... setting - that was the right time. The court had given the exact time, but the man was delaying in preparing the poison. Socrates asked the man, "Time is passing, the sun is setting - what is the delay?" The man could not believe that somebody who is going to die is so particular about the right time for his own death. In fact, he should be thankful for the delay. The man loved Socrates. He...

... enquiry in your eyes. Don't you understand? - you are going to DIE." Socrates said, "That's what I want to know. Life, I have known. It was beautiful; with all its anxieties, anguishes, still it was a joy. Just to breathe is joy enough. I have lived, I have loved; I have done whatever I wanted to do, I have said whatever I wanted to say. Now I want to taste death - and the sooner the better...

... have lived according to my own thinking, feeling, being; I want to die that way also. "And don't feel guilty. Nobody is responsible for my death, I am responsible. I knew that it was going to happen, because to talk about truth in a society which lives on lies, deceptions, illusions, is to ask for death. Don't blame these poor people who have decided for my death. If anybody is responsible, I am...

... Osho From Death to Deathlessness: No society rewards lovers Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho From Death to Deathlessness   Next > No society rewards lovers From: Osho Date: Fri, 9 August 1985 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: From Death to Deathlessness Chapter #: 8 Location: am in Rajneeshmandir Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio...

... saved. Who cares about paradise? - you are in it. The priest will die if you learn how to love yourself, the politician will not have followers; all the vested interests in society will go bankrupt. They are all thriving on a very subtle psychological exploitation of you. But learning to love oneself is not difficult, it is natural. If you have been able to do something which is unnatural, if you have...

... for any idiotic idea: the flag - just a rotten piece of cloth. You sacrifice yourself to the nation - which is nothing but fantasy, because the earth is not divided anywhere into nations. It is the politicians' cunningness, to divide the earth on the map. You are sacrificing for the lines drawn on the maps! Die for your religion: Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism. And they have managed...

... it in such a way that the individual is caught. If you die for your nation you will be called a martyr - you are simply committing suicide, and that too for a foolish reason. If you die for your religion you will reach paradise, you will enjoy eternal blessings. They have manipulated you. But one thing is basic in that manipulation, that is, don't love yourself; hate yourself, because you are not...

... is sane? Half of India is going to face the same fate as Ethiopia soon - and India's government is selling wheat, exporting wheat to the outside world. Their own people are going to die - not in small numbers: fifty percent of India is just on the borderline. Any moment it can become a bigger Ethiopia. But the political leaders are selling the wheat to other countries because they want nuclear...

... plants, atomic energy, so they can also compete in the foolish race that is going on. Anybody can see that it will take at least three hundred years for India to be a nuclear power equal to America or the Soviet Union. And do you think for these three hundred years America and the Soviet Union will simply wait? They will be growing in the same direction of destruction and death. All this has happened...

... towards the people who love him is the ugliest act anybody can do. I want to be just a fellow traveler with you. I am not your leader, I am not your savior. I don't take any responsibility on myself, and I don't want you to dump your responsibility on anybody. Can you see the beauty of an individual who is capable of standing on his own feet? And whatever happens - joy or sorrow, life or death - the man...

... who has loved himself is so integrated that he will be able not only to enjoy life, he will be able to enjoy death too. Socrates was punished by his society. People like Socrates are bound to be punished, because they are individuals and they don't allow anybody to dominate them. He was given poison. He was lying in the bed and the man who was going to give him poison was preparing it. The sun was...

...! "I know what it means to be, and the moment has come to know what it means not to be. And when I am no more, what is the problem? Why should I be worried about it? I will not be there to worry, so why waste time now?" This is the man who loves himself. Even the responsibility of death he has chosen - because the court had nothing against him; it was just public prejudice, the prejudice of...

... the mediocre people who could not understand the great flights of intelligence of Socrates. But they were in the majority, and they all decided on death for Socrates. They could not answer a single argument proposed by him. I think they could not even understand what he was saying - answering was out of the question. And he destroyed all their arguments; still, it was a city democracy - the people...

... than the common people. They said to Socrates, "We give you a few alternatives. If you leave Athens and promise never to come back again, you can save yourself from death. Or, if you want to remain in Athens, then stop speaking, go into silence. Then too we can persuade the people to let you live. Otherwise, the third alternative is: tomorrow as the sun sets you will have to drink poison."...

...; What did Socrates do? He said, "I am ready to take the poison tomorrow or today, whenever the poison is ready, but I cannot stop saying the truth. If I am alive I will go on saying it till my last breath. And I cannot leave Athens just to save myself, because then I will feel always a weakling who became afraid of death, who escaped death, who could not take the responsibility of death also. I...

...From Death to Deathlessness...

... who has known his whole life that he is the body, he will become unconscious while dying - he will go totally unconscious. Very few people die consciously. Death happens in a kind of sleep, in an unconscious state. You are not conscious while dying, otherwise you would be able to remember your previous death. Whatever happens in unconsciousness does not remain in the memory. That is why people do...

... cutting away a limb or two, but death has to cut away and separate your body from you. You cannot be kept conscious in such a big operation, therefore death has forever used the natural anaesthesia. As soon as death approaches you fall unconscious. In that unconsciousness, the world's biggest surgery happens, the separation of your body from your soul. But a person can die without becoming unconscious...

... who was a witness at the time of birth, one who was a witness at the time of a previous death, he remains a witness throughout his life. Thus in only one death you can die fully conscious, and in only one birth you can be fully conscious; thereafter the cycle of birth and death ceases. Thereafter you disappear from the world of bodies. For this phenomenon of disappearance, in India we have devised a...

... EVERYWHERE. I MYSELF AM BRAHMA - THE CREATOR GOD; I MYSELF AM VISHNU - THE SUSTAINER GOD; I MYSELF AM SHIVA - THE DESTROYER GOD; I MYSELF AM INDRA - THE CHIEF OF ALL GODS; I MYSELF AM THIS UNIVERSE, AND I MYSELF AM ALL. THERE IS NOTHING OTHER THAN MYSELF. Whatsoever is worth achieving in life can be achieved only during the lifetime. But many people go on waiting until after death. Many people think that...

..., "Life is for worldly pleasures." They have created such divisions: "Life is for bhoga, indulgence." But then only death remains for yoga, union with the divine. But death is not an opportunity. Let this be understood properly. Death is an end of all opportunity. What is the meaning of death? Its meaning is that now there is no more opportunity left. Life is an opportunity, death is...

... the end of the opportunity. So nothing can be achieved through death, because for achieving anything there should be a span of opportunity. But we have divided: we say life is for indulgence. But when life will be exhausted, then?... then yoga. We have created all these stories that you utter into the ears of the dying person at the time of death - when he will not even be able to hear. When living...

... persons do not listen, how would a dead or dying person hear a gayatri mantra, or recite the name of the divine, or the chant "Rama, Rama"? The person could not hear the gayatri mantra his whole life, and even if he heard he did not listen, and even if he heard he did not grasp.... That person at the time of death - when all the senses will be failing; when the eyes won't see, the ears won't...

... hear, the hands won't touch; when life is disappearing back into its source - will he be able to hear gayatri? No, he will not be able to hear. But then why do people go on uttering such things into his ears? There is a secret in it. That dying person is unable to hear anything, but the living ones who are uttering it for him remain under the assurance that at the time of their death somebody will...

... was calling his son, perhaps to advise the son in his last moments as to how to do black-marketing or how to keep double accounts! But due to god Narayana's misunderstanding the dying man went to heaven. He himself was surprised as to how he arrived there. But his utterance of the name of Narayana at the time of his death had managed the miracle. No, things cannot be managed so cheaply. And a...

... Narayana, who can be so easily deceived, will also be only a bogus Narayana. Deceptions don't work in real life; it is another matter that you may console your mind with such ideas. Death is the end of opportunity. Understand this meaning properly. Death is not yet another opportunity for doing something. Death is the end of all opportunities; you won't be able to do anything. There simply is no way of...

