... becomes objective. You are hidden behind and the object is outside. So if you are a man of mantras you can say to this tree, "Die," and the tree will die; you can say to a man, "Be healthy," and the disease will disappear, or, "Be unhealthy," and the disease will enter -- many things you can do. You can become somebody, and people will recognize you as a man of power but...

... -- fighting. Bankei is saying, "I am not a fighter; I don't fight at all. When I feel hungry I eat, when I feel sleepy I go to sleep; when I am alive I am alive, and when I die I will die. I don't come in the way." And he says,"This is the only miracle we know." But why call it a miracle? Animals are doing it already, trees are doing it already, birds are doing it already; the whole...

..., did everything for that monk; she was just like a mother and a disciple both. And the buddhist monk meditated and meditated and meditated. The day the old woman was going to die she called a prostitute from the town and said, "Go to that monk's hut. Enter the hut, go near him, caress the monk, and just come and tell me how he reacts. This night I am going to die, and I want to be certain...

... fruit means. You simply think that you have been expelled. Where can you be expelled to? The whole nature is the Garden of Eden -- where can you be expelled to? The whole house is God so where can you be expelled to? Bankei said, "I have entered the Garden again." Bankei was going to die. The disciples were very worried and they asked, "What should we do? What should we do with your...

... body? Should we preserve it? Should be burn it, as Hindus do, as Buddhists do? Should we bury it in the ground, as Mohammedans and Christians do? We don't know who you are, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Mohammedan? You have confused us too much we don't know who you are, so what should we do?" Bankei said, "Wait, let me die first. Why are you in such a hurry? The mind always jumps ahead. Why are...

... you in such a hurry? And you call yourselves my disciples? Let me die and do whatsoever you like, because Bankei will not be there. Whether you bury, whether you burn, or whether you preserve, it makes no difference to Bankei; Bankei will not be there. But let me die first then do whatsoever you like. It makes no difference but don't jump ahead. The mind has a tendency to jump ahead, always to jump...

... on your part. By and by, if you use tight clothes you will feel uneasy. Tight clothes belong to a tense mind, loose clothes belong to a relaxed mind. But the inner change is the first thing and everything else is just a consequence. If you reverse the order you will miss then you will become a food addict. One man came to me. He was just lean and thin and pale, and any moment he could die, and he...

... said, "I want to live only on water because everything else is a hindrance to spirituality. Now I want to live on pure water." This man is going to die. There have been a few people who have lived on pure water but that happened to them naturally, it cannot be practised. They were freaks, accidents; their body mechanism and chemistry worked differently. It has happened -- somebody can...

... you to absorb directly, and then fruit will not be needed. In the future -- and I think not very long, fifty years -- science is bound to discover it.It has to be discovered, otherwise humanity is going to die because food will not be possible. And birth control is not helping, nothing is helping; the population goes on growing. Some way has to be found so food can be dropped and direct absorption...

... cannot celebrate it, it cannot become festive; it will be a burdensome affair. So a husband is dead before death, and a wife is dead before death. It is two dead persons taking revenge on each other, because each thinks that one has killed the other. Taking revenge, angry, jealous -- the whole thing becomes so ugly. But in the West a different type of phenomenon is happening which is the same on the...

... utterly thrilled. He is blissful in his death, because his death is not an end but really a new birth. He is moving into a far greater life than there was before it. It is from life to more life. When you die you are moving from life to no life. From the outside it is all the same. From the inside it is not. This story is beautiful: "IN ORDER TO TEST A PHYSICIAN'S KNOWLEDGE, A CERTAIN KING SENT...

... EACH THE DOCTOR GAVE MEDICINE. WHEN THE KING SUMMONED HIM AND CHARGED HIM WITH THIS DECEIT, THE LEECH ANSWERED, 'GREAT KING! I HAD FOR SO LONG SEEN NOBODY BUT THE AILING THAT I HAD BEGUN TO IMAGINE THAT EVERYONE WAS ILL AND MISTOOK THE BRIGHT EYES OF GOOD HEALTH FOR THE SIGNS OF FEVER!' " EXISTENCE IS A DIALECTICS. IT DEPENDS ON POLAR OPPOSITES: man/woman, yin/yang, life/death, daylight. But the...

