... everything that was, if you say he is everything that is, if you say he is everything that ever will be, that means you are not. That means he is and you are not; that means the ego is not - and only the ego is born and only the ego is to die. If he is everything, then he is birth, he is death, he is life. Then how can you conceive of yourself as being born, and as dying? Birth and death are just two poles...

... of your ego - the feeling that "I am." If you drop this feeling, then birth is not the beginning and death is not the end. Then something always was, before you were born. Really, you are a continuity, a continuity of the whole past; and when you die, nothing is dying - only the continuity changes, takes a turn. Around the corner the continuity will continue. But if you begin to feel...

... between birth and death that you are, then you will die, then you will have to feel the suffering of dying. Remember that you are a continuity. The whole universe is involved in you; you are not alone. No man is an island, no man is alone and separate. The world exists as a net, as an interconnection, as inter-relatedness. The whole world exists as ONE. You are organic to it; you belong to it. If this...

... destiny, then you have no separate individual destiny. That is what is meant by saying one goes beyond life and death. If you have no individual destiny, the whole destiny of the universe IS your destiny. Then who is going to die? And who is going to be born? And who is concerned? Then a total acceptance explodes, a total acceptance comes. A TATHATA, a total acceptance happens. This is freedom; this is...

.... Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. HE IS BRAHMA, HE IS SHIVA, HE IS INDRA. HE IS INDESTRUCTIBLE, THE SUPREME, THE SELF-LUMINOUS. HE ALONE IS VISHNU, HE IS PRANA. HE IS SUN, FIRE; HE IS THE MOON. HE ALONE IS ALL THAT WAS AND ALL THAT WILL BE, THE ETERNAL. KNOWING HIM ONE GOES BEYOND THE STING OF DEATH; THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO REACH COMPLETE FREEDOM. EXPERIENCING ONE'S OWN SELF IN...

... mood - is important. The name is just a device to help you to call him. HE ALONE IS ALL THAT WAS AND ALL THAT WILL BE, THE ETERNAL. KNOWING HIM ONE GOES BEYOND THE STING OF DEATH; Knowing him one goes beyond the sting of life and death - why? This has to be understood. Why, if you can understand him, why will you go beyond life and death? - because life and death belong to the ego. If you say he is...

... feeling comes to you. KNOWING HIM ONE GOES BEYOND THE STING OF life and DEATH; THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO REACH COMPLETE FREEDOM. And unless you are a non-ego, there is no way to attain complete freedom. Ego is the slavery, ego is the suffering, ego is the anguish. Ego is the anxiety, the tension, the disease. So unless there is egolessness... and egolessness and God-consciousness mean the same thing. If...

... ultimate freedom. Now you cannot feel any limitation. The universe has never felt limitation. You feel it because you separate yourself. I will die as an individual, but I cannot die as a universe. The atoms in my hand will be there; my eyes will be there as someone else's eyes; my heart will be there as someone else's heart. I will exist in the trees, in the stones, in the earth, in the sky - I will be...

... there as a universe. I will not be there as myself. My consciousness will be there as someone else's consciousness. Or even it may not be someone else's consciousness... just a cloud floating in the sky, or just a silence, or just a drop in the ocean. As myself I am going to die, but not as a universe. This remembrance, this realization is the only freedom - the only and the ultimate. Unless this...

... happens, you are a slave. You will go on feeling limitations, you will go on feeling boundaries, you will go on feeling that this is going to be death, this is going to be birth, this is going to be pain, this is going to be suffering. To create, or to go on believing in individual destiny, is irreligion. The beginning of the feeling that "I am not an individual destiny - destiny belongs to the...

..., very mature, understanding, with great intelligence. Now you again become innocent. You start moving inwards. Only seven years are left, and you have to prepare for death. You have to be ready to die. And what is the readiness to die? To die celebrating is the readiness to die. To die happy, joyfully, to die willingly, welcomingly, is to be ready. God gave you an opportunity to learn, and be, and you...

... sinners, yes, from them also - they all helped. People who robbed him helped, people who helped him helped, people who were friends helped, people who were enemies helped. Everything helped. Summer and winter, satiety and hunger, everything helped. One can be thankful to all. When one is thankful to all and ready to die celebrating for this opportunity that was there, death becomes beautiful. Then death...

... flowers in it, it IS the flower. But to know the beauty of death one has to be ready for it, one has to learn the art. That's why I go on saying that I am here to teach you how to die. A master is a death. He allows you to die in him. He helps you to die every moment to the past, and he helps you to live an uncluttered moment - this moment. This small parable is beautiful. It says: UWAIS AL-QARNI WAS...

... outcome. You are growing each moment. Don't leave gaps, otherwise those gaps will hang around you. They will be holes in your being. In those holes will be wounds, and they will color your whole life to come. Die to the past. Die to the future and live in the present. Death is the only message that I would like to give to you - and if you can allow, millions of things will become possible to you. Let me...

... ordinary lilies in the field. "Look!" said Jesus to his disciples. "These lilies must be carrying a secret within their hearts." What is the secret? The secret is, lilies are here and now. Solomon may have been very very wise but he was not here and now. All beauty is here, and all life is now. Tomorrow is death, tomorrow is no life. But why do we live in the tomorrow? It looks absurd...

..., much time will be needed. By the time you reach, if death has not reached before, you will be already dead. People become presidents when they are already senile, past their sixties, becoming seventy, just ready for the grave. Then they enter the presidential house. And the whole life wasted, - for nothing. Even if your picture is in all the newspapers, what does it matter? How does it satisfy? Birds...

... from birth comes to death. The circle is complete in seventy years. It has ten divisions. In fact man's life should not be divided into childhood, youth, old age - that is not very scientific, because every seven years a new age, a new step is taken. For the first seven years a child is self-centered, as if he is the center of the whole world. The whole family moves around him. Whatsoever are his...

... phenomenon - friends, gangs.... Now he is not so much interested in himself; he is interested in the other, the bigger world. He enters into an adventure to know who is this "other." Inquiry starts. After the seventh year the child becomes a great questioner. He questions everything. He becomes a great skeptic, because inquiry is there. He asks millions of questions. He bores the parents to death...

... for the law and the courts and the government. One is no more an anarchist; one is all for the government, rules, regulations, discipline. By the forty-second year all sorts of physical and mental illnesses erupt, because now life is declining. Energy is moving towards death. As in the beginning energies were coming up and you were becoming more and more vital, energetic, you were becoming more and...

