... we will ever die. That is why we are able to live in the midst of death; otherwise, as we are surrounded by death constantly, we would die instantly. Why are we so confident and certain of living? That confidence is due to that something within that goes on telling us that we will not die, regardless of how much we may say, or the occurrence of an actual death may say, that we will die. No person...

... can ever conceive of his own death. He cannot imagine that he will die. However much he may try to imagine that he is dying, he will find himself still there. Even if he imagines himself dead, he will find that he is there seeing, that he is there standing outside of death. We are not able to place ourselves within the jaws of death even in imagination, because while imagining we go on watching from...

... the outside. The one who imagines stands outside, so he will not be able to die. This voice from within is the voice of the sea. It asks us, "Where is death?" Death is unknown; still we are afraid of death. This fear comes from the voice of the body, and there is a confusion between the two. The moment we identify ourselves with the voice of the body, our spirits begin to tremble over the...

.... In this situation, fear of death is meaningless. Death is so imminent that there is no question of survival. On the battlefield, there is some possibility of survival because some die while others survive, and so some fear remains. But on the field of death even that remote possibility is not there. At the moment of death the illusion that "I am the body" suddenly disappears. The fear of...

... would also be wrong. If we know what immortality is, only then does something happen; otherwise not. People surrounded by death only understand immortality to mean that we will not die. But they are wrong. One who knows what immortality is knows that he was never there at all. The difference is very deep and fundamental. A person seeing death thinks that if it is true that the soul is immortal he will...

... not die. His thinking is future-oriented. He is living in the future and is worried about it, so his understanding will be future-oriented. But one who knows what immortality is would say, " I am not there at all; I was never born." He will be past-oriented. Because all scientific knowledge is surrounded by death, science always talks about the future. And since the whole of religion is...

...: N.A. Question 1: YOU SAID THAT IF ONE WERE TALKING ABOUT THE BODY YOU WOULD SAY THAT THE BODY WAS DEATH-ORIENTED AND IF ONE WERE TALKING ABOUT THE SOUL YOU WOULD SAY, "YOU WERE NEVER BORN AT ALL." BUDDHA HAS SAID OF THE SOUL, "IT WAS JUST A BUBBLE WHICH IS NOW NO MORE. I MYSELF AM NOT THERE, SO WHERE WILL I GO?" THEN WHAT IS IT THAT IS IMMORTAL AND WHO IS UNBORN? There is a sea...

... over which waves come and go, but the sea remains the same. The waves are not separate from the sea, but the waves are not the sea. Waves are only forms born on the sea, just appearances which take form and die. A wave that remains a wave forever cannot be called a wave. The word "wave" means it dies as soon as it is born. That from which the wave arises is always there, but that which...

... arises is not. This is a dance of the transitory on the breast of the eternal. The sea is unborn; the wave is taking birth. The sea never dies; the wave always dies. The moment the wave knows that it is the sea, it goes beyond the chain of life and death. But as long as the wave believes that it is a wave it is within the possibility of birth and death. That which is, is unborn and deathless. From...

... where will birth come? Nothing is born out of the void. Where will death happen? Nothing is lost in the void. That which is, is eternal. Time makes no difference to it; time does not affect it. This existence is not within our grasp because our senses can only comprehend form and shape. Our senses cannot comprehend that which is beyond name and form. It is interesting to note that you must have stood...

... and form is born only because of the senses. It is not existence. Whatsoever has a name and form is born and will die and that which is beyond name and form is eternal. Neither is it born, nor will it die. So when Buddha says that he was born as a bubble, he is referring to two aspects of a bubble. What does the bubble contain? If we enter into a bubble, we will find that a very small amount of the...

... existence meanwhile was a rainbow existence. Nothing ever changed in the air or the water; they remain as they are. But meanwhile, a form was born which died. If we look upon ourselves as bubbles, then we also are forms that take birth and die. What is within us was always, but we identify ourselves with the bubble. So if I am looking at you from the point of view of the body, I will say that you are...

... death-oriented and slowly dying. From the moment you were born you began dying, and you have not been doing anything else except dying. The bubble may take seven moments to burst, but you take about seventy years to burst. In the endless flow of time, there is no difference between seven moments and seventy years. All difference is due to our narrow vision. If time is endless with no beginning and no...

... is of no consequence. No sooner is it born when it starts bursting. That is why I described the body as death-oriented. By body I mean that which manifests through birth with a name and form. By soul I mean that which remains even after that name and form are lost. When there was no such name and form, then also it was. By the soul I mean the sea and by the body I mean the wave. It is necessary to...

... understand these things clearly. That which is within us never dies, so inwardly we feel that "I will never die." We see that hundreds of thousands of people are dying but still we are not convinced that we will also die. In our deepest depths there is no echo that "I too will die." People die before our very eyes and still that inner feeling of immortality remains. In deeper moments we...

... are always aware that "I will die." We know that the facts show the fallaciousness of this belief and that outer events indicate that it is not possible that "I will not die." Reason says that if everything else has to die, then you will also die. But some voice within severs all links with reason and goes on saying, "I will not die." That is why we do not believe that...

... fact that the body is bound to die. No matter how much we may try to disprove this or seek the help of science or devise a system of medicine or surround ourselves with eminent physicians and medicines, the body does not for a single moment confirm that "I will live." The body does not have that feeling of deathlessness; it knows that daily it is dying. The body knows that it is a bubble...

... it was; the soul also remains where it was. Only the illusion disappears. Then we know that when the body will die we have not to be afraid, because there is no need to be afraid. The body is bound to die. It is useful to be afraid when there is a possibility of being saved. But in a situation from which there is no possibility of being saved, it is useless to become afraid. When a soldier marches...

... death disappears because there is no escape. Then the fact of the body dying becomes a certainty, a destiny. That is the fate of the body; there is no way of saving it. The moment one realizes that death is the nature of the body, it suddenly becomes apparent that what is beyond the body was never born and so there is no question of its death. Thus, for the soul also, fear vanishes, because there is...

... no reason to be afraid for that which cannot die. The fear arises due to the body and soul becoming identified with each other. It arises because the inner voice says, "I will not die," and the outer voice says, "You will certainly die!" These voices become confused. We are not aware that these two different melodies intermingle, and we listen to them as if they were the...

... melodies of the same instrument. That is the mistake. In our ignorance there is always a fear of death, but we go on living as if there were no death. Every moment the ignorant person lives as if there were no death though he is frightened of it. The one who knows also lives as if there were no death, but he is aware that death can happen at any moment. He lives at two different levels. Life for him has...

... split into two parts: the circumference has become separate from the center; the wave has become separate from the sea; the form has become separate from the formless. However, one cannot run away from death. It is a matter of wonder that a thing does not by itself cease to appear by our knowing that it is an illusion. By our knowing, only the consequent pain ceases. Shankaracharya was always giving...

... continue to appear blue. However, though I will know full well that the soul - the being - is immortal, the knowledge that the body is death-oriented also continues. In spite of my knowing that the existence of the sea is eternal, the play of the waves continues. But now I know that it has appeared so due to the spectacles. The spectacles are the eyes of the senses, and what you see through them is not...

... soul is never thirsty. It is the body that feels thirsty. Now Ananda may think that the body is not there at all, that it is only a name and form, just a bubble, "so how can it become thirsty?" Once you have known that there is no body, then from where does thirst come? Then the next day, when Buddha says, "I am not born at all so I will never die," it creates difficulties for the...

... is daily seen becomes truth for us. That is why I have said that the body is death-oriented and is itself a death. The soul is immortal, not death-oriented. But upon its deathlessness there is the dance of death of the body. We have no difficulty in understanding the sea and the wave because we have not seen any enmity between them. But immortality and death are difficult to understand because we...

... have assumed them to be enemies; that is our belief. When I talk about the sea and the wave, their existences are closely linked, so there does not seem to be any opposition. But immortality and death appear as stark enemies - as opposites. It seems they can never be one. But they are also one. The more closely and deeply you know death, the more you will find that death is nothing more than change...

.... The wave is also a change. The deeper you search into immortality, the more you will find it is nothing more than eternity. The existence of whatsoever appears to be in opposition in this world is based upon its opposite. Our difficulty is that it appears to us as opposite. We maintain a separation between death and immortality - but death cannot survive without the deathless. For death to exist, it...

