life is nothing but just a small link in a long procession. Hence, in the East, there has not been fear of death. And when there is no fear of death...

..., a very strange phenomenon happens: you start living totally - because death is half of your being. If you are afraid of death, you cannot live totally. Your life will always be under the shadow of death; it can come any moment, and you are helpless - nothing can be done about it. It comes without giving you any advance notice, it comes as a guest. I am using the word "guest" because that...

... not that quality - particularly the modern guest, who informs you ahead of time to see whether you will be available or not. And then, too, he comes and stays in a hotel. In the East it is inconceivable that your guest should stay in a hotel. It is simply uncivilized. To use the word atithi for death is immensely significant. You cannot do anything about it; you know it only when it has happened...

... has to be given, or chloroform, or something so that the person becomes unconscious; then you can do for hours whatever you want to do with his body - cut his limbs, remove his kidneys, any cancerous growth. Sometimes an operation may take six hours. If the man were alert and awake and conscious, you may succeed in the operation, but the man will die; it is intolerable. Hence nature has made it an...

..., "The operation you can do; but chloroform, or any kind of anesthesia, I will not take. I also want to watch it." The doctor said, "This is never done, and if you die, then we will be the murderers." He said, "I can write down that it is my will, and nobody else is responsible for it, because I know I am not going to die." There was great discussion between the doctors...

... anesthesia. At the most he can die - anyway he is going to die, but there is a chance... perhaps he can manage. He was a great meditator. He said, "I will simply meditate. The moment I meditate, I forget all about my body, I forget all about the world, I become pure consciousness; and I don't think your instruments can touch it or harm it." The operation was done. The surgeons were trembling...

... because they were doing something that should not be done, but there was no other alternative. And the king simply went into meditation. Two hours passed; the operation was successful. Then he opened his eyes, and he said, "Even death will not disturb me, because I belong to eternal life. It is not a hypothesis to me, it is my experience." And he had given a perfect example of his experience...

.... The West is very much afraid of death for the simple reason that it is a dead-end street. After it, only one thing can happen: that is the judgment day - and one cannot conceive of how it can happen. In one day, millions and millions of people who have died down the ages will be awakened by God from their graves - they are sleeping. The crowd will be so big; half of them will be women, screaming...

... is out of the grave, naturally he does not want to go back in it. Many graves are empty... where are the people? It is strange, but this is the idea of only one life. They don't say anything about where you come from - it is a very unscientific attitude. Your birth brings life, but from where? Your death takes life away, but where does it go? The Eastern search has been very profound, because they...

... were concentrated only on one thing. That's why in the East, science has not developed, technology has not developed, because all the geniuses of the East were concerned with only one thing: to discover the mystery of life and death. And they found death is only a change of clothes, of bodies, of houses - but nothing dies. Before birth you were here, after death you will be here. Hence, in the East...

..., death is not a fear. The fear is that you should make your life more conscious - you should not get lost in the ordinary trivia of life, you should become more alert, more meditative, so that when death comes, you can have a higher form of expression. Each death should take you to a higher stage; and the ultimate stage is God, or the universal spirit. THEN ALMITRA SPOKE, SAYING, WE WOULD ASK NOW OF...

... DEATH. AND HE SAID: YOU WOULD KNOW THE SECRET OF DEATH. There is no problem in it: YOU WOULD KNOW THE SECRET OF DEATH. BUT HOW SHALL YOU FIND IT UNLESS YOU SEEK IT IN THE HEART OF LIFE? It is growing within you; there is no need to seek death. All that is needed is to seek the very heart of your life, and there you will find death also, the shadow of your life. You cannot catch hold of a shadow, but...

... - naturally. People are living a lie - just as unconsciously as a drunk. They don't know who they are, they have never been inside themselves, they have never bothered about what this life is. Kahlil Gibran says: but how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? A very pregnant statement. Death does not come from outside; it grows within you, with your life, simultaneously. THE OWL WHOSE...

...;That which you know as night is day, and that which you call day is night." And the owl is not wrong; it is his experience. Although all over there is light, that cannot help unless you open your eyes. You are full of life, and full of death too; but unless you turn inwards and see what you have been carrying all along, you will only be concerned.... Somebody has died; you will be reminded of...

... your own death, and fear comes. Nobody has died. It is an outsider's view. You have to become an insider - within yourself - to find the secret of life. In finding the secret of life, you will also find the secret of death, because there are not two secrets; it is one secret with two aspects. Death does not kill you, it serves you. It helps you to get rid of an old rotten body, to move into a fresh...

..., younger body. There is nothing to be sad about, to be afraid about; you are simply changing house... going into a better house. Your whole concern should be to live with intensity, totality and awareness, so that you can become alert to the great secret of life and death. It is really not exact to say life and death; better will be to say the secret of "lifedeath" - not even a hyphen between...

... the two; they are one. IF YOU WOULD INDEED BEHOLD THE SPIRIT OF DEATH, OPEN YOUR HEART WIDE UNTO THE BODY OF LIFE. If you really want to know what death is, the spirit of death...open your heart wide unto the body of life. Forget about death, because perhaps the very word will not allow you to see the truth. Fear blinds; it is a prejudice gathered in ignorance, so better forget about death; you...

... simply open yourself to the life of your body. In that very understanding of life, you will be surprised - you have understood death too. FOR LIFE AND DEATH ARE ONE, EVEN AS THE RIVER AND THE SEA ARE ONE. IN THE DEPTH OF YOUR HOPES AND DESIRES LIES YOUR SILENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE BEYOND.... IN THE DEPTH OF YOUR HOPES AND DESIRES.... You cannot see clearly, because you are so full of expectations, hopes...

..., and people who don't have any dreams, who have gone beyond all hopes, all desires - who have arrived home. YOUR FEAR OF DEATH IS BUT THE TREMBLING OF THE SHEPHERD WHEN HE STANDS BEFORE THE KING WHOSE HAND IS TO BE LAID UPON HIM IN HONOUR. IS THE SHEPHERD NOT JOYFUL BENEATH HIS TREMBLING.... He's trembling because he's a poor shepherd - just standing before the king is enough for him to tremble. But...

... beneath his trembling, he's joyful because he has been chosen to be blessed by the king, and the king will put his hand on his head. IS THE SHEPHERD NOT JOYFUL BENEATH HIS TREMBLING, THAT HE SHALL WEAR THE MARK OF THE KING? YET IS HE NOT MORE MINDFUL OF HIS TREMBLING? The joy is hidden beneath the trembling, the fear. The fear of death is exactly like that. For those who are alert, they will know that...

... new world of which you cannot even dream. FOR WHAT IS IT TO DIE BUT TO STAND NAKED IN THE WIND AND TO MELT INTO THE SUN? For what is it to die, but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? Your body will melt, will merge into the earth; all the elements of your body will go to their sources. Only your pure consciousness - invisible, but eternal - will go with you: you are it. Everything...

... else will melt away. Don't be afraid of this melting, because this is certainly an end of a life, but it is also a beginning of a better life. Life is continuously evolving, and this is the only way to evolve. AND WHAT IS IT TO CEASE BREATHING BUT TO FREE THE BREATH FROM ITS RESTLESS TIDES...? You are not breathing.... Even medical science is not able to define death. All that they know is the...

..., and he had certificates from prominent physicians of the world declaring that he was dead; then after ten minutes, slowly he would start breathing and the pulse would come back, and the heartbeat would come back. Just a single man proved that what you call death is just the death of the body, but not of the being. And if you have disciplined yourself, you can deceive any doctor. Brahmayogi did a...

... great service. But such people are never taken seriously; it is thought perhaps they are exceptions. And even after his death, medical science goes on defining death with the symptoms. Every doctor should be trained in the same discipline that Brahmayogi went through - it is a simple discipline, it just takes a long time. There are signs that show that the day is not far off when medical science will...

... change this idea of death. In America, there are at least ten dead bodies of very superrich people waiting in a very deep-frozen state, because their physicians have said, "It will not take more than ten years, and we will be able to revive your breathing and your pulse and your heartbeat." It is very costly to keep those dead bodies from deteriorating, so they are deeply frozen, as if fast...

... breathing ceases, your soul can be free from the body, unencumbered, and expand and seek God, the universal spirit. Each death is an opportunity; either you expand and become one with the universe, or you go into another body - if you have not learned the lesson yet. Life is a school. You have to come back if you have not learned the lesson. If you have learned it, you need not come back to any cage, to...

... Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. Question 1: BELOVED OSHO, I KNOW IT IS CERTAIN THAT ONE DAY I AM GOING TO DIE, BUT I DON'T FEEL ANY FEAR - WHY? It is not something exceptional, it is almost the rule. Nobody is afraid of death; otherwise living will become impossible. There is a natural safety measure, and that is something of a very basic nature to be understood...

... certain: whoever moves, it is when somebody dies. Every step in this queue brings you closer to death. But it is an inference. Have you really seen a man die? You will say yes. Almost everybody has seen somebody die. But I say to you emphatically, you have not seen a single man die. You have seen only a man stopping breathing, his heart stopping beating, his pulse disappearing. Yes, you have seen this...

... technique! Brahmayogi had also trained himself for another miraculous feat. Science says that there are certain poisons that if your tongue even touches them, you will die. There is no way to help you, your death is certain. He practiced for that too - not only touching those certain poisons , he would drink cups of those poisons. He baffled the scientists. But in Rangoon an accident happened. His...

... all the symptoms of death are not at all symptoms of death, they are symptoms only of a body failure. Your deeper life force, elan vital, is eternal. You say,"I am certain that I am going to die one day." How can you be certain? You have not seen death yet, you have seen only symptoms, outward symptoms. You have never seen any life dying. You have seen only a dead body stop functioning; it...

... tolling for others; you are not certain, you cannot be. And you say, "One day I am going to die." This is very strange; you have not lived yet, how can you die? At least follow the natural course of things; first live. Without being alive, nobody can die. I mean unless you have experienced life in its totality, you will not be able to experience death in its totality either, because death is...

... have billboards saying, "It is better to be late than never." It is for people who are going beyond the legal speed: It is better to be late than never. I would like to say to you, it is better to be never than to be late. You have always been late. And if you say that you know, "I am going to die one day, I am certain;" you are going to miss again, you will be late. Death will...

... living. From one death to another death - there is no gap even where you can breathe. Don't say that "I am going to die one day." First live! And live this very day. And I promise you that if you can live this very day, death will happen, but not to you, only to your outward imprisonment - your body, the shell in which you are imprisoned. You are not going to die on any day. And fortunately...

.... You know that it is always the other who dies, never you. It is always somebody else, but never you. That gives an unconscious foundation for the hope that perhaps you are the exception, everybody dies except you. That's why you don't feel fear. Nature does not want you to feel fear of death for the simple reason that if fear of death becomes overwhelming, you will not be able to live. Life can be...

... lived only if somehow you can go on believing that you are going to be here forever. Things will change, people will die, but you will remain outside all this change. And it is based on your experience. The poet says: "Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." But when it tolls for thee, you are not there to hear it, that's the trouble. I say to you, it always tolls for somebody...

... else, that's why you can hear it. The poet does not know the deeper realms of human consciousness. In a way he is saying a truth. Yes, it tolls for thee. But you are hearing it .... You can understand the implication, but that implication will not create fear in you. I can say for certain that even the poet who wrote that was not afraid of death. Even he, hearing the bell tolling, would not have...

... thought that it is tolling for him. It is always for somebody else. It is always for the other. So this is one fundamental thing: you are not an exception, you are just the rule. But I have to go deep into your question. It has many layers you may not be aware of. You say, "It is certain that I am going to die one day." On what grounds do you say it is certain? Have you seen anything in life...