... enjoy. In fact, he himself never enjoyed - he endured life. He himself was neurotic in many ways. He was very much afraid of death; he had many phobias. He was a very angry person, so much so that when he would get into a rage he would fall on the floor in a swoon. He was SO afraid of death that even a mention of death was enough to make him tremble. And he was so ambitious and so political that he...

... to escape from the master. His presence was not nourishing but poisoning. And this man goes on giving judgments on Buddha and Lao Tzu and Zarathustra and Jesus and Mohammed. And these are the few people who were really healthy. Just think of one thing: if illness exists, that is proof enough that health is also possible - at least possible. If darkness is there, light is possible. And if death is...

... there, life is possible. In fact, how can death be if there is no life? How will you decide that somebody is ill if there is no health? If there is no Buddha in the world, how will you decide who is mad? Then everybody is mad! Maybe DIFFERENT kinds of madness, but everybody is mad. Freud became very skillful about the negative, an expert about illness and disease. Naturally, his experience was such...

... said, "But there is nothing! - what can I do?" "You read nothing...?" A Buddha has no dreams. A Buddha has no thoughts. A Buddha does not exist as an ego, so how can he be afraid? Even of death he is not afraid. There is no question of death. He has already died - died as an ego, and now there is only the immortality, the eternity, the timelessness. For what will Buddha go to...

... ever, there is no pain, no agony, no suffering, no hell. This is the way Ramana Maharshi experienced the sudden opening into ultimate consciousness, in which his individual identity was almost entirely lost. A family relation had died, and young Ramana decided to explore directly the experience of death. His motive stemmed more from curiosity than any feeling of bereavement. Ramana removed all his...

... seventeen and he thought, "What is death? Let me experience it." He threw his clothes, simulated death, fell on the floor. He had seen the relative lying on the floor; so just the same way he fell on the floor, closed his eyes, and started thinking, "I am dying, I am dying, I am dying." And he died! The ego disappeared. And here the ego disappeared and there God appeared - the primal...

... forgotten completely about God. We have started living on our own, as if a tree has forgotten about its roots and has started living in the branches - it is going to die, it will become ill. That's why the whole of humanity is ill. And Freud and company are right about ninety-nine point nine percent of people: people are ill! They are no more connected with the source of life. But that point one percent...

... ACHIEVE BUDDHAHOOD AND NIRVANA AS A RESULT OF THE MERCIFUL VOW. THE BUDDHA-NATURE MEANS NON-BIRTH, NON-EXTINCTION; THEN KNOW THAT ILLUSION IS BIRTH, DEATH, REINCARNATION. THE BUDDHA-NATURE is no birth, no extinction. To know inside yourself that you were never born, so how can you die? - to know this state of eternity is to know Buddha. Buddha has not to be sought in the books of history; you are not to...

... cannot ever die, then birth is illusion, a dream you have fallen into. And death is illusion, a dream again, produced by the first dream - a dream inside a dream. And then reincarnation is also a dream: dreams within dreams. Just a few days ago, somebody asked a question: "What is the point and significance of past lives? Will it help to remember them?" Even THIS life has no significance. And...

.... Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. THE MIND WHICH IS UNATTACHED TO ALL THINGS IN THE WORLD, DOES NOT THINK, DOES NOT FEEL, IS FLUID AND FLEXIBLE. ALL BUDDHAS AND BODHISATTVAS ACHIEVE BUDDHAHOOD AND NIRVANA AS A RESULT OF THE MERCIFUL VOW. THE BUDDHA-NATURE MEANS NON-BIRTH, NON-EXTINCTION; THEN KNOW THAT ILLUSION IS BIRTH, DEATH, REINCARNATION. THOUGH YOU PRACTISE VIRTUE, DO NOT GRIEVE THAT MISFORTUNE...

... ARISES; THE GUILTY KARMA OF THE PREVIOUS WORLD IS VANISHING AWAY. WHEN THEY ARE NOT TWO THINGS, THEY ARE NOT ONE THING, AND THE WIND IN THE INDIAN-INK PICTURE IS COOL INDEED. WHY ARE PEOPLE CALLED BUDDHAS AFTER THEY DIE? BECAUSE THEY DON'T GRUMBLE ANY MORE, BECAUSE THEY DON'T MAKE A NUISANCE OF THEMSELVES ANY MORE. THE MESSAGE OF THE BUDDHA CAN BE CONDENSED INTO ONE WORD. That word is freedom. Freedom...