... has to seek the support of that which is deathless. As long as death is there, it needs the support of that which is immortal. Even for a lie to exist, it can do so only with the support of truth. For a lie to exist, it also has to claim that it is truth. Truth never claims to be truth, but the lie always claims that it is truth. It cannot travel an inch without such a claim. It has to vociferously...

... announce, "Be careful; I am coming. I am truth." It carries many certificates with it to prove why it is truth. Truth needs no certificate; it needs no support from lies. If truth takes their support, it will be in difficulty. If the lie does not take the support of truth, then the lie will be in difficulty. For immortality, the support of death is not necessary, but it is only in relation to...

... the concept of immortality that the occurrence of death is understood. The pure existence has no need for that which is changeable, but what is changing can be understood only in relation to that which is changeless. One thing is certain, that we understand only the changeable - because that is what we are. That is why, whenever we think about immortality, we try to understand it only through that...

... certain light rays, for us they appear to be nothing more than darkness. What we call darkness is just that light which our eyes cannot see. Therefore, any inferences a person standing in darkness makes about light are likely to be wrong, as darkness is only a form, a shade of light. Although death is only a change in the form of immortality, any inferences drawn about immortality from one viewing death...

... become, what will happen tomorrow, what the end is. The search of science is conducted by those who are death-oriented. Religious thinking is done by those for whom death has ceased to have any meaning. It is interesting to note that death is always in the future. Death has nothing to do with the past. Whenever you are thinking about death, the past is of no consequence, of no importance. Death lies in...

... the tomorrow, but the source from where life has come is always in yesterday. From where life is coming, from where the Ganges is flowing, is the source, Gangotri. But where the Ganges will empty itself is the sea. It began in the yesterday and will end in the tomorrow. Thus a person surrounded by death will always draw conclusions that are colored by death. What is factual about a higher plane can...

... intelligent and wise, it is due to a special reason: they know all the planes; we know only one. That is why what they say is more meaningful. And whatsoever we know, they surely know. There is no difficulty in this. They have known death; they have also known misery, anger and violence. Theirs is the experience of all the planes. In Western countries all knowledge is just accumulation on the same plane...

... only touched the periphery, but Einstein has not moved into another plane. When we call Buddha or Mahavira or others of their category knowers, we mean that they have gone beyond the plane of death to where they have known immortality, and what they tell us about this is invaluable. We may understand it this way: if a person who has never drunk any alcohol makes a statement about it, the statement...

... also very interesting to note the method for knowing the time interval between the last death and the current birth. Speaking about myself, how did I come to know that I was not here for seven hundred years? It is very difficult to just figure it out directly. I can only judge or calculate the time by observing those people who took several births during this time interval. Suppose, for example, that...

... for three days. This was her first remembrance about me. This is true. Seven hundred years ago, in my previous life, there was a spiritual practice of twenty- one days, to be done before death. I was to give up my body after a total fast of twenty-one days. There were reasons for this, but I could not complete those twenty-one days. Three days remained. Those three days I had to complete in this...

.... That killing became valuable. At the time of death, those three days were left. After all my strenuous effort for enlightenment during that life, I was able to achieve in this life, after a period of twenty-one years, that which had been possible to achieve during those three days. For each of those three days in that life, I had to spend seven years in this life. That is why I say that from my last...

... whether one more birth will be of some use. Then it is worthwhile taking birth; otherwise the matter is over and it is no use making any more effort. So that killing was valuable and useful. As I have told you, time measurement while in the body is different from the calculation of time in other states of consciousness. At the time of birth, time is moving very slowly. At the time of death, time is...

...Transcendence of Death...

... Osho Gateless Gate: Transcendence of Death Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho Gateless Gate   Next > Transcendence of Death From: Osho Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1971 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Osho - The Gateless Gate Chapter #: 18 Location: ??? Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A...

.... Beloved Kusum, Love. Moment to moment life passes into death. Because it is death. Covered, it appears as life. Uncovered, it is death. Remember this fact always. This is silent meditation. And, when this remembering penetrates even in your dreams you will have a new door opened unto you. Through it in fact, you will be altogether new. And ultimately reborn. . Remembering death gives a new dimension to...

... consciousness. Because to remember death is not natural On the contrary nature has arranged so that one should not be aware of it. Because the moment one transcends death one transcends nature also. And, one cannot transcend death unless one is totally aware of the fact. So be totally aware of death. And it is happening each moment within and without. It is present everywhere. And because it is so obvious one...

... becomes absent to it. Remember and deepen the consciousness. Because as the awareness of death goes deeper one becomes capable of feeling that which is deathless. Really, death is the door - the opening to the deathless. But be conscious of it. Be conscious and transcend. Be conscious and know that which is before birth and after death. And, you are that. 17-4-1971 (To, Mrs. Kusum, C/o. Shree Kapil...

... passing. It is accepted; death is accepted. In fact, not only accepted, but magnified - to create fear in people so that they become religious. If death is magnified, it really scares you. And out of fear you can start going to the temple, to the mosque, to the priest, because death is coming - sooner or later you will have to die. Some arrangements have to be made, arrangements for that long journey...

.... India is not a sex-oriented country. Kissing, hugging, love, the very phenomenon of love, makes you more earthbound, makes you less afraid of death. Lovers are the people who are the least afraid of death. When you are in love you don't care about death. If it comes, it comes. So what? If you are in love, you can die smilingly. With a kiss on your lips you can say goodbye. You loved, you lived; there...

... him. I gave him the book and I said, "Why do you bother to come to the university at all? You can simply send this book, one of us can read it, and others can take notes. Why do you bother in your old age to come to the university again and again? This book will do! You can die in peace. This book is enough. You don't have to live at all - there is no need." Now, this professor is a...

... cabinet. Sunday: Holiday. Monday: See above. And the third: It is an historical fact that Diogenes went all around the known world, lamp in hand, trying to find an honest man. When he got to New Delhi, they stole his lamp. The fifth question: Question 5: BELOVED MASTER, SEX AND DEATH SEEM TO BE THE MAIN ATTRACTIONS FOR ME. WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT THESE POLES TO HELP ME GO BEYOND? Saguna, sex and death...

... are really one energy. Sex is one side of the coin, death the other side. Hence, anybody who is interested in sex is bound to be interested in death - although he would like to avoid it. Anybody who is interested in death is bound to be interested in sex - although he would like to avoid it. Why? - because the popular conception is that sex and death are opposites. They are not. And because of this...

... popular conception there have existed two kinds of cultures in the world: sex-oriented and death-oriented. For example, India has remained for centuries a death-oriented culture. Because it is death-oriented it represses sex. Thinking that sex is against, it represses sex, it avoids sex; it pretends sex does not exist. You can talk about death with no problem, but you cannot talk about sex. Just the...

.... In case something like that happens, they can escape; at least they can turn their backs towards you." In India, kissing is something like a sin, a crime. And in a public place, and that too before a police station! India is a death-oriented culture. You can talk about death; dead bodies of beggars can lie down by the side of the road and nobody will pay any attention. People will go on...

.... Who knows what will be needed? The priests pretend that they know. And all the so-called saints of India will be talking about death. They will bring up the subject of death again and again and again. Their whole business depends on death; if people forget about death, people start forgetting about God, people start forgetting about temples, people start forgetting about saints. So saints cannot...

... leave you alone; they will go on bringing the subject of death in your mind so they can go on keeping you trembling. Your fear is the secret of their trade: if you are afraid, you will remain slaves to them. If you become unafraid, then you will get out of their folds; then you cannot be exploited. Death is not bad for them, it is good. It helps their business. But sex... that is a danger for them...

... really deep into love you will be surprised that you have arrived at death. That's my own experience - I am not propounding a theory, I am simply stating my own existential state, my own experience. I am only stating a fact: if you love deeply you are bound to come to the phenomenon of death. And when you come through love to death, even death is beautiful, because love makes everything beautiful. When...

... you come through love to death, love glorifies death, love beautifies death; even death becomes a blessing. Those who have known love will know death as the ultimate in orgasm. Now there are sex-oriented cultures, for example, America. There, death is taboo; you should not talk about death. If you start talking about death, people will avoid you. You will not be invited to parties anymore. You are...

