... misunderstood it. He thought this is going to be a technique. He thought, "So, I can manipulate death, so I will die." But how can you manipulate death? If the mind is the manipulator, you are alive. You can imitate, but you will be alive. Even suicide is not suicide; because you have manipulated it you will be somewhere. But you cannot commit suicide, suicide is impossible. You go and you hang...

.... That means there is no religion left - churches, temples, mosques are dead tombs now. With Jesus one had to be real, but with the pope of the Vatican you have to be imitators. Now the Christianity of the Vatican is part of the society. Jesus was never a part of the society. He remained a stranger. All real religious people have remained strangers, they are outsiders. When they die, then a church is...

... one is dying one has to do the prayer, the last prayer before one leaves the body; the last thanksgiving and prayer. He was just on the death bed, changing sides, much troubled. So Baal Shem asked - he had come to see him and give the last farewell - he said, "Is there some problem?" He said, "Yes, because the mind says, 'Do the prayer,' and I cannot do it unless the urge leaves. When...

... mad - IT WOULD BE BETTER IF YOU DIED." But Mamiya misunderstood, as ordinarily all disciples misunderstand. The master said: "IT WOULD BE BETTER IF YOU DIED." To whom was the master saying, "BETTER IF YOU DIED"? It was the mind, not Mamiya, because Mamiya cannot die, Mamiya is deathless. It is the mind, the ego, which is also trying to solve this problem which cannot be...

... gone, who can lead into a new desire, who can lead into a new motivation, who can lead into the new body? The mind has left. There is only one death and that is the death of the mind. But mind cannot do it, because if you do it through the mind, the mind remains the doer and survives. THE NEXT TIME MAMIYA CAME BEFORE THE MASTER, HE WAS AGAIN ASKED WHAT HE HAD TO SHOW... Because these questions are...

.... He imitated. He thought: "Master has said, 'Die!' - better die." So he thought, this is very good, so he fell down. But the mind is working; it is mind who has concluded to do this. "YOU ARE DEAD ALL RIGHT," SAID THE MASTER, "BUT HOW ABOUT THAT SOUND?" LOOKING UP, MAMIYA REPLIED, "0H, I HAVEN'T SOLVED THAT ONE YET." This is beautiful, because the master is...

... silent... But how can he remain silent?... because he was only imitating, he was not really silent. You cannot deceive a master even if you die. Imitation cannot deceive. The master said, "Dead men can't speak." When the mind disappears and the master asks, "What about that sound?" no answer comes. The whole being is the answer. The disciple remains silent, he is showing himself...

... very conservative servant of the mind; it serves the mind in a religious way. If the mind loses the will to live, it will be reflected in the body by the dropping of resistance against 432 sickness, against death. Of course the physician will never bother about the will to live - that's why I thought it better that I say something. It is going to become such an enormous problem all over the world...

... disease because South Africa is the most affected area. It seems blacks are almost twice as vulnerable to the disease as white people. South Africa is suffering from a great epidemic of AIDS; hence, they have been researching. It is a question of life and death. Their report is very strange. It says that AIDS is not a homosexual disease at all, that it is a heterosexual disease, and it happens if people...

... heterosexuality or with homosexuality. It has certainly something to do with sex. And why has it something to do with sex? - because the will to live is rooted in sex. If the will to live disappears, then sex will be the most vulnerable area of life to invite death. Remember perfectly w ell that I am not a medical man, and whatever I am saying is from a totally different point of view. But there is much more...

... have everything that you can hope for, everything that you can desire - and that's where the problem of the will to live arises. When you are hungry you think of getting work, food; you don't have time to think about life and death. You don't have time to think about what the meaning of existence is. It is impossible: a hungry man cannot think of beauty, of art, music. Take the hungry man, starving...

..., why would I make them unhappy?" And the magistrate said, "You were laughing and joking." He said, "It is the same point again and again; you don't have a single different fact. The whole point is: if everybody after one's mother's death becomes sad never jokes, never laughs, never smiles, never dances, never goes with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, never has a party, what will...