... Siddhartha as such, it has nothing to do with a person. It is your innermost essence. THE BUDDHA-NATURE MEANS NON-BIRTH, NON-EXTINCTION... If you can come to see something in you which was never born and which is not going to die, you have come across Buddha. This is Buddhahood. YOU are the temple and Buddha resides in you. Go in. It is not a question of going twenty-five centuries back in time. It is a...

... question of GOING IN, RIGHT NOW. This very moment, Buddhahood can be found. It is immediate. It is not a kind of historical research, it is not archaeology. It is just an inner penetration into your own being. THEN KNOW THAT ILLUSION IS BIRTH, DEATH, REINCARNATION. And once you have known - and it is so simple to know it because it is so natural - that one was never born, and if one was never born one...

... the dream to the dreamer. A change of gestalt, looking not at the object but looking into the subject. Then all is a dream. Reincarnations, death, birth, good and bad, your being a king or your being a beggar, your being a murderer or your being a mahatma - all are dreams. But one thing is certain, that for dreams to exist, there needs to be a witness. That witness is the truth. To know that witness...

... or that. AND THE WIND IN THE INDIAN-INK PICTURE IS COOL INDEED. This is a beautiful statement. When all is one - the enemy and the friend, the man who loves you and the man who hates you, richness and poverty, failure and success, respectability or disrespectability; when all is one - youth and old age, birth and death - there will arise a great coolness. That coolness is the quality of a Buddha...

... water. Yes, that's what a Buddha is - for all those who are weary, tired, thirsty. WHY ARE PEOPLE CALLED BUDDHAS AFTER THEY DIE? BECAUSE THEY DON'T GRUMBLE ANY MORE, BECAUSE THEY DON'T MAKE A NUISANCE OF THEMSELVES ANY MORE. A beautiful statement from Ikkyu. THERE ARE A FEW PROBLEMS. A Buddha is accepted by the wider masses only when he is gone. He is accepted only by the chosen few when he is alive...

.... WHY ARE PEOPLE CALLED BUDDHAS AFTER THEY DIE? When a Buddha is alive you cannot call him a Buddha because he looks so like you. The body, the blood, the bones - just like you. He is young, then he becomes old, then he dies - just like you. How can you believe that a man like you can be a Buddha? It offends you. You hate yourself so much, that's why. You condemn yourself so much, that's why. You...

... as you are. He died of food poisoning - just as you would die of food poisoning, just like you. And that is difficult. Why is it difficult? Because you have been taught to condemn yourself, you have been taught that you are not right. If you are not right, then how can a man be a Buddha if he is just like you - feels hunger, feels thirsty, needs water, becomes dirty, has to wash his body, has to...

... take a bath, just like you? Then what is the difference? The difference is in the interiority, not in his exterior. When he is dead, you can also make the enterior according to your imagination, to your heart's content. WHY ARE THE BUDDHAS CALLED BUDDHAS AFTER THEY DIE? Ikkyu jokes. He says: BECAUSE THEY DON'T GRUMBLE ANY MORE. Buddhas are continuously grumbling - in the sense that they are saying...

..., thousands and thousands of books are written. And when they are alive, people either crucify them, poison them, insult them or throw stones at them. Man has never treated a living Buddha with respect. He treats with respect only those who are dead. Man respects death, he does not respect life. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... know something deathless; hence, in India, for time and death we use the same word, KAL - the same word for time and the same word for death. It is not coincidental, it has a significance. Time is death, because in time everything is momentary, everything is going to die. One moment it is, another moment it is gone, and gone forever. The moment you go beyond time, you go beyond death. But just as the...

... WHILE THE FOOL'S MISCHIEF TASTES SWEET, SWEET AS HONEY. BUT IN THE END IT TURNS BITTER. AND HOW BITTERLY HE SUFFERS! There is a famous Buddhist parable. Buddha loved to tell it again and again: A man is being chased by his enemies. They are coming closer and closer; he can hear the sound of the hooves of the horses coming closer and closer every moment. It is death! And there seems to be no way to...