... not supposed to talk about death; death has not to be mentioned. Death is still one of the unmentionables. That's why even if somebody dies we have euphemisms, words to cover up the fact of death. We say, "He has passed away." We don't say, "He has died." We say, "He has become God's beloved." We don't know about God, we don't know what it means to become God's beloved...

... universal, at the very center of the cosmos! But we have these ways of avoiding death; it has to be somehow avoided. The word itself is taboo. It is because of Sigmund Freud that the taboo against the word 'sex' was removed - the whole credit goes to this man. He is one of the greatest benefactors of humanity. Although he himself was not enlightened, he has done a great service, a pioneer work: he removed...

... one great taboo. Now you can talk about sex without feeling ashamed, without feeling guilty. Another Freud is needed - a Freud who will remove the taboo against death. The West is sex-oriented, the East is death-oriented; hence in the East people are repressive of sex and in the West people are repressive of death. Both are wrong because sex and death are two sides of the same coin. If you repress...

... one, you cannot experience the other in its totality, because to experience the one in its totality is to experience the other too, and both have to be experienced. Life is an opportunity to experience sex and death. If you experience these two and if you can come to your own authentic experience that they both are one, you have transcended. Knowing that both are one is transcendence. Saguna, you...

... ask me, "What can you say about these poles to help me go beyond?" Experience both. But right now death is not there; right now you have to experience love, sex - all the delicacies of love, intricacies of love, complexities of love, all the nuances of love. Right now, go deep into love, Saguna. And then when death comes you will be able to go deep into death too. In fact, while making...

... love, at the highest peak of orgasm a small death happens, because mind disappears, ego disappears, time disappears, as if the clock suddenly stops. You are transported into another world. You are not a body anymore, not a mind anymore, not an ego anymore... you are pure existence. That's the beauty of orgasm. To know orgasm is to experience a little bit of death, a small death. First go deep into...

... love so you can have a few tastes of death. Then death will come one day - then go dancingly into it, because you know it is going to be the greatest orgasm that you have ever known, that it is going to be the deepest of love. And that's how one transcends - knowing that both are one. That very knowing is transcendence. The last question: Question 6: BELOVED MASTER, I WANT TO BECOME A SANNYASIN, BUT...

... things, but two poles of a single, unitary process. We are afraid to die so we say that death is evil. "If God has created the world then there must be life and no death." But if that had been possible, it would have been the most boring existence. If there was only life and more life, and no death, then we would pray to God to give us death, because there is a moment to live and a moment to...

.... How can one know? You can think about it, but that will not be death, that will not be real. One has to die to know death and one has to live to know life. Do not think about death. While life is, live! Know life! And if you know it then you will know death also, because death is pinnacle: the peak of life, the completion of life. So do not ask what death is. It will come, and you will go through it...

..., feel life. Then you will become capable of feeling death when you die. It is as blissful to know death as to know life. It is as blissful to awaken in the morning as it is to go into deep sleep at night. Both are blissful. But you must know them while they are happening; you cannot know them beforehand. And if you ask someone, then what you know is second-hand - not a first hand knowledge, not a felt...

... waves of the same reality. For God, darkness is not evil. But for us it is evil, because our fearful minds have always been afraid of darkness. Nothing is bad. We say that life is good and death is bad, but how can that be? Death is the pinnacle of life, death is the peak of life, death is part and parcel of life. There can be no living process without the dying process. Death and life are not two...

... die. There is a moment to come up, and there is a moment to go down. There is no peak without the abyss, but we want only the peak and not the abyss. That is not possible. These are two aspects of one reality: the evil and the good. So do not impose your own feelings, your own evaluations, on the creative process. Rather, if you want to know the creator, the creative process, go beyond yourself...

... is to determine whether it is good or bad: me or the germs? If I become healthy the germs are bound to die so for those germs my health is an evil and for me the life of the germs is an evil. But to God, the germs and I are the same. So there is no evil for Him, no good for Him. He lives in us. He dies in us. He is the darkness and He is the light. That is why He is the transcendental, the beyond...

... to someone; the basic arrow is from someone. From someone to the all. Question: WHAT IS DEATH, AND WHAT EXISTS AFTER DEATH? If you think about what is, you will pervert i t. If you think about it, then you will impose your own conceptions on it. 'What is' can be revealed only when there is no conception, no thought, no theory in you; when your mind is totally vacant; when your mind has become an...

... communication that is happening right now between us can become a communication of what is. If you are just here - present, doing nothing then something from my eyes, from my hands, from the friends who have gathered here, from the whole situation that exists right here, can become an awakening and you can come into contact with what is. And you ask, "What is death?" One cannot know before dying...

.... But it is possible to go through death and still not know it. We are passing through life and still we have not known it. We are asking, "What is death?" while we are alive. The reverse can also happen: when we are dying we may be asking, "What was life?" A dying person asks what was life and a living person asks what is death! A living person can come to know life. Know it, be...

... one with it. Absorb it, drink it completely - eat it! Then death comes. When yon have known the day, the night comes. When you have known the day's awakening, you will have to know the night's relaxation and sleep. It is there. It is coming, it is hiding somewhere. It will come, but do not ask about it. Know what is here and now. Become a knower, a seer, so that when death comes, you will know it...

... also. A person who knows life, ultimately knows death also. And when he knows both, he knows that life is not against death nor is death against life. When he knows both, he knows that something unknown has come into being and that something unknown has left. Birth has been a door and death, too, has been a door, Something (the existence) has come in, and something has gone out. Nothing begins...

..., nothing ends. There are births beyond birth and there will deaths beyond death. There will be births beyond death and there will be deaths beyond birth. The process is endless, the voyage is eternal. Know what is, do not ask what will be. How can you know it? You can only think about it and create theories. Theories are important, meaningless. Feelings are potent, meaningful, so while you are alive...

... knowledge, not a realized knowledge, not a knowledge that has penetrated your ultimate being, that has come to you through your innermost core. The real knowledge always comes through seeing, through knowing firsthand. First know life; do not ask what death is. Know life, and by knowing life you will come to know death also. What you are transcends both. You are neither life nor death. You have been...

... living, you will be dying - your being transcends both. Do not identify yourself with life. If you identify yourself with life then you will think of death as your enemy. Know life and then you know that you are beyond - unidentified, someone who has come to life. And you will know death too - as a door going back, returning to the source. Life comes, death comes, but the source remains beyond both...

... old man comes to me, very old. And he is always worried about my death. He asks, 'Osho, if you die, what will happen to me?' He is nearabout seventy-five. I am always surprised when he says, 'If you die what is going to happen to me?' Osho is going to die and he is not going to die! There is every possibility he will die before me but about that he never asks. Whenever he comes this is his question...

... bothers? These things happen to others. 'These accidents, yes, they happen, but they never happen to me.' That idea persists . Gurdjieff's parable is not just a parable. All that is wrong happens to somebody else. Even death. You cannot conceive of your own death. And if you cannot conceive of your own death, you cannot become religious. Even to think about it seems impossible - how can I die? How? One...

... garden, then too it will die. The rose bush has to exist on so many insecurities - for the rock there is no problem. But the rose bush changes, that's why it is alive. Animals are less alive, man is more alive - or at least can be. It is his potentiality to be more alive. But then there is more insecurity. No animal is aware of death, hence there is no problem. Only man is aware of death. But if you...

... say 'he has passed away' or 'he has been called by God' or 'he has gone to his heavenly abode'. Tricky people. Just to avoid one single word 'death', to avoid the fact that he has died - because death can hurt you, that you have to die can hurt you - they say, 'He has gone to a heavenly abode. Now it is perfectly okay, let him go. He must be enjoying the company of God.' This is the situation. And...

... close his eyes. They will disappear into deep depth, into the unknown. There is the meeting. The meeting is not of the bodies, the meeting is of the souls. And when a child is conceived it is conceived in deep darkness. And so is death. You will die a private death, nobody will be a witness to it. People will see your body dead but nobody will see you dying. As nobody ever saw you being born, nobody...

... they believed it. It was always some sheep which was to be butchered. They remained aloof, distant. They were not worried. And by and by they were all butchered. 'This is the situation,' Gurdjieff used to say. When somebody dies, has the question occurred to you that it is your death? No, the mind goes on playing the game. The mind says it is always the other that dies, it is never you. Sometimes an...