... makes you sound like a criminal." He said, "That is only my hope - you sentence me to death. Yes, these are the facts which prove that I murdered my mother Just sentence me to death - because I cannot kill myself. I have tried but turned back. Many times I went to jump into the river but I would look down and say, 'The water is too cold, and who knows, it may be too deep also.'"...

... live spring up - it is almost like a spring. Otherwise, he will shrink and die - not with any physical disease, he will simply shrink and die. I have been to orphanages; one of my friends, Rekhchand Parekh, in Chanda Maharashtra, used to run an orphanage - nearabout one hundred to one hundred and ten orphans were there. And orphans would come, two days old, three days old; people would just leave...

... them in front of the orphanage. He wanted me to come to see the orphanage. I said, "Sometime later on I will see it, because I know whatever is there will make me unnecessarily sad." But he insisted, so one time I went, and what I saw.... They were taking every care, he was pouring his money on those children, but they were all ready to die just any moment. Doctors were there, nurses were...

... involvement.... When millions of people are dying, can you think of yourself, and your life, and your death? Your whole energy is moving to help people, to do whatever you can do. You have forgotten yourself, and because you have forgotten yourself you cannot be infected. The person who could have been infected is absent: he is so involved in doing something, he in so lost is some work. It does not matter...

.... And there is danger! because any moment you can die, any moment death is there. If you become a little more understanding you will understand. It is impossible not to be aware if you see that death is possible any moment. Then you cannot live like drunkards. An exhausted businessman gratefully climbed into his bed in a Washington hotel at midnight, looking forward to a solid nine-hour sleep. At 2...

... ME; BUT MY DEAF EARS CANNOT HEAR IT. LIFE IS DIALECTICAL. It is more Hegelian than Aristotelean because it consists of the opposites. Without the opposites existence is impossible - day and night, life and death, summer and winter. Life is so vast it can contain contradictions, and yet life in itself is not contradictory. There is harmony in the contradictions; the contradictions are complementary...

... opposites are REALLY opposites. That is not true. Can you think of love existing without hate? And can you think there is any possibility for life without death? It is not even conceivable that good can exist without bad. God needs the devil. Without the devil God cannot be. The opposites only appear to be opposites because our understanding is not very deep yet. You inhale and exhale, and there is a...

... a piece of cloth they call their national flag. Have you watched this? These national flags seem to be more a symbol of death than of life. When somebody dies they lower it down. And millions of people have died because of national flags. In a better world they should be completely burned and they should disappear. They are ugly. You have been taught that you belong to this country and you have to...

... die for this country. Nobody belongs to any country. The whole earth is ours - and the earth is undivided. It is divided only on the political maps. The earth is undivided. Where do you suppose India ends and Pakistan begins? Where do you suppose India ends and China begins? The earth is one. But politics will not allow you to have that feeling of oneness. Otherwise politics disappears. Politics is...

.... Politics is in the service of death. And your so-called religions are also in the service of death. Kabir wants you to love life. All the great mystics want you to love life. "SO, WHEN I GIVE UP PASSION, I SEE THAT ANGER REMAINS..."so nothing has changed. The energy has moved from one corner to another corner. You remain the same. The total result is the same. In fact it is worse. AND WHEN I...

... means the masculine inside you. Moon is intuition; sun is reason. Moon is yin; sun is yang. This is the Indian terminology for yin and yang. Moon is peace, silence; sun is energy, vitality. Moon is death, sleep, dream, imagination;.sun is awakening, life, logic. When moon and sun meet within you, there is a great experience. That experience is of unity of oneness - UNIO MYSTICA. That is the goal of...

... program to improve yourself. Kabir is giving you a radical approach - how to be transformed, transfigured - how to die to the old and be born again - totally new, absolutely new, fresh and virgin. Be natural, be spontaneous, be aware. Let these three words become your very key. And this is a master key; it can unlock all the doors, all the locks. Once you have become natural, spontaneous, and aware, the...

... mean that they are of less significance. Rather, the visible tree is entirely dependent on the invisible roots for its existence. If we tend the tree and neglect the roots, the tree is sure to die. No longer will it give out flowers and fruits, for its very life-breath lies hidden in the roots. Whatever is of consequence in life, is always hidden from view. What is manifest is the outer cover; what...