... escape, because he has come to a cul-de-sac, the road ends. He is facing a great abyss. If he jumps he is bound to die. He cannot turn back because the enemy is going to kill him. He was hoping that there may be one chance if he jumps - he may become crippled, but maybe, by a miracle, he may survive - but that too seems to be impossible because he sees deep in the abyss two lions looking up at him...

..., ready to devour him. Finding no other way - cannot go back, cannot go ahead - he hangs from the roots of a tree, just in the middle. It is a cold morning, his hands are becoming frozen. He knows within minutes he will not be able to hold the roots at all; his hands are slipping, he is losing his grip. He knows death is becoming more certain every moment. And then he sees that two mice, one black, one...

... white, are eating the root, cutting the root. Those two mice represent day and night - they represent time, which is cutting everybody's life root. Day and night, death is coming closer. So now it becomes even more absolutely certain that it is only a question of moments and he will be gone. The root is becoming weaker every moment, thinner every moment. The mice are at work; his hands are getting...

... - in a moment, he completely forgets everything. His whole mind becomes focused on that drop of honey. He opens his mouth, the honey drops on his tongue...and it is so sweet. This the situation of the fool. This is the situation of every man on the earth. How sweet it tastes! But how long can this taste remain? Soon death will be arriving from all directions. But that's how we go on living - living...

... for momentary pleasures, indulgence, food, sex, money, power, prestige...just drops of honey. How sweet it tastes, and in that moment we completely forget what is going to happen. The moment takes possession of us and we become oblivious of the reality of life: that it is rooted in death, that it is going to disappear. Buddha says: FOR A WHILE THE FOOL'S MISCHIEF TASTES SWEET, SWEET AS HONEY. BUT IN...

... rubbish, that life is slipping out of your hands, that it is a very costly affair that you are pursuing, utterly foolish, stupid. The life cannot be bought back; not even a single moment, with all your wealth, can you purchase back. It cannot be claimed back. Such precious time being wasted! You are piling up wealth which will be taken away by death, and you will go empty-handed...as empty-handed as you...

... had come to the earth. Then you will feel the bitterness of it, that you wasted your whole life for something which is not going to be with you. You wasted your whole life in power, politics; you wasted your whole life in becoming respectable, and now death has come and all will be taken away. And you have not tasted a single moment of your eternal reality - you have not tasted anything deathless...

..., destroying his body. He came to a point when he was almost on the verge of death - he had tortured himself too much. In that moment he became aware, "What am I doing? First I was indulging, my whole day and night was devoted to indulgence: women, wine, good food, clothes, palaces, golden chariots, hunting.... That was my life, the life of a prince. I was doing something which proved futile." He...

... death moving; if you want to stop it, then the other, the way of the intelligent person, the way of the wise...be a light unto yourself. LOOK NOT FOR RECOGNITION BUT FOLLOW THE AWAKENED AND SET YOURSELF FREE. Don't be bothered, don't desire recognition. If millions of fools recognize you, what does it matter? Millions of fools recognizing you simply proves that you are a greater fool than them...

... says: FOR CONSIDER THE WORLD.... What world? Does he mean the rocks and the mountains and the rivers and the stars? No, not at all. He means the world that you have been creating in your mind - your mind world is a bubble, a mirage. SEE THE WORLD AS IT IS, AND DEATH SHALL OVERLOOK YOU. If you can see the truth as it is, without your mind coming in between, you will not die; death will be impotent in...

.... Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. DO NOT LIVE IN THE WORLD IN DISTRACTION AND FALSE DREAMS, OUTSIDE THE LAW. ARISE AND WATCH. FOLLOW THE WAY JOYFULLY THROUGH THIS WORLD AND BEYOND. FOLLOW THE WAY OF VIRTUE. FOLLOW THE WAY JOYFULLY THROUGH THIS WORLD AND ON BEYOND! FOR CONSIDER THE WORLD - A BUBBLE, A MIRAGE. SEE THE WORLD AS IT IS, AND DEATH SHALL OVERLOOK YOU. COME, CONSIDER THE WORLD, A PAINTED...

... anything. Remember, one of the fundamentals of life is: that which depends on outside causes will be taken away from you sooner or later. At least one thing is absolutely certain: you will not be able to carry it with you into death. But that which is independent of outside causes, that which is caused in the innermost core of your being, in your own interiority, nobody can take it away. You cannot be...