... as a certainty? Life is a flux, nothing is certain. Everything goes on moving in new directions, unpredictable; you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Talking of certainty is absurd. A conscious man will never talk about certainty. A life is just a perhaps, it is never a certainty. I can understand when you say, "I am certain that one day I am going to die." I know what you mean...

... century. A century-old mind - it cannot bear the shock. But that apart, whether it can bear the shock or not ... even medical science is no longer certain that what we have always called death, is death. Yes, there are symptoms; the man is no longer capable of doing things he used to do. This is a very negative definition of death. Medical science has not been able to provide a positive definition of...

... death: no breathing, no pulse, no heartbeat - can't you see it is all negative? One yogi in India - his name was Brahmayogi - devoted his whole life to prove that all the symptoms that make the medical profession certain about death are wrong. His work was of tremendous value. He practiced methods very ancient in the East, simple methods, but requiring one thing which has disappeared from the world...

... blossom - but within six weeks they are gone too. Their whole life span from seed to death is only twelve weeks at the most. But if you want a tree like the cedars of Lebanon, or the redwoods of California, thousands of years old, reaching hundreds of feet into the sky .... They have a certain pride and a certain personality. The cedars of Lebanon have a grandeur, just like emperors; everything is just...

... of course you will have to deny the existence of the cedars of Lebanon. That's what has happened to the Eastern methods which have proved totally different conclusions about what indicates death. Brahmayogi practiced for thirty years a certain method of breathing which makes you capable of stopping the breath, the pulse and the heartbeat for ten minutes. He exhibited what he attained to almost all...

... breathing, it uses breathing, breathing is its means; but life energy itself is not breathing. It can exist without breathing." If it can exist for ten minutes it can exist for ten years. The question is whether life energy can remain separate from breathing, from the heartbeat, the pulse. Brahmayogi's effort was to prove that your symptoms of death are simply symptoms of a body which has become...

... incapable of keeping the life energy in itself. It is not a proof of death. But it is a strange world. The man proved his point in front of all the scientists of the world. But the problem for the scientist is, who is going to be trained for thirty years in a certain breathing technique? Who is going to be ready for that? People want instant coffee, and you are talking about thirty years of a breathing...

... here. You are not a burden, somebody needs you. You are here to fulfill somebody's life, you are here to make somebody complete. But you have to experience it; only then can you be certain. The same is true about death. You will be surprised; why am I comparing death with love? It is not accidental - they are alike, very much alike. In love there is death; the old dies and the new is born. There is a...

... death and there is eternity; death of something non-essential and the revelation of eternity, which is essential. The same is true about death. There is something of love in it. The old dies, the old body disappears, and suddenly there is a new freedom, unbounded. You cannot believe that you can be so huge, that stars can move within you. Love is a tiny death: death is immense love. Love happens...

... between two small individuals: Death happens between two universes. Love makes two individuals one: Death makes two universes one. That's why I have purposely chosen love to be an example. You say, 'I am certain ....' Please, don't be certain. Without experiencing anything, to be certain is stupid. First know, then certainty follows as a shadow, but without knowing .... You have only heard the bell...

... not separate from life. It is just an episode in your life. And there have been many episodes like that in your life. Your life is from one eternity - the beginningless beginning - to another eternity, the endless end. Millions of times the episode of death will happen, but you will be able to experience it only if before it, preceding it, there is the vital experience of life. It is something like...

... you see in schools: they all have blackboards. Why don't they have whiteboards? When I entered my first grade that was my first question. The teacher could not believe that such a small boy ... and he looked embarrassed because he had no answer. I said, "Why are all these boards black? Black is the color of the devil, the color of death, the color of mourning. Why? Why can't you have white...

... will not be visible to anybody, to you or to anybody else. You have to write on a black board. And white chalk was easily available; it is just white mud, refined - cheap. Exactly that is the case in life. Your life has to have an intensity, because death is a very momentary, fleeting experience. If you have not lived a life of tremendous depth, intensity - so intense that in one moment the whole...

... eternity becomes joined - you will not be able to detect when death comes and when it goes. Death comes and it goes so fast that unless you are in the moment, totally present, you will miss it. You may think of it: it is coming, it is coming, the queue is becoming smaller, smaller ... and then suddenly it is gone: you are out of the queue. You will know it before, you will know it after, but you will not...

... have passed by your side and you will not have been able to detect it. You will remain certain in your knowledge. You will be shocked only when you see that it has happened without even making you alert, giving you no warning, not even knocking on your door. It has passed. Death does not believe in knocking on your doors. It is a very fleeting moment, and it is a momentary thing. Life has a length...

... - death has no length. So please drop this idea that "I am certain." Drop this idea that, "I know that death is coming one day." How do you know? It may come, it may not come. How can you be certain? There is no way. Yes, you see people dying but you are not those people; you may live. This is an inference. What I want to emphasize is, there is an inference, a logical inference...

... crowd? Why can't you respect yourself as an individual? You say, "I am going to die one day ...." Be a little respectful to yourself. I am not saying that you will not die, I am saying at least before dying, don't die. Die only once, don't die every day; otherwise whenever the bell tolls you die again. How many deaths in such a small life! - so many deaths that there is no time left for...

... there are only seven days. So I give the guarantee that in these seven days you are not going to die, unless you invent the eighth day, which is very difficult. It is very strange that around the world all the cultures, all the societies, all the languages, not in connection with each other, all have seven days. And their seven days have all the same meanings. For example in English Monday is the...

... different, but even when things become different old traditions continue, old worlds continue. Old words are like old habits, they die hard. There are only seven days - please live! And I am not a Christian so I don't even give a holiday. The Christian God to me seems to be really lousy. Just six days' work - and not a great work. Just look around the world to see the mess that He has created! And He had...

... known so nothing can be said positively, just inferences - He just felt so guilty, so Catholic, that He hanged himself. There are only seven days - please live! Even Sunday is not a holiday - make it an intense day of life. Live each moment, don't leave a single moment unlived. Then only will you become capable of knowing death. When death comes you will be in the moment, available, open. And a man...

... who is open and available to death comes to know in death the most beautiful experience of life - because death is silence, utter silence, abysmal silence. And you ask me, "I am not afraid of it - why?" Nobody is afraid of death. I have never come across a person who is afraid of death. People are afraid of having cancer, people are afraid of having AIDS, people are afraid of becoming...

... blind, people are afraid of becoming crippled; people are afraid of all kinds of things that can happen in old age; they are afraid of old age. Nobody is afraid of death. Death is so clean - why should one be afraid of death? In fact the closer you come to your old age and the closer to death, the more you start hoping that death comes soon. Death is absolute clean, pure. It has never bothered anybody...

..., it has never tortured anybody. And the contrary, it has relieved millions of people from torture, from disease, from concentration camps, from suffering, misery, anguish. Death has been a great friend to the whole of humanity. That's why I say to my sannyasins: When death happens, celebrate! It is the coming of a great friend. Death is not the enemy. Death is very compassionate. It is the universe...

... getting rid of all the junk that you have gathered around yourself and freeing you again, making you again fresh, young, giving you another chance to live - this one you have lost again. Nobody is afraid of death. I have never come across a person who is afraid of death. People are certainly afraid of lying down in strange kinds of beds in the hospitals - legs up, hands down, all kinds of instruments...

... attached to the head and to the chest. People are afraid of all this, but death ... have you seen death doing any harm to anybody ever? Why should anybody be afraid? That's why I said it is not exceptional that you are not afraid. Don't start patting your own back, that "I'm not afraid of death." Nobody is. People are afraid of life, not of death, because life is a problem to be solved. Life...

... which is happening between the dead leaves and the wind. Something existential is there. Only this was missing. Now I can leave smiling." People are afraid of life, and they are afraid of life because life is only possible if you are capable of being wild - wild in your love, wild in your song, wild in your dance. This is where fear is. Who is afraid of death? I have never come across such a...

... person. And almost every person I have come across is afraid of life. Drop fear of life .... Because either you can be afraid or you can live; it is up to you. And what is there to be afraid of? You can't lose anything. You have everything to gain. Drop all fears and jump totally into life. Then one day death will come as a welcome guest, not your enemy, and you will enjoy death more than you have...

... enjoyed life, because death has its own beauties. And death is very rare because it happens once in a while - life is everyday. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... to say who is the man and who is the statue. It was so lifelike, so alive, so similar. An astrologer told him that his death is approaching, he is going to die soon. Of course, he became very much afraid and frightened, and as every man wants to avoid death, he also wanted to avoid. He thought about it, meditated, and he found a clue. He made his own statues, eleven in number, and when Death...

...; And Death laughed. And Death said, "You are caught. This is the only error: you cannot forget yourself. Come on, follow me." Death is of the ego. If the ego exists, death exists. The moment the ego disappears, death disappears. You are not going to die, remember; but if you think that you are, you are going to die. If you think that you are a being, then you are going to die. This false...

... entity of the ego is going to die, but if you think of yourself in terms of nonbeing, in terms of non-ego, then there is no death - already you have become deathless. You have always been deathless; now you have recognized the fact. The artist was caught because he could not disappear into nonbeing. Buddha says in his DHAMMAPADA: If you can see death, death cannot see you. If you can die before death...

... authentic suicide. And that is the paradox: that if you die, you attain to eternal life. If you cling to life, you will die a thousand and one times. You will go on... you will go on being born and dying again and again and again. It is a wheel. If you cling, you move with the wheel. Drop out of the wheel of life and death. How to drop out of it? It seems so impossible because you have never thought of...

.... First, why be worried about the exact time of death? How is it going to help? What is the point of it? If you ask Western psychologists, they will almost call it abnormal morbidity. Why be concerned with death? Avoid. Go on believing that death is not going to happen - at least not to you. It always happens to somebody else. You have seen people die, you have never seen yourself die, so why be afraid...

... death, because that is the possibility which is going to happen. If you know it beforehand, tremendous is the possibility. Many doors open. Then you can die in your own way, then you can die with a signature of your own on your death. Then you can manage not to be born again - that is the whole meaning. It is not morbid. It is very, very scientific. When everybody is going to die, this is absolutely...

... enemy. In fact it is a god given gift. It is a great opportunity to pass through. It can become a breakthrough: if you can die alert, conscious, aware, you will never be born again - and there will be no death anymore. If you miss, you will be born again. If you go on missing, you will be continuously born again and again, unless you learn the lesson of death. Let me say it in this way: the whole of...

... out of it rejuvenated, fresh, again young, again alive - all the dust gone, as if you have taken a great shower, an energy shower. But they have not yet come to know that the sex act is a very minor death; and one who can achieve deep orgasm is one who allows himself to die in love. It is a minor death, nothing to be compared with death. Death is the greatest orgasm there is. The intensity of death...

... is such that almost always people become unconscious. They cannot face it. The moment death comes, you are so afraid, so full of anxiety, to avoid you become unconscious. Almost ninety-nine percent of people die unconsciously. They miss the opportnity. To know death beforehand is just a method to help you prepare so when death comes you are perfectly alert and aware, waiting, ready to go with death...

... great power that has arisen in you; if you move it towards death, you will be able to know immediately when you are going to die. How it happens? When you go in a dark room, you cannot see what is there. When you go with a light, you can see what is there, or what is not there. You move almost in darkness your whole life, so you don't know how much prarabdha is still there - prarabdha, the karma that...

.... Seeing that, Ramkrishna said, "Look, I can see that you are not trusting me, but you will know. The day I am going to die, just three days before that day, three days before my death, I will not look at the food. You will bring my thali in, and I will start looking in another direction; then you can know that only three days more am I to be here." That too was not believed; they forgot about...