... knew the body when it was a child; now that it is young, I know it as such. When it gets old, I shall know it as such. Those with deeper understanding are also aware of death when it comes, and are capable of witnessing the same. When Sikandar was about to set out for India, his friends said: "When you return, bring a sanyasin from India along with you, for genuine sanyasins are found only in...

... on him, for the man did not fear even death!" No one can have a hold on him who does not fear death. We are afraid of death, and therefore vulnerable. Why are we afraid of death? We are afraid of death because we take all that is perceptible as the actual reality. The visible world is transitory and hence the fear of death. But those who discover the hidden self within, which is immortal, rise...

... about death. And you ask the worth of such a Self? That alone, is Existence; that alone is Immortal; that alone is Truth. The body holds as much value as a house; but the owner who stays within cannot be evaluated with the same measure. But there are fools, who sell the owner to save the house, who take the body to be everything and forget the Self. As Swami Ram was passing through the streets of...

... then, two men brought out the dead body of the son, the owner and the inheritor of all his wealth. The man was beside himself with grief. "What shall I do with all this wealth, when the one for whom it was, is no more!" "Swami Ram writes in his diary: "I witnessed a strange happening today, but very true. Today I saw the owner of a house burnt to death, while everyone was busy...

... one can do anything for another, in the same way as I cannot breathe for you, or make love for you, or even walk for you, or die in your place. Then how can I attain Truth for you? No one can attain anything for another. Many a time when we hear a person talk on truth, we are so carried away that we feel we have reached. We feel we have already reached our destination! This is a dangerous illusion...

... poweroriented, egotrip people need treatment. They need to be hospitalized. Because of their madness, their feverish competition, their tremendous effort to prove that they are somebody, you start feeling that you are nobody, that you are not special, that you are there just to vegetate - live an ignoble life and die an ignoble death. This is a very dangerous, poisonous idea, deeply planted in you. Throw it...

..., DESTINY, OR ONE IS CREATING NEW KARMAS? IF THE TIME FOR THE DEATH OF A PERSON IS FIXED BY SECONDS, DOES IT MEAN THAT MAN HAS NO FREEDOM TO DIE EARLIER OR PROLONG HIS LIFE SPAN? First: "Please explain the difference between samyama and the final enlightenment." Don't be worried about final enlightenment. And there is no way to explain it or even to describe it. If you are really interested, I...

..., logicians, by Aristotle. You have been taught to divide things into polar opposites - day and night, life and death, good and bad, God and devil, man and woman. Watertight compartments. Then if I say that in every woman there is a man and in every man there is a woman, you will immediately say, "Wait, there is a contradiction. How can a man be a woman, and how can a woman be a man? A man is man, a...

... woman is woman - clear cut." It is not so. Life does not believe in Aristotle; life is bigger than Aristotle. Man and woman are complementaries, not contradictions. Have you seen the Taoist symbol of yin and yang? - contradictions meeting into each other, dissolving into each other: day into night, night into day; life into death, death into life. And that's how it is. Life and death are not two...

... separate entities. There is no gap between them, no interval. It is life that becomes death, and it is death that again becomes life. You see a wave rising and moving in the ocean. Just in th. wake of the wave there is a hollow, upside-down wave following. They are not two separate things. You see a great mountain: just by the side there is a great valley. They are not two things. Valley is nothing but...

... cannot make an anchorage out of it. It is so pure that the earthly gravitation cannot function on it. The earth needs something more material. The body needs something more material; the body is part of the earth. When you die the earth returns to the earth - the dust unto dust. To remain in the body, just compassion is not enough. In fact, the day compassion arises, you are ready to leave the body...

... beauty of sex is nothing, the pleasure of sex is nothing. It simply gives you a momentary glimpse. The second chakra is hara. At the hara, life and death meet. If you reach to the second center, you reach to a higher orgasm of integration. Life meeting death, sun meeting moon. And the meeting is inner now, so the meeting can be more permanent, more stable, because you are not dependent on anybody else...