... robbed of it, it cannot be stolen - even death cannot destroy it. The body will be destroyed, but not the song. The body will be gone, but not the dance. The dance, the song, the joy, will move into the universal song, into the universal joy, into the universal ocean of consciousness, of truth, of godliness. FOLLOW THE WAY OF VIRTUE. FOLLOW THE WAY JOYFULLY. He repeats it again, because he wants to...

... disappearing - just as when you bring light into the room, the darkness disappears. When light is in the room, darkness cannot exist there. Sin is darkness, forgetfulness, unconsciousness. FOR CONSIDER THE WORLD - A BUBBLE, A MIRAGE. SEE THE WORLD AS IT IS, AND DEATH SHALL OVERLOOK YOU. One thing which is unique to Buddha is that that he never says "Believe." He never says, "You simply have to...

... death was so close that he had forgotten all his philosophy. But back again in the safe court and the mad elephant gone, although he was fractured all over and it was painful, his philosophy was back again, his ego was back. Reality is reality - you cannot make it disappear by remembering that it is a dream. But if something is a dream, just by remembering that it is a dream, it disappears. Buddha...

... encountering you. Death will come, but it can't take anything away from you, because you have already dropped all those dreams which death can destroy. Death can destroy only the mind. Consider it. Death cannot destroy your body, death cannot destroy your soul; death can only destroy the mind. The mind is a mirage, but the man who has dropped his mind himself, voluntarily... nothing is left for death to...

... need, you have come to the cemetery. This English word 'cemetery', is very beautiful, it comes from the Sanskrit word, SAMADHI. In India SAMADHI means both: the cemetery, the tomb, where a man is buried and also the final realization, the ultimate realization - both, because both are a sort of death. When you die, it is an ordinary death of the body, but the cluster of the mind survives, goes on...

.... 'Be a light unto yourself.' That was Buddha's last saying before he died; the last thing that he uttered was, 'Be a light unto yourself.' That is discipline. The second question: Question 2: BUDDHA USED TO SEND SOMEONE AFRAID OF DEATH TO MEDITATE IN THE CEMETERY, TO MAKE HIM READY FOR REAL MEDITATION. I FEEL MY FEAR OF DEATH AS A BARRIER TO MY MEDITATION. WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO SEND ME? There is no...

... taking new births, reincarnates, moves into the wheel of life and death. Ordinary death is not a total death, it is a partial death, a part of you dies; but the remaining part is so powerful that it recreates the dead part, a new body is built again. A new body crystalizes again. Then there is the final death. The final death is only that of a Buddha, of one who has known, who has come to know the...

... 'cemetery' originated from SAMADHI. No, I am not going to send you anywhere. I am your SAMADHI, your cemetery, here. You can die in me.... An ordinary cemetery won't do, you can get accustomed to it. There are people who work in the cemetery, who live there, but they have not become enlightened. They have become accustomed, habitual, the whole scene has become routine. Every day people come, dead bodies...

... currency notes, it is something to do with your inner mind and attitudes. Money is your love of things, money is your escape from persons, money is your security against death, money is your effort to control life, money is a thousand and one things. Money is not just in the currency notes otherwise things would have been very easy. Money is your love - love of things, not of persons. The most...

... accumulating, not sharing, and that is a clot in the blood circulation. The man disturbs, he does not live himself and because of his blocking he does not allow others to live. The money has stopped circulating. Blood circulating is life, blood stopped, blocked, is death. Money circulating is life, money stopped, blocked, is death. I'm for a society where money moves fast, nobody clings to it, everybody uses...

... rushed and stopped the soldier and said, "What are you doing, destroying your life for no reason at all?" He said, "Who wants to live, sir, in this country and under this madman? Who wants to live with this Adolf Hitler? It is better to die! It is freedom." When people are miserable, death seems to be freedom. And when people are miserable, they are so full of rage, anger, that they...

.... Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. Il. 103. naco re mero man, matta hoy DANCE, MY HEART! DANCE TODAY WITH JOY. THE STRAINS OF LOVE FILL THE DAYS AND THE NIGHTS WITH MUSIC, AND THE WORLD IS LISTENING TO ITS MELODIES. MAD WITH JOY, LIFE AND DEATH DANCE TO THE RHYTHM OF THIS MUSIC. THE HILLS AND THE SEA AND THE EARTH DANCE. THE WORLD OF MAN DANCES IN LAUGHTER AND TEARS. WHY PUT ON...