... than two, three hours." What is he saying? By long experience he has come to know how the pulse beats when a person is going to die. Exactly that way, a man who is alert knows how much prarabdha is left - how much pulse - and he knows when he has to go. This can be done in two ways. The sutra says either to focus on death, that is prarabdha karma.... "By performing samyama on the two types...

... of conception and birth. Exactly the same time before death, something clicks in the hara, in the navel center. It has to click because between the conception and birth there was a gap of nine months: nine months you took for birth; exactly the same time will be taken for death. As you prepared nine months in the mother's womb for birth, you will have to prepare nine months to die. Then the circle...

...Secrets of death and karma...

... Osho Yoga The Alpha and the Omega Volume 8: Secrets of death and karma Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho Yoga The Alpha and the Omega Volume 8   Next > Secrets of death and karma From: Osho Date: Fri, 11 April 1976 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 8 Chapter #: 1 Location: am in Buddha Hall Archive Code: N.A...

.... Short Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. 23. BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE TWO TYPES OF KARMA, ACTIVE AND DORMANT, OR UPON OMENS AND PORTENTS, THE EXACT TIME OF DEATH CAN BE PREDICTED. 24. BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON FRIENDLINESS, OR ANY OTHER ATTRIBUTE, GREAT STRENGTH IN THAT QUALITY IS OBTAINED. 25. BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE STRENGTH OF AN ELEPHANT, THE STRENGTH OF...

... knocked on his door and the Angel of Death entered, he stood hidden among his own eleven statues. He stopped his breathing. The Angel of Death was puzzled, could not believe his own eyes. It had never happened; it was so irregular. God has never been known to create two persons alike; he always creates the unique. He has never believed in any routine. He is not like an assembly line. He is absolutely...

... against carbons; he creates only originals. What has happened? Twelve persons in all, absolutely alike? Now, whom to take away? Only one has to be taken away. Death, the Angel of Death, could not decide. Puzzled, worried, nervous, he went back. He asked God, "What have you done? There are twelve persons exactly alike, and I am only supposed to bring one. How should I choose?" God laughed. He...

... called the Angel of Death close to him, and he uttered in his ears the formula, the clue how to find the real from the unreal. He gave him a mantra and told him, "Just go, and utter it in that room where that artist is hiding himself among his own statues." The Angel of Death asked, "How is it going to work?" God said, "Don't be worried. Just go and try." The Angel of...

... Death came, not yet believing how it is going to work, but when God had said, he had to do it. He came in the room, looked around, and not addressing anybody in particular, he said, "Sir, everything is perfect except one thing. You have done well, but you have missed at one point. One error is there." The man completely forgot that he is hiding. He jumped; he said, "What error?"...

... comes, then death cannot come to you; and there is no need to make statues. That is not going to help. Deep down you have to destroy one statue, not to create eleven more. You have to destroy the image of the ego. There is no need to create more statues and more images. Religion, in a way, is destructive. In a way, it is negative. It annihilates you - annihilates you completely and utterly. You come...

... cannot attain to fulfillment. When you are not, fulfillment is. Call it God, or give it a name Patanjali would like - samadhi - the attainment of the ultimate, but it comes when you disappear. These sutras of Patanjali are scientific methods how to dissolve, how to die, how to commit real suicide. I call it real because if you kill your body that is unreal suicide. If you kill your self that is...

... rapport with me, get in tune with me. Don't just listen to me; rather, be with me. Listening is secondary; being with me is primary, basic - just to be in my company. Allow yourself to be totally here-now with me, in my presence, because that death has happened to me. It can become infectious. I have committed that suicide. If you come close to me, if you are in tune with me even for a single moment...

..., you will have a glimpse of death. And, Buddha is right when he says, "If you can see death, death will not be able to see you," because the moment you see death you have transcended death. Then there is no death for you. The first sutra: BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE TWO TYPES OF KARMA, ACTIVE AND DORMANT, OR UPON OMENS AND PORTENTS, THE EXACT TIME OF DEATH CAN BE PREDICTED. Many things...

...? You may be the exception. But nobody is an exception; and death has already happened in your birth, so you cannot avoid it. Now the birth is beyond your power. You cannot do anything about it; it has already happened. It is already past; it is already done. You cannot undo it. Death is yet to happen: something is possible to be done about it. The whole of Eastern religion depends on the vision of...

... foolish not to think about death, not to meditate upon death, not to focus upon it, not to come to a deep understanding about it. It is going to happen. If you know, much is possible. Patanjali says even the exact date, the hour, the minute, the second of death can be known beforehand. If you know exactly when death is coming, you can prepare. Death has to be received like a great guest. It is not the...

... life is nothing but a learning about death, a preparation for death. That's why death comes in the end. It is the pinnacle, the crescendo, the very climax, the peak. In the West particularly, contemporary psychologists have become aware that in a deep sex act a certain peak can be attained, a climax, a great orgasm, which is tremendously fulfilling, exhilarating, ecstatic. You are cleansed; you come...

..., ready to surrender, ready to embrace death. Once you have accepted death in awareness, there is no longer any birth for you - you have learned the lesson. Now there is no coming back to the school again. This life is just a school, a discipline - a discipline to learn death. It is not morbid. The whole of religion is concerned with death, and if some religion is not concerned with death, then it is...

... not religion at all. It may be a sociology, an ethics, a morality, a politics, but it cannot be religion. Religion is the search of the deathless; but that deathless is possible only through the door of death. The first sutra says, "By performing samyama on the two types of karma, active and dormant, or upon omens and portents, the exact time of death can be predicted." The Eastern...

... remained a shoemaker. The marriage, the family, the job, the town - people were born in the same town and they would die in the same town. Lao Tzu remembers, "I have heard that in the ancient days people had not gone beyond the river." They had heard dogs barking on the other side, the other shore. They had inferred that there must be a town because in the evening they had seen smoke rising...

... human consciousness. Now you will be able to understand the sutra: "By performing samyama on the two types of karma, active and dormant, or upon omens and portents, the exact time of death can be predicted." Now if you concentrate, meditate, and get in tune in samadhi, you can be capable of knowing the exact time of death. If you move your samyama, this great synthesis of consciousness, this...

... you have to fulfill in this life. When you go with samyama, with light burning bright, you bring the flame in; you know how much prarabdha is left. You see the whole house is empty, just in the corner a few things are left, soon they will disappear. Now you can see when you are going to die. It is said about Ramkrishna that he was much too interested in food; in fact obsessed. That is very unlikely...

... of karma, active and dormant, or upon omens and portents, the exact time of death can be predicted." This can be done in two ways: either you look at the prarabdha or there are a few omens and portents which can be watched. For example, before one person dies, almost exactly near about nine months before, something happens. Ordinarily we are not aware, because we are not aware at all, and the...

... will be complete. Something in the navel center happens. Those who are aware, they will immediately know that something has broken in the navel center; now death is coming closer. Approximately nine months. Or for example, there are other omens and other portents. A man, before he dies, exactly six months before he dies, becomes by and by incapable of seeing the tip of his own nose because eyes start...

... turning upwards, very slowly. In death they turn completely upwards, but they start the turning, the returning journey, before death. That happens: when a child is born, the child takes almost six months, that is usually - there may be exceptions - the child takes six months to have fixed eyes. Otherwise the eyes are loose. That's why children can bring both their eyes together near the nose, can take...

... of seeing the tip of his own nose. And there are many methods in which yogis continuously watch the tip of their nose. They concentrate on it. People who have been concentrating on it, suddenly one day realize they cannot see their own nose. Now they know the death is approaching near. According to yoga physiology there are seven centers in man. The first, the genital organs; and the last is...

... sahasrar, in the head; between these two there are five others. Whenever you die, you die from a particular center. That shows your growth that you have been doing in this life. Ordinarily, people die through the genital organ, because the whole life people live around the sex center, continuously thinking of sex, fantasizing about sex, doing everything about sex - as if the whole of life seems to be...

... centered around the sex center. These people die through the sex center. If you have evolved a little and you have attained to love, gone beyond sex, then you will die from the heart center. If you have evolved completely, if you have become a siddha, you will die from the sahasrar. The center you will die from will have an opening because the whole life energy will be released from there.... Just a few...

... moves from sahasrar. A certain activity, a movement, just at the top of the head starts working three days before one dies. These indications can prepare you how to receive death, and if you know how to receive death in a great celebration, in great joy, in delight - almost dancing and in ecstasy - you will not be born again. Your lesson is complete. You have learned whatsoever was to be learned here...

... back to life. One has to come back to love from samadhi; hence, Patanjali's sutra immediately after the samadhi, in which death is experienced: "By performing samyama on friendliness, or any other attribute," compassion, love, "great strength in that quality is obtained." Contemporary psychologists will also agree - up to a certain limit. If you constantly think about something...

... be dropped. Hence, immediately, after death, when you start feeling the deathless, Patanjali says bring friendliness in, now think of sharing. There are two seas in Palestine. One is filled with fresh and sparkling water. Trees and flowers grow around it. Fish live in it, and its banks are green. The pure waters of this sea, which possess a healing quality, are brought down by the River Jordan from...

... you don't go high you will die. You will not be able to reach to the sun. You will not be available to the sun and the sun will not be available to you. You will not be showered by the energy of life. Sun is life; sex is life. All life arises out of sun; all life arises out of sex. All life. Trees try to reach higher so that they can become available to the sun and the sun becomes available to them...

... mysteries, but two aspects of the same mystery, two doors of the same secret. But nothing can be said about them. Whatever you say, you will miss the point. Life can be lived, death also can be lived. They are experiences -- one has to pass through them and know them. Nobody can answer your questions. How can life be answered? or death? Unless YOU live, unless YOU die, who's going to answer? But many...

... life: it is a preparation, it is a training, it is a discipline. Life is not the end, it is just a discipline to learn the art of dying. But you are afraid, you are scared, at the very word death you start trembling. That means you have not yet known life, because life never dies. Life cannot die. Somewhere you have become identified with the body, with the mechanism. The mechanism is to die, the...

... FINAL.' They are doing something. They are creating a situation. They are saying, 'Be silent before death. Don't ask questions, because when you ask you come to the surface, you become superficial. These questions are not questions to be asked. These questions are to be penetrated, lived, meditated on. You have to move into them. If you want to know death -- die! That is the only way to know. If you...

... is. Only intensity penetrates. And if you can live an intense life you will have a different quality of death, because you will die intensely. As life is, so will the death be. If you live dragging, you will die dragging. You will miss life, and you will miss death also. Make life as intense as possible. Put everything at stake. Why worry? Why be worried about the future? THIS moment is there...

...? Death. If you meditate, what is the secret of meditation? Death. Whatsoever happens that is beautiful and intense always happens through death. You die. You simply bring yourself totally in it and die to everything else. You become so intense that you are not there, because if you are there then the intensity cannot be total; then two are there. If you love and the lover is there, then love cannot be...

... neither love nor meditation nor death, the problem is: How to move to the depth? Deepness is the question. If you move deeply in ANYTHING, life will be on the periphery and death will be in the center. Even if you watch a flower totally, forgetting everything, in watching the flower you will die in the flower. You will experience a merging, a melting. Suddenly you will feel you are not, only the flower...

...: No Length: 102 mins AT THE DEATH OF A PARISHIONER, MASTER DOGO, ACCOMPANIED BY HIS DISCIPLE ZENGEN, VISITED THE BEREAVED FAMILY. WITHOUT TAKING TIME TO EXPRESS A WORD OF SYMPATHY, ZENGEN WENT UP TO THE COFFIN, RAPPED ON IT, AND ASKED DOGO: 'IS HE REALLY DEAD?' 'I WON'T SAY,' SAID DOGO. 'WELL?' INSISTED ZENGEN.'I'M NOT SAYING, AND THAT'S FINAL,' SAID DOGO. ON THEIR WAY BACK TO THE TEMPLE THE FURIOUS...