.... Now you are meeting your own inner woman or your own inner man. The third center is the navel. There the positive and the negative meet - the positive electricity and the negative electricity. Their meeting is even higher than life and death because the electric energy, the prana, the bioplasma or bioenergy, is deeper than life and death. It exists before life, it exists after death. Life and death...

... third. Of course it is a very poor psychology, very rudimentary, fragmentary, and concerned with the very lower functioning of human beings. Oral - yes, the child uses the throat center, just to receive. And once he has started receiving, his being moves to the anal. Have you watched that a few people cling to the oral, even up to their death? These are the people you will find smoking; these are oral...

... other shore; there was a town. This side was simply wilderness. The hoarder said, "Now you don't have any money, so we cannot pay the ferryman. What do you say now about it? You are against hoarding; now if I don't have any money we both will die. You see the point?" He said, "Money is needed." The man who believed in renunciation laughed, but he didn't say anything. Then the...

... someone would die in his place by drinking the potion he had. Each member of the family had an excuse that made it necessary to keep his own life, and the wife added, "Anyway, he is already dead; we will manage." At this the yogi stood up and said, "Woman, if you can live-without me then I can go with my guru." He faced the teacher and said, "Let us go, sir, revered Master. I...

... will follow you." The whole attachment to the senses is as if you are the senses, as if you cannot live without them, as if your whole life is confined to them. But you are not confined to them. You can renounce them, and you can live still, and live on a higher plane. Difficult. Just as if you want to persuade a seed that "Die, and soon a beautiful plant will be born." How can he...

... believe, because he will be dead? And no seed has ever known that by his death a new sprout comes up, a new life arises. So how to believe it? Or if you go near an egg and you want to persuade the bird within that "Come out," but how is the bird to believe it, that there is any possibility of life without the egg? Or if you talk to a child inside the womb of a mother and tell him, "Come...

... the cost, be yourself. Be sincere. In the beginning there will be much fear because you think that you are a great man and suddenly you reveal yourself to be an ordinary man. There will be fear, the ego will feel hurt; but let it feel hurt. In fact let it starve and die. Help it to death. Be ordinary, be simple, and you will become more whole and the tension will dissolve and there will be no need...

... given to you, the character that the society has forced upon you, will fall into pieces. Again you will be standing without a character, as you were when you were born, on the first day. Everything will be a chaos, and out of that chaos, out of that nothingness, you will be reborn. That's why I say again and again that religion is a great daring. It is a death, a great death, almost a suicide...

.... Voluntarily you die, and not knowing what is going to happen, because how can you know what is going to happen? You will be dead. Hence trust is needed. So if by the side, continuously, side by side with the chaos, a trust is growing in me, then there is no need to be afraid. That trust will take care. If the trust is not growing by the side, side by side, then there can be danger, then one can become mad...

... life, antilife. Just see yourself and others. People are preparing: someday they are going to live. That day never comes. They go on preparing, and they die. It will never come because, if you get into preparations too much, that will become an obsession. You will simply prepare and prepare and prepare. It is as if somebody goes on accumulating foodstuff for some future use and goes on remaining...

... hungry, starving, and dying. That's what is happening to millions of people. They die, surrounded by much stuff which could have been used. They could have lived beautifully. Nobody is hindering your path except your ambition. So miserliness is part of ambition. This question is from Bodhidharma. He is very ambitious. Not in a worldly sense - he does not want a big house, he does not want a big car, he...

... all about. It is to learn how to be without doing anything. Wu wei - how to be, without doing anything. Just to be. And you start falling into this moment, deeper and deeper and deeper. And this vertical movement of time is eternity. Both meet in you - time and eternity. Now it is for you to decide. If you move in ambition, you will move in time; and death exists in time. If you move in desire, you...

... will move in time; and death exists in time. If you hanker for the ego, you will move in time. Death, ego, desire, ambition, they all are part of the horizontal line. If you start digging in the moment and move vertically, you become a nonego, you become desireless, you become nonambitious. But suddenly you are aflame with life, you are an intense energy of life. God has taken possession of you. Move...