..., 'Don't leave me. If you die, what will happen to me?' This is how the mind goes on functioning. It is always somebody else who dies. Have you not seen people in their cars rushing with mad speed? Why? There is a deep idea in the mind that accidents happen to others. Even on boards it is written how many accidents are happening every day, how many people died yesterday, yet people go on rushing by. Who...

... goes on keeping oneself separate from all, one goes on believing that one is the exception. Watch out! Whenever you feel that you are the exception, remember, the mind is going to deceive you. The magician of the mind is tricking you. And it has tricked everybody. This is the metaphysical sleep. 'Death is not going to happen to me. And I am already that which I want to be. And everything is good. And...

... start seeking some path of awareness, some path of meditation. Unless by accident they come close to a Master - a Sufi, a Zen, a Hassid - they will get more and more into the mire of sleep. Children are born awake and old people die fast asleep, snoring. If you arr asleep there is no celebration. But why - why is man asleep? What is the root cause of it? It is a way to avoid; sleep is a way to avoid...

... and no thorns, flowers would be meaningless. It is because of darkness that the morning is so beautiful, it is because of death that life has such joy, it is because of illness that health is significant. I am not saying there is nothing to be worried about. There are many things, but there is no need to worry about them. They can be encountered. They can be encountered without any worry, they can...

... be encountered through celebration. There are only two ways to encounter them: one is the way of worry and the other is the way of celebration. The way of worry is the way of the world; the way of celebration is the way of religion. The way of worry creates sleep - there are so many worries, how to get rid of them? You don't know. Not even a single worry can be solved. For example, there is death...

.... How can you solve it? What can you do to solve it? It is there, naked in front of you. You cannot even avoid it, it is happening every moment. We have made every arrangement to avoid it. We make our cemeteries outside the town, we make our graves with beautiful marble and we write beautiful maxims on that marble. We go and put flowers on graves. These are ways to make the shock of death a little...

... less shocking. When a man dies we say that his soul is immortal. This is again a trick. I am not saying that the soul is not immortal - it is - but it is not for you, it is only for those who have awakened. You are simply using it as a consolation. It is a prop to avoid death. We paint the dead man,, we put beautiful clothes on the dead man. In the West now a whole profession exists of how to...

... about it and he would die within twenty-four hours. So he made a will. He said, 'I have just purchased my Cadillac. It was specially ordered, made to order, and I have not even been able to drive it, so do one thing - bury me in my Cadillac.' His will was followed. A big grave was dug and he was put in the Cadillac and with a crane the Cadillac was put in the grave. The whole town had gathered to see...

... this thing. All were there. Two beggars also came and one beggar said to the other, 'Man, this is the way one should live. This is what I call living! This is life, man!' It happens you are so dead in life that sometimes your death can look very, very alive - comparatively. You cannot solve the problem of death. There is no way. Then what is one supposed to do? The easiest way that man has found is...

... to go into a sleep about death - not to look at it, to avoid it. Never look at it face to face, eye to eye. Avoid it. Avoidance has become the way of man. There are problems - ill-health is there, disease is there, cancer is there, tuberculosis is there, and many things. And nobody is ever secure, nobody can ever be - because life exists in insecurity. You may have a big bank balance but the bank...

... don't be worried. It does not matter whether the wipers are working or not because I have left my glasses at home.' When you don't see, you think nothing matters. You create a fog around yourself then you don't see ahead. Death is there, you don't see; insecurity is there, you don't see; your wife is going to leave tomorrow, you don't see; your husband is going to become a poet, you don't see. There...

... are aware of death then it can become a challenge - how to transcend it, how to face it, how to live in the face of death, not avoiding it, accepting it totally, knowing totally that it is there. How to live knowing that death is going to happen? In fact, life will become a great intensity when death is known. You know that tomorrow it is possible that death may come - or maybe the next moment - so...

... you have only one moment at one time in your hand. Don't waste it. And don't live lukewarmly because who knows? - the next moment may never come. This is the only moment that you have got, the next is not certain. It may be, it may not be, you cannot depend on it. You cannot postpone, you cannot sacrifice the present for the uncertain future. If you accept death and if you face death you will start...

... living in the present. Death is not a problem, death will help you to be alive, more alive, intensely alive. You will start living totally because there is no way to have any hope for the future. The future does not exist. If death is known, accepted, then the future disappears. And with the disappearance of the future the only thing that remains in your hands is now. Then you can go deep into this now...

..., herenow. Here is the only space and now is the only time - because death is there. To think of death as a problem is to move in the wrong direction. Then you start avoiding it. When you avoid it you be come asleep. To accept death.... Yes, death is there, it is part of life. It entered you the very day you were born, it entered with birth. Birth and death are two aspects of the same coin. The day you...

... were born you became vulnerable to death. Now there is no way to avoid it. Yes, I know medical science can help man to live for two hundred years or three hundred years, but that doesn't make any difference. Whether you live thirty years or three hundred years does not make any difference. The difference can be made only by one thing - how you live, not how long. If you live sleepily you can sleep...

... contentment. Don't avoid, otherwise you will remain asleep. Don't avoid death, don't avoid problems, don't avoid anxieties - accept them, encounter them, they are part of the game. Just the other day I was reading a passage from Bernard Shannon. He writes an almost Sufi parable: 'A man awakens suddenly in the cabin of a ship, and realises that he has no memory of boarding the vessel, nor knowledge of where...

... downs of the deck-games. These games are governed by certain rules that are termed - logic!' This is what is happening on the earth. The earth is the ship on which one day you suddenly find yourself, not knowing from where you come, not knowing where you are going, seeing people becoming old, afflicted, seeing people die. You start enquiring and nobody is interested in your question. In fact, whenever...

... you ask somebody 'What is death?' he starts feeling restless. He wants to avoid it, he wants to drop the topic. He will think you are a little morbid or something. Why bring up such an ugly subject? Why talk about death? The very word 'death' gives you a shiver in the spine. People don't use the word 'death' when somebody has died, they say he has 'passed away'. Just to avoid the word 'death' they...

... people are deeply involved in their games. Somebody is playing the game of politics - he wants to become the prime minister or the president or somebody. He is completely absorbed in it. In India just a few days ago Morarji Desai became the prime minister. He is eighty-two. He was still interested in being a prime minister, he is not interested in death at all. It is time to think about death, but no...

..., he is not interested in death. He goes on saying that within ten years he will solve all the problems of the country. Within ten years.... How long does he think he is going to live? No, he has not thought about that at all. Nobody does. He is not exceptional. And people are completely absorbed in their games. Somebody is absorbed in his money game - how to have more money, how to grab more money...

.... And somebody is absorbed in holding knowledge. These are all games and these games are invented by man to avoid real problems in life. These games gives you a chance to solve things. You cannot solve anything in real life, nothing can be solved - because real life is a mystery not a problem. Death is a mystery not a problem. You cannot solve it. It is not a crossword puzzle. It is a mystery. It...

... they have wrongly taken mysteries as problems. Insecurity is mystery. Death is mystery. Love is mystery. All is mysterious. And by 'mysterious' I mean it is not logical. It is very illogical. One never knows. Do you know when you fall in love with a woman or a man? Have you any answer why? Can you answer it? It simply happens. It simply happens out of the blue. You come across a strange woman and...

... there. Love cannot be pretended and love cannot be managed. There is no way to manage love; it is bigger than you. It comes from the same source as birth and death. From where they come, love comes. These three things - birth, love and death - come from the unknown. They suddenly enter you like a breeze and they suddenly disappear. You cannot solve these problems but you can transcend them. And the...

... way to transcend is to accept that they are there. And don't think that they are problems, they are mysteries. Once you start feeling that they are mysteries suddenly you are en rapport with life - and there is celebration, there is trust. This is possible only if mind is not allowed to play games. The heart is the centre where love happens, birth happens, death happens. When death happens it is the...

... will ever see you dying. In the death moment you will be again alone. It will happen in your privacy, in the uttermost privacy. Nobody will be there. You cannot invite anybody. You cannot share your death. People will be standing outside, but what they will see will be just the body and the disappearance of something from the body, but they don't know what and where. Life enters invisibly, life...