... doing anything in death. Doing means life, so whatsoever is to be done, it has to be done during life. In this sutra some beautiful words have been used. ONE WHO HAS ATTAINED ONENESS WITH BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY, WHILE LIVING, WILL REMAIN SO EVEN AFTER LEAVING THE BODY. Only the one who has known his self during his lifetime will remain as Brahma, the ultimate one, when his body drops. Someone...

... not know that they have been born many times and they have died many times, because whenever they died they were unconscious. And whosoever dies unconscious is born unconscious, because birth and death are two polarities of the same thing. A person dies here, this is one end of the phenomenon; then the same person enters a womb somewhere, that is the other end. Death and birth are two sides of the...

.... Remember, one who does not know about his birth will have great difficulty in knowing about his death while dying. They are interconnected. Death has happened many times, but you have died unconscious. Leave death aside; you are sleeping every day, the phenomenon of sleep is happening every day, but do you know that just before sleep comes you are losing your consciousness? Do you have any awareness of...

... encountering sleep? When sleep descends, are you able to see it descending? Up to the point of sleep you are able to notice anything; you are still awake, sleep has not descended yet. And the moment sleep descends you are lost. At the very descending of sleep you lose consciousness. When you are unable to remain aware even in sleep, how are you going to remain aware in death? Death is a very deep sleep, the...

... deepest sleep: it is very difficult to remain aware in it. You will die unconscious. And in that unconsciousness, whoever is reciting the gayatri mantra, whoever is chanting "Rama, Rama," you will know nothing of it. And this unconsciousness is actually necessary. Only those people are freed from this unconsciousness who become free from their identification with the body. Why? If a surgeon is...

... you will not know it. You will know the pain only when you regain your consciousness. And when you know, you will experience the pain happening. In your unconsciousness, even if limb after limb is cut - you are cut to pieces - you will not know. However, the surgeon is doing a small operation, whereas death is a very big operation. There is no bigger operation than death. The surgeon is merely...

.... Nature allows a person to die consciously who has come to know that he is not the body. Why? Because then, when the body is being cut off, he does not identify with the body. He goes on watching from a distance - he can watch from a distance because he knows that something else is being cut: "I am not being cut, I am watching it, I am only a witness." Whenever such a realization becomes...

... crystalized, nature gives such a person the opportunity to die consciously. But this happens at a much later stage. First one has to learn to sleep consciously, and that too comes later; first one has to learn to be conscious while awake. One who is conscious while awake slowly learns how to sleep consciously. One who lives consciously one day dies consciously. One who dies consciously is able to know that...

... he has become one with Brahma, the ultimate reality. But first one has to know this in the consciousness hidden within one's own body. Then one day this outer pot also breaks and the inner sky merges with the vast sky. One who dies consciously passes through wonderful experiences. Death does not feel like an enemy to him. Death feels like a friend to him. Death feels like a great union with the...

... your personal dreams, the ones you see in your sleep during the night. The other type is the common dream which you see while awake during the day. But there is no difference between the two, because they both are changing. The dreams of the night are falsified by the morning, and the dreams of life are falsified by death. A moment comes when all that was seen becomes useless. Is there any truth then...

... also went away but the one who saw it is unchanged. It is the same seer who saw the childhood, who saw the youth, who saw the old age; who saw the birth, who saw the death; who saw the happiness, who saw the unhappiness; who saw the success and failure. Everything changes, only the one who goes on seeing, who goes on experiencing everything, does not change. It is this seer whom we know as the soul...

... catch dreams, but even before we have any grip on them they are lost and our fist remains empty. In the night we saw that we were emperors; in the morning our hands are empty. In life we see we have become this, we have become that; at the time of death our hands are empty. Whosoever we had held as our own - on whosoever we had closed our fist - they disappeared like the air from one's fist would. The...

..., that integrity which is uniform. That is known as kaivalya. If you know that one while living, then at death, on the dropping of the body, the oneness with Brahma, the absolute reality, is experienced. THEREFORE, O INNOCENT ONE! BECOMING AWAKENED BE VOID OF ALL CHOICE IN DUALITY. How shall we be able to know the one? The process is: be void of all vikalpa, all choice in duality. This word vikalpa is...

...? Because it was false. Coughing is also not permitted. Just try experimenting with it; you won't die by not coughing for ten minutes. You have no idea how many tricks your mind plays. The mind says, "A really bad cough is forcing its way, I will cough just slightly." You succeeded in hindering it slightly, but you coughed. You thought, "But what can I do? - coughing is compulsive." No...

... it absolutely! What can really go wrong in ten minutes? At the most you may die... although it has never been heard of that someone did not cough for ten minutes and died because of it. One may have died because of coughing for ten minutes, but never because of not coughing for ten minutes. Please be kind, stop it completely. Just be a corpse for those ten minutes. When I say, "Stop!"...

... DEATH TAKES THEM ALL AWAY WITHIN A MOMENT. DROPPING ALL THESE ILLUSORY MATTERS, KNOW THE DIVINE AND ENTER INTO IT. DAY AND NIGHT, EVENING AND MORNING, WINTER AND SPRING COME AND GO AGAIN AND AGAIN. THUS THE PLAY OF TIME GOES ON AND ONE'S LIFE IS OVER. AND YET THE BREEZE OF HOPE DOES NOT LEAVE ONE ALONE. OH, YOU MADMAN! WHY ARE YOU CAUGHT UP IN THE WORRIES ABOUT YOUR WIFE AND YOUR WEALTH? DON'T YOU...

... then you are afraid of the loneliness. When you are with someone else, then his or her presence disturbs you. When you have company you want to be alone, when you are alone you want company. When you are with someone then you start observing the bad points in him or her. When you are alone the loneliness frightens you like death. The company and loneliness are both troublesome for you. That is why...

... this all becomes unlimited godliness. Just now you do not see the divine. You see the world and the world is not one. There are as many worlds as there are different minds, because every individual has his own world. If your wife dies you will cry, nobody else. Others will try to explain to you that the soul is eternal, it does not die, so do not cry. They will make the most of this opportunity of...

... showing off their knowledge. They will see you in a pitiable condition and will start preaching to you. They will say, "Why are you crying? Who really belongs to us?" Tomorrow, when their wives die, then you will get your chance, then you will go and preach to them that this world is an illusion, all these relationships are illusion. Every individual's world is his own. Your attachment, your...

... added to truth by you is lost. ALWAYS SING THE SONG OF THE THE DIVINE. DO NOT BE PROUD OF WEALTH, PEOPLE AND YOUTH, BECAUSE DEATH TAKES THEM ALL AWAY WITHIN A MOMENT. DROPPING ALL THESE ILLUSORY MATTERS, KNOW THE DIVINE AND ENTER INTO IT. I was reading a song this morning and a few lines of that song appealed to me: JOR HE KYA THA JAFA-E-BAGVAN DEKNA KIYE ASHIAN UJRA KIYA HUM NATWAN DEKHA KIYE. The...

... meaning is: The garden was being destroyed and I watched it helplessly. Yes, your whole life is the same story. Your garden will be destroyed daily. The spring will soon be over. Youth will also pass away. This speed and this energy will gradually become less and less. The house will be destroyed and death will come nearer and nearer. Life is only a momentary dream; death is approaching every minute...

.... You are dying since the day you were born. A birthday is actually the death day also. You cannot postpone death, you cannot run away from death. It is coming nearer and nearer. DO NOT BE PROUD OF WEALTH, PEOPLE AND YOUTH. This ego is shallow. In fact all egos are shallow; shallowness is the nature of ego. It thinks as its own that which is not its own. The transient seems permanent, and that which...