... THE DEAD DOGO, WOULD NOT ANSWER. 'BY GOD!' CRIED ZENGEN. 'YOU TOO?' 'I'M NOT SAYING,' SAID SEKISO, 'AND THAT'S FINAL.' AT THAT VERY INSTANT ZENGEN EXPERIENCED AN AWAKENING. LIFE CAN BE KNOWN, death also -- but nothing can be said about them. No answer will be true; it cannot be by the very nature of things. Life and death are the deepest mysteries. It would be better to say that they are not two...

... and the mind cannot remain with the question, it is uneasy; to remain with the question feels inconvenient. An answer is needed -- even if it is false it will do; mind is put at rest. To go and take a jump into the sea is dangerous. And remember, Ramakrishna is true: we are all men of salt as far as the ocean is concerned -- the ocean of life and death. We are men of salt, we will melt into it...

... ready, because questions come out of many many sources. Sometimes you are simply curious. A master is not there to fulfill your curiosities, because they are childish. Sometimes you really never meant it. Just by the way you asked, you showed you were not concerned and you are not going to use the answer in any way. Somebody is dead and you simply ask the question, 'What is death?' - - and by the next...

... only in your being. When you ask a question in such a way as if your life and death depend on it, then if you don't receive the answer you will miss, your whole being will remain hungry for it; you are thirsty, your whole being is ready to receive it, and if the answer is given you will digest it, it will become your blood and your bones and move into the very beat of your heart; only then will a...

.... Now try to understand this parable: AT THE DEATH OF A PARISHIONER, MASTER DOGO, ACCOMPANIED BY HIS DISCIPLE ZENGEN, VISITED THE BEREAVED FAMILY. WITHOUT TAKING TIME TO EXPRESS A WORD OF SYMPATHY, ZENGEN WENT UP TO THE COFFIN, RAPPED ON IT, AND ASKED DOGO: 'IS HE REALLY DEAD?' The first thing: when death is there you have to be very respectful because death is no ordinary phenomenon, it is the most...

... extraordinary phenomenon in the world. Nothing is more mysterious than death. Death reaches to the very center of existence, and when a man is dead you are moving on sacred ground: it is the holiest moment possible. No, ordinary curiosities cannot be allowed. They are disrespectful. In the East particularly, death is respected more than life -- and the East has lived long to come to this conclusion. In the...

... West life is more respected than death; hence so much tension, so much worry and so much anguish, so much madness. Why? If you respect life more, you will be afraid of death, and then death will look antagonistic, the enemy; and if death is the enemy you will remain tense your whole life, because death can happen any moment. You don't accept it, you reject it -- but you cannot destroy it. Death...

... cannot be destroyed. You can reject it; you can deny it; you can be afraid, scared, but it is there, just at the corner, always with you like a shadow. You will be trembling your whole life -- and you ARE trembling. And in the fear, in all fears if searched deeply, you will find the fear of death. Whenever you are afraid, something has given you an indication of death. If your bank goes bankrupt and...

... you are filled with fear and trembling, anxiety -- that too is anxiety about death, because your bank balance was nothing but a security against death. Now you are more open, vulnerable. Now who will protect you if death knocks at the door? If you become ill, if you become old, then who is going to take care of you? The guarantee was there in the bank, and the bank has gone bankrupt. You cling to...

... are afraid of, if you search deeply you will always find the shadow of death somewhere. You cling to a husband, you are afraid he may leave; or you cling to a wife, afraid she may leave you. What is the fear? Is it really the fear of a divorce, or is it a fear of death? It is a fear of death... because in divorce you become alone. The other gives a protection, a feeling that you are not alone...

... relationship. The older you become the more it becomes a life relationship, because now if the other leaves you, immediately death is there. Wherever you are afraid, try to explore, and you will find death hiding somewhere behind. All fear is of death. Death is the only fear source. In the West people are very scared, worried, anxious, because you have to fight continuously against death. You love life, you...

... respect life -- that's why in the West old people are not respected. Young people are respected, because old people have moved further towards death than you; they are already in its grip. Youth is respected in the West -- and youth is a transitory phenomenon, it is already passing from your hands. In the East old men are respected, because in the East death is respected; and because in the East death...

... is respected, there is no fear about death. Life is just a part; death is the culmination. Life is just the process; death is the crescendo. Life is just the moving; death is the reaching. And both are one! So what will you respect more, the way or the goal? The process or the flowering? Death is the flower, life is nothing but the tree. And the tree is there for the flower, the flower is not there...

... for the tree. The tree should be happy and the tree should dance when the flower comes. So in the East death is accepted; not only accepted, welcomed. It is a divine guest. When it knocks at the door, it means the universe is ready to receive you back. In the East we respect death. And this young man Zengen just came in without even expressing a word of sympathy or respect. He simply became curious...

.... Not only that, he was very disrespectful -- he tapped on the coffin and asked Dogo, 'Is he really dead?' His question is beautiful, but not in the right moment. The question is right but the moment he has chosen is wrong. To be curious before death is childish; one has to be respectful, silent. That is the only way to have a rapport with the phenomenon. When somebody dies it is really something very...

... deep happening. If you can just sit there and meditate many things will be revealed to you. Questioning is foolish. When death is there, why not meditate? Questioning may be just a trick to avoid the thing, it may be just a safety measure so as not to look at death directly. I have watched when people go to burn or to cremate somebody -- they start talking too much there. At the cremation ground they...

... discuss many philosophical things. In my childhood I loved very much to follow everybody. Whosoever died, I would be there. Even my parents became very much afraid; they would say, 'Why do you go? We don't even know that man. There is no need to go.' I would say, 'That is not the point. The man is not my concern. Death... it is such a beautiful phenomenon, and one of the most mysterious. One should not...

... miss it.' So the moment I heard that somebody had died I would be there, always watching, waiting, witnessing what was happening. And I watched people discussing many things, philosophical problems such as: What is death? And somebody would say: 'Nobody dies. The innermost self is immortal.' They would discuss the Upanishads, the Gita, and quote authorities. I started feeling: 'They are avoiding. By...

... just becoming engaged in a discussion, they are avoiding the phenomenon that is happening. They are not looking at the dead man. And the thing is there! Death is there, and you are discussing it! What fools!' You have to be silent. If you can be silent when death is there you will suddenly see many things, because death is not just a person stopping breathing. Many things are happening. When a person...

... person, and when a person dies, immediately that part that he had given to another person leaves that person and moves to the dead man. If you die here and your lover lives in Hong Kong, something will leave your lover immediately -- because you have given a part of your life and that part will come back to you. That's why when a loved one dies you feel that something has left you also, something in...

... center leaves the body. When a man 'dies', that is simply a stopping of the breath, and you think he is dead. He is not dead; that takes time. Sometimes, if the person has been involved in millions of lives, it takes many days for him to die -- that's why with sages, with saints, particularly in the East, we never burn their bodies. Only saints are not burned; otherwise everybody is burned, because...

... body. Life is an energy phenomenon. It depends on the involvement, on how many persons he was involved in. And a person like Buddha is not only involved with persons, he is involved even with trees, birds, animals; his involvement is so deep that if he dies his death will take at least five hundred years. Buddha is reported to have said, 'My religion will be a live force for only five hundred years...

....' And the meaning is here, because he will be a live force for five hundred years. It will take five hundred years for him to get out of the involvement totally. When death happens, be silent. Watch! All over the world, whenever you pay respect to a dead man, you become silent, you remain silent for two minutes -- without knowing why. This tradition has been continued all over the world. Why silence...

... you when you are dead even more -- because in death a deep surrendering happens. In life you are always resisting, fighting, even with your master; not surrendering, or surrendering half-heartedly -- which means nothing. But when you are dying, surrendering is easier, because death and surrender are the same process. When the whole body is dying, you can surrender easily. To fight is difficult...

..., resistance is difficult. Already your resistance is being broken, your body is moving into a let-go; that is what death is. Dogo was there for something special, and this disciple asked a question. The question is right but the time is not right. 'I WON'T SAY,' SAID DOGO.'WELL?' INSISTED ZENGEN.'I'M NOT SAYING, AND THAT'S FINAL,' SAID DOGO. First thing: what can be said about death? How can you say...

... anything about death? It is not possible for any word to carry the meaning of death. What does this word 'death' mean? In fact it means nothing. What do you mean when you use the word death? It is simply a door beyond which we don't know what happens. We see a man disappearing inside a door; we can see up to the door, and then the man simply disappears. Your word death can give only the meaning of the...

... are body and breath alone, then there is no problem. Then death is nothing. It is not a door to anything. It is simply a stopping, not a disappearance. It is just like a clock. The clock is tick-ticking, working, then it stops; you don't ask where the tick-tick has gone -- that would be meaningless! It has gone nowhere. It has not gone at all, it has simply stopped; it was a mechanism and something...

... has gone wrong in the mechanism -- you can repair the mechanism, then it will tick-tick again. Is death just like a clock stopping? Just like that? If so, it is not a mystery, it is nothing really. But how can life disappear so easily? Life is not mechanical. Life is awareness. The clock is not aware -- you can listen to the tick- tick, the clock has never listened to it. You can listen to your own...

... be the object. You can witness it; you can close your eyes and you can see your breath going in and coming out. Who is this seer, the witnessing? It must be a separate force that does not depend on breathing. When the breathing disappears it is the stopping of a clock, but where does this awareness go? Where does this awareness move to? Death is a door, it is not a stopping. Awareness moves but...

... your body remains at the door -- just as you have come here and left your shoes at the door. The body is left outside the temple, and your awareness enters the temple. It is the most subtle phenomenon, life is nothing before it. Basically life is just a preparation for dying, and only those are wise who learn in their life how to die. If you don't know how to die you have missed the whole meaning of...

... mechanism cannot be eternal, because the mechanism depends on many things; it is a conditioned phenomenon. Awareness is unconditional, it doesn't depend on anything. It can float like a cloud in the sky, it has no roots, it is not caused, it is never born so it can never die. Whenever someone dies you have to be meditative near them, because a temple is just near and it is holy ground. Don't be childish...

..., don't bring curiosities, be silent so you can watch and see. Something very very meaningful is happening -- don't miss the moment. And when death is there, why ask about it? Why not look at it? Why not watch it? Why not move with it a few steps? 'I WON'T SAY,' SAID DOGO.'WELL?' INSISTED ZENGEN.'I'M NOT SAYING, AND THAT'S FINAL,' SAID DOGO. ON THEIR WAY BACK TO THE TEMPLE, THE FURIOUS ZENGEN TURNED ON...

... they say that millions of paths reach, you will be simply confused. This disciple Zengen was in trouble, because his Master Dogo died. He never expected that this was going to happen so soon. Disciples always feel in great difficulty when masters die. When masters are there, they fool around and waste time. When masters are dead, then they are in a real fix and difficulty -- what to do? So Zengen's...

... question remained, the problem remained, the puzzle was as it was before. The disciple had not yet come to know what death is, and Dogo had died. He went to another master, Sekiso, and after relating the whole thing, what had happened, asked the same question of him. SEKISO, AS IF CONSPIRING WITH THE DEAD DOGO, WOULD NOT ANSWER.'BY GOD!' CRIED ZENGEN. 'YOU TOO?' 'I'M NOT SAYING,' SAID SEKISO, 'AND THAT'S...