... more strong - now just the opposite happens, you become weaker every day. But your habits persist. You have been eating enough up to the age of thirty-five; now you continue your habit. You will start gathering fat. Now that much food is not needed. It was needed but now it is not needed because life is moving towards death, it does not need that much food. If you go on filling your belly as you were...

... doing before, then all sorts of illnesses will happen: high blood pressure, heart attack, insomnia, ulcers - they all happen nearabout forty-two. Forty-two is one of the most dangerous points. Hair starts falling out, becoming grey. Life is turning into death. And near the age of forty-two religion starts becoming important for the first time. You may have dabbled a little here and there in religion...

... before, but now religion starts becoming for the first time important - because religion is deeply concerned with death. Now death is approaching and the first desire for religion arises. Carl Gustav Jung has written that in his whole life he has been observing that people who come to him at the age of forty or nearabout are always in need of religion. If they go mad, neurotic, psychotic, they cannot...

... trained, no discipline has been given them to face death. The society has made them ready for life, but nobody has taught them to become ready for death. They need as much education for death as they need education for life. If I was allowed my way then I would divide universities into two parts: one for young people, another part for old people. Young people would come to learn the art of life - sex...

..., ambition, struggle. Then when they became old and they reached the forty-two mark, they would again come back to the university to learn about death, God, meditation - because now the old universities wouldn't be of any help to them. They would again need a new training, a new discipline, so that they can become anchored with the new phase that is happening to them. This society leaves them in limbo...

... stop. And once you stop sex, life energy will drop down, you will die soon. If the husband stops, the wife is after him: What are you doing? If the wife stops the husband is after her: This is against the psychologists, and this may create some perversion! In the East we did one stupidity, and in the West also in the ancient days they did the same stupidity. It was against religion for a child of...

... the home - you can become homeless. At the age of forty-nine one should start looking towards the forest, moving inwards, becoming introvert, becoming more and more meditative and prayerful. At the age of fifty-six again a change comes, a revolution. Now it is not enough to look towards the Himalayas, one has to really travel, one has to go. Life is ending, death is coming nearer. At the age of...

... become a circle of energy, not moving anywhere. No reading, not much talking. More and more silent, more and more with one's self, remaining totally independent of all that is around you. The energy by and by subsides. By the age of seventy you are ready. And if you have followed this natural pattern, just before your death, nine months before your death, you will become aware of your death. As a child...

... has to pass nine months in the mother's womb, the same circle is totally repeated, completely repeated, utterly repeated. By the time death comes, nine months before, you will become aware. Now you are entering the womb again. This womb is no more outside in the mother, this womb is inside you. Indians call the innermost shrine of a temple the GARBHA, the womb. When you go to a temple the innermost...

... renounce all that is useless now, just junk, garbage. The whole life becomes garbage; only one thing remains always eternally valuable, and that is your awareness. By the time of the seventieth year, when you are ready to die - if you lived everything rightly, in the moment, never postponing for the future, never dreaming for the future, you lived it totally in the moment whatsoever it was - nine months...

... before your death you will become aware... you have attained that much awareness, you can see: now death is coming. Many saints have declared their deaths, but I have not come across a single instance when the death was declared before nine months. Exactly nine months before, a man of awareness, uncluttered with the past... because one who never thinks of the future will never think of the past. They...

... no burden to carry, he moves without weight. The gravitation doesn't affect him. In fact, he doesn't walk, he flies. He has wings.... Before he dies, exactly nine months before, he will become aware that death is coming. And he will enjoy and he will celebrate and he will say to people, "My ship is coming, and I am only for a little while more on this bank. Soon I will be going to my home...

... is not the enemy, it is the greatest friend, because it is the crescendo of life. It is the highest peak that life achieves. It is not the end of life, it is the climax. It looks like the end because you have never known life. To one who has known life it appears as the very crescendo, the very peak, the highest peak. Death is the culmination, the fulfillment. Life does not end in it; in fact life...

... bother. Even if gurus come to them and talk to them they won't listen. They will say, "Go somewhere else, find some stupid human being. Here no gurus are needed. We are already okay, absolutely okay." When the time comes the tree flowers. When the time comes it is laden with fruits. When the time comes, fruits are ripe, ready to fall, die into the earth, create new seeds, new trees - and the...

... and the next will come out of this. If this has been beautiful the next is going to be better than this. This moment will decide the fate of the next moment that is going to follow. There is no other way. Death is the only guarantee. This moment lived well is the only guarantee for the next moment which is going to follow it, because it is not following really, it is coming out of it, it is an...

... death, because death is nothing but the whole life condensed again in a seed. Now the petals are falling. Evening has come. The sun has set, the night will take over. The death has come, the petals are falling towards the earth. They don't hesitate. They don't know where they are going, they don't know whether there is any earth down there or not - maybe it is a bottomless abyss - but they don't doubt...

... Length: 0 mins Question 1: OSHO, WOULD YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR FATHER'S DEATH YESTERDAY? Vivek, IT WAS NOT A DEATH AT ALL. Or it was the total death. And both mean the same thing. I was hoping that he would die in this way. He died a death that everybody should be ambitious for: he died in samadhi, he died utterly detached from the body and the mind. I went to see him only three times during this...

... could die a right death. He was no more concerned with the body. Yesterday, early in the morning at three o'clock, he attained his first glimpse of the eternal -- and immediately he became aware that now he was going to die. This was the first time he had called me to come; the other two times I had gone on my own. Yesterday he called me to come because he was certain that he was going to die. He...

... silence, in joy, in peace. He left the world like a lotus flower -- it was worth celebrating. And these are the occasions for you to learn how to live and how to die. Each death should be a celebration, but it can be a celebration only if it leads you to higher planes of existence. He died enlightened. And that's how I would like each of my sannyasins to die. Life is ugly if you are unenlightened, and...

... consciousness. Yesterday it happened; it happened in right time. If he had left his body just one day before he would have been back in the body again soon -- a little clinging was there. But yesterday the slate was completely clean. He attained to no-mind, he died like a Buddha. What more can one have than Buddhahood? My effort here is to help you all to live like Buddhas and die like Buddhas. The death of a...