... perfect love. It is not possible, because a perfect love will mean now there is no more growth possible. It will be a death. I say make your love total, whole. Love wholly. Whatsoever is in you, don't hold it. Give it totally, give in totally. Flow into the other totally; don't hold. This is the only thing that will make you whole. If you are swimming, swim totally. If you are walking, walk totally. In...

... he has gone beyond it. Now he sees darkness as part of light and light as part of darkness, now there is no division. Light and darkness have both become one - degrees of one phenomenon. Now he sees everything as degrees of one; howsoever polar opposite they are, they are not two. Life and death, love and hate, good and bad, everything is part of one phenomenon, one energy. The difference is only...

... is that." You divide and say A is A and B is B... you have divided. You say A cannot be B; then you have created a division, a dichotomy, and the existence is one. A is always becoming B, A is always moving into B. Life is always becoming death, life is always moving into death, so how can you define? Childhood is moving into youth and youth is moving into old age; health is moving into...

... silence, but we do not accept your anger." Destroy anger and your aliveness is destroyed. Then you will be silent, but not an alive man - only a dead one. That silence is not life, it is just death. Religions always divide you into two: the evil and the divine. They accept the divine and are against the evil - the evil has to be destroyed. So if someone really follows them, he will come to conclude...

... that the moment you destroy the devil, God is destroyed. But no one really follows them - no one can follow them because the very teaching is absurd. So what is everyone doing? Everyone is just deceiving. That is why there is so much hypocrisy. That hypocrisy has been created by religion. You cannot do whatsoever they are teaching you to do, so you become a hypocrite. If you follow them you will die...

... will die and you cannot take your wealth with you." This is the logic of the so-called religious preachers - that you cannot take your wealth with you. But if someone could take it, then the whole logic would fail. The greedy man feels the logic, of course. He asks, "How can I take wealth with me?" But he really wants to take it. That is why the priest becomes influential. He shows him...

... that it is nonsense to accumulate things which cannot be taken beyond death. He says, "I will teach you how to accumulate things which can be taken. Virtue can be taken, PUNYA - good deeds - can be taken, goodness can be taken, but not wealth. So donate the wealth." But this is an appeal to his greed. This is telling him, "Now we will give you better things which can be carried beyond...

... death." The appeal obtains results. The greedy man feels, "You are right. Death is there and nothing can be done about it, so I must do something which can be carried beyond. I must create some kind of bank balance in the other world also. The world, this bank balance, cannot be with me forever." He goes on talking in these terms. Go through the scriptures... they appeal to your greed...

... women? Think of heaven. They are not against pleasure. Really, they are against momentary pleasure. If, through some whim, God gives this world eternal pleasure, your whole edifice of religion will fall down immediately; the whole appeal will be lost. If somehow bank balances can be carried beyond death, no one will be interested in creating bank balances in the other world. So death is a great help...

.... Both states are wrong. Kabir says: ... AND THOSE ALIVE ARE NOT AFRAID TO DIE. I KNOW OF A COUNTRY... ... where people know death is a lie, where people know that life is eternal. I know a space where you will also be able to see and feel and experience that life never begins, never ends -- that death is only a change of garments. THERE WILD FLOWERS COME UP THROUGH THE LEAFY FLOOR, AND THE FRAGRANCE...

... THOSE ALIVE ARE NOT AFRAID TO DIE. THERE WILD FLOWERS COME UP THROUGH THE LEAFY FLOOR, AMD THE FRAGRANCE OF 'I AM HE' FLOATS ON THE WIND. THERE THE BEE OF THE HEART STAYS DEEP INSIDE THE FLOWER, AND CARES FOR NO OTHER THING. DON'T GO OUTSIDE YOUR HOUSE TO SEE FLOWERS. MY FRIEND, DON'T BOTHER WITH THAT EXCURSION. INSIDE YOUR BODY THERE ARE FLOWERS. ONE FLOWER HAS A THOUSAND PETALS. THAT WILL DO FOR A...