... want to know life -- live!' You are alive but not living, and you will die and you will not die... because everything is lukewarm in you. You live? -- not exactly; you just drag. Somehow, somehow you pull yourself along. Live as intensely as possible! Burn your candle of life from both ends! Burn it so intensely... if it is finished in one second it is okay, but at least you will have known what it...

.... Bring your total existence into it! Live intensely, totally, wholly, and this moment will become a revelation. And if you know life, you will know death. This is the secret key: if you know life, you will know death. If you ask what death is, it means you have not lived -- because deep down they are one. What is the secret of life? The secret of life is death. If you love, what is the secret of love...

... intense. Love so deeply, so totally, that the lover disappears. Then you are just an energy moving. Then you will know love, you will know life, you will know death. These three words are very meaningful: love, life, and death. Their secret is the same, and if you understand them there is no need to meditate. It is because you don't understand them that meditation is needed. Meditation is just a spare...

.... What happened? Hearing again the same words... is there a certain conspiracy? Why the same words again? Suddenly he became aware: My question is absurd, I am asking something which cannot be answered. It is not the master who is denying the answer, it is my very question, the nature of it. A silence is needed before death, before life, before love. If you love a person you sit silently with the...

... was wrong because I thought: He is not answering; he is not paying attention to my question; he is not caring about me at all and my inquiry. My ego was hurt. But I was wrong -- he was not hitting my ego. I was not at all in the question. The very nature of death is such....' Suddenly he was awakened. This is called satori. It is a special enlightenment. In no other language does there exist a word...

... and death, one has to be silent.' The gestalt changes. He can see the whole thing. Hence, he attains a glimpse. Whenever the gestalt changes you attain a glimpse. That glimpse is satori. It is not final, you will lose it again. You will not become a buddha by satori; that's why I say it is a samadhi and yet not a samadhi. It is an ocean in a teacup. Ocean, yes, and yet not the ocean -- samadhi in a...

... remains becomes poison. It was life only because it was oxygen, but you have used it. So life goes on changing everything into a poison. Now there is a great movement in the West - ecology. Man has been using everything and turning it into poison, and the very Earth is just on the verge of dying. Any day it can die because we have turned everything into poison. Death is a purifying process. When your...

... amount of steps and you will not be tired. What happens? When you go with an emphasis on exhaling, you are ready to let go, you are ready to die. You are not afraid of death; that makes you open. Otherwise you are closed - fear closes you. When you exhale, the whole system changes and accepts death. There is no fear, you are ready to die. And one who is ready to die can live. Really, only one who is...

... ready to die can live. He alone becomes capable of life - because he is not afraid. One who accepts death, welcomes it, receives it as a guest, lives with it, goes deep into life. Exhale, do not inhale, and that will change your total mind. Because of simple techniques tantra never appeals, because we think, "My mind is such a complex thing." It is not complex - just foolish. And fools are...

... philosophy, all tantra and yoga, is basically death-oriented. If you are aware of death, only then does religion become meaningful. That is why no animal except man is religious, because no animal is aware of death. They die, but they are not aware. They cannot conceive or imagine that there is going to be death. When one dog dies, other dogs never imagine that death is going to happen to them also. Always...

... someone else dies, so how can a dog imagine that "I am going to die"? He has never seen himself dying. Someone else, some other dog dies, so how can he connect that "I am going to die"? No animal is aware of death; that is why no animal renounces. No animal can become a sannyasin. Only a very high quality of consciousness can lead you to renounce - when you become aware of death. And...

... to die." And you do not infer it even seeing your wife dying, your mother, your father, your child. You weep for them, but you never conceive that this is a sign that "I am going to die." But the astrologers said, "The boy is very, very sensitive, so protect him from any type of death." And the father was over-conscientious He would not allow even an old man or an old woman...

... to be seen, because oldness is just death heard from a distance; death is there from a distance, just coming. So Buddha's father would not allow any old man or old woman to be seen by the child. If Buddha suddenly became aware that just by stopping the breath a man could die, it would be very difficult for him. "Just because no breath is coming in, how can a man die?" he would wonder...

... his NIRVANA that it is death-like. He never says you will attain life immortal, he says you will simply die totally. Jesus says, "Come to me and I will give you life, and life abundant." Buddha says, "Come to me to realize your death. I will give you death totally." And both mean the same thing, but Buddha's terminology is more basic. But you will become afraid of it. That is why...

... that the breath will go out and will never come in again - total death, nirvana, cessation." We become afraid because we cling to life. But this is the paradox: the more you cling to life, the more you will die, and the more you are ready to die, then the more you become deathless. If you are ready to die, then there is no possibility of death. No one can give you death if you accept it, because...

... prepare the body for the disease. The impact is felt even six months before. But never mind disease, we never become aware even of death! If you are going to die tomorrow, you are not aware even today. A thing like death which may happen the next moment, and you are not aware this moment. You are totally dead to your body, insensitive. This whole society, the whole culture up to now, creates this...

.... Someone was saying that "That man cannot survive." The priest of the church ran out. He came near and he found out that the old man was just going to die, so he prepared to administer the last rites. He came near and asked the dying Mulla, "Do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in God the Son? Do you believe in God the Holy Ghost?" Mulla opened his eyes and said, "My...

... God! I am dying and he is asking me puzzles!" All philosophy is like this: it is asking puzzles while you are dying. Every moment you are dying, every moment everyone is on his deathbed - because death can occur at any moment. But philosophy goes on asking and answering puzzles. Tantra says, it is good for children to philosophize but those who are wise will not waste their time in philosophy...

... that ends in "AH" - intone it silently. Emphasis should be given to the ending "AH." Why? Because the moment this sound "AH" is intoned, your breath goes out. You may not have observed it, but now you can observe: whenever your breath goes out you are more silent, and whenever your breath comes in you are more tense - because the outgoing breath is death and the incoming...

... breath is life. Tension is part of life, not of death. Relaxation is part of death; death means total relaxation. Life cannot be totally relaxed; it is impossible. Life means tension, effort. Only death is relaxed. So whenever a person becomes absolutely relaxed, he is both - alive outwardly and dead within. You can see in the face of a buddha both life and death simultaneously. That is why there is so...

... much silence and calm, they are part of death. Life is not relaxation. You relax in the night when you are asleep. That is why the old traditions say that death and sleep are similar. Sleep is a temporary death and death is permanent sleep. That is why night relaxes you, it is the outgoing breath. The morning is the incoming breath. The day makes you tense and the night relaxes you. Light makes you...

... tense, darkness relaxes you. That is why you cannot sleep when there is light, it is difficult to relax because light is similar to life: it is anti-death. Darkness is similar to death: it is pro-death. So darkness has deep relaxation in it, and those who are afraid of darkness cannot relax... impossible, because every relaxation is dark. And darkness surrounds your life on both the sides. Before you...

... are born you are in darkness; when life ceases you are again in darkness. Darkness is infinite, and this light and this life is just a moment in it, just a wave arising and then falling back. If you can remember the darkness that surrounds both the ends, you will be relaxed here and now. Life, death - they both are two sides of existence. The incoming breath is life, the outgoing breath is death. So...

... it is not that you die someday, you are dying with every breath. That is why the Hindus have been counting life in breaths, they do not count life in years. Tantra, yoga, all the old Indian systems, they count life in breaths: how many breaths you are going to live. So they say if you breathe very fast, with too much breathing in a short time, you will die very soon. If you breathe very slowly and...

... life. A long life is always with slow breath. Tantra and yoga and other Indian systems count your life in breaths. Really, with every breath you are born and with every breath you are dying. This mantra, this technique, uses the outgoing breath as the method, the medium, the vehicle, to go deep into silence. It is a death method. INTONE SILENTLY A WORD ENDING IN "AH." The breath has gone...

... will be a different man. Then you will know well that this life is not your life and this death is also not your death. Then you will know something which is beyond the incoming and outgoing breath - the witnessing soul. And this witnessing can happen easily when you are empty of breath, because life has subsided and with it all tensions have subsided. So try it, it is a very beautiful method. But...

... the ordinary process, the ordinary habit, is to emphasize the incoming breath, never the outgoing breath. We always take the breath in. We ALWAYS take it in, but we never throw it out. We take it in and THE BODY throws it out. Observe your breathing and you will know. We take it in. We never exhale, we only inhale. The exhaling is done by the body because we are afraid of death, that is the reason...

.... The constipation is the other end of the same thing. He cannot exhale anything, he goes on accumulating, he is afraid. The fear is there. He can only accumulate, but anything that is accumulated becomes poisonous. If you only inhale and do not exhale, your very breath becomes poison to you; you will die because of it. You can turn a life-giving force into poison if you behave in a miserly way...

..., because the exhaling is absolutely necessary. It throws all the poisons out of you. So really, death is a purifying process and life is a poisoning process. This will look paradoxical. Life is a poisoning process because to live you have to use many things - and the moment you have used them they turn into poison, they are converted into poisons. You take a breath in, you use oxygen, and then what...

... whole body has become poisonous, death will relieve you of the body. It will renew you, it will give you a new birth; a new body will be given to you. Through death all the accumulated poisons are dissolved back into nature. You are given a new mechanism. And this happens with every breath. The outgoing breath is similar to death - it takes poisons out. And when it is going out, everything ebbs within...

... ENDING IN "AH." Emphasize the exhaling breath. And you can use it for many changes in the mind. If you are suffering from constipation, forget intaking. Just exhale and do not inhale. Let the body do the work of inhaling; you just do the work of exhaling. You force the breath out and do not inhale. The body will inhale by itself; you need not worry about it, you are not going to die. The body...

... very complex. A wise man is simple. Nothing is complex in your mind, it is a very simple mechanism. If you understand, you can change it very easily. If you have not seen anybody dying, if you have been protected from seeing death as Buddha was protected, you cannot understand anything about it. Buddha's father was afraid because some astrologer said that "This boy is going to be a great...

... sannyasin. He will renounce the world." The father asked, "What is to be done to protect him from doing such a thing?" So those astrologers thought and thought, and then they concluded and they said, "Do not allow him to see death, because if he is not aware of death he will never think of renouncing life." This is beautiful - very meaningful. That means all religion, all...

... if even by being a man you are not aware of death, you belong to the animal kingdom; you are not yet a man. You become a man only when you encounter death. Otherwise there is no difference between you and the animal. Everything is similar; only death makes the difference. With death encountered, you are no more animal, something has happened to you which never happens to an animal. Now you will be...

... a different consciousness. So Buddha's father protected him from seeing any type of death - not only man's death, but the death of animals and even of flowers. So the gardeners were instructed not to allow the child to see a dead flower, a pale flower dying on the branch, a pale leaf, a dry leaf. No, nowhere should he come to realize that something dies - he may infer from it that "I am going...

.... "Life is such a big, complex process." If you have not seen anyone dying, even you cannot conceive that just by stopping the breath a man will die. Just by stopping the breath? Such a simple thing! And how can such a complex life die? It is the same with these methods. They look simple, but they touch the basic reality. When the breath is going out, when you are completely emptied of life...

..., you touch death: you are just near it, and everything becomes calm and silent within you. Use it as a mantra. Whenever you feel tired, whenever you feel tense, use any word which ends in "AH." "Allah" will do - any word that brings your total breath out so that you exhale completely and you are emptied of breath. The moment you are emptied of breath you are emptied of life also...

.... And all your problems belong to life: no problem belongs to death. Your anxiety, your anguish, your anger, your sadness, they all belong to life. Death is non-problematic. Death never gives any problem to anyone. And even if you think that "I am afraid of death and death creates a problem," it is not death that creates the problem but your clinging to life. Only life creates problems...