... ourselves, and in this way we become unauthentic. Then whatever we do in life is false. The person who wants to wake up should stop sowing lies and should say goodbye to all his false beliefs. He should know that this body is not permanent, it is not static, it is dying every moment, and death is not going to occur tomorrow, it is occurring now. We are dying. Death is not going to occur after seventy more...

... years - we are dying gradually and there will be nothing left after seventy years. Life goes on finishing drop by drop. Do not call it life, it is a lie. You can call it a gradual death. Do not celebrate birthdays, all are deathdays. The day you see death in your birthday and you hear the footsteps of death in life, you will know the truth. That truth will give you freedom. As soon as you know that...

... THE PLAY OF TIME GOES ON AND ONE'S LIFE IS OVER. AND YET THE BREEZE OF HOPE DOES NOT LEAVE ONE ALONE. Hope is poison, and because of this poison you have mistaken death to be life. Today you are unhappy, but the mind says that tomorrow everything will be all right. Today there is no happiness, but the mind says, "Wait, tomorrow everything will be fine." This is the way the mind has led you...

... will get heaven after death. This is the expansion of hope. Hope says 'tomorrow'. Hope says 'future'. Hope says 'more life'! But if the revolution of life is to occur, it will occur just now and here. Do not depend on tomorrow; tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow is a lie. And the hope which is giving you the assurance about tomorrow is the cause of creating these dreams in you. Whatever is to be done is...

... is looking after the shop? All of them are here!" Their father was dying. Thinking this, all the sons had gathered there. They had closed the shop. But death is not the concern of the dying father - who is tending the shop? He is not asking for his sons out of love: where is the oldest one, where is the middle one, the youngest one? He is asking to find out who is tending the shop. All of them...

... are present there - does it mean there is nobody in the shop? Yes, even at the last moment your mind is full of shop! It will be so, because whatever you have done in your whole life, you will think of it while dying also. You cannot change yourself suddenly at the time of death. Do not believe that false story. A man was dying, his son's name was Narayan which is another name for God. So he called...

... not worth obtaining! This type of heaven or salvation is absolutely false. This story cannot be true. Death is the summing up of your whole life; at the moment of death your mind will be full of what you have done during your life. If you have been counting money your whole life then you will be counting it while dying also, because death is the essence of your life. If you have been restless all...

... your life then you will be restless at death also. If you have been peaceful then your death will be very peaceful. Every individual dies a different death because everyone lives a different life. Neither your life nor your death can be the same as that of someone else. When a buddha dies the grandeur of his death is different - the grandeur of his death is much more than your so-called life. Your...

... life is just nothing compared to his death. The grandeur of his death is a million times more than your life, because in that moment of his death the whole of life shrinks and comes near, the music of his whole life becomes condensed - as if the essence of all the flowers of his life has been taken and made into a fragrance. At the moment of death the fragrance which comes out of a buddha is the...

... essence of the flowers of his whole life. The stink which will come out of you will be the essence of all the dirt and rubbish of your whole life. You cannot change suddenly in death. So do not believe the pundits who tell you to become religious at the end of your life. If you want to be religious you have to do it here and now; do not postpone it to the end. If you are careful now you will be able to...

... take care in the future. If you wake up today then gradually you will become wakeful. If you sing the song of the divine from today then perhaps at the moment of death the divine will hear you. Do not think at the time of death that a borrowed pundit will save your soul by reciting mantras in your ears, by pouring the water of the Ganges in your mouth, by reading the Gita near you. That pundit will...

... go on repeating the Gita but you will not be able to hear it within you at that time. Only that person can hear the Gita at the time of death who has learnt the art of listening properly the whole of his life. If one has sung the song of the divine all his life then at the time of death he will not have to listen to it sung by a borrowed servant or pundit; every breath, every beat of his heart will...

... be singing the song of the divine. In that moment of death you will go dancing toward the divine full of gratitude. Your death will become the gate to a greater life; you will change death. Death kills you now, then you will kill death. And religion is the art of killing death, it is the science of becoming nectar. Therefore, OH IDIOT! ALWAYS SING THE SONG OF THE THE DIVINE. Enough for today...

... yours. Life can be anonymous. If you live with others, you can compromise too much, you can imitate - but death is always unique because death is alone. You die alone. There is no society. They don't exist in your death. The crowd, the mass, is there when you are alive, but when you die you die absolutely alone, utterly alone. Death has a quality. So sometimes it happens that a man may commit suicide...

... looks very absurd at the side of a baby who has just been born - only one thing is absolutely certain: that he will die. This prediction can be made, and your prediction is never going to be wrong. So death has a certain quality of certainty about it - it is going to happen. And at the same time it has something absolutely uncertain about it too. One never knows when it is going to happen. There is...

... beating - that's all. But this is nothing. How can you know about death from these things? The mystery remains a mystery, you have not even touched it. You can know it only by going into it. But if you are dragged into it there are more possibilities of your becoming unconscious - because you are being dragged into it. Almost always people die unconsciously. Before death happens they become so afraid...

... very much. Even while you were alive, it was just a tiny flicker. When the wind of death comes, that flicker is gone - there is complete darkness. Hemingway wanted to go into death fully conscious. It was a conscious exercise in dying. But that is possible only through suicide or through samadhi. These are the only two possibilities. You can die consciously in only two ways. You can commit suicide...

... DO YOU HAVE SO MUCH COMPASSION FOR THEM? I AM SICK AND TIRED OF THEM! The question is from Prageet. First, there are suicides and suicides. Each suicide has something unique about it - as each life has something unique about it. Your life is yours and your death is also going to be yours. Sometimes it is possible that your life may not be yours, but it is not possible that your death may not be...

... have to go into it; if it does not happen you can do whatsoever you want and it will not happen. Nobody can produce love on order. And the most important three things in life are birth, love, death. Death is the only thing that you can do something about - you can commit suicide. Hemingway's search was for freedom. He wanted to do something that HE had done. He had not managed birth, he had not...

... managed love, now there was only death. There was only one thing which if you wanted to do, you could do. It would be your act, an individual act, done by you. Death has a mysterious quality about it; it is a very strange paradox. If you are standing by the side of a small baby, just born, and if somebody asks you to say something absolutely certain about the baby - the baby is in his crib, asleep...

..., relaxing - what can you say absolutely certainly? You can say only one thing: that he will die. This is a very strange thing to say. Anything else is uncertain. He may love, he may not love. He may succeed, he may fail. He may be a sinner, he may be a saint. All are 'maybes', there is nothing certain about anything. It is not possible to predict anything. There is only one thing you can say - and it...

... certainty that it is going to happen and uncertainty about when it is going to happen. Both this certainty and uncertainty about death make it a mystery, a paradox. If you go on living, it will happen - but then again it will come from out of the blue. You will not be the decisive factor. Birth happened, love happened - was death also to happen? That made Hemingway uneasy. He wanted to do at least one...

... thing in life to which he could have his own signature, about which he could say 'This I did'. That's why he committed suicide. Suicide was an exercise in freedom. You cannot know anything about death unless you go into it. Hemingway's attitude was that if it is going to happen then why be dragged into it? Why not go into it on your own? It is going to happen. His whole life's concern was death...

..., that's why he became so interested in bullfights. Death was very close by. He was constantly. attracted by the theme of death - what it was. But you cannot know. Even if somebody is dying in front of you, you don't know anything about death. You simply know that the breathing has disappeared, that this man's eyes won't open again, that this man will never speak again, that his heart is no longer...

..., so very afraid, that a kind of coma surrounds them and protects them. It is a natural anaesthetic. When you go for an operation, you need an anaesthetic - and death is the greatest operation there is: the soul and body will be torn apart. So nature has some built-in mechanism - before you start dying you go into a coma; all consciousness disappears. In the first place your consciousness was not...

