..., tomorrow I am going to meditate." But it is afraid. Meditation is like death. And it is. You will have to die as you are; only then the new can be born. This is a small story by Sheikh Saadi, one of the great Sufi mystic poets. A very simple anecdote, but carrying much meaning. And all those who have known, they talk in the simplest words possible... because the truth itself is so complex. Why make...

... happen. And the plant is so tender, so soft, so feminine, and the seed was so masculine, so protective, so hard, so strong. And life IS soft, death IS hard. Life IS tender.... For death there exists no hazard, because a dead person cannot die again. For life - millions of hazards. Hazards and hazards - it is an adventure into the unknown. Watch a seed sprouting, breaking the hard shell, then the hard...

... to do with this man? Why is he insisting...? I asked the wife the details. She said, "He has always been afraid of death, always afraid of illness. When he was healthy, then too it was difficult for him to go to the hospital, even if some relative was there, or friend; even to see and visit the patient was difficult for him. The moment he reaches near a hospital something in him catches fear...

... - death, the idea of death. And now it is creating trouble because he is ill and he won't go - and he insists that he is not ill so what is the use of going to any doctor? Why should he go?" I looked at the whole situation. The man was really afraid. I told him, "Your wife has gone really mad. You are perfectly healthy" - he smiled, his face changed - "nothing is wrong with you."...

..., time is passing. Half your life you have lived, only half is left; you can drift the same way. And then comes death, and oblivion. And nobody knows where one goes. Why bother about self knowledge? In your ignorance you have created a comfortable, an established life, a secure life with a bank balance, insurance, the government, the society, membership of a religion, the church - you have created a...

... in the beginning, that is in the end. The beginning is painful. It is like a birth. Birth IS painful. If a child becomes afraid in the womb of the mother, afraid to pass through the birth passage - it is very narrow, it is painful, suffocating, it is a trauma, it leaves a wound forever - if the child becomes afraid, then there will be no birth, and there will be no life. Then the child will die in...

... the womb. If the bird in the egg becomes afraid to leave the protecting shell.... He is closed in, completely closed in, and protected from everything, and he has whatsoever he needs inside. If a seed becomes afraid to sprout... because as a seed there is no suffering, there is no death because there is no life. As a seed there is no danger; the seed can remain for millions of years. In Mohenjo Daro...

... as Mahakashyapa succeeded and Bodhidharma succeeded, Rinzai also succeeded in creating silence, in turning people inwards. The message is not linguistic. The message is existential. The master can only create a certain situation, a certain device in which, if you allow, if you are receptive, you can be transformed. This transformation is almost a death and a resurrection. Your old personality will...

... way is valid if you reach to your center, because your center is the only immortal part in you. Everything else is going to die. Today Professor Barks is here. He has done a tremendous job in translating Rumi. He has come as close as possible, but I don't think he knows that Rumi's whole effort by whirling is to find the center. If you whirl for hours, you will see slowly that something at the very...

... these - poetry, music, dance, love - are poor substitutes for meditation. They are good, beautiful, but they are not meditation. And meditation does not come naturally to you, because in meditation you will have to disappear forever. There is no coming back. That creates fear. Meditation is a death - death of all that you are now. Of course there will be a resurrection, but that will be a totally new...

... person. The old personality is nowhere to be found. You have to start your life again from ABC. You have to learn everything with fresh eyes, with a totally new heart. That's why meditation creates fear. The UPANISHADS say that the master is a death. It is an incomplete sentence. The master is a death but also a rebirth, a resurrection. A master is nothing but meditation. A master simply gives you a...

... meditation; he cannot do anything else. He gives you the meditation to die and to be reborn. A meditator can play music and it will have a totally different significance. A meditator can write poetry, but then the poetry will not be only a composition of words. It will express something inexpressible. A meditator can do anything, but he will bring to it a new grace, a new beauty, a new significance. Music...

... through him. As far as I am concerned, poetry and music and love and dance are more religious activities than the so-called religious rituals, because at least they give you a little glimpse. If you follow that glimpse you will enter into meditation. Meditation directly and naturally does not attract you because of a great fear of death. You don't know after death whether there is going to be a...