...; death dissolves all problems. So when the breath has moved completely out, "AH," you are emptied of life. Look within at that moment when the breath is completely out. Before taking another breath in, go deep down in that interval and become aware of the inside calm, the silence. In that moment you are a buddha. If you can catch that moment, you have known a taste of what Buddha might have...

...; EFFORTLESSLY, THE SPONTANEITY. And when the breath goes out, "HH," everything is emptied. EFFORTLESSLY: in this moment, there is no need to make any effort. The SPONTANEITY: just be aware, be spontaneous, be sensitive, and realize this moment of death. In this moment you are just near the door, just near the door!- very, very near to the ultimate. The immediate has moved out, the superfluous has...

... moved out. In this moment you are not the wave: you are the ocean - just near, just near! If you can become aware you will forget that you are a wave. Again the wave will come, but now you can never be identified with it, you will remain the ocean. Once you have known that you are the ocean, you can never again be the wave. Life is waves... death is the ocean. That is why Buddha so much insists about...

... religious. What type of religious land is this? Buddha has no roots here; he was totally uprooted. He used the language of death - that is the cause, and brahmins were using the language of life. They say THE BRAHMAN and he says NIRVANA: 'Brahman' means life - life, infinite life; and 'Nirvana' means just cessation, death - total death. Buddha says, "Your ordinary death is not total; you will be born...

... again. It is NOT total! You will be born again! I will give you a total death, and you will never be born again." A total death means now no birth is possible. So this so-called death, Buddha says, is not death. It is just a rest period, you will become alive again. It is just a breath gone out. You will take the breath in again, you will be reborn. Buddha says, "I will give you the way so...

... through that acceptance you become aware of something within you which is deathless. This incoming breath and outgoing breath are the life and death of the body, not of "me." But "I" do not know anything other than the body; "I" am identified with the body. Then it will be difficult to be aware when the breath comes in, easy to be aware when the breath goes out. When the...

... feel that well-being that comes with "AH." It is coming because of the breath. So languages differ, but these two things never differ. All over the world, whenever someone feels tired he will say "AH." Really, he is calling for death to come and relax him. Whenever one feels overjoyed, blissful, he says "AH." He is so overfilled with joy that he is not afraid of death...

... his body it has a wooden feeling, not the warmth of a living body. He is like a soldier just moving to the front. Look at the soldier moving to the front. He has a wooden shape, a wooden feeling, and that is needed by a soldier because he is going to die or to kill. He must not be much aware of the body, so his whole training is to create a wooden body. Soldiers marching look like toys, like dead...

..., you falsify even the part. Love is midway. It is exactly in the middle of life and death. It is half life, half death; hence the fear of love. Unless you are ready to die, you cannot know love - although by dying you become more alive. It is through death that love resurrects itself again and again. It is by disappearing that it appears again and again. Love is far more mysterious than life itself...

..., because it has life in it and something more too: life plus death. Fifty percent of love is life, fifty percent is death. And only those who are ready to die will know the life of love. Those who are afraid to die will never enter the mystery of love. Art explores the world of love. Hence art is far truer than science, goes deeper than science. The vision of the artist contains much more than scientific...

... is to penetrate death, because there seems to be nothing more mysterious than death. Love has some mystery because of death, and life also has some mystery because of death. If death disappears there will be no mystery in life. That's why a dead thing has no mystery in it, a corpse has no mystery in it, because it cannot die anymore. You think it has no mystery because life has disappeared? No, it...

... has no mystery because now it cannot die anymore. Death has disappeared, and with death automatically life disappears. Life is only one of the ways of death's expression. The corpse has no mystery because, with the disappearance of death, love is gone. Just one moment before there was great mystery; now there is nothing. You can only go and bury the dead or burn the dead. The full stop has come. The...

... anesthesia. That's what death has been doing for centuries, from eternity. If you can't go joyously, dancingly into it, there is a built-in anesthesia: people become unconscious before they die. That's why you don't remember your past lives, because you became so deeply unconscious before you died that the chapter became closed. If a person can die conscious, alert, he will remember his past life. That's...

... every day. Whenever he meditates he goes into death. He reaches to those heights, those depths, and, slowly slowly, as meditation becomes natural, he starts living death. Then each moment of his life is also a moment of death. Each moment he dies to the past and remains fresh, because the moment you die to the past you become alive to the present. He dies continuously and remains as fresh as dewdrops...

... or lotus leaves in the early morning sun. His freshness, his youth, his timelessness, depend on the art of dying. And then when actual death comes he has nothing to fear, because he has known this death thousands of times. He is thrilled, enchanted; he dances! Joyously he wants to die. Death does not create fear in him; on the contrary, a tremendous attraction, a great pull. And because he dies...

..., these are natural. And to be natural is to be religious. ALL FEAR DEATH; hence, do not kill. Rather, help people to know death. Their fear is because of ignorance. They are afraid of death because death is the greatest unknown. There is no way to know death unless you die. Help people to know death through meditation, because that is a way of dying and still remaining alive. ALL LOVE LIFE; hence, love...

... train gets here, a man could starve to death." Nobody wants to die. That means life wants to persist for ever and ever. That means life is in love with eternity. In fact life IS eternal. Death only changes the form, it does not destroy - but it creates fear because it is the most unknown phenomenon. Fear disappears only when, in deep meditation, you become acquainted with death; when in deep...

... from all kinds of goals, brings a different kind of stillness, a natural stillness that arises within your being, starts overflowing. Even others can feel it; it becomes almost tangible. LIKE HERDSMEN DRIVING THEIR COWS INTO THE FIELDS OLD AGE AND DEATH WILL DRIVE YOU BEFORE THEM. Death is going to come sooner or later. Before death comes, learn how to die in meditation. BUT THE FOOL IN HIS MISCHIEF...

...: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. ALL BEINGS TREMBLE BEFORE VIOLENCE. ALL FEAR DEATH. ALL LOVE LIFE. SEE YOURSELF IN OTHERS. THEN WHOM CAN YOU HURT? WHAT HARM CAN YOU DO? HE WHO SEEKS HAPPINESS BY HURTING THOSE WHO SEEK HAPPINESS WILL NEVER FIND HAPPINESS. FOR YOUR BROTHER IS LIKE YOU. HE WANTS TO BE HAPPY. NEVER HARM HIM AND WHEN YOU LEAVE THIS LIFE YOU TOO WILL FIND HAPPINESS. NEVER SPEAK...

... HARSH WORDS FOR THEY WILL REBOUND UPON YOU. ANGRY WORDS HURT AND THE HURT REBOUNDS. LIKE A BROKEN GONG BE STILL, BE SILENT. KNOW THE STILLNESS OF FREEDOM WHERE THERE IS NO MORE STRIVING. LIKE HERDSMEN DRIVING THEIR COWS INTO THE FIELDS OLD AGE AND DEATH WILL DRIVE YOU BEFORE THEM. BUT THE FOOL IN HIS MISCHIEF FORGETS AND HE LIGHTS THE FIRE WHEREIN ONE DAY HE MUST BURN. HE WHO HARMS THE HARMLESS OR...

... HURTS THE INNOCENT TEN TIMES SHALL HE FALL - INTO TORMENT OR INFIRMITY, INJURY OR DISEASE OR MADNESS, PERSECUTION OR FEARFUL ACCUSATION, LOSS OF FAMILY, LOSS OF FORTUNE. FIRE FROM HEAVEN SHALL STRIKE HIS HOUSE AND WHEN HIS BODY HAS BEEN STRUCK DOWN HE SHALL RISE IN HELL. What is the greatest mystery of existence? It is not life, it is not love - it is death. Science tries to understand life; hence...

... flower but looks THROUGH the flower, becomes the eyes of the flower. Naturally, he dives deeper than science; he brings far bigger diamonds, far more precious stones. Poetry, painting, sculpture, music - they come closer to reality because they are ready to participate. But they are only halfway. Religion is concerned basically with death. Death contains all: death contains life, death contains love...

..., and something more which neither life can contain nor love can contain. Death is the culmination of all, the crescendo, the highest peak. Life is the base, death is the peak - love is somewhere in between. The religious man, the mystic, tries to explore the mystery of death. In exploring the mystery of death, he inevitably comes to know what life is, what love is. Those are not his goals. His goal...

... process has stopped. It is death that keeps the process going on. It is death that keeps you aware of something mysterious, miraculous, magical. Religion is founded in the search into death, and to understand death is to understand all. To experience death is to experience all, because in the experience of death, you not only experience life at its highest, love at its deepest; in experiencing death you...

... enter into the divine. Death is the door to the divine. Death is the name of the door of God's temple. The meditator dies voluntarily. There are two kinds of death. One is the ordinary death; everybody dies it. That is not the mystic's death. The ordinary death happens against you; you go into it very reluctantly. You don't want to go into it, you cling to life. You don't become available to it, you...

... don't become open to it. Hence you go on missing the point. Many times you have died, but each time you died so much obsessed with life that you could not see what death is. Your eyes were focused on life, you were clinging to life. You were snatched away, and the only way to snatch you away is to make you unconscious. When the surgeon is going to operate on you he makes you unconscious, he gives you...

... how India discovered that there is not only one life; millions of times you have lived. You are not new, you are very ancient pilgrims. But each time you died reluctantly, unconsciously; hence you forgot everything. The mystic dies voluntarily. The mystic dies before the actual death; he dies in meditation. Lovers know a little bit of it because fifty percent of love is death. That's why love is...

... very close to meditation. Lovers know something of meditativeness; unawares they have stumbled upon it. Lovers know silence, stillness. Lovers know timelessness, but they have stumbled upon it - it has not been their basic search. The mystic goes into it very consciously, deliberately. Meditation is total death, voluntary death. One dies into oneself. Before death ever comes the mystic dies. He dies...

... joyously he dies without becoming unconscious, and he knows the total secret of death. Knowing it, he has the master key that can unlock all the doors. He has the key that can open the door of God. And now he knows that he is not a separate individual. The very idea of separation was stupid. The very idea of separation was there because he was not aware of death. You think yourself separate as an ego...

... because you don't know what death is. If you know death, the ego will evaporate. And the moment the ego evaporates you start feeling for the whole existence. That is why Buddha teaches nonviolence. It is not a moral teaching, not like Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi's whole teaching is moral, social, political. It is ordinary; it has no mysticism in it. Buddha's nonviolence is totally different...

... Buddha has never used the word. But hints are there; for the perceptive ones, for the sensitive ones, there are infinite hints. In each sentence there is a hint. The moment you die consciously, in meditation, God is born - because you disappear as an ego. Then what is left? A stillness, a tremendously potential stillness, a silence that is pregnant - pregnant with the whole. When you disappear...

... lives in the tree as greenness, and in the rose as redness. He is on the wings of the bird, he is the roar of the lion and he is the waves of the ocean. He is all... how can he be violent? How can he hurt? How can he be destructive? His whole life becomes a creativity. The mystic is utterly creative. The sutras: ALL BEINGS TREMBLE BEFORE VIOLENCE. ALL FEAR DEATH. ALL LOVE LIFE. Simple statements, but...

... tiger - but all the trees surrounding the place tremble. Even the death of the tiger is enough to make them sad, to make them afraid. What scientists have just now become aware of, within these last three or four years, the mystics have been aware of for centuries. Buddha says: ALL BEINGS TREMBLE BEFORE VIOLENCE. Violence is something against nature. The religious person cannot be violent - not that...

... all meat-eaters - the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans. Of course they have rationalized it. The rationalization is that, "We eat the meat only of those animals who have died a natural death." So in China, in Japan or in Buddhist countries, you will find written on shops' boards, "Here only that meat is served which has been taken from animals who have died a natural death."...

