... hidden part is more than the manifested part. That's why I say man is a seed. He can grow, and man can be only if he grows. If a seed remains a seed, that means death. If a seed is not growing, then it is dying. And you cannot remain in between. Either you have to grow or you have to die. There is no midpoint. Grow or die! There is no other alternative. The seed is just a situation to grow. And to grow...

... means to transcend, to grow means to die on a particular level and to be reborn on another. what is growth for a seed? The seed must die as a seed - only then is the tree born. The possibility begins to become actual. A seed can die in two ways. It can just die without growing; then it is negative death. Or, a seed can die to grow; then it is positive death, and positive death is the door to more life...

.... Positive death means dying for something - dying to grow, disappearing from one plane to appear on another. Man can remain a seed, and many men die negative deaths without growing, without transcending themselves, without disappearing from one plane to appear on another. Nietzsche has said somewhere that man is only when he transcends himself: you are only when you are disappearing from below and...

... to create such misunderstanding with an enemy, because the enemy of today can become an ally of tomorrow. The enemy is a friend in seed-form. He has the potential within him of becoming a friend. Friendship and enmity are two ends of the same relationship. The intellect, however, breaks everything into two - even birth and death, though they are two extremities of the same life. On one side is...

... birth; on the other side death. There is no gap between the two. Birth turns into death. Can we point to any part of life where birth ends and death begins? Birth extends and expands into death. When we view life from one side, we see birth; if we see it from another side, it appears as death. But they are the two ends of the same happening, two names of the same thing. Because the intellect breaks...

...? God is both light and darkness. Actually, light and darkness are two ends of one and the same thing. There is no darkness without light. Darkness is a particular condition of light. There is no light where darkness is also not present, and there is no darkness where light is not present. Similarly, there is no birth without death and no death without birth. They are two ends of the same thing. But...

...; birth and death. Behind these - what remains is the unknowable. That which is behind the integrated intellect is the unknowable - that which will never be known. You may turn the unknown into the known and the known into the unknown but the fundamental support behind the two shall always remain unknowable. This is the difference between religion and science; this is the reason for the quarrel between...

.... We proceed in the direction of religion, but for the wrong reasons. So our religion becomes False. We approach religion in order to be something more, to attain something more. We say that we want to attain heaven, bliss. Our intention is to secure our life after death. We strive for a life without death because in this life, death is certain. So here, also, we are struggling for survival. All our...

... efforts are to save ourselves. That is why we find our priests teaching us, "Only those who are with us will be saved. On the day of judgment, we shall be your witness." Such teachers find followers by the thousands because all of us desire to be saved. This desire can be easily exploited. It is hard for a teacher like Buddha to find followers because he says, "Die! Lose yourself, be no...

... things that appear and disappear, for it is deeper than these. That which does not manifest itself even in the light of the sun, and that which does not set with the setting of the sun - that alone is. That which is not when the flower is, and that which is not extinct when the flower is not - that alone is. That which is not born at birth and that which does not die at death - that alone is. When a...

... CALLED ELUSIVE. MEET IT AND YOU DO NOT SEE ITS FACE. FOLLOW IT AND YOU DO NOT SEE ITS BACK. HE WHO HOLDS FAST TO THE TAO OF OLD, IN ORDER TO MANAGE THE AFFAIRS OF NOW, IS ABLE TO KNOW THE PRIMEVAL BEGINNINGS, WHICH ARE THE CONTINUITY (TRADITION) OF TAO. The flowers bloom in the morning and wither in the evening. The sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. There is birth and it ends in death...

.... Each happening has a beginning and an end. But existence always is. There is no morning, nor evening for existence, neither birth nor death. In this sutra, Lao Tzu tells us about the beginningless, infinite continuity of the nature of existence, that is beyond both birth and death. Whatever we know, we can encircle within a limit. On one end of this boundary there lies its beginning, and on the other...

... when it appears, and nothing is darkened when it disappears." Such is the imperishable, uninterrupted mystery which defies all definitions. It always is; it is eternal. Suns rise and set, flowers bloom and die, life comes and goes, creations form and fade. The universe is created and annihilated, but God always is. That something, by whatever name may we call it, always is. It is never born, it...

... there is his being. The body dies and dust turns to dust, but his being - does that also die? When we crush a flower, remember that we crush only the flower and not its beauty. How can we destroy that which we have never seen, never grasped, never even touched? How can we destroy that which is beyond the conception of our senses? We can destroy a flower or blind an eye, but we cannot destroy the...

... beauty that peeped from behind the flower or shone through the eye. Suns are formed and dissolved, creations come and go, men are born and they die but this being within them, this existence, forever is - it flows forever. Lao Tzu says, "Its manifestation does not bring light, nor does its disappearance plunge things into darkness" - because it neither rises nor sets. We do not know it by...