...; you can manage your own death. You can have your revolver ready, contemplate it, put it to your chest or your head, pull the trigger yourself consciously, see the explosion and see death. This is one possibility. It is a very destructive possibility. Another possibility is to go more and more into meditation, to attain to a state of awareness that cannot be drowned by death. Then there is no need to...

... commit suicide. Then whenever death comes, let it come. You will be dying fully alert, aware, watchful. So it is suicide or sannyas, suicide or samadhi. And in the West, sannyas and samadhi have not been available. That's why these two very rare people committed suicide. And they have not been understood. People think that they were kind of ill, neurotic, mad, morbid, unhealthy. They were not. I am not...

... saying that all people who commit suicide are the same. There are neurotic people who will commit suicide. There are morbid people who are more concerned with death than they are concerned with life, who enjoy destructiveness. They are self-destructive mechanisms who go on poisoning themselves. I'm not talking about all suicides - but you have asked about these two. And there are as many as people...

... dull kind of life that your interest naturally starts moving towards death. That's why there are constant wars. And the periods that you call days of peace are not much concerned with peace, they are only preparations for a new war. So either you are in war or you prepare for war. There are only two kinds of periods in history: actual fighting and preparation for the fighting. There has never been a...

... don't know that it is a gift, that it is a great gift. They don't know gratitude. So they go on being destructive in every possible way. The Western attitude has been growing more and more towards death and every day it is bringing death closer to this planet. Any day this planet can explode into utter annihilation. The whole intelligence - technology, science, politics, everything - is directed...

... whole life on that small fact and make it a philosophy, is wrong. The other thing is as much a fact as this - we exist with the trees. Destroy all the trees and you will die. You breathe oxygen in, trees exhale oxygen. You exhale carbon dioxide, trees inhale carbon dioxide. So when you are surrounded by trees you are more alive. It is not just poetry. 'When you go into a jungle and a great jubilation...

... is very pragmatic. He means business, because he knows only one thing is left for you about which something can be done and should be done - and that is death. And remember: it is not a simple phenomenon that you die and go to heaven. It is a very complex phenomenon, more complex than life itself. Mrs. O'Hara, a widow of some five years, went to visit a famous medium, thinking she might contact her...

... Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. YOU ARE AS THE YELLOW LEAF. THE MESSENGERS OF DEATH ARE AT HAND. YOU ARE TO TRAVEL FAR AWAY. WHAT WILL YOU TAKE WITH YOU? YOU ARE THE LAMP TO LIGHTEN THE WAY. THEN HURRY, HURRY. WHEN YOUR LIGHT SHINES WITHOUT IMPURITY OR DESIRE YOU WILL COME INTO THE BOUNDLESS COUNTRY. YOUR LIFE IS FALLING AWAY. DEATH IS AT HAND. WHERE WILL YOU REST ON THE WAY? WHAT HAVE...

... YOU TAKEN WITH YOU? YOU ARE THE LAMP TO LIGHTEN THE WAY. THEN HURRY, HURRY. WHEN YOUR LIGHT SHINES PURELY YOU WILL NOT BE BORN AND YOU WILL NOT DIE. AS A SILVERSMITH SIFTS DUST FROM SILVER, REMOVE YOUR OWN IMPURITIES LITTLE BY LITTLE. OR AS IRON IS CORRODED BY RUST YOUR OWN MISCHIEF WILL CONSUME YOU. NEGLECTED, THE SACRED VERSES RUST. FOR BEAUTY RUSTS WITHOUT USE AND UNREPAIRED THE HOUSE FALLS INTO...

... talk of other worlds, of other visions, because there are mysteries upon mysteries. The sutras.... The Buddha says: YOU ARE AS THE YELLOW LEAF. THE MESSENGERS OF DEATH ARE AT HAND. There are two things in life which are the most important. The first is birth, and the second is death - everything else is trivia. The first has already happened, now nothing can be done about it. The second has not...

... happened yet, but can happen any moment. Hence those who are alert will prepare, they will prepare for death. Nothing can be done about birth, but much can be done about death. But people don't even think about death, they avoid the very subject. It is not thought to be polite to talk about it. Even if they refer to death, they refer to it in roundabout ways. If somebody dies, we don't say that he has...

... died. We say God has called him, that God loved him so much, that whomsoever God loves he calls earlier; that he has gone to heaven, that he has moved to the other world, that he has not died, only the body has fallen back to the earth but the soul, the soul is immortal. Have you ever heard of anybody going to hell? Everybody goes to heaven. We are so afraid of death, we try to make it as beautiful...

... as possible: we decorate it, we speak beautiful words about it, we try to avoid the fact. But Buddha insists again and again... his whole life after his enlightenment for forty- two years continuously he was talking, morning, evening, day in, day out, year in, year out, about death. Why? Many people think that he is a pessimist - he is not. He is neither optimist nor pessimist. He is a realist, he...

... beginning. It will be only later on that you come to understand that this is hell. But we talk about everybody who dies - that he has gone to heaven, that he has become a beloved of God, that God has chosen him, called him forth... ways of avoiding death. But Buddha talks continuously about death. His first sutra is: YOU ARE AS THE YELLOW LEAF. Yellow leaf represents death. Any moment it is going to fall...

... down. Dust unto dust, any moment and death is going to possess you. Tomorrow may never come, even the next moment is not certain. This is the only moment you can be certain of, next moment you may not be here. What are you doing to prepare for that great journey into the unknown? YOU ARE AS THE YELLOW LEAF. THE MESSENGERS OF DEATH ARE AT HAND. YOU ARE TO TRAVEL FAR AWAY. It is a long journey, a long...

.... You have not encountered your reality, you have not gone into your inner being, you have not seen yourself, you don't know who you are. All the friends gone, family, money, power, prestige, body... will you be able even to recognize that it is you? You will be simply in a chaos. Buddha asks you: WHAT WILL YOU TAKE WITH YOU? Tomorrow is death - YOU ARE LIKE THE YELLOW LEAF - next moment is death...

... are being lived by unconscious desires. Buddha says: Meditation is the only wealth, because you can take it beyond death. In fact he says this is the criterion: if something can be taken beyond death it is true wealth. If it cannot be taken beyond death, it is untrue wealth, it is a deception. And not only that you are deceiving others, you are deceiving yourself. And when death will knock at your...

... door, you will weep, you will cry, but then nothing can be done. It is said of Alexander the Great that when he was dying, tears were rolling down his cheeks, because the physicians had told him that he had only twenty-four hours at the most; his death was absolutely certain within twenty-four hours. His physician asked, "Why are you crying? You are a brave man." Alexander said, "I had...

... purchasing even a few minutes for me." Death is so powerful, but one thing it cannot take away from you, that is meditation. If you can become rooted in your being, alert, conscious, watchful, you will see that you are not the body, and you are not the mind, and you are not the heart. You are simply the witnessing soul, and that witnessing will go with you. Then you can witness even death. That...

... effort of becoming available to bliss, to silence. Buddha says: YOU ARE THE LAMP TO LIGHTEN THE WAY. THEN HURRY, HURRY. On the one hand he says: YOU ARE THE YELLOW LEAF. If you are unaware, you are the yellow leaf, you are death. But if you become aware, YOU ARE THE LAMP TO LIGHTEN THE WAY. THEN HURRY, HURRY. Don't waste time, because who knows, there may be no time left - this may be the only moment...

... ready not to give sannyas to your son, if you replace him. You are seventy. What about you?" And he wrote, "Yes, some day I will also take sannyas, but the time has not come yet." But how will you manage? Death may come before and if the time has not come even when you are seventy, when is it going to come? There are ways of postponing; desire is a way of postponing. Today is ugly...

... only another desire. The desire to be desireless is still a desire, and it is not going to help. YOUR LIFE IS FALLING AWAY. DEATH IS AT HAND. WHERE WILL YOU REST ON THE WAY? WHAT HAVE YOU TAKEN WITH YOU? This is Buddha's special way - he repeats. When for the first time Buddhist sutras were translated into non-Indian languages, the translators were at a loss to understand why he repeats so much...