...; Now, not so many animals are dying a natural death that they can supply the whole of Asia. But that's enough - people are cunning. But in India the Jainas are still practicing nonviolence. But because they practice it, it remains something false, something closer to hypocrisy. It does not transform their being, it does not make them luminous, it does not give them grace and beauty. And in their...

... being - only its body is different from you; and the tiger has a being - only its body is different from you. The differences are only on the circumference. The center is always the same because the center is one. The name of the center is God. ALL BEINGS TREMBLE BEFORE VIOLENCE. ALL FEAR DEATH. ALL LOVE LIFE. There is no need to prove these things. These are simple observations of everybody. But a...

... will see that life is absolutely against destructiveness. Life is creative energy. Even if sometimes people commit suicide, they commit it not in the service of death but in the service of life. The people who commit suicide are the people who have been in tremendous love with life and feel frustrated, disillusioned. In those moments of disillusionment they go insane. Those people who commit suicide...

... meditation you know that "I am not the body, not the mind. Then how can there be death?" The body will go into the earth - dust unto dust - but your consciousness will persist forever. Then fear disappears. And when fear disappears in you, a great desire arises to help others also so that they can dissipate their fear - because people living in fear are living in anguish. Their life is a...

... WANTS TO BE HAPPY. NEVER HARM HIM AND WHEN YOU LEAVE THIS LIFE YOU TOO WILL FIND HAPPINESS. This sutra has been misinterpreted for at least twenty-five centuries. AND WHEN YOU LEAVE THIS LIFE YOU TOO WILL FIND HAPPINESS. This has been interpreted again and again as if it says something about life after death: "When you leave this life, when you leave this body, then you will find happiness"...

...; - as if happiness is something which happens only after death; it cannot happen in life. This has been the way of the Buddhist interpreters. I am not a Buddhist. The Buddhists have been interpreting it in a life-negative way. My interpretation is totally different. And I say to you that that is exactly what Buddha meant it to be, because I am not just interpreting it in a philosophical way - this is...

... my experience too. And as far as experience is concerned it can't be different; it is not different from Buddha's experience. When Buddha says: AND WHEN YOU LEAVE THIS LIFE... he does not mean death. He simply means this way of living this life, this way of stupid living: this way of desires, ambitions, anger, possessions, jealousies - this foolish way of life. And everybody who is not getting...

... ego, you will find happiness - immediately, instantly, herenow. It is not a question of after death. It is not a question that after death you will be happy. You can be happy this very moment - you just have to change your pattern of life. And the pattern of your life can be changed in two ways: either from the outside, from without - which is character, which is morality - or from the inside, from...

... even though the psychoanalyst says, "Don't be worried, don't be afraid. I am not going to disclose it to anybody - this will remain a secret with me, this will die with me." Whatsoever he says, his presence is enough to repress, because it is impossible for him not to be judgmental. If you are saying something which goes against his mind you can see in his eyes that the judgment has arisen...

... himself. He was very much afraid of death too. Even the mention of death once or twice had made him go into a faint; just the mention of death and he had fainted, become unconscious. Now, this is the founder of psychoanalysis - fainting at the mention of the word 'death' and carrying very stupid, funny ideas about sex. What to say about other psychoanalysts - they are in the same boat as their patients...

... night you will have a dreamless sleep. The same happens when death comes. When the body falls, immediately either you experience heaven - if you have lived rightly, mindfully, meditatively - or you experience hell. These are not geographical places somewhere; these are when you leave the body. The mind left alone goes berserk. The mind left alone, unoccupied, creates something for which you have been...

... is moksha. There is no word to translate it, because in all the non-Indian religions - Christianity, Judaism, Islam - only two words have been talked about: heaven and hell. The third is missing, the highest is missing. That's why I say these three religions are a little primitive compared to Buddhism. Buddhism reaches to the highest peak - it transcends heaven and hell too. One can die in absolute...

... silence - fully alert, experiencing neither pleasure nor pain. Then he will not be born again. Then he has jumped out of the ugly wheel of life and death. He has become one with the cosmos. To become one with the cosmos is nirvana. He has ceased as an individual being and he has become the whole. Become still - not a forced stillness, not a practiced and cultivated stillness - become still naturally...

... of science during the last three thousand years we will see that this has been its entire activity. Its entire conflict is against death, and it has been successful to a great extent. A thousand years ago, nine out of ten newborn children used to die, and today, in countries where science has made remarkable progress, not even one out of ten newborn children dies. Among the bones found by...

... person will die twenty years before reaching that age. That ninety-year-old man belongs to a community where the maximum age is one hundred and fifty years. Till what age is a man still young when his lifespan ranges up to one hundred and fifty? Would you not fix it at a hundred at the least? Wherever science has been successful, death has been pushed away a little further, and in recent times science...

.... So they will try their best to save the man. If in spite of the doctors' efforts the patient dies, it is a different matter. So the agitation goes on to give man a right to die if he chooses. This matter is soon going to be very significant, because no mechanism has been found in the human body which can actually precipitate death. The only reason death happens is that up to now it has not been...

... possible to replace physical organs of the body. We are unable to replace certain parts of the body, and that is the difficulty. As we go on making progress in replacing body parts, death will not remain an unavoidable phenomenon for man. It will become an act of one's own will. Bear in mind, it will happen very soon that no man, except by an accident, will die in the course of time. So there will be...

... overcome by avidya. The eternal within can never die. Death is of the body; then the eternal within us accepts a new body. However, if we can keep the old body fit and active then there is no need to accept a new one, and to accept a new body seems absolutely uneconomical. It seems that nature does not know what economics is. It seems nature has no experience whatsoever of the science of economics. It...

... not allow the seventy-year-old, with all his experience, to die. A man of seventy will assume a new life after his death - and will again have to spend twenty to twenty-five years in educating and training himself, just to regain with difficulty the position he was in at the time of his death. This is all worthless. So science is busy in this direction, and makes all efforts to end this wastage. If...

.... 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 BOTH VIDYA AND AVIDYA TOGETHER OVERCOMES DEATH THROUGH AVIDYA AND EXPERIENCES IMMORTALITY THROUGH VIDYA. One who knows both avidya and vidya, having overcome death, will know the immortal. This is a very rare couplet. I told you that the Upanishads are not opposed to...

... avidya. They favor vidya but are not at all opposed to avidya. It is said, "He who knows avidya will overcome death." The whole conflict of avidya is against death. The doctor is fighting against death, the engineer is fighting against death. Science's entire endeavor, all its activities, are directed against death - against sickness, against insecurity, against future dangers. To see that...

... life does not end, to see that it is preserved, is the total effort of avidya - of scientific knowledge. The whole avidya is in a constant fight with death. So he who is proficient in avidya succeeds in holding death at bay. That is, he lives comfortably. In this sense, through avidya he overcomes death - but he cannot reach the immortal. He simply controls death quite comfortably. With the help of...

... avidya we can exist, but we cannot taste the substance of life. We can merely exist. This should be called vegetating. We will run the course of life. Everything - food, a house, medicine, and so on - will be available to us. We will get it all, and life will pass nicely, comfortably. But the immortal will be unavailable to us. And even if avidya succeeds altogether in preventing death, the immortal...

... will still not be available. Modern science is busily searching for ways and means to conquer death. The entire effort of science is really to save man from death. That is why science is so keen to find out how death can be avoided, how it can be avoided forever. The situation may arise in the distant future when we are able, if we wish, to avoid death forever. If we rightly understand the progress...

... the life of man we should add this rule to the constitution of the country - that every man is born with the right to die. Otherwise a very difficult situation will arise; because if the government does not allow a person to die, that person will have no right to do so. Up to now we made rules throughout the world that nobody has a right to kill another person. But nowadays, in the whole world...

... - especially in countries like Switzerland, Sweden and Norway, where science has been successful in prolonging man's life - people have started to agitate for the ending of life. Intelligent people have initiated propaganda campaigns maintaining that no doctor has a right to save the life of a person who wishes to die, and if a doctor saves the life of such a person, it should be considered an abuse against...

... the fundamental right of that person, his fundamental right over his own life. We are in a dangerous position. Suppose a man is one hundred and fifty years old. Now, he is a fool if he wants to live longer, he should wish to take rest forever, to die. But the doctors have to keep him in hospital for treatment and try to keep him alive, because at present doctors have no right to help a person to die...

... fewer natural deaths and more suicides in the world. It will certainly be a suicide if a person asks a doctor to end his life. Then suicide will be a common means of death. Since very ancient times, man has been proclaiming that death can be overcome by avidya. What the medical science of the West says today is declared in the Upanishads. They say death can be restrained so much that it is effectively...

... the tape is being played. The tape feeds instruction slowly slowly into the children's brains during the whole night, and they receive it directly. The proclamation of the Upanishad that death can be overcome by avidya, science, should be sent in writing to all the universities. The sage of the Upanishad says this is so because death is merely a physical tragedy, an accident. If we can develop the...

... appropriate instruments and technologies, death can be pushed a little further away. There is no difficulty about this. Up to now science has lacked the means to restore a dead person to life, but scientists hope to be able to give new life to a dead person by the end of this century. One person who died fifteen years ago has made a will of ten million dollars for the purpose of preserving his dead body in...

... reentering a house which has been reconstructed after it had fallen down. Death can be overcome by avidya - by science - but the immortal cannot be experienced through it. The second part of the sutra is more important, and a necessary condition. It is possible that science may defeat death, and may make man almost immortal, but then, how is man going to be benefited by this change? Even after becoming...

... almost immortal he cannot have the experience of the immortal. Even then we will not know that which is immortal in us. We may have seventy years of knowledge, or seven hundred years; we may even live for seven thousand years. But we have no experience at all of that which was there before our life, which existed before our birth and also exists after our death. If we wish to know - to experience - the...

... immortal, only vidya, true knowledge, can help. The Upanishads pay a great tribute to avidya, to science. It is the way to fight against death, although it is powerless to attain to the immortal. Conflict with death is a negative effort; experiencing the immortal is a positive achievement. To try to experience the immortal is the effort to know that which existed before our birth and will also exist...

... after our death; which is at present, which was in the past and which will also be in the future. It was before this body existed, and it will still exist when this body has perished. To know this is to attain the immortal. To go on prolonging this body's life is merely to be in conflict with death. It is a struggle about extending the distance between birth and death, whereas to go deep into the...

... experience of that which is beyond birth and death is to discover the immortal. The Upanishads declare that immortality will be experienced through vidya. So we need to understand two or three sutras about vidya - true knowledge. What teachings about vidya can guide us now towards the immortal? The first point is that the person who thinks he is the body is unable to move towards the immortal. So the first...

... avidya, towards the conflict with death. And life is such that we are reminded twenty-four hours a day that "I am the body." If our leg is injured a little, we at once remember, "I am the body." If we are hungry we remember, "I am the body." If there is a little headache we remember, "I am the body." If there is fever we remember, "I am the body." As...

... hunger. Something always decreases in the body because it dies every day, and due to this process of dying, you feel hunger. You may be surprised to know that something within you dies every day; so the portion that dies has to be replaced by food. There is no other reason. Some parts within you die, so you have to replace those dead portions by living ones so that you can remain alive. Hence you lose...

..., he is dying. He will grow weaker day by day, losing weight and feeling worn out, but he will continue to live. We replace our dead elements by food; the deficiency is made good. But the soul does not die. No element of it is lessened, so there is no reason for the soul to feel hungry. There is one interesting thing to know about this happening. The soul does not feel hungry; the body does not know...