..., sleeping, getting up again... and the whole circle starts. This is your life. You move in this way - day in, day out, year in, year out. Life in, life out, you go on moving in this way. ALL WE HAVE TO DO AFTER THAT IS TO DIE. Only one thing is left out of the circle, that is death. Sooner or later, that too arrives. This is the whole story. Omar Khayyam in his Rubaiyat says: "Some little talk a...

... witness. Drinking, remain a witness. Merrying, remain a witness. And that witnessing will change everything. That witnessing is the transformation. Only that witnessing will make you aware of who you are. I SHAN'T DIE, I SHAN't GO ANYWHERE, I'LL BE HERE; BUT DON'T ASK ME ANYTHING, I SHAN'T ANSWER. THIS IS IKKYU'S DEATH VERSE. Traditionally in Zen, when a master dies, his disciples ask him for a death...

... verse - the last poetic expression, the last statement, the testament. The last statement about death. Ikkyu says: WE EAT, EXCRETE, SLEEP, AND GET UP; THIS IS OUR WORLD. ALL WE HAVE TO DO AFTER THAT IS TO DIE. Now death is coming, and the disciples have asked him to compose the last verse. And this was his last verse: I SHAN'T DIE, I SHAN't GO ANYWHERE, I'LL BE HERE; BUT DON'T ASK ME ANYTHING, I...

... existence. Ikkyu says: I SHAN'T DIE... Because in the first place I was never born. Birth is an illusion. And I am not going to die either - how can I die? because I was never born. Death is another illusion. I will be here, I have always been here. I am the taste of Tao. I am part of this eternity, I am a wave in this ocean. Sometimes as a wave, and sometimes as a no-wave - but I am here, and I am always...

... accidental that you are born; nothing is accidental. You have caused it, you are responsible for it. People die with different forms in their minds. Those forms become the guiding lines - then they enter into a womb according to those guiding lines. Birth arises. And you will be surprised to know that death is also your idea. People die according to their ideas. In fact, depth psychology suspects that each...

... death is a suicide. And the suspicion is almost true - I say "almost" because I have to leave Buddhas out of it. But about everyone else it is true: your death is your idea. You start becoming tired of life, sooner or later, and you start thinking how to die, how to disappear. It is too much. Enough is enough! Have you not thought many times of committing suicide? Freud stumbled upon the...

... idea; he called it "thanatos" - the death-wish. Everybody has that, deep inside; it decides your death. Even people who die in accidents are people who are prone to accidents, who would like to die in an accident. We go on creating possibilities around ourselves, and when they happen then we are surprised. Just watch your ideas and how they create your life. Somebody thinks that he is such...

... completely. It continuously overhauls itself, renews, rejuvenates, it is a continuum. There is no inner necessity for the body to die. Now physiologists agree about it. And psychologists also are feeling that the reason why people die may be something to do with the mind, not with the body. This is one of the greatest teachings of Buddhism - that birth is mind, death is mind. All ideas. And you are neither...

.... I SHAN'T DIE, I SHAN't GO ANYWHERE, I'LL BE HERE; BUT DON'T ASK ME ANYTHING, I SHAN'T ANSWER. Because it can't be answered. It has to be lived, seen. It has to be tasted. Just go deep inside yourself, watch: are you thinking to die? Then you are creating the seed. In fact, birth creates death. Just a few moments before, I told you about the birth trauma. When a child is born the child thinks this...

.... But if you feel afraid of death and if the birth trauma stirs memories in you, then it will be difficult to be orgasmic in bed. People die in their beds. Ninety-nine percent of people die in their beds. Naturally - that seems to be the natural thing: one day they disappear in bed. And for the whole life they think how to create the womb again. Your houses are a recreation of the womb. The more close...

... a thing comes to the womb, the more comfortable it feels. I SHAN'T DIE, I SHAN'T GO ANYWHERE, I'LL BE HERE; BUT DON'T ASK ME ANYTHING, I SHAN'T ANSWER. Death is false, as false as birth. You are beyond birth and beyond death. You come into birth, you take the form of the birth, and then you move beyond that form in death - but you are formless. But nothing can be said about it. It has to be...

... Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. "WE COME INTO THIS WORLD ALONE, WE DEPART ALONE" - THIS ALSO IS ILLUSION. I WILL TEACH YOU THE WAY NOT TO COME, NOT TO GO! WE EAT, EXCRETE, SLEEP, AND GET UP; THIS IS OUR WORLD. ALL WE HAVE TO DO AFTER THAT IS TO DIE. I SHAN'T DIE, I SHAN'T GO ANYWHERE, I'LL BE HERE; BUT DON'T ASK ME ANYTHING, I SHAN'T ANSWER. WHATSOEVER IT MAY BE, IT IS ALL...

... PART OF THE WORLD OF ILLUSION, DEATH ITSELF NOT BEING A REAL THING. SHOULD YOU WISH TO KNOW THE WAY IN BOTH THIS WORLD, AND THAT OTHER, ASK A MAN OF MERCY AND SINCERITY. A MONK ASKS MASTER PAI-CHANG, "WHO IS THE BUDDHA?" PAI-CHANG ANSWERS, "WHO ARE YOU?" THE PURPOSE OF THE BUDDHAS IS NOT TO INFORM YOU but to transform you. They want to bring a radical change in your consciousness...

... into it. Sannyas means encountering one's aloneness, going into it. Going into it in spite of all the fear. Dying into it. If death happens through it, it is okay, but one is not going to shirk from the truth. If aloneness is truth, then one accepts and goes into it. That's the meaning of sannyas. And one really commits suicide. One disappears. This is the transformation I am talking about. Buddhas...

...: if darkness is false, how can light be true? If pain is false, how can happiness be true? If birth is false, how can death be true? If "I" is false, how can "thou" be true? - or vice versa. They exist as pairs. Love and meditation are a couple, married for ever. And if you observe silently the functioning of your mind, you will see it happening continuously.... You are in love...

... get into one, from one you get into none - no-one. That is ADVAITA, that is the non- dual; you cannot even call it "one". And that is the source. That is the ocean, we are the waves of it. And seeing that ocean, you know you have never been born and you are not going to die either. Your whole existence was a dream existence. All has disappeared. BUDDHA HAS CALLED this tendency to be in...

... projections. WE EAT, EXCRETE, SLEEP, AND GET UP; THIS IS OUR WORLD. ALL WE HAVE TO DO AFTER THAT IS TO DIE. THIS STATEMENT HAS TWO MEANINGS. The first, for the ignorant man: this is your life, your whole life - see what your life consists of. WE EAT, EXCRETE, SLEEP, AND GET UP; THIS IS OUR WORLD. That's what you have been doing. Mind must be utterly stupid, otherwise just to do this - eating, excreting...

... here, and I will be always here. There is no coming, no going. Ikkyu says: I WILL TEACH YOU THE WAY NOT TO COME, NOT TO GO! Birth and death are both your ideas. It is very hard to understand that birth and death are both our ideas. When a man dies, in the last moments when he is dying he projects the birth idea. He starts thinking in the last moments: How to come back? in what form? His whole life's...

... experiences become condensed into one form: a form arises. He has lived in a certain way - he wanted to live in some other way, but could not make it. Now that other form takes possession of his mind: "Next time I would like to be this." And the last idea when one is dying becomes the seed. If you can die without an idea, you will not be born. Your birth is your idea; it creates it. It is not just...

... life, you are constantly manufacturing your life. Psychologists have come to the fact that people have had the idea, for centuries, that life consists of three score and ten years. That's why people live to nearabout seventy; there is no other reason. Because people believe that seventy years is the limit - leave a few freaks who die a little earlier and a little later, but generally people follow...

... the routine, the convention - they die at nearabout seventy. They start preparing, as they reach sixty they are getting ready. They get retirement, they start pulling themselves out of the world; they are getting ready. For ten years they will think, "Now it is coming. Three score and ten years. Now one year has passed: nine left. Two have passed: eight left." They are constantly...

... since they have come in contact with other people they have started dying earlier. Their food remains the same, everything remains the same - their climate, everything, is the same. But just because they have come to know that people die earlier, they must be feeling a little guilty. They have started dying earlier - one has to follow the crowd. Within thirty, forty years they will disappear. They...

... - ninety, ninety-five, ninety-eight, one hundred... One man had died when he was a hundred, and on the stone there was an epitaph saying: "This man died untimely" - and he had lived a hundred years! He said, "This is the place to live." Where people think to die at a hundred is untimely, he chose that place to live. And he lived long - the idea worked. Physiologists say that there...