... you support a prison, the prison has its own investment. Then it will not allow you to have a taste of freedom. So from the very childhood the child is not allowed to taste freedom, because once he knows what freedom is, then he will not concede, he will not compromise - then he will not be ready to live in any dark cell. He would like to die, but he will not allow anybody to reduce him to being a...

.... Only miserable people can be enlisted for war; only deeply miserable people can be ready to fight, can be ready to kill and to be killed. They are so miserable that even death seems to be better than their life. I have heard Adolf Hitler was talking to a British diplomat. They were standing on the thirtieth floor of a skyscraper, and to impress him, he ordered one German soldier to jump off. And the...

... hypnosis in which you are living - unless you take hold of it, watch it, and drop it, you will never become ecstatic, and you will never be able to sing the song that you have come to sing. Then you will die without singing your song. Then you will die without dancing your dance. Then you will die without having ever lived. Your life is just a hope; it is not a reality. It can be a reality. This neurosis...

... child must feel these tensions. When the mother would think to abort the child, the child must have felt hurt. The child is part of the mother's body; every vibe will reach the child. Or when the mother thinks and hesitates and is just in a limbo of what to do or what not to do, the child will also feel a trembling, shaking - he is hanging between death and life. And then somehow the child is born and...

... balance. Mulla Nasrudin was in love with a woman - very homely and ordinary, but she had much money and she was the only child of her father, and the father was old and dying. Mulla was deeply in love with the woman, and one day he went to her very excitedly because the father was approaching death very fast - and he said, "I am dying." Mulla said to the woman, "I am dying; I cannot live...

... dance be here and now, and let it come from your totality. You abandon yourself; you become a drunkard. THE STRAINS OF LOVE FILL THE DAYS AND THE NIGHTS WITH MUSIC, AND THE WORLD IS LISTENING TO ITS MELODIES: MAD WITH JOY, LIFE AND DEATH DANCE TO THE RHYTHM OF THIS MUSIC. Yes, joy is mad. And only mad people can afford it. The ordinary sane person is so clever, so cunning, calculating, he cannot...

... stupid. "MAD WITH JOY, LIFE AND DEATH DANCE TO THE RHYTHM OF THIS MUSIC." And when you are madly dancing, madly singing, when you are joyful without any control, without your presence, when the joy is so full, overflowing - you are flooded with it and all control is abandoned - then you will see a miracle: death and life dancing together. Because then all duality disappears. If you are dual...

..., duality appears. If you are nondual, duality disappears. When you are split, the whole world is split. It is your own split that is projected onto the screen of the universe. When you are in a nonsplit state, integrated, one, organic, orgasmic, then all duality disappears. Then life and death are not two, not opposites, but complementaries dancing with each other hand in hand. Then bad and good are not...

... comes "divine," from it comes "devil." Deep down, the tree is one. Branches are many, moving in different dimensions, directions; leaves are millions; but the deeper you go, you come to one, one tree. Mad with joy, life and death dance to the rhythm of this music. ... THE HILLS AND THE SEA AND THE EARTH DANCE. When you are in a dance, everything dances with you. Yes, the old saying...

... thing is certain: that by the death of the body one does not die. Death happens to the body, not to the consciousness, because my consciousness is still intact." His last words were, "My tongue is getting numb and I cannot say anything more, hut remember, even up to now I am as whole as I have ever been. Nothing has died in ME. Something has died around me, on the periphery, but in contrast...

... is a man of learning. Even at the moment of death he is still learning. When he was given the poison, his disciples started crying and weeping. He said, "Don't miss this opportunity to learn something about death. It is one of the greatest events in life, in fact THE greatest even, because it is the culmination, the crescendo, the climax. Wait, watch, meditate over what is happening to me...

...." That's actually what HE did. The others were crying and weeping; they were not in a state of exploration - as if they knew what death was. Nobody knows what death is, although you all have died many times; but you still don't know what death is because you missed the opportunity of learning; you were not alert enough to learn. Hence, again and again you have died, again and again you have...