... HURRY, HURRY. WHEN YOUR LIGHT SHINES PURELY YOU WILL NOT BE BORN AND YOU WILL NOT DIE. He says, "Only one thing I can promise you. If you become enlightened, if you become fully alert and aware and conscious, if you dispel all desire and darkness from your being, this much I can promise: you will not die." Of course, if you are not going to be born, how can you die? There will be no birth...

... and no death, and to go beyond birth and death is to go into eternity, is to be immortal. That's what nirvana is, that's what absolute freedom is. Birth is a bondage, it is a confinement, you are chained into the body. And death again leads you into another birth, it is a vicious circle. Birth leads you into death, death leads you into birth, and you go on moving in a circle. Jump out of the wheel...

... of birth and death. AS A SILVERSMITH SIFTS DUST FROM SILVER, REMOVE YOUR OWN IMPURITIES LITTLE BY LITTLE. Don't be greedy. Many times it happens, you become spiritually greedy, you start asking too much without any inner capacity to receive it. You start demanding too much - that too is desire and greed. Don't be greedy, go slow, go steady. Be persistent in your effort but be ready to wait too...

...? If only death is finally to happen, then why not commit suicide now? Why get up every day, work hard, go to bed, get up again, work hard, go to bed -- for what? Just to die in the end? Death is the only metaphysical problem. It is because of death that man starts thinking. It is because of death that man became a contemplative, a meditator. In fact, it is because of death that religion was born...

.... The whole credit goes to death. Death stirred everybody's consciousness. The problem is such; it has to be solved. So nothing is wrong with it. The question is from Vidya. "I am confronted by death"...everybody is confronted by death. Martin Heidigger has said, "Man is a being towards death." And that is the priority of man. Animals die but they don't know that they die or that...

... they are going to die. Trees die, but there is no confrontation with death. It is the priority of man that only man knows that he is going to die. Hence, man can grow beyond death. Hence, there is a possibility to penetrate into death and overcome it. "I accept or so I think"...no, acceptance is not possible. You can deceive: you can think that you accept because it is so troublesome even...

... to look at it. Even to think about it is so troublesome that one thinks, "yes, okay, I'm going to die -- so what? I'm going to die, but don't raise the question. Don't talk about it." One keeps it away, goes on putting it by the side so it does not come in the way, keeps it in the unconscious. Acceptance is not possible. You will have to face death, and when you have faced it you need not...

... some sympathetic ears, good. Otherwise, trees, rocks, but don't repress it. The fifth question: Question 5: I AM CONFRONTED BY DEATH. I ACCEPT, OR SO I THINK, AND THEN MANY PEOPLE GET SICK AND DEATH HAPPENS AND HOSPITALIZATION AND I GET THIS ENORMOUS KNOT OF FEAR IN MY STOMACH. I AM SO SCARED OF DEATH AND DYING. I GET SO FREAKED OUT. DEATH is a problem. You can avoid it, you can postpone it, but you...

... cannot completely dissolve it. You have to face it. It can be dissolved only by going through it to the very end, all the way. It is very risky and it will give you great fear. Your whole being will start shaking and trembling; the very idea of dying is unacceptable. It looks so unjust and it looks so meaningless. If a person is to die then what is the meaning of life? Then why am I living, for what...

... accept, because then you know there is no death. "And then many people get sick and death happens and hospitalization and I get this enormous knot of fear in my stomach"...that is where the problem has to be solved. That enormous knot in the stomach is exactly the place where death happens. The Japanese call it HARA. Just below the navel, two inches below the navel is a point where body and...

... soul are connected. It is there where disconnection happens when you die. Nothing dies, because body cannot die, body is already dead. And you cannot die because you are life itself. Just the connection between you and the body disappears. That knot is exactly the place where the work has to be done, so don't try to avoid that knot. I would like to say to Vidya that whenever you feel that knot, it is...

..., a tension, a stress. "I am so scared of death and dying. I get so freaked out"...There is no need to freak out; freak in. It's perfectly natural that when somebody dies, somebody is hospitalized again and again, again and again, you remember your death. Nothing is wrong in it. I have heard.... A beatnik visited a psychiatrist and pleaded, "You have got to help me." "What...

... is your problem?" asked the head-shrinker. "Lately," said the beat, "I have had the most compelling desire to shower and shave." Now if you don't shower and you don't shave, one day or other there is going to be a very compelling desire to shower and shave. It is not a problem; just go and take a shower. You are avoiding death. It has to be faced, it is part of life's work...

.... It is one of the greatest lessons one has to learn. There is no need to be freaking out; that is not going to help. Go in, face it. Remember that yes, one day or other you will be hospitalized, one day or other you will be ill, and one day or other, you are going to die. So there is no point in postponing it. It is better to understand it before it is too late. Mulla Nasrudin got sick and worriedly...

... about nine years, eleven months and twenty-nine days?" One day it has to be faced. Don't be foolish; don't postpone it. Because if you postpone it to the very end, it will be too late. It is not certain when the last day will happen. It can happen today, it can happen tomorrow, it can happen any moment. Death is very unpredictable. We live in death, so any moment it can happen. Face it, encounter...

... you say, although I am ready to die for you.' You are not ready to allow a single word of mine to become a seed in your heart, and you are ready to die for me? You are not ready to accept me as a guest in you, and you are ready to die for me? In the first place, I don't want you to die, I want you to live. And live authentically. Death will come in its own time. When the time is ripe, death is...

... teach you how to live THIS moment, THIS day. If you die right now you will be unripe, and death will be a pain and death will be a suffering. And death will be meaningless. People live meaninglessly and die meaninglessly. And because people live meaninglessly, they can be exploited. Because your life is so meaningless anybody can come and can give you a meaningful death. He earl say 'Die for Islam' or...

..., taking a nap, a snake moving up on a tree or swinging with the branches of a tree, a snake ALICE. And a snake in the museum, in the hospital, in the science lab, in alcohol. The alcohol snake, or call it the alcoholic snake, will live long, because it is dead. The real snake, the alive snake, will not live long, because it is alive - death will be coming. But for the alcoholic snake there is no death...

... meeting of the opposites. And whenever two opposites meet, there is great bliss. When two opposites meet, only then there is bliss. A man meets a woman and there is orgasm and there is joy. And life meets death and there is great ecstasy, if you know how to allow it. The dying moment is the greatest ecstatic moment - if you know how to allow it, if you know how to relax into it, how to surrender to it...

.... Here, love will meet with renunciation. Here, meditation will meet with prayer. Here, silence and sound will be together. Silence alone is poor, so is sound alone. Sound alone is noise, silence alone is death. When silence and sound meet, there is music. Music is the meeting of silence and sound. There is a rhythm between sound and silence, hence the music. The great music always contains silence in...

... always in security. They don't explore, they don't go beyond the boundary. And the boundary has been fixed by the priests and the politicians - by the enemies, by the poisoners. Naturally your life has no flavor to it, no tone. It is placid, it is flat, it has no blood, no bones, it is pale. You are like a candle dying. Your life is nothing but a long process of slow death. You never live. I am all for...

... a host and you allow me as a guest in you. And soon, the guest is such, the host will disappear and the guest will possess the home. The third question: Question 4: BELOVED OSHO, I WILL DIE FOR YOU, I THINK, BUT I DON'T BELIEVE A SINGLE WORD YOU SAY, NOT A SINGLE WORD. Good, Anand Geet. Dying is always easy, living is difficult. To become a martyr is very easy, any stupid person can do that. In...

... fact only stupid become martyrs. Otherwise who wants to become a martyr? But it is easier to die, because it happens in a single moment. And once you are dead you are dead, there is no more to it. But to live is the real problem, because life is long. You say: I WILL DIE FOR YOU, I THINK. And I know you cannot die even, because that 'I think' is not reliable. Thinking is never reliable, only feeling...