... seems to be no inner necessity in the physique of man to die. Yes, you will be surprised to know that there is a possibility one day that man can live very very long, almost a physical immortality - because the body goes on renewing itself. There is no need really for it to die, because it is constantly renewing itself. Old cells disappear, new cells arrive; within seven years the body changes itself...

... is a death. Naturally, because he was living so beautifully. He is being thrown out of paradise. Adam is expelled in every child - he was in the Garden of Eden, now he is being expelled. That was LIFE, and this seems to be death. And each child, the whole of his life, wants to get back into the womb of the mother. We create substitute wombs. Our bedrooms are wombs - the closed bedroom with dark...

... small death. That's why you find it so hard to get up in the morning - because getting up in the morning again disturbs your deep unconscious. It is again a birth - the birth trauma is still affecting you. You will be surprised that primitive people DON'T have any trouble getting up early in the morning. By the time the sun rises they are up, no problem at all. And the reason is because they DON'T...

... does not want to get out of it, you have to be pulled out of it. Birth creates death. Each sleep is a small death. That's why many people find it very difficult to make love in bed, because it stirs the idea of death. They become a little afraid. They find it far better to make love in a car or on the beach, but to make love in bed feels a little difficult. For a few people it is really impossible...

..., because the whole idea of the bed conjures up the atmosphere of death. But for a few other people it is only possible to make love in bed - because entering into the body of a woman they think of entering into the womb again. It depends what your thinking is. If you think that entering the body of a woman is entering into the womb again, then you will not find any other place to make love except the bed...

... experienced. WHATSOEVER IT MAY BE, IT IS ALL PART OF THE WORLD OF ILLUSION, DEATH ITSELF NOT BEING A REAL THING. Death is the greatest illusion, next only to birth. You are eternal. Ikkyu used to call his approach towards birth and death "the medicine of unborn undying". He used to say, "This can cure all ills" - because all ills are somewhere in between birth and death. If you can drop...

... the idea of birth and death, then everything is dropped. Then you need not be worried about love and you need not be worried about meditation. Then there is no togetherness and no aloneness. You are one with the whole. How can you be alone? And how can you be together? - because there is nobody other than the whole. The whole is the whole - nothing besides, nothing outside it - so it cannot be...

.... The totality is both: this and that, visible, invisible. The totality is both birth and death, AND neither. The totality means the whole thing is so complex, you cannot make any consistent statement about it. You have to go on contradicting yourself. If you can find a man of contradictions, you may be close to somebody who knows. Truth is that whose contradictory is also true. Look for the sincerity...

... of compassion?" And not only that, he mentions the incident that I mentioned some days before, that one of my friends was going to commit suicide. He mentions that "Listening to that story, I thought you are also very cruel. You didn't persuade the man not to commit suicide; on the contrary, you were ready to take him to the river to jump from the cliff and die. What kind of compassion is...

... - that out of a hundred persons, almost ninety-nine persons die thinking of sex. In fact when death comes, the idea of sex becomes very strong. Because death and sex are opposite each other; they are the polar opposites. Sex is birth and death is the end of the same energy that birth released. So while dying, a person becomes obsessively interested in sex. And that becomes the beginning of another...

... uncertain. Everything else may happen, may not happen, everything else is accidental. Death is absolutely certain. The day you were born, death became certain. With the very birth, only one thing has become absolutely certain - that you will die. Death is certain. You may know it or you may not know it; you may look at it, you may not look at it - but death is certain. Still, even with so much certainty...

... people who cling to the bank are the people who think this life is all. The people who try to understand, penetrate deeply into the life, become aware that this is not the real thing. Then they take a jump into the river which is going somewhere else - towards death. Meditation is an effort to die voluntarily. And in deep meditation one dies. In deep meditation, the so-called life disappears and for...

... the first time you encounter death. That experience of encountering death makes you deathless. Suddenly you transcend death. Suddenly you know - that which is going to die is not you. All that can die, you are not. You are neither your body nor your mind nor your self. You are simply pure space - which is never born and never dies. People talk about death very rarely. Even if they talk about it...

... hide the unpleasantness, one has invented many theories, beliefs, that after death one goes to eternal heaven. Everybody has to somehow convince himself that he will not die. Buddha's teaching is that you have to accept the fact that you will die. Not only that - that all that you think you are, absolutely, in toto, is going to die. Buddha is very stern about it. If you ask Mahavir, he will say that...

... difficult things not to make you avoid them - it is an invitation, it is a challenge. These twenty himalayan peaks are just a challenge for you... a great invitation. Don't remain in the valley. The valley is very secure, convenient, comfortable. You will live comfortably, you will die comfortably. But you will not grow. You will only grow old, but you will not grow. Growth happens only when you are...

... cannot be taken away by anybody, not even by death. Difficult, but possible. It looks impossible. How to be loving without finding a lover? Our whole mind has been conditioned in a wrong way. You can dance without the audience; why can't you love without there being somebody? You can sing without a listener; why can't you love without a lover? Your mind has been conditioned wrongly. You think you can...

... you remember god when you go to sleep?' He said, 'Yes, every night.' And I asked him, 'In the morning?' He said, 'What is the point in the morning? In the night I feel afraid, in the morning everything is okay. What is the need? Why bother?' This childish attitude seems to be the very common attitude. When you are ill, suddenly you start feeling very religious. When death is approaching close by and...

... the last - sannyas, the fourth stage of life. That means after seventy-five years. The last - when everything has happened, when there is nothing else, then... then god. This seems to be very insulting. This is very insulting to god - that you are fit for him only when you are dead. It seems you somehow relate god with death, not with life. God should be in the very center of life. And Buddha says...

..., when you have courage, when you can take risks, when danger has appeal for you, when death has not weakened you, when you are full of zest and life, that is the point - - take the challenge and move into the unknown. The third: IT IS DIFFICULT TO DISREGARD LIFE AND GO TO CERTAIN DEATH. IT IS DIFFICULT TO DISREGARD LIFE AND GO TO CERTAIN DEATH. It is very difficult to disregard life. Life is very...

... birth. To die without thinking about sex is a great experience. Then something of tremendous import has happened to you. If you can die without thinking of sex at all, no lurking shadows of sex in your mind, of lust for life, you are dying as one should die. Only one percent of people die that way. These are the people Buddha calls srotapanna - those who have entered into the stream, those who have...

... become sannyasins, those who have taken a step towards understanding what is real and what is unreal, those who have become discriminative of what is dream and what is true. IT IS DIFFICULT TO DISREGARD LIFE AND GO TO CERTAIN DEATH. Even when death is coming, then too it is difficult to disregard life. Even when death has become certain. In fact, death is the only certainty. Everything else is...

..., one is afraid to go into it; one clings with uncertain life, with dreamlike life. Death seems to be more real than whatsoever you call your life. Buddha says it is difficult to accept death and move into death, and it is difficult to disregard so-called life. But a man of understanding starts disregarding life and regarding death. He respects death more because death is more certain, must be more...

.... What proof have you got that it was real? What is left in your hand? Nothing... emptiness. And you call it life? And only emptiness results out of it? Buddha says, better call it death. Now look into death - maybe there is real life. It is difficult, but a person who becomes interested in death, intrigued by death, the phenomenon of death, becomes a different type of person. He is a srotapanna. The...

..., they talk very reluctantly. Even if they are forced to talk about it, they feel embarrassed - even people who believe that the soul never dies, even people who believe that after death a person goes to the eternal god, to the paradise. In his 'Unpopular Essays', Bertrand Russell has a telling anecdote. "F. W. H. Myers, whom spiritualism had converted to belief in a future life, questioned a...

... body will die, mind will die, but your soul? - no, your soul will remain. Now there is some protection. We can think, 'Okay, the body will die. We would like it not to die, but we can accept. Body is not me.' In India you can find many monks, sadhus, just contemplating: 'I am not the body. I am not the body. I am the soul eternal.' Now, what are they doing? If they really know that they are the soul...

... experience. It will remain just an autosuggestion. They have befooled themselves, they have fallen into a delusion. And then they are saying, 'I am the eternal soul - infinite, satchidananda - true, always true, existential, always existential, blissful, always blissful. They are fighting with death and they are trying to find some place where they can hide against death. Buddha's approach is totally...