... space that the Master has created in this bed, and I would like to die here." It is becoming so attuned with the Master that you don't feel your life and your death as separate from him; that is the meaning of it. Sundero was so attuned with the Master's life that it used to happen sometimes that he would speak in Dadu's name. And he was told by people, "You are not Dadu!" Then he would...

... -- because that is how growth begins. The death of the ego is the beginning of growth. Just as the seed has to die in the soil, the ego has to die in the Master. Once your ego is completely gone, you are a beautiful tree, with much foliage, greenery, flowers, fragrance. My effort is to make this desert a garden. And there is every possibility of succeeding, because people ARE getting ready. Hesitating...

... wanted to say good-bye, and he said it beautifully -- with no tears in the eyes, with no longing for life any more. Hence, in a way it is not a death but a birth into eternity. He died in time and was born into eternity. Or it is a total death -- total in the sense that now he will not be coming any more. And that is the ultimate achievement; there is nothing higher than it. He left the world in utter...

... even death becomes beautiful if you are enlightened. Life is ugly if you are unenlightened because it is a misery, a hell. Death becomes a door to the divine if you are enlightened; it is no more a misery, it is no more a hell. In fact, on the contrary, it is getting out of all hell, out of all misery. I am immensely glad that he died the way he died. Remember it: as meditation deepens, you become...

... farther and farther away from your body-mind composite. And when meditation reaches its ultimate peak, you can see everything. Yesterday morning he was absolutely aware of death, that it had come. And he called me. This was the first time he had called me, and the moment I saw him I saw that he was no more in the body. All the pains of the body had disappeared. That's why the doctors were puzzled: the...

... body was functioning in an absolutely normal way. This was the last thing the doctors could have imagined, that he could die. He could have died any day before. He was in deep pain, there were many complexities in the body: his heart was not functioning well, his pulse was missing; there were blood clots in the brain, in the leg, in the hand. Yesterday he was absolutely normal. They checked, and they...

... said it was impossible; now there was no problem, no danger. But this is how it happens. The day of the danger, according to the physicians, didn't prove dangerous. The first twenty-four hours when he was admitted to the hospital one month before were the most dangerous; they were afraid that he would die. He didn't die. Then for the next twenty-four hours they were still hesitant to say whether he...

... would be saved or not. A suggestion had even come from a surgeon to cut the leg off completely, because if blood clots started happening in other places it would be impossible to save him. But I was against cutting off the leg, because one has to die one day -- why distort the body and why create more pain? And just living in itself has no meaning, just lengthening the life has no meaning. I said no...

... indication that now death was possible. If meditation happens before death, everything becomes normal. One dies in perfect health, because one is not really dying but entering into a higher plane. The body becomes a stepping-stone. He was meditating for years. He was a rare man -- it is very rare to find a father like him. A father becoming a disciple of his own son: it is rare. Jesus' father did not dare...

... Buddha is both! It is not a death, because life is eternal. Life does not begin with birth and does not end with death. Millions of times you have been born and died; they are all small episodes In the eternal pilgrimage. But because you are unconscious you cannot see that which is beyond birth and death. As you become more conscious, you can see your original face. He saw his original face yesterday...

.... He heard the one hand clapping, he heard the soundless sound. Hence it is not a death: it is attaining life eternal. On the other hand it can be called a total death -- total death in the sense that he will not be coming any more. Rejoice! The second question Question 2: OSHO, WHEN HEARING THE STORY OVER DINNER OF DADU AND TWO OF HIS DISCIPLES, RAJJAB AND SUNDERO. I WAS BAFFLED BY HOW DEEPLY...

... AFFECTED THEY BOTH WERE BY THE DEATH OF THEIR MASTER. ONE, RAJJAB, NEVER OPENED HIS EYES AGAIN, AND THE OTHER, SUNDERO, DIED IN THE SAME BED AS HIS MASTER, DADU. HOW CAN AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON BE SO AFFECTED BY THE DEATH OF HIS MASTER OR BELOVED ONE? Ambubhai Diwanji, IT IS ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL STORIES. There is no parallel to it in the whole history of religion, but it has to be understood. You have...

... misunderstood it totally; it is very easy to misunderstand it. Apparently, what you have understood is what is understood by people who read the story. The question arises: why are two enlightened persons so much affected by the death of their Master? They are not affected at all! It is not happening out of misery; it is a totally different dimension. Rajjab never opened his eyes again. He was asked once why...

... send Sundero. And people were very much puzzled: "We have invited the Master, not the disciple." But they were not able to understand that the Master and the disciple, at the ultimate peak of their love affair, disappear into each other. Hence, the day Dadu died, Sundero did not say a single word about his death, did not go to the funeral at all. Everybody left for the funeral. Thousands of...

.... Socrates does not say that life survives after death. He says, "I will have to wait and see. When I die, only then can I see whether life survives after death or not, because nobody has come back from death and told us that life survives." And never forget that this was twenty-five centuries ago. This man had such courage that when poison was given to him, he gathered all his disciples and said...

..., seventy-five years. After the age of seventy-five the hospitals should be ready to help anybody who wants to get rid of their body. Every hospital should have a place for dying people, and those who have chosen to die should be given special consideration and help. Their death should be beautiful. Every hospital should have a teacher of meditation. The person who is going to die should be given one...

..., "I don't want to die" - then he can go home. There is no problem in it: it is his decision. Right now there is a very strange situation in many countries. People try to commit suicide - if they succeed, good; if they don't succeed, then the court gives them the death sentence. Strange! - they themselves were doing that. They were caught in the middle. Now for two years a trial will go on...

... unchristian, it is irreligious - the very idea of death. They should be given freedom, but not only to die; they should be given the freedom of one month's training in how to die. In that training meditation should be a basic part; physical care should be a basic part. They should die healthy, whole, silent, peaceful - slowly slipping deep into sleep. And if meditation has been joined with sleep they may...

... die enlightened. They may know that only the body is left behind, and they are part of eternity. Their death will be better than the ordinary death, because in the ordinary death you don't have the chance of becoming enlightened. In fact more and more people will prefer to die in the hospitals, in the special institutes for death where every arrangement is made. You can leave life in a joyous...

... they don't agree with, but they had to choose it because it was not a question of choosing between two doctrines, two philosophies: it was a choice between life and death. Life is good - and who cares about the KORAN? Mohammedans have converted millions of people just by forcing them with the sword; their only argument was the sword. Now the world has changed; its strategies have changed. If you go...