... deceived by the mind. Love is a feeling. And when you say, 'I will die for you, I think,' what you are actually saying is that you love me and you are ready to die for me. But through thinking that is not possible. At the last moment the thinking will say, 'What are you doing? It is your life.' And really you don't mean it. And you say: I DON'T BELIEVE A SINGLE WORD YOU SAY, NOT A SINGLE WORD. Because if...

..., not death. And if you know life you will know death too, because death is the culmination of life. It is not against life, it is the crescendo of the song of life. It is the last alleluia. I teach you life. But if you trust me then you will be getting into trouble. You will have to transform yourself, you will have to go through many many mutations. That's why your mind says, 'I don't believe a word...

... beautiful. When the fruit is ripe it falls on its own accord. When you have lived your life totally, death is a joy, because it is a relaxation into the universe again. The wave disappears in the ocean again to rest - for another life sometime, for another wave to rise. It is like, the whole day you lived, and the night comes. Night is so beautiful. You can go into bed and forget all - the turmoil, the...

... anxiety, the work, the tiredness. You drop into a small death every night. And blessed are those who really drop into death every night, because in the morning they are resurrected. They are reborn. They are again fresh, they are again ready to do many things that life requires to be done. They are no more exhausted, their heart is again dancing, they are fresh. And they are ready to jump into the...

... turmoil of life and to live another day. Just like that, you will die in this body and you will rest into the earth and you will rest into the sky and you will rest for a time-being. And when you will be ready to be born again - another day, another resurrection, another body, you will be back again. This will go on and on till you finish the job that has been given to you, till you fulfill your destiny...

... it - then you disappear. Then you will not be coming back on this earth in a bodily form. Then you will be born into God, without body. Then you will become God. Then you will float into the eternity. Then you will be a lotus flower, invisible to ordinary eyes. Then you will be a pure fragrance for ever and for ever. But till that is attained, each death is a new birth. And remember, I am here to...

... 'Die for Christianity', or for Christ's sake or for Buddha's sake, die! And he gives you a meaning. And you are meaningless and you say, 'Okay. Life is meaningless, let me try this. Maybe this makes me meaningful.' This is a kind of suicide. And Islam and Buddha and Christ are just rationalizations for the suicide. You are committing suicide, with beautiful words around you. No, I don't want to be an...

... altar for you. Nobody has to die for me. My sannyasins have to live for me. And life and living is arduous. Because it cannot be a momentary impulse; it is not impulsive. If I say 'Die!' you can jump from a mountain - it happens in an impulsive moment. And once you have taken the jump you cannot take it back. Finished. But when you have to live, a thousand times you can take your steps back. And you...

... wit take your steps back, a million times. Because life cannot be impulsive. And I don't teach you impulsiveness, I teach you transformation. So please, nobody has to die for me. Never. If you love me, live for me, love for me. Let your life be a song, a joy, a celebration. When you are happy you are with me, when you are dancing you are with me, when you are loving you are with me. That is my work...

... will not be a trust in my rose, because that is of no use. Seeing that a man just like you - as fragile as you, made of body, bones and blood just like you, as vulnerable to death as you - a man just like you has bloomed, will give you a trust into yourself. Then why can it not happen to you? That's my work, to bring you close. Sannyas is nothing but an invitation to come a little closer - a little...

... arise to avoid that which is. To avoid life, to avoid love, to avoid death. Their sole purpose is to avoid. They are distractions. They are refusals to see, to hear, to be. When you are finished with goals and the ideologies that perpetuate them, then there is no need of God, nirvana or truth. Then all that you need is porridge for the breakfast, a roof against the rain, and the present moment. It is...

... mind has a tendency, an obsession, to complete a certain thing. Now it is almost within reach. Man can be freed completely from pain, discomfort, illness, disease, even death - because a plastic body will never die. When you can go on replacing it, the very point of death is lost. Just contemplate about it a little - just think that you have a plastic body. How will you become a Buddha in a plastic...

... tell the whole dream in detail. You may have lived a whole life, from the very birth to the very death, got married, had children, saw them married and everything - and only one minute has passed by clock time. Dream time moves on a separate level. It is true that people who die by drowning themselves - accidentally or knowingly - come to see their whole life in a single second span. Their whole life...

..., from Kabul to Delhi, from Delhi to Poona, from Poona to Goa, from Goa to Katmandu, you go around the world, but you don't go in. That is the nearest beach and the nearest mountain, the nearest Mecca and the nearest Kasi, the nearest temple, the GURUDWARA. But there you never go because if you go there you become scared. It is a death, you die there. You ask about suicide? Go in, and the suicide will...

... trying; he was playing a game, he was not sincere. Then he started asking others: What to do? I do everything, whatsoever the master says, and nothing happens. Somebody said: It will not happen, it is difficult, it is almost impossible. If you really want it to happen the only way is to die. The man had by this time become such a practitioner of pretensions that he said: I will do it. He went to the...

... DO ANYTHING. NOTHING SEEMS TO MATTER TO ME ANYMORE. LIFE IS SO MUCH EFFORT: THE BODY REQUIRES FOOD AND SUFFERS CONSTANT PHYSICAL DISCOMFORT. THE EGO WANTS ATTENTION, THE MIND CONTINUES ITS CONSTANT MOVEMENT. I OFTEN THINK ABOUT HOW NICE IT WOULD BE TO DIE. IS COMMITTING SUICIDE JUST AN ESCAPE FROM LIFE? IS THERE ANY REASON WHY ONE SHOULD NOT COMMIT SUICIDE? Many things have to be understood. The...

... problem is very delicate. First, if you no longer have the desire to do anything, how will you desire suicide? It is a desire. How can you commit suicide without desiring it? In fact it is the utmost in desire. NOTHING SEEMS TO MATTER TO ME ANY MORE. If nothing seems to matter anymore suicide also cannot mean anything. How will you choose? How will you choose between life and death? It will be an escape...

..., an escape from life; and somebody who is escaping from life is also escaping from death. That's why I say it is very delicate. If you are fed up with life, if you are really tired of life, if you don't desire anything, you are bored, then your suicide will have a negative quality to it. It will be just boredom, a 'fed-upness,' it will not be a real suicide. It will be negative, it will be futile...

... and you will be thrown back into life again because life is a discipline, you are here to learn something. If you are ecstatic, if you are celebrating life and you are so fulfilled that dancing you move into death, then it is no longer suicide, it is SAMADHI, it is NIRVANA. Buddha also moved into death, but he was not tired of life, he was fulfilled. Try to understand the difference. There is only...

... back. It should be absolutely positive. Another condition is that one should not take poison or jump from a hill or into the river or into the ocean. No, that can be done in a single moment. One should fast, fast unto death - it takes seventy, eighty, ninety, sometimes a hundred days. Millions of times there will be a possibility for you to think again and again and again. If you have remained a...

... have not lived this and that. Live it! Who knows? You may not come back to life again. If you are not really fulfilled you will come back. To remain with the conclusion for a hundred days and to move towards death happily, you need absolutely no mind. To commit suicide in a single moment won't do because in a single moment you can be deluded, you can be in an illusion. If you take poison, it can be...

... dark shadow, a gloominess around your face, around your being. You will move in life shrouded in death. That will not be good. I can allow you and I can admit you to total suicide: that's what I am all about, that's what I am doing here - preaching total suicide. Total means no coming back, and that is possible only through deep meditation. A point comes when all desires really disappear. You say: I...

... everything has become a bondage, there is the hope that you can commit suicide, that is your freedom. Man is free to commit suicide. No other animal can commit suicide, no other animal is so free You are not free to be born but you are free to die. In India there is a higher stage - the stage of DEVAS. DEVAS are not parallel to angels in Christianity, no, angels belong to fairy tales. DEVAS are in a higher...