... different. He says there is no place to hide. You have to go headlong into it. And Buddha says your body will die, your mind will die, your so-called soul will die - everything, in toto. You are going to die. Nothing is going to remain. This is very very difficult to even conceive. But Buddha says, if you can conceive this, and if you are ready for this, only then you will be able to know that innermost...

... space which is beyond time and space. But remember - you don't know that space at all, so it has nothing to do with you. Whatsoever is your identity is going to die completely and that which is going to remain has nothing to do with you. So Buddha says don't ask about that. Because you are such rationalizing animals, such tricky fellows, that if Buddha says, 'Yes, there is an inner space which will...

... about it. It had not entered in his being; it had bloomed into his own being - it was his own flower. When something blooms into you, it is yours; it is for you to keep or to share. Buddha is continuously tempted. A thousand times, I think almost every day, people are coming to him and asking him, 'Yes, we can understand that the soul will die, the body will die, the mind will die - but the soul? the...

... self? the atman?' And Buddha goes on saying flatly, 'Everything will die. Everything that you know your identity is, will die. You will die completely and that which will be saved, you don't know anything about.' When you disappear, then you will know that which remains. That has nothing to do with you. That existed before you existed. That exists just now, just parallel to you. You never meet with...

... it. You are two parallel lines; you never meet. You are hiding it. When you are not, it is revealed. Buddha says, go into death as deeply as possible. And that is possible only if you start disregarding your so-called life. To disregard it means to know it - it is a dream. The swain and his girl had just encountered a bulldog that looked mean and hungry. 'Why, Percy,' she exclaimed as he started a...

... strategic retreat. 'You always swore you would face death for me.' 'I would,' he flung back, 'but that damned dog ain't dead yet!' People say they can face death, but when it comes to facing death, suddenly their whole courage disappears. People say that they can surrender their life very easily. It is not so easy. Lust for life is very deep. You have watered it for many lives; its roots have gone deep...

... a Buddha, you have to pass through a few experiences that life is illusory, that death is certain. Unless your illusion about life is shattered completely, you will not listen to a Buddha. He is irrelevant, he does not exist for you. Buddha exists for you only if you have become alert that this life is fleeting, slipping by; that this life is just a shadow, not a reality... a reflection in the...

... something. Out of the immaterial, matter has arisen. Out of no-being, being has gathered. It is difficult to know it, first, because who wants to know that one is not? Who desires to disappear? Who longs for total ultimate death? It is difficult first to know it and then it is even more difficult to practise it - because when you are nobody, nothing is left to practise. To walk like a Buddha is really the...

... die joyfully because he knows there is no death; the death was in his clinging with life. You say, Sagar, I FEEL A STRONG CONNECTION BETWEEN DEATH AND MEDITATION. There is. In the ancient scriptures of this land, even the master is defined as death because his whole function, his whole work is to teach you meditation. In other words, he is teaching you to die without dying -- to pass through the...

... might die because of the pain. Surgery needs you to be unconscious. Perhaps the science of surgery has learned the art of anesthesia from the experience of death, because death is the greatest surgery. It separates you from your body, from your heart, and you have remained identified with all this for seventy years, eighty years. They have become almost your real self. The separation is going to be...

... Audio Available: Yes Video Available: Yes Length: 104 mins Question 1: BELOVED OSHO, I FEEL A STRONG CONNECTION BETWEEN DEATH AND MEDITATION, A FASCINATION AND A FEAR. WHEN I SIT WITH YOU, IT IS SOMEHOW SAFE TO CLOSE MY EYES AND MEDITATE; WHEN I AM ALONE, IT IS FRIGHTENING. PLEASE COMMENT. Dhyan Sagar, there is not only a strong connection between meditation and death, but they are almost the same...

... thing -- just two ways of looking at the same experience. Death separates you from your body, from your mind, from all that is not you. But it separates you against your will. You are resisting, you don't want to be separated; you are not willing, you are not in a state of let-go. Meditation also separates all that is not you from your being and reality -- but the resistance is not there; that is the...

... only difference. Instead of resistance, there is a tremendous willingness, a longing, a passionate welcome. You want it; you desire it from the very depth of your heart. The experience is the same -- the separation between the false and the real -- but because of your resistance in death, you become unconscious, you fall into a coma. You cling too much in death; you don't allow it to happen, you...

... close all the doors, all the windows. Your lust for life is at the optimum. The very idea of dying frightens you from the very roots. But death is a natural phenomenon and absolutely necessary too -- it has to happen. If the leaves don't become yellow and don't fall, the new leaves, the fresh and young will not come. If one goes on living in the old body, he will not be moving into a better house...

..., fresher, newer, with more possibilities of a new beginning. Perhaps he may not take the same route as he has taken in his past life, getting in a desert. He may move into a new sky of consciousness. Each death is an end and a beginning. Don't pay too much attention to the end. It is an end to an old, rotten, miserable life style, and it is a great opportunity to begin a new life, not to commit the old...

... mistakes. It is a beginning of an adventure. But because you cling to life and you don't want to leave it -- and it has to happen by the very nature of things -- you fall unconscious. Almost everyone, except those few people who have become enlightened, dies unconsciously; hence they don't know what death is, they don't know its new beginning, the new dawn. Meditation is your own exploration. You are...

... searching to know exactly what constitutes you: what is false in you and what is real in you. It is a tremendous journey from the false to the real, from the mortal to the immortal, from darkness to light. But when you come to the point of seeing the separation from the mind and the body, and yourself just as a witness, the experience of death is the same. You are not dying... a man who has meditated will...

... experience of death, surprised that you are still alive; death was like a cloud that has passed; it has not even scratched you. Hence the fascination, and the fear. The fascination is to know the mysterious experience everybody has to pass through, has passed through many times, but became unconscious. And the fear -- that perhaps death is only the end and not another beginning. It happened, just in the...

... witness, as if it is happening to somebody else." The moment was very critical; the operation had to be done immediately. If it was not done immediately, it might cause death. There were only two alternatives: either to operate and allow the patient to remain conscious, or not to operate, but follow the old routine of science. But in that case, death was certain. In the first case, there was a...

... is going wrong. Nothing goes right without meditation; your whole life is going wrong. You live only in hope, but your hopes are never fulfilled. Your life is a long, long tragedy. And the reason is your unawareness, your unmeditativeness. Meditation looks like death, and the experience is exactly the same. But the attitude and the approach is different, and the difference is so vast that it can be...

... said that meditation is life and death is just a dream. But this is the function of a mystery school, where many people are meditating, where a master is present. You feel safe, you are not alone. If something goes wrong, help will be available immediately. But nothing goes wrong. So meditate while you are sitting with me, and meditate in your aloneness. Meditation is the only thing with an absolute...

... profound blessings to you. Not that you deserve them, but because life gives them out of its abundance -- it is burdened, it shares with whomsoever is receptive to it. But don't get the idea that meditation is death-like, because death has no good associations in your mind. That will prevent you experiencing consciousness -- "It is death-like." In fact, it is a real death. The ordinary death is...

... not a real death, because you will be again joined with another structure, another body. The meditator dies in a great way; he never again becomes imprisoned in a body. An Italian missed a day at work and the foreman wanted an explanation. "Where have you been?" he asked. "It was-a my wife. She give-a birth to a wheelbarrow." "If you can't do any better than that," said...

... it was-a something with-a wheels-a on it." There are misunderstandings piled upon misunderstandings in you. Some misunderstandings can be tremendously harmful. Getting the association of meditation and death identified in your mind is one of the greatest harms that you can do to yourself. Although you are not wrong, your associations with the meaning of death are such that they will prevent...

... you from getting into meditation. That is one of the reasons I want to make death more and more associated with celebration rather than with mourning, more and more associated with a change, a new beginning, rather than just a full stop, an end. I want to change the association. That will clear the way for meditativeness. And if you are feeling, here with me, silent and meditative -- still alive...

... point it looked very dangerous. A great river was flowing by, thousands of feet down -- and just a small road. He stopped the car, went out, and sat there. And he said, "I cannot move anymore, it is simply going into death." I said, "Don't be worried, you just sit; I will drive." He said, "That is even more dangerous! I cannot give you the key." I said, "This is very...