... witnessing. This experience of witnessing is the ultimate truth of your being. This is what the UPANISHADS have called satyam, shivam, sundram - truth, good, beauty. In this space you are eternal. You have never known any birth, you have never known any death. All that happens on the circumference. At the center there is no death, no birth... just a pure sky. You are blessed to be here in this tremendously...

... dying, slowly slowly... existing comfortably, but not living -- no intensity, no flair, no flame, no fire, just a cold life. Comfortably they will live and comfortably they will die -- but in fact they will never have lived. And one who has never lived, how can he die? Death is the ultimate mystery. That gift is given only to those who have lived really intensely, who have burned their torch of life...

... from both the ends together. Only then it happens sometimes that in a single moment of intensity the whole life is revealed. In a single moment of total intensity, the whole eternity opens its doors to you, you are welcomed by God. God is not found by praying on your knees; God is not found in the temples and churches. God is found in intense living -- a life of depth, depth and totality, and a death...

... also of depth and totality. Live totally and die totally, and God is yours and truth is yours. The second sutra: ALWAYS MEDITATE ON SPECIFIC OBJECTS. First thing: by meditation Atisha never means concentration, remember. Concentration and meditation are polar opposites. Concentration narrows down your mind; it is focusing on one point. It includes only something and excludes everything else...

... the definition of all the buddhas, that which can be taken by death is unimportant and that which cannot be taken by death is important. Remember this definition, let this be a touchstone. You can judge anything immediately on this touchstone. Have you seen the touchstone on which gold is judged? Let this be a touchstone for what is important: Is death going to take it away from you? Then it is not...

... important. Money then is not important -- useful, but not important, has no import. Power, prestige, respectability -- death will come and efface them all, so why make so much fuss about them for the few days you are here? This is a caravanserai, an overnight stay, and by the morning we go. Remember, only that which you can take with you when you leave the body is important. That means, except meditation...

..., nothing is important. Except awareness, nothing is important, because only awareness cannot be taken away by death. Everything else will be snatched away, because everything else comes from without. Only awareness wells up within; that cannot be taken away. And the shadows of awareness -- compassion, love -- they cannot be taken away; they are intrinsic parts of awareness. You will be taking with you...

... destroyed the ecology. Now if something is not done immediately, the earth may become uninhabitable. The earth has been poisoned by us, we are killing it. And we have to live on it, and we are turning it into a corpse! It has started stinking in many places. We have given nature and earth a cancer: nature has given us life, and we are giving death to nature in return. And the basic reason, the basic cause...

... frustrated. The world is conquered - then what? Commit suicide? Nothing is left for you to do; you have wasted your whole life in conquering the world. And remember, the greatest king and the poorest beggar both have to die. Death is a great equalizer. Death does not make any distinction." Alexander said, "I understand, but now only a small part of the world is left. I would also like to be as...

... anything more to ask you. I have just come to remind you that life is also like playing on the sitar: if you are too loose you are lost, if you are too tight you are lost. Each extreme is a death, and to find the exact middle is the whole art. You were too loose living in utter luxury. Now you are too tight living in an unnecessarily ascetic way. Come into the middle, listen to me, for the wise have...

.... I am not, because death has not taken even clothes from me - I had given them up before death. Death has not been able to take anything from me, and it has taken everything that you had conquered. You are entering the other world as a beggar. At least now try to understand." This must be a story, because who knows what happens after death? But it is beautiful, meaningful, very significant to...

... from everybody else's. But in consciousness we are one continent - nobody is an island. That universal consciousness is always there. Either you are aware of it, then it makes your life a rejoicing, or you are unaware of it, then your life becomes just a dragging somehow towards death. So there is no contradiction at all. But remember, there are many experiences. If you think about them you will find...

..., nobody stepping on your feet, naturally there is no anger, no hate, no ego - but they are all dormant. Come back to the world and they will all be alive; they don't die. People have been given positive motives to drop the ego by other religions. This is a negative motive: that it is misery, that it is a constant headache, and you don't want misery, you don't want a headache, so you are even ready to...