... stage of consciousness. Animals are absolutely in bondage, they cannot commit suicide; man is a little freer - he is not free to be born, he is not free to come into life, but he is free to go out of it; DEVAS are free both ways - free to be born, free to die. Animals exist with both ways closed, man exists with only one way open, and DEVAS are in a higher state of consciousness where both the ways...

.... Then you can come out of the dream; then suicide will not be suicide, it will be SAMADHI. Then you don't commit only the body to death, you commit your mind to death as well. You become mindless. Then there is nothing to come back. I NO LONGER HAVE THE DESIRE TO DO ANYTHING. NOTHING SEEMS TO MATTER TO ME ANYMORE. LIFE IS SO MUCH EFFORT. It is, but it is good because through effort you grow, you...

... become mature. If life is not any effort how will you mature, how will you grow? You will be just a lump of earth, dead. Life gives you shape, tone; life gives you sharpness. In fact everything is as it should be: the struggle is needed to make you more alive. If the struggle is not there you will be dead before death; that's why it happens that you will always see that the faces of people who have...

... body? You will remain an idiot, because the opposites will disappear - and the opposites give you the opportunity to grow. Pain and pleasure, comfort and discomfort, frustration and fulfillment - they give you the opportunity to grow. Don't try to escape. THE EGO WANTS ATTENTION, THE MIND CONTINUES ITS CONSTANT MOVEMENT. Then let the ego die. Why are you going to die? You cling to the ego - you are...

... ABOUT HOW NICE IT WILL BE TO DIE. Nice! Then your desire is there. In fact, you want a nice life - 'nice' means a life of vegetation, doing nothing and getting everything, receiving everything without making any effort. How ungrateful you are. You have received so much without doing anything for it, but gratitude never arises; rather on the contrary the idea of suicide arises. Suicide is the greatest...

... learned at least one thing - that is patience. So I'm not for Mahavir. Those people who are trying to commit suicide lack at least patience. They will have to be thrown back to life because that is one of the very greatest points to be learned - patience, awaiting. They lack that quality, otherwise what is the hurry? If you become enlightened at the age of forty and you will die at the age of seventy...

..., can't you wait for thirty years? What type of enlightenment is it if you can't wait for it? This is a tense state of affairs, you seem to be very anxiety-ridden. You don't seem to be really happy and flowering. A man of enlightened consciousness accepts life, accepts death. When it comes he does not ask death to wait one minute more; when it does not come he does not invite her to come a single minute...

... before. What is the point? Whether death comes today or tomorrow, it is the same to him. This patience is the final flowering. And I think that Mahavir's attitude may be courageous but it is wrong. Courage is not always right. Just courage, in itself, is not right. No, more things are implied and have to be understood. IS COMMITTING SUICIDE JUST AN ESCAPE FROM LIFE? Yes. IS THERE ANY REASON WHY ONE...

... SHOULD NOT COMMIT SUICIDE? There is no reason, but there is also no reason why one SHOULD commit suicide. Life is irrational. There is no reason to live, there is no reason to die. Life is not a cause-effect phenomenon, it is a mystery. There is no reason to live and to continue to live but that is not reason enough to die. There is no reason to commit suicide. So what to do? Float. You have no reason...

... either way, so don't choose, remain choiceless. If you choose you will be thrown back again and again into the whole wheel of life and death. If you remain choiceless you will simply disappear from the wheel into the cosmos. That is the real suicide. That is the real phenomenon. Then you cannot be forced back into the material life, into the body. Then you live a bodiless existence. That's what MOKSHA...

... moral. The sixth question: Question 6: I HAVE A QUESTION - BUT I CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHAT IT IS. I have the answer also but unless you figure it out I will not figure it out. Right? The seventh question: Question 7: WE COME OUT OF NOTHINGNESS AND GO BACK INTO IT. THE SOUL REMAINS AROUND THE BODY IF THE BODY IS BURIED AFTER DEATH, AND IT LEAVES THE BODY IMMEDIATELY IF THE BODY IS BURNT. HOW IS THE SOUL...

... else? Then you have been missing the tea that I am offering to you. The tea is a symbol of awareness, because it doesn't allow you to sleep. That's all I am offering to you. You come to me and I say to you: Have a cup of tea. That is the whole meaning of whatsoever I have been telling you - a cup of tea. And the last question: Question 10: WHEN YOU DIE WILL YOU INVITE US TO COME WITH YOU? I WOULD NOT...

... LIKE TO BE LEFT BEHIND WHEN YOU GO. Why should we wait for my death to come? I give you a standing invitation, I give it to you right now! Remember that if you are with me this moment you will be with me forever. Why postpone it to the time of my death? If you postpone it today tomorrow will be my death, and again you will postpone it. So the thing to remember is that if you want to be with me be...

... here and now don't bother about death and tomorrow - that is not the point. It is all irrelevant. Be here with me, you have received the invitation. You can then be with me forever. That is not the point to be discussed at all. If you are here with me this moment, you will be with me forever because this moment contains eternity. There is no other moment except this. There is no other time than the...

... there is another morbidity. You can move to the other extreme and you can become obsessed with death. You can constantly tremble and you can lie awake at night, because who knows? - you may not get up in the morning. You cannot eat well, because how can you eat when death is coming? You cannot love, because how can you love anybody when everybody is going to die? That, too, is morbid; that, too, is...

... to be celebrated even more deeply, because who knows? - the next moment we may not be here. While the bridegroom is here, celebrate it. The parable of the bridegroom can have a very inner meaning. Within you, your body is the body of death and your consciousness is life, the source of life. You are both. Your body is going to die: it belongs to the earth - dust unto dust. It will have to go, it...

... happens. Only in freedom is there consciousness, only in freedom is there God. God is total freedom. If you live moment to moment, not knowing where you are going, not knowing from where you are coming - if the past is irrelevant and the future also, if only the present has any relevance, any reality - you go beyond being Jewish. Everybody is born a Jew. Rarely, very rarely, does somebody die not a Jew...

... bondage, to remain secure in the imprisonment, to remain comfortable - and live somehow, dragging life as a burden; and die somehow. The greater masses will not listen, will not understand, will not try to transform themselves. Religion is individual. And religion has no name. Whenever somebody becomes religious, immediately he is no longer a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. He's simply religious. It...

... would weep and cry and sob, and tears would flow down. Tolstoy used to think: "What deep compassion she has!" But by and by, later on, he became aware that she had no compassion at all. This was a substitute. When they would come out of the theater the driver, sitting with the buggy and waiting for them, would be dead - frozen to death. He could not leave the buggy, he had to be there - any...

... death, because any moment it is possible. That is the meaning of'to carry the cross every day' - that you should not forget death. Once you forget death you relapse into unconsciousness. If you remember death you remain alert, awake. But when we say'remember death', we don't mean that you should become oppressed by the idea, obsessed by the idea. We don't mean that you should create a deep fear about...

... death and tremble continuously. That will be morbidity, that will be perversion. In relationship to death, there are two types of perverted people. One: those who have completely forgotten, or try to forget, that death is. They try to avoid it. They would not even like to talk about death. If you start talking with them about death they will think that you are uncivilized. unmannerly. They will avoid...

... the very topic. They will not go to the cemetery. That's why cemeteries are built outside of the town. Nobody comes across them accidentally. Only when one has to come to the cemetery does one come. Otherwise it can be avoided. Death is a taboo subject, more tabooed than sex. Nobody talks about it... and everybody knows it is coming. Humanity lives in a great deception. This is one morbidity. Then...

... perversion. Jesus says, "Carry your cross every day." He says to remember death... and still let every moment be a celebration of life. Death is coming: that is all the more deep a reason to celebrate. Because who knows? - this may be the last moment. This moment of life is not to be destroyed by the fear of death, but AGAINST death, in contrast to death, this moment has to be celebrated. It has...