... shocked that the real richness is not of the outside world, the real richness is of the inside. Ginsberg is dying. "Call the priest," he says to his wife, "and tell him I want to be converted into the catholic religion." "But Max, you are an orthodox Jew all your life. What are you talking about? You want to be converted?" Ginsberg says, "Better one of them should die...

... the core, in the very being, in the center? You don't know. No one has witnessed death. And no one can, because there is only one way to witness it: if you move to your own innermost core and witness it there. But death never happens there. That is why a Buddha laughs at death, a Krishna laughs. Krishna says to Arjuna in the Gita, "Don't be afraid. Don't think that anyone is going to die."...

... will desire life, but you will go on missing it. Allow life to happen to you. How can that be done? By being attentive here. By not being desirous of being somewhere else. The moment you start desiring life, you become afraid of death. It is bound to be so, because the desire for life creates the fear of death. There is no death. In reality, nothing dies; nothing can. It is impossible. Death never...

... happens; death is not. Then why do we feel death so much, and why are we so afraid of it? Why are we afraid of something that is not? We are afraid of death because of our desire for life. The desire for life creates a counter fear: the fear of death. We don't know life, but we desire life. Then the fear comes in that life is going to be destroyed. We see death happening... someone dies. Have you ever...

... observed the fact that it is always someone else who dies, never you? It is always someone else. You see death from the outside; you have not seen it from the inside. You see someone dying but you don't know what is happening to him in his innermost core. You just know what is happening on the periphery. The periphery has gone dead; it is no longer alive, the man cannot breathe. But what has happened in...

...; No one dies; you cannot kill anyone. It is impossible. In this world, nothing can be destroyed, not even a micro-organism can be destroyed. Destruction is not possible. Only change is possible. Life goes on moving. One wave dies (appears to die) and then arises as another wave. Only forms disappear and new forms appear, but nothing dies and nothing is born. If nothing dies then nothing is born...

..., because death is possible only if something is born. Birth and death are two fallacies. You existed before your birth - otherwise birth would not have been possible - and you will exist after your death - otherwise it would not be possible for you to be here and now. But the desire to cling to life creates the fear of death. If you stop desiring life, the fear of death immediately disappears. And when...

... the fear of death disappears, you can know what life is. A mind that is trembling with fear and anguish cannot know. Knowing needs a very calm, unafraid, fearless consciousness. Desire for life means fear of death. The sutra says KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE so that the fear of death disappears. And when there is no death, and no clinging to life, you will know what life is, because it has already...

... festivity. Look at existence! Every tree is in a festive mood, every bird is in a festive mood. Except man, everything is in a festive mood. The whole existence is a festival, a constant, continuous festival. No sadness, no death, no misery exists anywhere except in the human mind. Something is wrong with the human mind, not with existence. Something is wrong with you, not with the situation. Why is man...

... you cannot escape it! It has come into existence with you. Your death is born with you; now you cannot escape it. You have hidden it in yourself - become aware of it. The moment you become aware that you are going to die, that death is certain, your total mind will start looking in a different dimension. Then food is a basic need for the body, but not for the being, because even if you get food...

... death will occur. Food cannot protect you from death, food can only postpone. Food can help you to postpone. If you get a good shelter, a good house, it will not protect you from death. it will only help you to die conveniently, comfortably. And death, whether it happens comfortably or uncomfortably, is the same. In life you may be poor or rich, but death is the great equalizer. The greatest communism...

... small. You cannot think beyond thirty years. After thirty years there will be death... it is as if you are not going to die. Thirty years is so long, the distance is so much, it is as if death is not going to occur. If you want to contemplate death, know another fact about it: it can occur the next moment; it is possible the very next moment. You may not be able to hear my whole sentence, I may not be...

... could make my kundali. He was dead, and I have been constantly wondering about this. He was aware of the fact that this child may die, but he was not aware of the fact that he may die. He was not aware! It seems that he was absolutely unconcerned - and he was no ordinary man. But no one is concerned with his own death. Knowingly, cunningly, we are not concerned with it because it creates a fear. So I...

... which he will die, he starts loving the mother. That love comes secondly, as a shadow, because the mother is fulfilling a basic need. So those mothers who are feeding their children through bottles should not expect much love because for the child food is the need, not the mother. The mother will come into his being, enter into his being only through food. That is why food and love are deeply related...

... become aware of a deep need which helps you move inward? Three things are to be remembered. Firstly, death. Remember, all life-needs force you to move outward. If you want to move inward, death must become a basic concern; otherwise you cannot move inward. That is why it happened that persons like Buddha, who became deeply conscious of death, started moving inward. Only when you become aware of death...

... will you create the need to look back. Life looks outward. Unless you become aware of death, religion is meaningless for you. That is why animals have no religion. They are alive, they are as much alive as man, or even more, but they cannot be conscious of death, they cannot conceive of death, they cannot see death in the future. They see that others are dying, but it never occurs to the animal mind...

... that this death is an indication of his death also. For the animal mind death always occurs to others. And if for you also death is just something which happens to others, you still live in the animal mind. If you are not aware of death, you have not yet become man. That is the basic difference between animal and man-because animal cannot be aware of death, only man can be. If you are not aware of...

... death you are not a man yet, and only man creates the need to move inward. To me, man means awareness of death. I am not saying become afraid of death; that is not awareness. Just be aware of the fact that death is coming nearer and nearer and you have to be prepared for it. Life has its own needs; death creates its own needs. That is why younger societies are irreligious - because younger societies...

... are not yet aware of the phenomenon of death; it has not become a central concern for them. An older society - for example, India, one of the oldest societies in existence - is so much aware of death. Because of that awareness, deep down India is religious. So the first thing: become aware of death. Think about it, look at it, contemplate it. Do not be afraid, do not escape the fact. It is there and...

... is in death. Howsoever you live, it makes no difference; death happens equally. In life, equality is impossible; in death, inequality is impossible. Become aware of it, contemplate it. And it is not only that death is certain somewhere in the future: with the idea that it is very far away, you will again not be able to contemplate it. The mind has a very small range; the focus of the mind is very...

... it is useless. If the child is going to die in seven years it is useless to make the kundali; it will be of no use. And it has been my habit," the astrologer said, "that unless I am certain that the kundali will be useful I never make it." So he didn't make it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I survived. Then my mother's father went to the astrologer, but he was dead, so he never...

... have always suspected that that astrologer might have never looked at his own kundali; otherwise he would have become aware. Death is possible the very next moment, but the mind will not believe it. I say it and your mind will say, "No! How is it possible the next moment? It is far away." But that is a trick. If you postpone, you cannot contemplate. It must be so near that you can focus on...

... it. And when I say that the next moment it is possible, I mean it. It can happen, and whenever it will happen it will be the next moment. Just before it, you could not have conceived that it was going to happen. A person is dying: just a moment before he could never have thought that death is so near. It always happens in the next moment - remember. It has always happened that way, and this will be...

... renounced everything, not because out of it he was going to get something. He renounced just to see if when he has nothing, whether there is any meaning or not. He thought that if one possesses nothing, if even then one has a meaning, a purpose, a destiny, then death cannot annihilate anything, because death can annihilate only a possessions and the body is also possession. He left everything. He had only...

... help his children become educated and well placed. And he will die, and those children will go on doing the same nonsense. What is the meaning of all this? What are you doing? Just passing time? Just destroying life? Or have you got some authentic meaning which you can say makes you happy, blissful? This is the second consideration which will turn you inward. And thirdly, man goes on forgetting. You...

... words, three key words: Death: make it a constant contemplation. Meaning: go on searching for it in your life. And learn: learn through your life, because there is no other learning. Scriptures won't give you anything. If your own life cannot give you something, nothing can give it to you. Learn through your own life, conclude through it. What have you been doing with yourself? If you are in a wheel...

... mind. What kind of technique is this - SIMPLY BY LOOKING INTO THE BLUE SKY BEYOND CLOUDS, THE SERENITY. One will become serene!" But if you remember: death, meaning, learning, this technique will help you immediately to turn in. LOOKING INTO THE BLUE SKY BEYOND CLOUDS... Just looking, not thinking. The sky is infinite; it ends nowhere. Just look into it. There is no object; that is why the sky...