..., "You have always been asking about whether life survives or not. This is a good chance, a great opportunity. If I had died an ordinary death then there would have been no opportunity. But now poison will be given to me" - and poison kills very slowly - "so I will report to you to the very last moment, till my tongue also becomes numb and I cannot say anything." And as the poison is...

... given he starts saying with closed eyes, "My legs up to the knees are dead. I don't feel them; even by touching them I don't feel them. Life has gone out of them. But one thing is to be remembered: I am still feeling as whole as I was always. So the death of the legs has not affected my consciousness." Then he says, "Half of my body, the lower half, is dead, but I am completely whole...

...; half of my consciousness is not dead." Then he says, "My hands are becoming numb, my eyes are drooping, and I can feel that my tongue will stop any moment, so this is perhaps the last statement I have to make to you - that life survives after death, because I can see death happening. Parts of my body are dead and I am fully alive. Nothing is missing. So I am certain that when my tongue...

... stops, my eyes close, and my heart stops, it is not going to matter. But don't believe me; it is just a hypothesis for you. When you die, try it." Such a scientific spirit! I feel immensely happy to be here. I have loved Socrates much more than anyone else - for his humbleness, for his scientific enquiry, for not creating a religion, not creating a theology, not creating a following, not becoming...

... made churches, and they would have still been worshiping him. It needs immense courage when you have such consciousness, such clarity, to remain humble and just human - knowing perfectly well that this is the way to death. Sooner or later these same people are going to kill you, these people whom you are trying to make free from all fetters. Still Socrates chose to remain human. That's why you don't...

... trembling, my hands are trembling. What I am doing is not right. I want to delay it as long as I can." Socrates says, "No, that is not right. You do your duty; your personal feelings should not come into it. And moreover, I am so curious to go into death because I have lived a long life, I have known all the secrets of it, but death is such a great adventure, such an unknown. So don't delay it...

..., just bring the poison." People who were not afraid of death, we have killed. And these were the people who had known life; that's why they were not afraid of death. Deep down they have known that there is something that is going to continue, but they didn't have any proof, any evidence. Hence Socrates will not say it; he will say it only when the evidence is there. Such devotion to the...

... will be gaining immense treasures. QUESTION FROM Rajneesh Times, HOLLAND. Question 4: THE MAIN ISSUE IN THE COMING PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION IN HOLLAND IS EUTHANASIA. POLITICIANS ARE FIGHTING ABOUT THE RIGHT FORMULA FOR LEGISLATION OF THE ISSUE. PLEASE COMMENT. Euthanasia, or the freedom to choose your death, should be accepted as a birthright of every human being. A limit can be put to it, for example...

..., his wife, his children, because he is going on a long journey. There is no question of preventing him - he has lived long, and he does not want to go on living, his work is finished. And he should be taught meditation in this one month, so that he can do meditation while death comes. And for death, medical help should be given so it comes like a sleep - slowly slowly, side by side with meditation...

... years old when he died. Five thousand years ago the longest a person was going to live was forty, and out of ten children born nine were going to die within two years - only one would survive - so life was immensely valuable. And Hippocrates gave the oath to the medical profession that you have to help life in every case. He was not aware, he was not a seer. He had not the insight to see that a day...

... reached one hundred and fifty years, and there are a few thousand people who have reached one hundred and eighty years of age - and they are still working. But now life has become boring. One hundred and eighty years, just think of it, doing the same thing... even the bones will be hurting. And they have yet no possibility of death; death still seems to be far away - they are still working and healthy...

... in America are on the streets without shelter, without food, without clothes, and thousands of people are taking up hospital beds, doctors, nurses - their work, their labor, medicines. Everybody knows they will die sooner or later, but as long as you can you should keep them alive. They want to die. They shout that they want to die, but the doctor cannot help in that. These people certainly need...

... burden, you don't know what to do. And that is why old people are so irritable: because they don't have any work, they don't have any respect, they don't have any dignity. Nobody bothers about them, nobody takes note of them. They are ready to fight and be angry and shout. These are simply their frustrations that are showing; the real thing is they want to die. But they cannot even say it. It is...

... waiting, not knowing what to do. In the West particularly, the old man has become such a helpless phenomenon, just waiting for death with nothing to do. You cannot imagine. In the past only a few people had to wait for death, those who were sentenced to die. They had to wait in the prisons for a few days, just waiting - it was terrible agony. But now, everybody.... Retired, you are sentenced to death...

... waiting, waiting to die. Never before! That's why I say that man is so helpless before death. In the East, when death started approaching, when death knocked for the first time on the door, people became very, very happy. Death was a door, it was not the end. Something new was going to start, and it was not the enemy, it was God coming in the garb of death. They had come to know that they are not the...

... body, they are not going to die. The bodies will be left behind and they will go on an eternal journey. Death was not the end. Death was a meeting, a meeting with the Unknown. Death was a long, long awaited moment - desired, dreamed, hoped. It was the last desire: to leave the body and to meet the Divine, to merge into it so totally that not even a trace of you is left behind. The body looked like a...

... WHEN HE WAS SIXTY. Remember, your age is not relevant. You may be a child or you may be very, very old. You may be young, you may be healthy, or you may be ill - it makes no difference. Because the basic thing is to be empty within. It has nothing to do with your walls, young or old. A child can attain Enlightenment. A man just on the verge of death can attain Enlightenment because Enlightenment is...

..., which was unbelievable! He had never bothered, nobody had ever asked. He had simply lived, not conscious of time. When you are conscious of time, you are in the grip of death. When you are not conscious of time, death simply cannot enter. It enters through time - death is time. And life is eternal, timeless. You are life, not death. What did the doctors do to that poor old man? They suggested to him...

... children, some are young, some are old. Mind is cunning. When you are a child, you say you are a child. When you are young, you say you are young, you have to live life a little more. By the time you are old, you feel exhausted, energy gone, tired. You say: Now what can I do? Nothing is left. I can simply wait helplessly for death. Never in the history of man, has man been as helpless before death as he...

... is now - and with such tremendous advances in medical science! Never before has man been so helpless before death. Never has man worried about death as much as he worries now. Why such a helplessness? Because you are not in contact with the eternal; your roots are not in the eternal. You have lived a temporal life, and death is the end of time. Not you. Remember, death ends time, not you. And if...