... freshness of the morning. Nobody goes into the world to die, nobody goes into the river of life to meet crocodiles! One goes into life in search of happiness, in search of treasures - success, fame, prestige - but in this process gets caught by crocodiles. Death gets hold of you sooner or later. And if a person is wise he understands soon that this river is the surface; death is hidden inside - 'crocodile...

... - mother means birth; on the other end is death - death means the end. Freedom from the mother is possible only if death can be seen; birth can be meaningless only if the end can be seen. So sannyas means realization of death. We go on postponing death in this world; we go on saying that it is always others who die, I will never die. Every day you see dead bodies being taken to the graveyard or to the...

... cremation ground; you help others carry these dead ones there, but it never occurs to you that you will also die. You always think that you are going to live forever and only others will die. But one day others will also carry your body to the graveyard when you are no longer alive. Man lives on false hopes. Sannyas means the awakening of the awareness that "death is mine; the news of the other...

... person's death is actually the news of my death. The death of the other is pointing towards my death. And with the death of everyone, I also die a little." If you have a little understanding, then everyone's death will become your death. But if you do not have this understanding, if you are foolish, then you will think that it is always others who die; I will not die, I am immortal. Shankara could...

... everything. One has to die, so it does not matter whether one dies earlier or later - today, tomorrow or the day after, it is just a matter of time. If death has to happen then it has happened just now. And the arrow of death will pierce you in such a way that you will not be able to be what you were up till now. This new change in you is sannyas. If you ask me the definition of sannyas, I will say that...

..., and the permission was given. Yes, this permission is granted only when death is standing at the door. One does not get permission before this, only when the mother realizes that her son will only be saved if he becomes a sannyasin. Otherwise, as he is, he will die. When the question is of choosing between a dead son and a sannyasin son, then the mother chooses the sannyasin son. This is the meaning...

... remembered. Shankara, a small child, is on the verge of death; a crocodile has caught hold of his leg. His mother is standing on the bank of the river and Shankara is asking her permission to take sannyas. He is saying, "I am dying, there is no hope of my being saved. Let me die as a sannyasin. Give me the permission for sannyas. The crocodile is taking me away - so give me the permission." Even...

... dreams of desire and ambition. I have killed myself with my own hands. Then only the nectar within which was surrounded by death remains in its purity." You do not know anything about this nectar as long as you go on holding onto life. That is why you hold life so tightly that it does not slip out of your hands. You are afraid you may die. You are afraid of death all the time. The more you try to...

... the nectar also. "Shankara was saved" - because death cannot destroy you. It can destroy the so-called life. It can destroy what you call body. It can destroy what you call name and form. But death cannot destroy you. You are immortal, you are amrit putra. You were never destroyed and can never be destroyed. You were never born nor will you ever die. One who is born will die. Your body was...

... did not give him permission to take sannyas." A lot of things are hidden in this. 'Mother' means, the love of the mother; mother means attachment. It is difficult for attachment to give permission for sannyas because sannyas means the death of attachment. Sannyas means that a person is becoming free of the family; now the mother will not be the mother, now the father will not be the father, now...

... the brother will not be the brother. That is why Jesus has said again and again that whosoever wants to come with me has to deny his mother and his father; whosoever wants to come with me has to give up his family. You cannot be a part of the family of Jesus until you give up your family. Sannyas means that this life between birth and death is futile, meaningless. If this life is futile then the...

... wants to tread a difficult path. "When Shankara was very young his mother did not give him permission to take sannyas. But one day as he was bathing in a river he was caught by a crocodile." In the river of life misery gets hold of you sometime or other. You meet death in this river of life. You do not go into the river to meet death, you go there to bathe, to enjoy swimming, to enjoy the...

...' means the hidden death. On the surface the flow of the water seems so pure and peaceful but deep down death is waiting. On the surface it looks very attractive, and the river also seems very innocent. Inside death waits quietly. Anyone who is clever, wise and conscious will be able to understand this quickly. Shankara saw it at once. If you cannot see this for a long time, then it means that you have...

... very little intelligence and understanding. Your mirror is covered with dust. Your intelligence is full of smoke, otherwise you could see it earlier. In this story the only thing conveyed is that Shankara realized that in this life one gets nothing except death. And one cannot be free of the love of the mother until the realization of death. Try to understand this a little. On one end is the mother...

... see death. One gets free of the mother as soon as you see death, because mother means life. Mother means the one who brought you into this world. Death means that which will take you away. The Hindus' imagination regarding this is unique. No other community on this earth is more imaginative, more poetic, than Hindus. Their poetry is very deep. Have you ever seen the statue of Kali? She is the mother...

... and death also; kal, means death - so her name is Kali. And she is the mother, so she is a woman. She is beautiful, beautiful like a mother. Nobody else can be as beautiful as the mother. Even if one's own mother is ugly, she seems beautiful. Nobody thinks in terms of the beauty of the mother. But the mother is beautiful... because if you see your mother as ugly, then that means that you are ugly...

... because you are her expansion. So Kali is beautiful, very beautiful! But around her neck she is wearing a garland of human heads. She is beautiful but she is Kali - kal, death! Western thinkers are puzzled over this symbol. They wonder why a woman should be depicted so horribly, so terrifying! And you call her mother also! How frightening! It is horrible, because death starts from the one who gives...

... birth. It is horrible, because death has also arrived along with the birth. The mother has given death as well as life. So on one side she is as beautiful as the mother, as the source, and on the other end she is like kal, death, as dark as death. Around her neck is a garland of human heads; in her hand she is holding a severed head, blood dripping, and she is standing, with her feet on her husband...

.... This is a very deep symbol: woman as life and as death! ... Because death comes from where life comes; these two are the two sides of the same coin. And nobody else on this earth realized this fact as the Hindus have done. When Shankara became aware of death... whether he was really caught by the crocodile or not should be asked of the silly historians; I am just not interested in it. What difference...

... does it make whether he was caught by a crocodile or not? But one thing is definite - that he saw death, and when he saw death, sannyas happened. One cannot escape from sannyas after seeing death. Then you remain stunned wherever you are. Then life cannot be the same as it was just a moment before this realization. The ambition, the fame, the reputation - everything loses its charm. Death destroys...

... sannyas is a state of being where death has not happened outside but has happened inside. One is alive but one knows death; while living, one is quite aware of death. This is sannyas. One lives but does not forget death even for a moment: this is sannyas. You know that the dewdrop is just momentary. The world is like the morning star: it will soon disappear. You live but you are not drunk with life...

.... Then life cannot make you forget the fact of death. You remain awakened, you are aware all the time. Death awakens you. One who is awakened is a sannyasin. One who is lost in life and is taking the dreams to be true is a worldly person, is a householder. One who makes a home in dreams or who is creating dreams in the home is a householder. But one who gets up from sleep, whose dream is over, who is...

... awakened and is conscious, realizes that over here there is nothing except death. Any extended family, any place of living, is nothing but a graveyard, or a queue waiting to go to the graveyard. The queue is moving towards the graveyard. Someone may be a little ahead and someone may be behind, but all of them are going to the graveyard. The attachment to life is over as soon as one sees this. Losing this...

... enough then how much time do you need?" In this life you also go about as if drunk, humming the song of dreams, and you do not see things as they are. A hard hit is needed to upset your dreaming mind, only then you can see the empty sky. You will then see that you are surrounded by death. What you consider as life is actually death. What you consider as happiness is actually the mask of misery...

.... What you consider as wealth is only a game of falsehood. In the illusion of money you remained poor. And in the illusion of life you remained unacquainted with the real life. And time is passing away, life is passing every minute and your energy is diminishing. This is only a symbol, that when death caught hold of Shankara then before dying he asked his mother to give him permission to take sannyas...

..., because a sannyasin son means a dead son. Sannyas means one has died while living. Jesus has said, "You cannot come with me until you agree to carry your cross on your shoulders; you cannot come with me until you are ready to deny yourself; there is no way of resurrection until you are ready to die." If this story is true, if things really happened in this way, then this symbol should be...

... then the mother must have hesitated. Even then she might have hoped against hope that her son may be saved. But death was pulling Shankara away. A crowd of people must have collected and they must have said, "You had better give the permission now. He is dying, he is going. You cannot stop him from dying, so set him free before he dies." Ultimately she gave the permission after hearing...

... Shankara's words that he wants to die as a sannyasin so that he is not born again, so that there is no longer any attachment to life for him; he wants to die with no attachment to life. Even then, to me it seems that the mother must have hesitated; her eyes must have been full of tears. She must have prayed to God to save her son. But when there was no hope then very reluctantly, in a very helpless way...

..., she must have said, "Since you are dying you had better die as a sannyasin." But this incident may not have happened, because crocodiles do not worry about these things. When men do not worry, why should crocodiles worry? It is said that Shankara was saved. The crocodile thought: Why kill this person now when he has become a sannyasin? No, crocodiles are not so intelligent! When Hitler and...

... Mussolini are not intelligent, then how can crocodiles be intelligent? But this symbol is very valuable. Man is saved only when he becomes a sannyasin; then even death cannot harm him. But he only dies who tries to get hold of life; death cannot kill the person who himself gives up life. How can you take from a person who is ready to give away? Things can be snatched away only from the person who wants to...

... save them. That is why Jesus says, "That one who saves will lose; one who is ready to lose, has saved." You must understand this. Shankara was saved. Did the crocodile leave him? No, it only means that death does not kill a sannyasin. There is no way of killing a sannyasin because, he says, "The I which could be killed by you was given up by me. I have given up the ego and all the...

... hold the more frightened you become, because you know that you cannot fool death. Yes, death is coming. Where can you hide yourself from death? It comes from all sides. If it was coming from any particular direction then that could be avoided, but it comes from all sides. You could save yourself if it was coming from outside, but it comes from inside. You may run away anywhere, but death will come...

.... You may hide yourself anywhere, death will find you, because death is hidden within you. Nectar and death both are hidden within you. As long as you go on holding onto life outside you will see only death within. The moment you accept death within, you will start seeing the life within. If you write on a blackboard with white chalk then the words are visible and clear. But if you write with white...

... chalk on a white wall, then the words are not visible. If you accept that inner death, then in that blackness the little candle of immortality which is burning within you will become a thousand times more luminous. But you do not accept death, you do not accept the blackboard, so you cannot see the white words. Always remember this contradictory statement: whoever could see death properly, has seen...

... born so it will die. Your name and your personality were born so they will die. But you were always in time beyond name and form, and you will always remain in time. You are ancient, you are eternal. The meaning of sannyas is that I will give up whatever is transient and I will go in search of what will not be destroyed. I will give up the transient and I will look for the eternal. Even if I am...

... only an illusion of the mind. The wasp had been flying until it read the book. The scripture was the cause of death. The wasp could not fly from that day; it just sat down and became fat by sitting, and it became more difficult to fly. And when it became difficult to fly the scriptures seemed quite correct. The other wasps were flying, but it thought that they were ignorant fools and they were flying...

... and it had read about this block in the psychology books. Books are your death. Try to come into life a little. Please say goodbye to the Vedas, the Koran and the Bible. Yes, you should say goodbye to them in these words, "Please excuse me now, enough is enough. Now let me live a natural life as it is." To be natural is to be religious. You have become unnatural. You do not suffer from any...

... became lost, but he still exists in the crowd of your thoughts. When these thoughts calm down, suddenly the child will be rediscovered. That is saintliness. The fifth question: Question 5: BELOVED OSHO, SOMETIMES SHRI SHANKARACHARYA SAYS THAT NOTHING WILL HAPPEN BY THE PILGRIMAGE TO THE GANGES AND SOMETIMES HE SAYS THAT, EVEN BY DRINKING A DROP OF THE GANGES WATER, A MAN CONQUERS DEATH. PLEASE CLARIFY...