...;future life," in the "other life," if you drop the ego you will be given immense sources of pleasure. You will have beautiful women, you will have all kinds of comforts and luxuries eternally available. There will be no death; you will have become immortal gods. These are positive motives, but these are not going to destroy your ego. It happened.... One Jaina acharya, Acharya Tulsi, had...

... it was not there; the way you are trying to find it means you will miss, the very method prohibits. The moment you dissect the child he is dead, the life has disappeared, and by dissecting you will come to death, not to life. Science ultimately leads to death - Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not accidental. And if man still follows science for one more century... even one century is too optimistic...

...; these coming twenty- five years.... If man continuously follows science it may prove a global suicide, because dissection cannot lead to life; the ultimate result is bound to be death. And science cannot believe in life, because you cannot find it anywhere, in any laboratory. You dissect, and life disappears. You dissect your beloved, and love disappears. You go to a surgeon and let him dissect your...

... heart, or take x-rays of your heart to find out whether love is there or not. He may find a cancer there, but he cannot find love. Death can be detected, love cannot be detected. There is no way to have any x-ray of love. Death can be detected; if tb is there, if cancer is there, it can be detected, science can find it out. Go to a library and look at medical encyclopedias to find a definition of...

.... Religious discourses are really poisons, they are poisonous food. Buddha talks, Krishna talks, Lao Tzu goes on preaching to the disciples. What are they doing? They are doing only one thing: they are giving you poison which looks like food to reason. Reason immediately absorbs it, but it is poison, and reason will have to die. And once reason is dead, for the first time you will be alert, conscious...

... darkness, if I say light, it is wrong, because he is also darkness. If I say darkness, it is wrong, because he is also light. If I say he is light, then the question arises, "Then darkness exists. Where does it exist? Then there must be something other than God where darkness exists." If I say God is life... then death? Who is death? If I say God is death, then who is life? And if I say God is...

... both life and death, then it becomes a paradox. If I say God is both light and darkness, then you will say, "You are not saying much, it is a paradox. How can one be both?" These are the four ways: either I can say God is light or darkness, or I can say God is both, or I can say God is not both, but the problem remains. And these are the only ways to express. That's why Mahavira has...

... going to die soon as he was ill and old, all his great disciples gathered, just to meet him for the last time. Twenty people were there, Freud was sitting with them and they were discussing. They were discussing, and they forgot that Freud was still alive. They were discussing what Freud meant about certain principles and each one had his own interpretation. They discussed, argued, and there was chaos...

... office politicians do not live long. They remain strong as long as they are winning elections, but as soon as they are defeated they lose strength. Psychologists say people die earlier if they retire than if they hadn't. There is a difference of ten years, more or less. A man who would have lived to be eighty, if he is retired at sixty he dies at seventy. The single cause of early death is that he is...

...; - Ashtavakra calls this feeling immortal nectar. " 'I am not the doer.'" This is ambrosia. You should understand another meaning also. Only ego dies, you never die; hence ego is death, poison. The day you know there is no such thing as ego, there is only God inside of you: all is his one expanse, it is his one ray, his one drop. Then there is no death for you, then you are immortal. With God you...

... whole? Wherever existence takes you, it is good. We didn't come here through our own wish, we don't go through our own wish. We don't know why we are born nor do we know why we die. Before birth no one asked us whether we wanted to be born. Before death no one will ask us whether we want to die. Everything is happening here. Who asks us? Why should we uselessly bring ourselves into it? We shall...

...; People live for the crowd, people die for the crowd. What others say has become so important that you do not even ask who you are. You collect cuttings of what others say and make your self-image. This image is bound to be very unsteady, because people's minds go on changing. Not only do people's minds go on changing, their reasons also go on changing. Somebody comes to you and says, "You are a...

... movies is their total attention is focused. They see... actually there is nothing on the screen, just shadows go on flickering, but people are all attention. They forget their illness, their anxieties, their old age, and even if death comes they will forget that. But remember, you have not become an observer in the theater; you have become a spectator. You have forgotten yourself, you have no memory of...