... has written it exactly in his diaries that: "Whenever I see animals, I feel jealous. We have missed something." We have not missed really, but the peace, the calm, the collectedness of the animal is lost. The animal is happy because he is unaware -- unaware of death, unaware of the problems of life. The animal is happy because there is no consciousness. Consciousness first brings pain...

... left the home yet. It would be good if we remember the home. SWAN, I WOULD LIKE YOU TO TELL ME YOUR WHOLE STORY! Tell me your whole story! But if somebody asks you what story you have to tell, birth seems to be the beginning -- which it is not -- and death seems to be the end -- which it is not. Birth and death, both are episodes in your long life, and they have happened millions of times. The true...

... all its beauty and joy, is yours. IT IS MORNING, SWAN, WAKE UP, CLIMB IN THE AIR...! I KNOW OF A COUNTRY THAT SPIRITUAL FLATNESS DOES NOT CONTROL, NOR CONSTANT DEPRESSION, AND THOSE ALIVE ARE NOT AFRAID TO DIE. Kabir says: I KNOW OF A COUNTRY... I know of a space -- if you come with me, if you dare to come with me, it needs daring, if you are courageous enough to soar with me, if you are ready to...

... rebel. He will not be worshipped as a saint in his life -- he will be worshipped as a saint only when he is gone. People worship dead saints: either you have to be dead while alive -- they will worship you -- or they will wait: when you really die and nothing of you is left, and the whole fragrance has evaporated, then they will worship you. Jesus they crucified, and crucified Jesus they worship...

... find two types of people: one who is just boringly religious, flat; another who is just worldly, but depressed. The pseudo religious at least hopes that something great is going to happen after death, but the worldly man does not even have that hope -- he is very depressed. You can see this... In India you will feel the difference from the West. India is a flat spiritual country, but people are in a...

... way hopeful. Life is short, and soon it will be gone, and then the paradise and all the joys; and the more you suffered in life, the more you will be rewarded. So carry on, be patient. In the West, people are not flatly spiritual, and they have no hope, no future, no life after death. Then there is great depression, then they are very heavy, as if they are carrying mountains of worries, anxieties...

... dog of envy, and the big dog of pride, and the big dog of gluttony - and yes, brethren, I killed the big dog of sex!" "Brother!" came a voice from the back of the church, "Are you sure that last dog didn't die a natural death?" You cannot kill these dogs. Either they die a natural death - but that does not bring any transformation to you - or you have to become masters...

... existence, like the wave which has disappeared in the ocean. That has been the ultimate goal of the mystics: to disappear into the universal, not to be separate; to melt and merge into the universal. Separation brings anxiety, separation brings death, separation brings misery. We are miserable because we are feeling separate from God or the universe. Bliss arises whenever you feel one with the universe...

...; when you are in harmony with the universe bliss arises. There is great joy, rejoicing; you disappear, you die in a way, but you are reborn. You are reborn as the ocean, you die as the dewdrop. But if you don't learn the lesson you will have to come back again. Unless you learn you will have to repeat the same process. David, a student of a university, received a telephone call from his brother Blake...

... situation arises to be jealous you can laugh at it, so the next time the same situation arises you don't behave in the same old pattern; you can get out of the old pattern. To me this is sannyas: getting always out of the old patterns, becoming always new, remaining always fresh, young, learning. Then your whole life will teach you something of tremendous value and you will be able to die in deep silence...

..., decorated, maybe made of gold, but it chains you. Hell may be a poor place and heaven may be a very rich place but poverty and riches are two aspects of the same coin. One has to be free of both. When you are free of both, you are free of mind, because mind lives in the duality of heaven and hell, of darkness and light, of misery and happiness, of day and night, of life and death. When you have...

... drubble. Wen you die, you was dead; wen I die, I haf to go somewhere again." You need not if you learn; if you learn the lesson you need not go anywhere again. You disappear into the whole, you are everywhere and nowhere then. You are no more an entity, confined into boundaries. MY OWN MIND USED TO WANDER WHEREVER PLEASURE OR DESIRE OR LUST LED IT. BUT NOW I HAVE IT TAMED, I GUIDE IT, AS THE KEEPER...