... are created and destroyed; people come and go, through so many lives. There are so many people, so many palaces and so many graves - and then, silence. So much turmoil while life lasts; then the silence of death. And yet, the universe is none the richer or poorer by a single grain. The universe means the sum total of everything. There is nothing outside of it. Then how can it increase? And also, how...

... birth is a way of being and death is also a way of being. In birth we manifest, and in death we revert to the realm of nothingness. To be awake is a way of being. Then, we are active. To be asleep is also a way of being. Then we are inactive. In waking, we are active in the outside world. In sleep, we are active within ourselves. Consciousness and unconsciousness are two aspects of our being. In the...

... years long; and if you were to take into account the lives after death, the future extends to infinity. So the past is infinite and the future is infinite. And what is our present? Hardly a moment. If you were to investigate more deeply, which moment would you call the present moment? As soon as you name it, the moment slips into the past. If I say, "This moment when it is 9.35 a.m. is the...

... capable to know the primeval beginnings which are the continuity of Tao. Tao means religion, Tao means power, Tao means the rule (RIT). Tao means the supreme mystery, where there is no time, where there is no making and breaking, where there is no life, no death. He attains this supreme continuity. Time is the gate. If you are swinging between the past and the future, you are still in samsara (the world...

... take the parts apart, and you will not find any soul. That's what charvakas said five thousand years ago: that if there is a soul, then cut a man open and you should find it. Or when soldiers are cut open in the war -- so many souls would be flying upwards. Or when ordinarily a death happens naturally in your house, the soul must leave the body. Charvakas were very stubborn materialists. In five...

... of death that even the word `death' was prohibited. In his essence nobody should mention the word `death' because just hearing the word he would fall into a fit, he would go unconscious. These are the founders of modern psychology; they are going to give humanity sanity! And on the other hand.... A Zen monk, just before dying, said to his disciples: "Listen, I have always lived in my own way...

.... I am an independent person and I want to die in my own way also. When I am dead I will not be here, so I will give you the instructions to be followed." Just as in India, it happens in exactly the same way in Japan too; before he is taken to the funeral, the person's clothes are changed, he is given a bath and new clothes are put on him. He said, "I have taken the bath myself, I have...

... the funeral pyre, they all started laughing and giggling -- he had hidden firecrackers inside his clothes. He had made it into a divali, just to make everybody laugh -- because that was his basic teaching, that life should be a dance, a joy, and death should be a celebration. And people said that even after death he managed it so that nobody should stand around him with a long face, so that...

... everybody was laughing. Even the strangers who had come started laughing; they had never seen such a scene. These are the people who have understood life and death. They can make death a joke. Not Sigmund Freud, for whom the word `death' becomes a fit. And the same is the case with other great psychologists. Jung wanted to go to Egypt to see the old mummies of kings and queens, dead bodies preserved for...

... three thousand years old. But he was very much afraid of death and dead bodies. He was a disciple of Freud. He booked the ticket twelve times, and each time he would find some excuse: "I am feeling feverish," or, "Some urgent work has come." And he knew. He wrote in his diary: "I knew it was all an excuse. I was avoiding going to Egypt, but the more I avoided it the more I was...

... become your father! Then naturally all that was directed towards your father - resentment, anger, hatred - you direct towards me, and I am absolutely innocent in the matter. I don't even know you! I don't know whom I am answering! And don't replace your family with the commune. The commune is not the family. The commune is the death of the family. Not one family, many families die, then one commune is...

... anybody. Today I can satisfy this man; even my death becomes valuable. I help people in my life, I am helping this man in my death. If this is his enjoyment, if this is what will bring some rejoicing to him, then I am the last person to interfere in it; I will help him. And I will die trusting him. And the last thing I would like to say to you: Trust is a very alchemical force. If you trust somebody...

... Osho From Death to Deathlessness: I am not your father Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho From Death to Deathlessness   Next > I am not your father From: Osho Date: Fri, 12 August 1985 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: From Death to Deathlessness Chapter #: 11 Location: am in Rajneeshmandir Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available...

.... And won't you trust a victim? You are asking me, "How can you trust a man who is murdering you?" I have lived my life so intensely and so totally that if somebody murders me he is not taking anything away from me. I will trust him for the simple reason that he is a human being; his being a murderer does not matter. Anyway, one day I am going to die, and when I die I will not be satisfying...

...From Death to Deathlessness...

.... They need a father figure, a big daddy. They are still childish. Their mental age is just nearabout twelve years, not more than that. They need somebody to give them courage, to guide them, to protect them. They are simply afraid to be left alone. They are afraid of death which is coming closer every day. They need somebody to protect them from death. It is a projection of your fear. The moment your...