... observer you are mistaken. The one who sees is behind the eyes. The one who hears is behind the ears. If you touch my hand, you will think your hand is touching my hand. It is wrong. The one who touches is hidden within the hand; how will the hand touch? If you die tomorrow the corpse will be lying there. People will sit holding the hand but there won't be any touch. The corpse will be lying there, the...

... have disappeared. Suddenly the balloon of his ego is shrinking, as if the balloon has burst; air has escaped, it is punctured. He begins to shrink. There doesn't seem to be any reason in living. The wish to die starts coming to him. He begins to think of dying because now life has no meaning. People die sooner after retirement because the whole strength and juice of their lives was in the area of...

... are deathless. With yourself you are going to die. With yourself you are alone - against the world, against existence. You are engaged in an impossible battle in which defeat is certain. With God everything is with you. In him defeat is impossible, victory is assured. Take all with you when you start the journey. When it can happen by cooperation, why struggle? When it can be attained by bowing down...

... too much! This life is nothing, everything is meaningless. I never got anything I wanted, I always got what I wanted to avoid. God is against me, so why should I continue this life?" The fakir said, "Wait, stay one more day - then you can die. What's the rush? You say you don't have anything?" The man replied, "Nothing at all. If I had anything, why would I come to take my life...

... suicide. Or you wanted to be a minister, but you could only become a deputy minister so now you are suicidal. Or you wanted to have a big house but you got a small one and it seems life has no meaning. Or you go bankrupt, your bank account empties, and you say "Why go on living?" Or you loved a woman and couldn't get her, or loved a man and couldn't get him. Now you want to die. The more you...

... logic rules our education, our minds, so whenever we see two complementary things, immediately the idea of contradiction arises. Otherwise, in one interrelated existence, how could there be contradiction? Complementariness is essential. For example, the day and night are not contradictory; they are complementary to each other. Nor are life and death contradictory; they are complementary to each other...

.... They make one whole, one circle, complete and entire. But seen through the eyes of logic, it is hard to believe that life and death are not contradictory. It seems obvious that death is the end of life; that is not true. Death is only a beginning of a new life - a refreshment, a rejuvenation. The old body is tired. You need more experiences to become mature. You have to move through many other forms...

... of life, and there are millions of forms of life. Moving through all these forms of life, learning by and by, step by step, inch by inch, you arrive at humanity. Humanity gives you a new opportunity of transformation, to jump out of the circle of life and death and to become part of the eternal. Those who achieve it have really lived. Those who have missed may have to learn again the old route. Who...

... knows how many lives it takes to recognize that humanity is a point of departure, not only from death, but also from life - life as you know it - to a new immortality, to a life which can be equivalent to godliness. Logic has created many misunderstandings. It goes on insisting on the duality of things without seeing the interconnecting link. I am reminded of one incident. Mahatma Gandhi and...

... twenty-five years, dropped the idea and said, "I want to die as soon as possible. There is no joy." On the surface, logic will say that these two persons were contradictory to each other, enemies to each other. But deep down there seems to be an intimacy. Jinnah was the head of his government in Pakistan. Gandhi was nobody; his disciples were running the government. Just one year after he was...

... not going to choose his successor. Hyakujo was the master almost on the verge of death. The second disciple Goho did a little better. GOHO SAID, "OSHO!" Osho is a very honorable word. There are many respectful words, but the sweetness of Osho, the love, the respect, the gratitude, all are together in it. It is just like Christians using 'reverend', but that is no comparison to it. Just the...

... is as soft as a lotus leaf. It is both together. It is not right for the disciple to say to the master, "YOU SHOULD SHUT UP!" To avoid the disrespectfulness of his answer, he first addresses the master, Osho! Don't misunderstand me. I have great respect and love for you, but you are asking nonsense. You should shut up. At the moment of death, have you gone a little senile. Just shut up...

... similarities between the Himalayan peaks and the inner consciousness. Bodhidharma said, "Now I am old enough and sooner or later I will have to die. I don't want to leave my footprints behind me. I want to disappear into the Himalayan snows without leaving a trace behind. And it is time that I should move, because it will take years to reach again to the deepest part of the Himalayas." So he...