... you have lived in time, with time, only with temporal goals, then death is a problem. But if you have lived deeper within yourself, in the remoter mountains where Kakua moved, inside where nobody can visit you, totally alone - then death is not a problem. Because, you know the deathless - it is hidden there. On the surface is time, at the center is eternity. Remember, eternity is not a long, long...

... experienced. What is your experience? What have you known exactly? - nothing. I see your hands are empty, I see your being is just poor. You have not attained any inner experience which gives you richness, which gives you significance. But just by being old, you have passed through many things of course, travelled on many, many paths. Frustrated, hopeless, helpless, you stand before death; trembling, just...

.... Nothing else to do, just waiting. Any moment death will come. And the agony is increased by medical science still more because they go on prolonging you. They go on giving you injections and vitamins. For what? - to wait still more, a little longer? They go on pushing you back in the queue, but you are in the queue. What difference does it make when one has lost everything? And just waiting, just...

... barrier, so when it was dropped, you were completely free. Death was freedom and the culmination of life, it was not just the end. If death is just the end and you simply finish, life cannot be meaningful. How can life be meaningful when it just ends? Then the whole life becomes gloomy; the shadow of death makes it sad. Whatsoever you do is meaningless, because you are going to end. Whatsoever you...

... create is meaningless, because you are going to end. Whatsoever you do is just fooling yourself, because you are going to end. If death is a new beginning, if death is a rebirth, if death is a meeting with the Divine, then life has a significance. Then whatsoever you do is meaningful. Then you are something significant, and the existence hopes many many things through you. At the age of sixty Joshu was...

... already dead. Sufis say that ordinarily people die at thirty and are buried at sixty. When you stop learning, you are dead. JOSHU STARTED AT THE AGE OF SIXTY, AND WHEN HE WAS EIGHTY, HE FOUND ENLIGHTENMENT. Remember, Enlightenment is not a game. Everything else is a game except Enlightenment. It is not a game, you have to be patient about it, and Joshu must have been a man of infinite patience...

.... Beginning at the age of sixty, it is difficult to wait - one thinks of death. One thinks: If death comes before Enlightenment, what then? Then one must be in a hurry - but Joshu was not in a hurry. Remember, the more you are in a hurry, the less is there a possibility for you to reach. The more you are patient, the more is the possibility. I will tell you one small Hindu anecdote. It happened that a...

... day he would be killed, the disciples were asking him: In the kingdom of God you will be sitting just on the right side of God. Where will we be sitting? - where? They were not worried about Jesus. They were not worried about his death the next day - they were not worried about it. They were worried about their positions: twelve disciples - in what hierarchy? Jesus would be sitting there of course...

... below sex. If you fast for twenty-one days, sex will disappear completely. Even if the most beautiful woman passes, you won't be interested in looking at her. Not that you are transformed; there is no energy even to look. And when the energy is not there, you cannot do wrong, that's right. But this is a negative type of man - he CANNOT do bad. So it is better to die because dead men never do anything...

... started disbelieving in you.'" And all the religions teach that God forgives those who ask for it. It is simple. Whether he is or not, is not the question. The person is going to die and has to face the reality - if he survives death, with what face is he going to encounter God? This is the despair of your parents. Young, they were painters and poets and dancers. It is easy, when you are young, to...

..., no old man would like to live like that; it is better to die completely. Death should be total, not only of the body but of the soul too. That will be a great relaxation, because if you are not, who is going to worry? Just think back: when you were not born, do you remember that you were very much concerned about things - nuclear weapons, world war, Ethiopia? And do you think that before your birth...

... over. Can you see any intelligence in making more weapons? Are not these enough? A man dies only once! And you are not the begotten son of God, that after death you will be resurrected with glory, so they will have to kill you again. But I think the whole idea of resurrection of Jesus is a fiction. Yes, I know he did not die on the cross. It was a Friday, and that was chosen specially by Pontius...

... your parents were atheists. The atheists are bound to come someday to deep despair. As death comes close by, they start trembling. They have not believed in God, they have disbelieved in religion. It was good when they were young, but before death almost all atheists become theists, they start believing. A simple arithmetic.... Death is there. What is beyond they don't know. They don't know...

... themselves. It was easier when they were young, hot. They enjoyed criticizing, they enjoyed destroying arguments of those who believe. And it is very easy to destroy their arguments. God is not an argument. At the moment of death, as they become older and the gap between them and death is becoming less and less, they freak out. Now they are no longer young, no longer hot. They have become just cold...

..., shrunken, and death scares them. Now the only way is to accept religion, because religion is a kind of opium. It helps you to forget your despair, your anguish. It helps you to hallucinate whatsoever you want. And the reasoning is: "If there is no God, there is no harm. By becoming a theist, if there is a God, then we can say, 'Forgive us, we were too young, inexperienced. Knowing nothing, we...

.... And you are not even concerned with death, it is too far away. There is a certain limit beyond which you cannot be worried. You can worry for tomorrow, you can worry for the day after tomorrow, but are you going to worry about the coming year? Are you going to be worried about the coming century? You will say, "Today is so much, tomorrow is close by - who cares about the coming century?"...

..., death is almost non-existential. You cannot disregard it when you get older. Your parents must be getting older. Their youth is finished, the love between your mother and father is finished - that too was there because they were young. In old age everybody would like to be divorced, not only from his wife, but from womankind as such. Youth is the time of romance. That's why young people have never...

... worry about, these young people will also get over their romantic ideas, ideas of revolution, of the future of mankind." As death comes, you will shrink to a single question: What is beyond death, what is going to happen? If there is a God, then I am doomed - my whole life I denied him. If there is no God, that too is scary. Then you will become a ghost, without a body, a consciousness who wants...

..., tremendously satisfying. You know that you will die, but at least you will live in your child. The child is part of you. Even if a part is saved, it gives consolation. Your parents in your childhood were young, full of romantic ideas. In fact, the young man wants to be recognized, his greatest need is attention. If you are a theist, who is going to give you any attention? There are millions of theists, it is...

... a very common thing. But to be an atheist - you immediately start getting attention. That fulfills the ego. And the trouble is that the atheist can always defeat any other kind of believers. The atheist can win in argument with any theist, because the theist has no evidence, no eyewitness about what happens after death, because nobody comes back after death and tells you stories about what is...