... capacity. Even if he grows hair, it is not as thick as on an animal who lives in the snows. He will not survive, he will die. He has to protect his body. He is not cold blooded, like cold blooded fishes which live in the Arctic. Their blood is cold, ice cold, and it has a certain chemical that keeps it from freezing. The outside, to us, is freezing cold; for those fishes it is not. Man is a hot blooded...

... as anyone else: "This life has to be used just to reach the real life which is after death." Now, nobody has returned after death. Not a single proof exists of anybody returning after death and telling you that there is life there. And all these religions are based on this assumption, that there is a life after death; sacrifice this for that. And I am saying, "Sacrifice that for this...

...!" - because this is all that you have got: herenow. And if there is any life after death, you will be there and then it will be "here and now." Once you know how to live here and now, you will be able to live there too. So I teach you how to live here and now. This is the first religion which does not reject anything from your life. It accepts you totally, as you are, and finds methods...

...? They are simply waiting for one of the two to die so that a decision will happen; otherwise, legally there is no possibility. Both have equally valid grounds. These infallible shankaracharyas, infallible popes, imams, caliphs... they can be proved very easily wrong in a thousand and one ways. I am not infallible. So what I am giving to you is an open religion. They have given you a closed system. A...

... kneeled down before the pope - he was old, seventy-five, dying; from his death bed he had been forced and dragged to the court - and he asked, "What do you want from me?" The pope said, "You simply state in your book that the sun goes around the earth, and the previous statement you cancel." He said, "Perfectly right. I will write in my book that the sun goes round the earth...

... and again that there are no contradictions in life; all contradictions are complementaries. So even something contradicting any statement of mine can be absorbed in the religion without any fear, because this is my position: every contradiction is a complementary. Just as day and night are complementary, life and death are complementary, all contradictions are complementary, so you can absorb even...

...; only then is it possible not to feel hurt, not to feel wounded. Jesus was betrayed only once, by one disciple. I have been betrayed continually for almost as much time as Jesus lived on the earth -- thirty-three years. So many people I have trusted so totally have betrayed me so easily. There was a moment they were ready to die for me and just some small thing... if I was not fulfilling their...

... expectation, which I have never agreed to Truth is not divisible fulfill, their love changes into great hate. The same person who was ready to die for me is ready to kill me. So I have learned it the hard way that if you love, it is your decision. If you hate, it is your decision. I am almost non-existent as far as my side is concerned: neither am I a partner in your love, nor am I going to be a partner in...

... agreeing with the disciple is like light agreeing with darkness, truth agreeing with that which is not true, life agreeing with death. But because Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus and other teachers of the past have compromised on minor points, very few people have left them. I am an absolutely non-compromising person. Either you have to be with me absolutely... without expecting anything from my side, because I...

... OF THE SAME ENERGY? Prem Nirmala, commitment and spontaneity are certainly opposite poles, and of the same energy. Commitment is something like death; spontaneity is something like life. Commitment is something like darkness, and spontaneity is something like light. Truth is not divisible Although they belong to the same energy as opposite poles, you have to start from being spontaneous. All the...

... should be allowed to be known to them that go against their belief. Commitment demands that you lose your eyes, lose your mind, lose your reason, your logic, your intelligence, your consciousness. It is almost a living death. Never begin anything with commitment. But such is the mystery of life... Begin everything with spontaneity, with natural awareness, with no commitment for anything, but always...

... Spontaneity was like a child; commitment is maturity, crystallization. Just as nobody can start from the middle of life, or from the end of life -- everybody has to start from the childhood. Although every childhood will reach old age, and every birth will reach death... but nobody can begin with death. And a life that has been lived with joy and dance and love -- its crescendo, the death, will not be dark...

... discrimination between such closely connected experiences. But just a little turn makes all the difference. If you start from commitment, then you will never reach to spontaneity; you have started from death. But if you start from spontaneity, you Truth is not divisible will reach to commitment -- and that commitment will not be death. Out of spontaneity, death cannot grow -- only more life and more life and...

... by they have convinced me that I am a wise man. I too have started believing in it." I said, "At least now drop that belief. Die as ignorant as you are. Your whole life you have been dishonest, but even a single moment before death, if you are honest, perhaps the right time and the right season may come suddenly." And actually it happened. He closed his eyes, and I was sitting by his...

... side and I saw the change happening around his energy; there was a freshness, a different fragrance. His old face became so beautiful -- wrinkled with age, but now showing a maturity. He opened his eyes and he took my hand in his hand and he said, "I cannot be more grateful to anybody in my life than to you, although you have not done anything. But seeing the fact that death is coming, I closed...

... my eyes and for the first time I looked inwards. It was there, it has always been there." He died an enlightened man. He lived unenlightened, in misery, in suffering, but he died enlightened, in tremendous joy. He told me, "Nobody should weep or cry; nobody should be sad or serious because my death is an illumination. What life has not been able to give me, my death has given to me...