... missed the opportunity. You have missed the opportunity because you go on believing as if you know what death is. You don't even know what life is, how can you know what death is? Once a man came to me and asked, "What happens after death?" I said, "Forget about it! First try to learn what happens BEFORE death. Have you learned that? Do you know what life is?" He said, "I don't...

... know." I said, "You are alive and you don't know what life is - how can you know what death is? You will know it only when you are dying. But if you don't know life, the same way you will miss that opportunity too." Socrates remained alert to the very last moment. He went on telling his disciples to the very last moment what was happening to him. He was learning, he was teaching. A...

... said, "My legs have gone absolutely numb, I don't feel them. They are dead, but I am still whole. Nothing is missing. As far as my consciousness is concerned, it has not even been touched by death." Then he said, "My hands are disappearing." Then he said, "Now I am even afraid any moment my heart will stop; it is sinking. But I am still as whole as I have ever been, so one...

.... They go on quoting from the scriptures like parrots, but if you just dig a little deep in them you will not find anything; you will find only rubbish. You will find them as ordinary as anybody else. The only difference is that their egos are puffed up with borrowed knowledge. A learner never depends on borrowed knowledge. He himself tries to experience life, love, death - everything. He tries to...

... you. When you are not identified, the identification is broken, then who is the mother? She has not given birth to you but only to this body which is going to die. So the mother has not given you life; rather, on the contrary, the mother has given you one more death. The father has not given you life, he has given you one more possibility to die. Once you are not identified with the body you have...

..., when the flame is lit and you are not in darkness. Then there will be more life, more silence, but the silence will belong to life, not to death. It will not be the silence of the graveyard. This is the paradox to be understood: war is bad, hate is bad; they are the evils on the earth and they must go. Disease is bad, health is good; disease must go, but you must remember that a dead man never falls...

... not be able to love; you will not really be able to move, you will not be able to look at another human being. You will feel so inferior, so bad, so devilish, that you will die - this feeling will become a suicide. And this is a truth - so what to do? One way is to change this truth: become a man of God, not a man of the devil - become divine. But that is difficult, arduous, a long hard path. Much...

... never says that. Life says, "Experience!" - not time. Life waits, can wait: mind cannot wait - death is coming near. There is no death for life, but for mind there is death. Mind always tries to find a shortcut. And to find a shortcut, the easiest way is to create an illusion: think that you are what you want to be - then you have become neurotic. That is what has happened to many people who...

.... When you come to a master like Jesus you come for peace. You are blissfully unaware that you have come to the wrong person. As you are you cannot get peace. And if somebody gives you peace, that will be death to you. As you are, if you become peaceful, what will that mean? That will mean the struggle has ceased before you have attained anything. As you are, if somebody makes you silent, what will...

... create the chaos. You have to pass through the chaos, because as you are you are absolutely wrong. In this state if somebody consoles you he is your enemy. With him you will lose time, life, energy, and in the end consolations won't help. When death comes all consolations will evaporate. There was one old man whose son died. He came to me and he said, "Console me!" I said, "I cannot do...

... listening to these consolations he is missing a great opportunity. He is missing an opportunity in which he could face his ambition, which is his problem. He could have encountered the fact that all ambition is useless, futile, because you work and work and work, and then death takes everything. He could have penetrated to this. But no, he stopped coming to me. He used to come to me, but since that time...

... stronger, still stronger, until a moment comes when the whole energy of the body is absorbed by the self. Gurdjieff used friction very deeply and in such unbelievably dangerous ways. When he was very old, just within a few years of his death, he made a very dangerous car accident happen. He did it - it was not really an accident. In the life of a person like Gurdjieff there is no accident. He is so aware...

... hospital perfectly conscious. He said that no anesthesia should be given to him - he wanted to remain perfectly conscious. This was the greatest friction he ever created with his body. The body was just on the verge of death; he had created the whole situation and he wanted to remain absolutely alert. He remained alert, and at this moment he attained the greatest centering that can happen to a man: he...

... story of Jesus' life say that he was not crucified, but that he managed to be crucified just like Gurdjieff. He managed to be crucified - it was a drama that he arranged. Those who were crucifying him thought they were killing him, but such a man as Jesus cannot be forced to die. He could have escaped very easily, for it was well known that he was to be caught. He could have moved away from the...