... beyond death. So it is left up to your imagination. Of course, older people start imagining a God; otherwise they will be so helpless without the body - wandering like a cloud with no direction, no purpose. They need God. God is the need of the old man. Children don't care; they are forced to believe in God. The old man is again in a similar situation, but far more difficult and complex. A child can...

... easily be molded; he is soft, vulnerable, imitative. The old man feels for seventy, eighty years he has been a certain kind of person. His personality has become consolidated, and now at the moment of death it is very difficult for him to undo himself. That is why the old are in despair. Why did they get divorced? As youth leaves you one day, it takes many things from you; it does not go alone. It...

... marijuana in your own garden; there is no need to get it from all kinds of peddlers. But one day youth is going to disappear. And the day youth disappears, you have entered into the arena of death. Old age is only a preparation for death. Now they must be feeling empty. Their art has failed, their love has failed, their revolution has failed, but their ego is still there. The ego cannot go against itself...

... modern techniques. The people who died in Jonestown, they were given Kool-Aid to drink which was full of poison. Really contemporary! Jesus cannot be thought to have known anything about Kool-Aid. It was tasty, and death was not a fear because the leader, the shepherd, was going with them, and he knew the way, he had a direct communication line with God. On the contrary, Christians criticize me; they...

.... A few, like Reverend Jones and his followers, do it quickly. Jainas in India have followed the same idea for the thousand years at least: their monks fast unto death. It takes sometimes seventy days, eighty days, ninety days. The man goes on becoming a skeleton. His eyes go on deepening, becoming dark. He cannot move, he cannot speak. I don't think after seventy days' fast he recognizes anybody...

..., or even knows what is happening, what he is doing. They have given it a beautiful name, santhara, and they think this is the greatest ascetic practice. It is a crime, but the Indian government cannot stop it: it is a religious crime and you are not supposed to interfere in religion. Your parents are feeling empty, trembling before death. All that was meaningful is no longer there. They are simply...

... hollow. It is right that you say, for you they are dead. They are really living a ghostly life. On the one hand, their whole past does not allow them to change their minds. On the other hand, death, the darkening night. Death says it is better to change your ideology; perhaps there is a God, who knows? If they were real agnostics, by this time they would have found what the truth is. The truth is...

... come. How do you do?" No meditator in the whole of history has found any person. Yes, every meditator has found a tremendous experience of awakening, enlightenment, liberation. Your parents need meditation, otherwise they will die in tremendous despair and frustration. And meditation needs no belief system, so they need not drop their belief systems. Meditation does not require you to believe in...

... much - if they can become just a witness, a watcher, the mind will slowly melt away as ice melts when the sun rises. Meditation is the only medicine for them now. If they can die meditatively, silently, blissfully - which is simple and possible - you will feel also relieved of a burden; otherwise, you will carry some burden on your soul, that you could not help them when they needed it. You are...

..., so by the evening they would come and sit and talk about the past. The old man has no future, he has only a long past. The child has no past, he has only a long future; hence children want to grow fast. Old people cling to the past: perhaps that will help against the oncoming death. So they used to talk about beautiful moments in their life, difficult times in their life, successful moments in...

... are known, how much power America has, but about Russia everything is secret. She may be more powerful, she may have more nuclear weapons. She may have new methods which are even superior. For example, they have been trying, and perhaps they have succeeded, in creating death rays. No bomb is needed, certain rays are just directed towards the country. You will not see them, so you cannot protect...

... yourself. When somebody is bombing, there is time - Russia cannot destroy the whole of America in a day, nor can America destroy Russia in a day. But death rays will kill people and nobody will be able to know what is happening. Suddenly the death ray hits your heart, you fall dead. It is an invisible way of killing, and as far as I know, there is as yet no way found to protect people against death rays...

... dying and starving, and they are preparing death for others, knowing perfectly well that now there is no time to become in any way a great world power. Russia and America are so far ahead that by the time you reach that point, they would have moved again, miles further ahead. Now there is no way for them to catch up. It is sheer stupidity on the part of other countries to waste their money on nuclear...

... out. It takes at least forty-eight hours of immense suffering for the man, and only then does he die. Crucifixion is not an electric chair, where before you know you are dead, you are dead - just a switch and you are finished. Even Adolf Hitler was more human, although he killed millions of Jews; but he had created gas chambers. People would go into the chamber, and within a minute you would see...

... money goes into making destructive things, no money goes into the service of death. And you should remember, seventy-five percent of the energy of all the nations is going into the service of death. This seventy-five percent of the energy should become available to the poor, the downtrodden. And can you imagine? Seventy-five percent of the finances, if released from the service of death, can make this...

... not be physically immortal. And I don't think many people would like to live seven hundred years; even seventy years is too much! People start thinking after a time, "Now it will be better to die." Death is a relief, a relaxation. Everything wants rest; death is going into rest. Your body also gets tired, matter also gets tired. It wants to go back to its original source: water into water...

... good about death: now you cannot ask Sri Aurobindo, "Why have you been telling your whole life that physical immortality is possible, that you know the secret, that you have been able to bring God into the physical world?" But fools gathered. Fools become attracted always to strange things. Just deep down the fear is there - nobody wants to die. Why? Why in the first place are you afraid of...

... dropped. But death is not your belief; otherwise why do animals die? They don't believe, they don't believe that they are going to die. Why do trees die? They don't believe that they are going to die, they don't have any belief system. Why do stars and suns and moons die? Why do earths die? They don't believe; death is a universal phenomenon, it happens everywhere. It is part of life; it is the other...

... question: Question 3: BELOVED MASTER, IS THERE ANY TRUTH IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY WHICH SAYS THAT IT IS ONLY OUR BELIEF IN THE INEVITABILITY OF DEATH WHICH PRODUCES OLD AGE, DISEASE AND DEATH? TO WHAT EXTENT DO OUR THOUGHTS MANIFEST RESULTS? John Fisant, man is afraid of death; hence he goes on creating all kinds of stupid ideas. Physical immortality is sheer nonsense because anything...

... not be a man, you will be a machine. If you are born you are bound to die. Yes, it is possible your life can be prolonged - life HAS been prolonged. As medicine has evolved, as scientific technology has come to help human beings, as we have become more and more aware of the secrets of life, life has been prolonged. It may be prolonged from seventy years to seven hundred years, but then too you will...