... out of existence singing, dancing? He is indicating to every disciple who is in search of the eternal sources of life that you should go dancing in your death. Only then can you find it. Dancing transforms death into eternal life. Dancing is a very transforming force. It contains your joy, your blissfulness, your peace, your gratitude; your thankfulness to existence that it gave you time to blossom...

..., it gave you great foliage, great flowers. And now that it wants you to return to the source, you should not be sad. That is ungratefulness. You should be in a celebrating mood, in a thankful mood for all that the existence has done for you. Go dancing and in that dancing death becomes a fiction. That dancing transforms even death into a new life, or into eternal life. Question 1: Maneesha has asked...

.... The master will have to share it. He cannot contain it within himself. He will die if he tries to contain it within himself. His experience will kill him. It has happened thousands of times that people become enlightened and die immediately, almost simultaneously. Their enlightenment and death come together. The reason is that they have not created before enlightenment a certain capacity to be...

... customers. And all his commodities are invisible - he cannot place them before you. He cannot give you some experience, some taste, before you are ready to be a customer. Selling invisible things, one needs tremendous preparation. So only once in a while there is a master; otherwise people become enlightened and die. The experience is too much; it simply stops their breathing; it simply stops their...

... heartbeat. Out of sheer joy they forget to breathe, they forget that their heart has to continue to beat. And it is so much, so big, and they are so small. They have always thought of themselves as small, and now suddenly a whole mountain has descended over them - beautiful, ecstatic, but it brings death unless they are capable of immediately sharing it. The master needs disciples; otherwise he cannot...

... by her side. Sometimes I myself was sick; sometimes there was no excuse but I simply thought, 'He is always coming and going. I can go anytime.' "I had started taking him for granted. I had forgotten that even a buddha has to die. Don't prevent me, because it may be many lives before I meet a man of his caliber again." This quarrel is going on between Ananda and the villager, and Buddha...

... door. I will answer him." And before his death he initiated the man. The master has a need, a tremendous need, of sharing. But it is a strange need, because with the word "need" we think you want to get something. The master's need is not to get something, his need is to give something. With the master even the quality of the need changes to its diametrically opposite meaning...

... open to the unknown skies, to the winds, the sun, the rain; one never knows what is going to happen. There is nobody to guide the seed, there are no scriptures for the seed to read. The seed is taking a risk by coming out, and you should understand that the risk is not small. The risk is exactly a death. The seed has to die in the soil; only then the sprouts of the potentiality of the seed will start...

... of the people in the world, who Wilhelm Reich has called "little men," die as little men, although their destiny is not to be little men. Wilhelm Reich was perfectly right in respect of the masses, the crowd, to call his book LISTEN, LITTLE MAN. But he was absolutely wrong because he could not see that hidden in the little man is the greatest buddha. He simply condemned the little man...

... close by. Why not drink it and be quenched? Ma Tzu says, after understanding the meaning of the dharma, that HE FELT AS IF HE WERE DRINKING THE MOST EXQUISITE NECTAR. The deeper you go in your meditations, the closer you will come to the eternal stream of your life sources. It is pure nectar, because it declares your immortality, it declares your eternity. It declares that death is a fiction; it has...

.... They have both taken the same risk and the same challenge. In fact it is a death and a resurrection. The seed dies and resurrects into many flowers, into many fruits, into many seeds. It is said that a single seed can make the whole earth green. Just one plant is not its potential. On that one plant there will come thousands of seeds again, each seed again carrying thousands of seeds. Just a single...

... would wait for the seed to die into the soil -- and it was one of the miracles of modern genius, that when the real rose came, it would be exactly the same as the photograph. He has caught the future in his net. He became convinced that if it is true about the seed then it can be used in many things. For example, Kirlian photography has now become an absolute must in Russian hospitals. People come...

... just to be checked, to see if there is any possibility of disease in the future. His lenses have become even more refined now after his death; a whole school of Kirlian photographers has been working on it. They can see at least six months ahead. If you are going to be sick in six months' time, the photograph will show it -- that after six months you will have cancer. There is no other way to find it...