.... Celebrate! Tell the people that my death has to be celebrated." And when I told the people, they wouldn't believe me. I said, "Whether you believe me or not, that old man's last wish should be fulfilled. If you cannot celebrate I will have to bring my friends, and we will celebrate." I had to gather people, and they were hesitant because death is not celebrated, death is a calamity. But the...

... death of an enlightened being, and particularly a death which makes a man enlightened, has to be a festival. It is far more valuable than birth. Birth brings you life. Enlightened death brings you eternal life, a timeless ecstasy, a blissfulness that never ends. Daio wrote: THE SPHERE OF PERFECT COMMUNION IS CLEAR EVERYWHERE. THE WATER IS ALIVE, THE WILLOW EYES ARE GREEN. WHY ARE PEOPLE THESE DAYS IN...

... anyone else because the path of Yoga is inner. There are no outer markings and milestones, there are no outward signs at all. Buddha followed a certain path, but the path was an inner one which existed for him alone. No one else can move on it. No person can ever take another person's place. You cannot die in my place. You can die for me - that is another thing - but you cannot replace me in my death...

.... Even if you die for me it will be your death, chosen by you; it will not be my death. In the same way, you cannot love in my place. There can be no substitute, there can be no help, there can be no alternative. My love is bound to be my love and my death is bound to be my death. So how can my life be your life? My life is my life; no one else can make it his way to live. It is absolutely mine, and so...

..., which longs for certainty, cannot be a meditative mind. Only a mind which is open to anything that life offers, welcoming each and everything that happens, even death, can create a situation in which meditation happens. So the only thing that can be done by you is to be receptive to meditation, to be totally receptive - not to any particular happening but to anything that comes. Meditation is not a...

... mankind did not exist on the earth there would be no past and no future. There would just be the present, the now, only now - without any passage of time, without any coming, any going. The meditative mind lives in the now - that is its only existence. A Zen monk was sentenced to death. The king of the country called him and said to him, "You have only twenty-four hours - how are you going to live...

... continuity in between, a process in between, then it becomes work which has to be taken seriously. Then tensions, conflicts and burdens are created and your innocence is destroyed. The means are the end. The end is the means. Anything taken with this attitude becomes meditative. The beginning is the end. Your first step is your last. Your birth is your death. Meeting is parting. These pairs are two poles...

.... They don't leave a trace behind. They don't burden anybody else with their memory. They simply disperse into the universe. They don't have any mind and they don't have any memory system. They have already dissolved it in their meditations. That's why the enlightened person is never born. But the unenlightened people go on throwing out, with every death, all kinds of misery patterns. Just as riches...

... not understand his language. Most probably you will misunderstand him. You know misery, and he is talking about bliss. You know wounds, and he is talking about eternal health. You know only death, and he is talking about eternity. In the first place, it is difficult to find a buddha. In the second place, it is difficult to understand his language because it is not your language. Otherwise, this must...

... clarity. Death is coming - be prepared for a journey. And the people who saw him standing with one foot up, could not see that that foot was indicating towards the invisible. He had left the body, and the consciousness had become part of the cosmos. But a man of meditation becomes aware to leave the body when the time is ripe, or when the body is trying to get rid of his consciousness. A Zen man dies...

... consciously, hence his death is not a death but an entry into immortality. And Tanka Tennen would be the right figure - with his straw hat on, holding his stick in his hand, putting on his sandals, and taking a step forward... But before his foot touched the ground, he died, standing, ready for the eternal journey. This shows an intense awareness of one's being. And it also shows that the man is free of the...

... mind. Only a man free of mind has the clarity to see things as they are going to happen. And he is always ready, even for death. Most of the people are not found ready for death. If you ask them, "Are you ready for death?" they will say, "Wait, there are so many things to do." Only a man of meditation is always ready. He has done everything in each moment with such totality, with...

... such completion, that he will not ask death to wait. Tanka ordered his disciples to prepare a bath. They had no idea why he was asking for a bath. They had no idea why he was putting on his straw hat. Where was he going? He did not say anything. The only thing he said was, "Prepare a bath for me - I am now going." Going where? Going into nowhere, going into the cosmos: "Enough I have...

... is up to you to live a miserable life of the mind, or to live a blissful, peaceful, rejoicing of no-mind. Witnessing is the secret. Make it deeper... Nivedano... (Drumbeat) Relax... and just disappear. This moment you are melting, and Gautama the Buddha Auditorium is becoming an ocean of pure consciousness.... This is the art of both life and death. If you can live with this consciousness, your...

... whole life will become a path of roses, and your death will be the crescendo of your dance. Sadness, misery, are man manufactured. Bliss, joy, are your natural potentialities. Meditation is just to know your potential. Before Nivedano calls you back, gather all the light, all the joy, all the peace, all the silence - the whole truth of this moment. And persuade the buddha, the flame, to follow you. It...