... death? Death is not the enemy. To a man who has really lived, death is the friend. It is like sleep. Nobody wants to remain wakeful twenty-four hours a day. There are a few people who think that sleep is also just an old habit and they try to reduce it. For centuries they have tried. Yes, it can be reduced, it can be reduced to two hours because two hours is the essential sleep; you also sleep only...

... two hours in a deep way. Somewhere between two and four or three and five you sleep for two hours very deeply; those are the refreshing moments. All dreaming disappears, you are almost dead. Hence the ancients used to say sleep is a small death. But people have been trying to avoid sleep also. The logic is: if you can avoid sleep then you can one day avoid death too. If sleep is a small death and...

... you have conquered sleep, you will be able to conquer the big sleep, death, too. But why? What is wrong in dying? The people who are afraid of death are the people who have not really lived their lives. They are not afraid of death, they are simply afraid that they have not lived yet and death has come. Rather than thinking of physical immortality, think of living your life totally. While you are...

... here, live your life in a multidimensional richness. And then when death comes you will feel it as a crescendo, as a peak, as an ultimate - life reaching to the highest - and you will enjoy death as much as you have enjoyed life. You will be utterly satisfied with death because it will give you rest, relaxation; it will renew you. It will take away the old garments and it will give you new garments...

.... But people go on philosophizing. They have created things like Christian Science, mind over matter. They think that if you believe that you are not going to die then you will not die. I heard about a man who was a Christian Scientist. One day he met a young man. He asked the young man, "Any news about your father?" The young man said, "He is very ill." The Christian Scientist...

... believes that he is dead." It is not a question of belief: illness has a reality, and death too has a reality. Yes, by believing also you can create a few illnesses - which are false, bogus - and by disbelieving in them you can destroy them. But you cannot destroy a real illness; the illness has to be false in the first place. If you BELIEVE in it and create it, then by disbelieving in it, it can be...

... use it as a single word 'bodymind', 'psychosomatic'. So of course, your inner affects your outer, your outer affects your inner - you are bodymind - but you are not finished with the bodymind. There is a witness also. John Fisant, rather than bothering about physical immortality, get in touch with your witnessing soul which watches the body and mind both. It watches life, it watches death; hence it...

... transcends life and death both. Only this witness is immortal because it is never born and it never dies. The Zen people call it the original face. This witnessing is your original face. And meditation is nothing but an art to discover your original face. You are immortal, but not physically; just in your awareness, in your consciousness you ARE immortal, you are universal. The fourth question: Question 4...

... questions consisted of everything that philosophy, theology, metaphysics is made of. If you don't ask those eleven questions, nothing is left to ask - nothing metaphysical. Then you can ask only actual problems. You can ask about your anger, your greed, your sex. You can ask about your misery, suffering, how to get rid of it, but you cannot ask whether God is. You cannot ask what will happen after death...

... dead. He asked, "What has happened to this man? He is not even breathing!" The charioteer said, "This is the second stage. First you saw the old man. Soon death will come to him too. It has come to this man." Buddha asked, "Am I also going to die one day?" The charioteer - afraid of the king, but he must have been a man of some integrity - said, "Truth is truth...

..., nobody can deny it. Your father the king is going to die, I am going to die, you are going to die. Death begins the day you are born. After birth there is no way to escape death." And just then they passed a sannyasin. Astrologers had said to the king, "Your son should not be allowed any contact with sannyasins, because those are the people who have renounced everything. Those are the people...

... - he will go again. Why give him trouble? Do you know what happened to Lazarus? Even if Jesus raised him from the dead - which is nonsense.... For the argument's sake if we accept that yes, he was raised from death back to life, then what happened to him? Where is Lazarus? He will have to die again so what is the point? Maybe a few years more of misery and poverty, sickness, anxiety and anguish - and...

..., 'Bring the mustard seeds from a family where nobody has ever died.'" By the evening, when she returned, she was a totally different woman. She was not the same woman who had come in the morning. She had become absolutely aware that death is a reality of life - it cannot be changed. And what is the point? "Even if my child lives for a few years, he will have to die again. In the first place it...

...The death of the mind is the birth of you...

... Osho From the False to the Truth: The death of the mind is the birth of you Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho From the False to the Truth   Next > The death of the mind is the birth of you From: Osho Date: Fri, 15 July 1985 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: From the False to the Truth Chapter #: 17 Location: am in Rajneeshmandir Archive Code...

... wanted is here. So where are you going? And this mind will be with you wherever you go, and it will not allow you any rest. The mind always wants to go on and on, because that is its very lifeblood. Stopping, even for a single moment, the mind dies. And the death of the mind is the birth of you. While the mind has power over you, you are not born yet. All the great masters in the East were either kings...

... garden were told that Buddha should not see a flower withering away or a leaf turning pale. In the night everything that indicates death had to be removed. He should see only beautiful flowers which are always young. He should see only green leaves which are always green. And this the king could manage. He managed it - and his management backfired. Those idiotic astrologers had no idea of a simple fact...

... borderline of death. He asked his charioteer, "What is the matter? What has happened to this man? I have never seen anything like this!" The charioteer loved Buddha just as his own son. He could not lie. He said, "Although it is going against the orders of your father, I cannot lie to you. You have been prevented from seeing people getting old. Everybody gets old - I will get old. This is...

..., somebody died. Now you cannot prevent death. You cannot order death, "You are not to happen on this road, you can happen anywhere else." Death is not in your hands. Somebody died, people were crying, and the dead body was there. Buddha asked, "What has happened? Why are people crying?" He had never seen anybody crying, he had never seen anybody with tears; he had never seen anybody...

... who teach that this world is illusion, that all your desires are going to lead you nowhere, that you are simply wasting your life, and death is coming close by every moment. Sannyasins have to be avoided." And for twenty-nine years Buddha had no notion that there are people who are trying to find something which is beyond life and death. This red-clothed sannyasin looked very strange to him...

... have seen people, but nobody wears a loose robe like this, with a begging bowl in his hand. What kind of man is he?" The charioteer said, "This man has understood that beauty is going to turn into ugliness, that youth is going to turn into old age, that life is going to turn into death, and he is trying to find, 'Is there something eternal? Is there something which is not affected by youth...