... been discovered - not exactly - what happened and how. You cannot imagine managing your own crucifixion, but that is what religion is: managing your own crucifixion. Going to the cross means going to the climax of friction - where death is. Jesus says: FOR THERE SHALL BE FIVE IN A HOUSE: THREE SHALL BE AGAINST TWO AND TWO AGAINST THREE. A friction has to be created. The senses have to fight and the...

... makes you think that even then, when you die, you will stop?" Really, if you are under hypnosis, it never stops. Death doesn't make much difference: in the next life you start again the same way, because the next life starts from where the last was discontinued; it is a continuity. So when a child is born, he is not really a child, he is very, very old, very ancient. He brings all his ancient...

..., or anybody who is awakened, will find you all drunk. The drunkenness is of many types, but the drunkenness is there. You are not alert, you are not awake: you simply think that you are awake and alert. Your sleep continues from birth to death. Gurdjieff used to tell a small story. There was a man who owned thousands of sheep, and he was always in trouble because the sheep would go astray and they...

... reading an article to him against smoking. Experts were quoted as saying that cancer and tuberculosis and other diseases are possible through smoking. He heard it and then said, "Stop this nonsense! This is all silly, and I tell you, I intend to continue smoking till I die!" His weary wife said, "Okay then, have it your own way. But what makes you think that even then you will stop? What...

..., Alexander, Hitler - successful in the world, powerful in the world. But can you find anything more ugly than them? Power is the ugliest thing, but everybody wants power, to dominate. Have you seen the ugliness of wealth? It has to be ugly, it cannot be beautiful, because it depends on exploitation. Blood is there, death is there, and many have been deprived of their lives... only then does your bank...

... life. When you don't escape from it, it is the most beautiful thing, the purest, because only emptiness can be pure. If something is there, dirt has entered; if something is there, then death has entered; if something is there, then limitation has entered. If something is there, then God cannot be there. God means the great abyss, the ultimate abyss. It is there, but you are never trained to look...

... are also in search of mental peace - more than you. They are also afraid of death, and trembling, just like you. If you look at your successful people minutely, you will find that those 'gods' also have clay feet. Death will take them, and with death all success disappears, all fame disappears. The whole thing seems to be a nightmare: so much effort, so much misery, so much hardship - and nothing is...

... gained. In the end death comes and everything disappears like a bubble. And because of this bubble, that which is eternal is lost. AND MY SOUL WAS AFFLICTED FOR THE SONS OF MEN, BECAUSE THEY ARE BLIND IN THEIR HEART, AND THEY DO NOT SEE THAT EMPTY THEY HAVE COME INTO THE WORLD, AND EMPTY THEY SEEK TO GO OUT OF THE WORLD AGAIN. Empty you have come, but not exactly empty: filled with desires. Empty you...

... will go, but not exactly empty: again filled with desires. But desires are dreams - you remain empty - they have nothing substantial in them. You are born empty, and then you move in the world and accumulate things, just believing that these things will give you a fulfillment. You remain empty. Death snatches everything, you move again into the grave, again empty. To what point does this whole life...

..., left to themselves, they would not invent them. So a watch, for a Hindu mind, is really a foreign element: a clock in a Hindu house doesn't suit. The clock is a Christian invention, because time is short, running fast; it is not a clock, it is life running fast out of your hands. This death is going to be the final one, you cannot postpone. Just to avoid postponement Jesus and John the Baptist - who...

... truth can be poisonous, sometimes truth can make you lazy. I will give you another example which will be helpful: Gurdjieff used to say that you don't have any eternal soul, remember. You can attain it, but you don't have it - you can miss. And if you don't attain it you will simply die, nothing is going to survive. And Gurdjieff said that only one in millions attains to the soul, and then the soul...

..., reincarnation, rebirth. Life is a long continuity, this death is not going to be the ultimate death. But once this is said, you relax. And the whole method of Jesus depends on friction: you are not allowed to relax, you have to fight, create friction, so that you can become crystallized. BUT NOW THEY ARE DRUNK. WHEN THEY HAVE SHAKEN OFF THEIR WINE, THEN THEY WILL REPENT. JESUS SAID: IF THE FLESH HAS COME INTO...