... will return to its source. You belong to the sky, you belong to God - your consciousness is separate from your body. This is the meaning of Jesus on the cross. Everybody is on the cross because consciousness lives in the body and the body is death. If you understand, you know that everybody is on the cross. But that should not become a pessimism. On the contrary, that should be all the more reason to...

... celebrate. The bridegroom is within you and the body is the chamber of the bridegroom. Celebrate it! Jesus is not contradictory; Jesus is absolutely simple. The contradiction is in life itself: that life exists through death and death exists through life. Life itself is the paradox. But that is the beauty also. All beauty exists in contrast and all of life exists as a tension between opposites. It is a...

... bridge built on two banks: death and life. Celebrate every moment because this may be the last moment. But while celebrating, don't forget that death is coming. Remember it. Remembering should not become an obsession; remembrance should become a celebration. Carry the cross but carry it dancing; carry the cross but carry it singing; carry the cross but carry it with a deep celebration within. Then you...

... live both: you live life, you live death. And you live both of them deeply and intensely. When you can live both intensely, they become one. Then you know that life and death are two aspects of the same thing, of the same energy. Life is expression, manifestation. Death is a returning. Question 5: WOULD YOU DEFINE AND DISCUSS THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS? HOW DOES CONSCIOUSNESS RELATE TO EGO? IS...

... is both the dark night and the bright day, both summer and winter, both life and death. God is the beginning and the end, both. God is beyond duality and the duality is intrinsic in him. He is both matter and mind; the manifest and the unmanifest. Consciousness is just a part of the great oceanic unconsciousness. Consciousness is just on the surface; deeply hidden are layers and layers of...

..., NOT DOWN; JUST VERY SIMPLE AND SOBER. BELOVED MASTER, WAS THIS AN ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH? Rafia, there is no way to encounter death, just because death is a fiction. You can think about it, you can be afraid about it; but you cannot encounter it. Nobody ever dies -- people are simply changing houses. What you have experienced was first the fear that: after I die, how are you going to live without me...

.... Millions of people have died -- every day people go on dying -- and life continues with all its songs, with all its discos, with all its music. People go on dying, but if you think before... it is the thinking that makes it difficult. Death itself is a wound that time heals very quickly. But I will not even leave that wound in you. Before I die, I will make you able to see that there is no death. What is...

... the purpose of all your meditations? It is a deep search to know that life is eternal, and death as such is only an observation of the outsiders. You have always seen other people die: have you ever seen yourself die? But what do you know when other people die? Only one thing -- that they don't breathe, they don't talk; that their blood circulation stops, that their hearts have no more beats. I was...

... time I'm really going to die." He has been asked by doctors what his secret is, and he says his secret is very simple: going deep into meditation, he realized that as you go deeper, your breathing becomes slower. When you are deepest in meditation, your breathing stops. And it is simply a knack.... Once he learned that stopping the breathing is not death, he allowed even the heart to stop -- he...

... from the cradle to the grave, but we can make each moment a tremendous rejoicing -- a song, a dance, a celebration. The old man that has existed up to now is on his death bed. He has suffered much; he needs all our compassion. He has been conditioned to live in misery, in suffering, in self- torture. He was given promises: promissory notes for great rewards after death -- the more he suffers, the...

... to be befooled by the tomorrow, and the promises for tomorrow. The new man contains the whole future of humanity. The old man is bound to die. He has prepared his own grave -- he is digging it every moment, deeper and deeper. What do you think Ronald Reagan is doing? -- digging a grave for humanity as deep as possible. These people seem to be afraid even of dead people -- that if the grave is not...

... deep enough, they may come back; they may come back alive. Nuclear weapons and all destructive measures are a preparation for a global suicide. The old man has decided to die. It is up to the intelligent people in the world to disconnect from the old man before he destroys you too... to disconnect yourself from old traditions, old religions, old nations, old ideologies. For the first time, the old is...

... continuous phenomenon, not a refinement. The new man is the declaration of the death of the old, and the birth of an absolutely fresh man -- unconditioned, without any nation, without any religion, without any discriminations of men and women, of black and white, of East and West, or North and South. The new man is a manifesto of one humanity. It is the greatest revolution the world has ever seen. You have...

... increase the joys of life, the pleasures of life -- more flowers, more beauty, more humanity, more compassion. And we have the capacity and the potential to make this planet a paradise, and to make this moment the greatest ecstasy of your life. Let the old die. Let the old be led by people like Ronald Reagan. Let the blind people follow the blind. But those who have a younger spirit -- and when I say...

... greatest revolution that has ever happened in the world. And there is no way to avoid it because the old man is determined to die, determined, committed to commit suicide. Let him die peacefully. Those who have a rebellious spirit should just disconnect themselves, and they will be the saviors, they will create a Noah's ark, they will be the beginning of a new world. And because we have known the old...

... according to some ideals and values, but just as he is. The new man is going to be the very salt of the earth. Question 2: BELOVED OSHO, LAST NIGHT, AFTER YOU HAD LEFT DISCOURSE, AND I WAS BOWING DOWN, A FEELING CAME OVER ME SO STRONGLY THAT I COULDN'T IMAGINE LIVING AFTER YOU DIE. I FELT THAT WITHOUT YOUR CONSTANT SHOWERING, I WOULD BE LOST IN DARKNESS FOREVER. LATER, SITTING IN MY ROOM, I FELT A...

...? Don't be worried about it. First, if I see that you cannot live without me, I can postpone dying -- unless you come with folded hands, and you say, "Now, it is too much -- I cannot tolerate You any more." Secondly, before meeting me you have lived without me. If I die, it will be a shock -- for a few days, you will feel in a dramatic mood of sadness, and then life will take you over again...

... just relaxed. And from deep down, he was watching the whole show that was going all around: the doctors, and physicians, and the relatives. There was one man, Bhrahma Yogi, from South India -- he did the same experiment in almost every university of the world, particularly the medical colleges. For ten minutes, it was possible for him to pretend to die. And he had certificates from the greatest...

... authorities -- from Oxford, from Cambridge -- that he is dead; the doctors signed certificates for his death. And after ten minutes he would start breathing again, smiling, and he would open his eyes. It was very frightening. He had collected so many certificates -- death certificates from so many authorities -- that he had challenged the whole medical science: "Your idea of death is incorrect. You...

... mean that electricity has died. Life is nothing but bio-electricity -- living electricity -- a higher form, a refined form of the same energy as electricity. I will not leave, Rafia, unless you have experienced that there is no death. I will ask your permission before I leave. You will have to sign your signature that you give me leave, then I can go on a holiday. And once you know that your inner...

... imprisonment. I have done my jail terms -- complete! But one thing important happened that you have not been very conscious about: the moment you allowed the fear -- the darkness surrounding you -- and you relaxed into it, with no resistance, with no fight, with no desire to escape into some activity, slowly, slowly, the fear and the darkness and the death disappeared. You became profoundly silent... a...

..., with a welcome, and it will open doors of great riches and great treasures. But you have not understood the great opportunity because in the end you still ask: "Beloved Master, was this an encounter with death?" You have encountered silence, you have encountered a new quality within you of soberness, quietude -- which is unusual to you. You were not ecstatic, and not down, very centered...

...: neither at this extreme nor that extreme, but exactly in the middle. But you have not understood. It is natural -- when for the first time it happens, it is expected that you will not understand it. But I want you to remember, it was not an encounter with death; it was an encounter with your fear of death, with your fear of being left behind, with your fear of being without a master. Ten years after his...

... her imprisonment. And in the past particularly, she was continuously pregnant because out of ten children, nine children used to die. To have two, three children, a woman had to be continually pregnant the whole time she was capable of reproducing. A pregnant woman becomes even more dependent financially -- the man becomes her caretaker. The man is knowledgeable, the woman knows nothing. She has...