..., by old age, by death, by disease?' He is a sannyasin, he has renounced the ordinary world. He is a seeker of truth." They were just reaching the stadium. Buddha said to the charioteer, "Turn back - I am not going to the youth festival. If youth is finally going to become old age, disease, death, and if this is going to happen to me, then I have lost twenty-nine years uselessly. I have...

... you call it a miracle? And again he will be back in the grave. At least in the grave he will be without anxiety, without poverty, without sickness, and without any fear of death. It has already happened, now it cannot happen again. Jesus really was unkind if he did raise Lazarus from death. Buddha would not do it. It is not a miracle, it is foolishness. A similar case happened in Buddha's life: a...

... this is a small miracle - nothing much - that the child starts breathing again. She went, crying and weeping, put the child's dead body at the feet of Buddha, and asked him, "You are a great master, you know the secrets of life and death, and I have come with great hope. Make my child alive again." Buddha said, "That I will do, but you have to fulfill a condition before I do it."...

...; She said, "I am ready to fulfill any condition. I am ready to give my life, but let my child live." Buddha said, "No, the condition you have to fulfill is very simple. You just go around the village and find a few mustard seeds from a house where death has never happened." She was in such despair, she went from one house to another. And those people said, "We can give you as...

... a projection of your mind. Those who cannot think of the future start thinking of the past. Old people are afraid: death is coming, tomorrow is death! And their whole life and its experience has raised many doubts in them: who knows whether after death all that you wanted will be available? There is not a single eyewitness. The old man starts being afraid of death. He turns his eyes towards the...

... past which he has lived - he starts remembering the beautiful days of youth, the wonderful days of childhood. And I tell you, he is inventing it. When he was a child, he was as miserable as anything. When he was a young man, he was burdened with all kinds of miseries and problems. Now that death is coming near, he cannot look forward - there is only the darkness of the grave. He turns his back...

... really true. But it actually happens. If you allow fear to take possession of you, your hair will stand on end. Then for the first time you will know what a beautiful phenomenon fear is. In that turmoil, in that cyclone, you will come to know that there is still a point somewhere within you which is absolutely untouched. And if fear cannot touch it, then death cannot touch it. There is darkness and...

... things, who simply lives feelings and has no thoughts about them. Fear is one of the doors from where one enters into one's being. It is one of the most repressed things. The whole of humanity, all the world over, can be divided into two types: one is sex-repressive, the other is death-repressive. Either a society suppresses death or it suppresses sex. Whenever a society expresses sex, becomes unafraid...

... of it, untabooed, uninhibited about it, it immediately starts to suppress death - immediately, because death is the polar opposite. So if you allow sex, death has to be repressed. If you repress sex then there is no fear of death, you can allow it. In the West, since Freud, sex has been untabooed; now death has become the taboo. And whenever death becomes the taboo, fear becomes the suppressed...

... thing. When sex is taboo, love becomes the suppressed thing. Just like sex and death, love and fear are deeply joined. If you move deeply in meditation, either fear or love will become the door. If death has been suppressed, then fear will be the door. If sex has been suppressed, then love will be the door. For example, in the eastern civilization where sex has been suppressed, is still suppressed...

..., the first thing the mind faces in meditation is love, a deep upsurge of sex energy, because whatsoever is suppressed, uncoils. You don't have any suppressions about sex, so fear will uncoil. The suppressed and tabooed thing is death, so you have to be deeply relaxed in allowing it. Once fear is allowed, it will soon become death; you will have to pass through a moment of death. Once sex and death...

... Available: Yes Video Available: Yes Length: 101 mins Question 1: BELOVED OSHO, I AM AFRAID TO MEET YOU. TREMBLING, SHOCKED, ALONE... IT MEANS DEATH. The meeting with the master has always been a kind of death, death to all that you have been, death to your past, death to your ego, death to your personality. But it is not only death, it is also resurrection: the birth of the new, the birth of the fresh and...

... the innocent, a new sunrise on the horizon, a new unfoldment of your being. But naturally, first you have to meet the death, you have to pass through it. Resurrection can only be afterwards. The death is what you pay for your resurrection; hence, your question is significant. You are feeling afraid coming closer to me. This is not new. This has nothing to do with you or me. This is as old as man...

.... The ancientmost scriptures in the world are the VEDAS. They describe the master as death, but a death which opens the door to the divine, certainly a death which happens only to the blessed ones. It is no ordinary death, it is not the death of your body; it is the death that transforms you. Everything remains the same -- the body, the world -- yet nothing remains the same because your vision, your...

... fire which burns only that which is false in you. Out of it, you come as twenty-four karat gold. The function of a mystic school is to encourage you: "You need not be worried. We have passed through the test; the fire is cool and the death is a blessing." But if you don't have any guts, then perhaps the time is not ripe for you, perhaps in some other life with some other master the death...

... will happen. But why postpone? What is possible right now should not be postponed for tomorrow. Why remain in misery even for one day, even for one minute, even for one second? The death of the ego, the death of your personality, the death of all that you have been thinking about yourself, immediately opens a door. New flowers start blossoming, new songs start stirring in your heart, new dances. You...

... don't walk anymore, you simply dance; you fly. The ecstasy is such, the blissfulness is such... gather just a little bit of courage. Question 2: BELOVED OSHO, YOU ALWAYS SAID TO US THAT WE SHOULD REJOICE IN BEING ALIVE, BUT DEEP IN MYSELF I FOUND A VERY STRONG WILL TO DIE -- NOT THAT I WANT TO COMMIT SUICIDE, BUT TO DIE NATURALLY. SOMEHOW I KNOW THAT BY DYING I MIGHT FIND THAT WHICH I REALLY ENJOY...

... -- finally -- death. Empty handed you have come, and one day empty handed you will leave, and all that happens in between birth and death is simply tedious. So I cannot say there is anything wrong with you. Every intelligent person thinks that perhaps what is not available in life may be available in death. Psychologists have found that almost every intelligent person at least once in his life thinks of...

... committing suicide. So there is time, you are waiting for a natural death. Don't be worried. Before natural death, I will give you the taste of natural life. And once you are drunk with natural life, death disappears; you become part of an eternal flow of life which knows no end. Every moment is a new discovery, every moment a new peak. Every moment you think, what can be more than this? -- yet the next...