... against Gurdjieff; his name became unmentionable. Whatsoever he was teaching he had learned from Gurdjieff, but he was very secretive. He wouldn't allow his disciples to read Gurdjieff's books. He wouldn't allow his disciples to go and see Gurdjieff. Ouspensky's disciples could see Gurdjieff only after Ouspensky's death; and then they were surprised at how much they had missed. Ouspensky was only a...

.... Within moments all will be gone; within moments you will be shattered on the earth. Hence Buddha goes on reminding you about death: death is there by the corner. We try to make our life to last forever. We try in every possible way to avoid death, but death is unavoidable. We try to befool ourselves that we are exceptions, but nobody is an exception. Death comes inevitably. The only thing inevitable in...

... life is death. But we go on creating illusions around ourselves that this is not going to happen - not at least today. And who takes care about tomorrow? "We will see about tomorrow when it comes. Let us enjoy this moment - eat, drink, be merry." Buddha says that this "Eat, drink, be merry" philosophy is sheer unconsciousness. And this unconscious state can create more and more...

... go on and on and on; it is bound to come to an end. Buddha simply wants you to be reminded again and again that when death is there, what kind of life are you living? It can't be much of a life. There is another life which is beyond death, which is deathlessness, and it is your birthright to attain to it. But the false has to be dropped first. The false has to be seen as false and then the quest...

... starts for the real. The moment you recognize your life as nothing but a slow kind of death you will start looking for the real life. And the real life is available and not very far away; it is available inside you, within you. Whatsoever you do on the outside is to be taken away by death. Do something for your inner transformation, because that is the only treasure which cannot be taken away by death...

... the world is cunning, what are you going to lose by being innocent, simple? Nothing of real value can be lost by being simple. In fact, by being simple and innocent the real is attained. Yes, by cunningness you can attain to power, to money, to prestige, but what is the point of attaining all that? Death is bound to take everything away from you. And can't you see the people who are powerful? Are...

... want so much to die. Look at my state: my eyes are blind, my body is old and withered, my wings have broken and I cannot fly, my feet have disintegrated, but alas, I cannot die! Look at me just once and then do what you please. "Now I beg that someone should kill me, but alas I cannot be killed because I have drunk this nectar. Now I pray to God night and day to grant me death. I want to die...

.... Buddha slept under a tree that night. After endless births this was the first night when there was nothing to look forward to, nothing to attain, nowhere to go; nothing was left. If death had approached Buddha this moment, he would not have requested it to wait a while, becausethere was no need; all hopes were dashed to the ground. In total tiredness all hues of the rainbow of hope have been rubbed...

... hopes, our expectations, our intelligence, offer no wisdom or understanding. I must tell you a well-known story from the life of Alexander the Great. It is said that he was in search of the elixir of life, which once taken keeps death away. His plan to conquer the whole world was mainly in order to find this nectar. The story goes that he ultimately found the spring of the immortal waters in a cave...

.... His wings had fallen off, his eyes could see no more, his whole body was in a state of disintegration. He was just a skeleton. Alexander asked him, "Who are you to stop me? What is your reason?" "Listen to my story first, O king, then do as you see fit," said the crow. "I too was in search of this spring. I too discovered the cave and drank this water. Now I cannot die and I...

... somehow, anyhow!" It is said that Alexander stopped and pondered, then he silently left the cave without touching the water. If your desires are fulfilled you find yourself in as much difficulty as when they are unfulfilled. You do not wish to die. If you were to find this cave and you drink the water from the spring, then you will find yourself in a dilemma - what will you do with your life now...

...? When life was in your hands, when you could have really lived, you were busy looking for the nectar to escape death. You cannot live with the elixir, you cannot live with death, you cannot live in poverty, you cannot live in riches; you cannot live in hell, you cannot live in heaven, and yet you consider yourselves wise! Bayazid was a Sufi mystic. He told God in his prayers, "O Lord, do not...

... falling into God all day long, but we are not aware of it. We move round and round and about Him but we know not. Again and again we fall into Him. In every death we fall into Him, in every birth we arise from Him, but we lack remembrance. So we are like the rivers and rivulets. We fall into the ocean but are unconscious of the event. Without awareness we are unfeeling, unconscious. We move as if in a...

... Great was about to die he told his ministers that his hands should be left hanging outside the coffin. When they complained that this was not the custom and wanted to understand the reason, he said, "I want people to see that in spite of all my conquests I leave this world with empty hands." People like Alexander die as paupers. The most powerful turn out to be impotent; but if even an ant...

.... Hitler was a concrete example of this age-old truth; the greater a man's fear of death, the greater is the violence that develops in him. By killing others, he feels he has risen above death. Exploitation and war only exist because people with disturbed minds are trying to escape from the madness in themselves, and society is stagnating because we are not even able to see the magnitude of our mental...

... say? I was not doing anything. I was just there, alone. But that is the beginning of emptiness. This is the point where you pass the physical world by and the realization of God begins in you. I teach emptiness, I teach dissolution, I teach death, I teach this so that you may become prefect, so that you may become immortal. It may come as a surprise to you, but a man gains life through death. Those...

... individual has to die. Only a fearless and courageous man can embrace the infinite realization of truth. YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH and yet you allow the dust of thoughts to accumulate in your mind. The mind is like a mirror. Wipe it clean. Then you will see the truth standing in front of you. Then you will see that the truth has always been there, right in front of your eyes. THE TINIEST SPECK OF DUST IN...

... remaining different from and opposed to the rest of existence.The effort to become "I" is an attempt to flight with the all. And it only results in anxiety and distress. It leads to the fear of destruction, to the dread of death. It is no wonder misery is the only result of achieving this rigid "I", of attaining this stubborn and impossible unreality. But the word can also be looked at...

... a part is slavery; being whole is freedom. As long as "I am", I am in misery, because the very existence of "I" is an eternal duel with life, a battle to the death. But when "I am not", I am in bliss. Non-being is infinite peace. When consciousness is liberated from "I" it is released from all traditions, freed from all conditionings. Separating the self...

... of duality. That unknown entity that I have called the universal soul is body and soul, both God and nature. These are all just notes of a single melody. All is life. Nothing is dead; nothing is inanimate. Death is nowhere to be found. The waves surge up in the ocean of life and then they fall back, and then they merge. They are there when they crest and there when they ebb. In both conditions they...

... exist, because the ocean exists. Individuals die because there really is no such entity as an individual. Theism perishes because it really does not exist. Whatever has no real existence perishes, but what exists, exists always. This is not just my idea; this is not just my thought - this is what I see. And anyone who avoids thoughts and opinions, who remains silent and calm and empty and aware will...

... reality of his existence. Death dissolves; he perceives immortality. Darkness disappears; he realizes truth. Only after this experience does real life begin. Up to this point a man experiences life only in a very limited way. A FRIEND SAID TO ME "WOULDN'T IT BE WONDERFUL IF WE COULD TRANSFORM THE WORLD?" I replied, "It would be very nice, but where is this world? I look for it but cannot...

... DISAPPOINTMENT I SEE IN YOUR EYES? Do you know that when disappointment shows in one's eyes it means the fire in one's heart has gone out, that one has become stagnant and dull. Disappointment is a great sin; it restrains the energy of life, it keeps it from moving upwards. Not only is it sin, it is suicide, because the man who is not striving for a better life is moving like an automaton towards death. It is...

... only natural my heart fills with sorrow, love and compassion, because this kind of disillusionment with life is the beginning of the descent into the valley of death. Like a sunflower, hope turns towards the sun. Disappointment lives in darkness. The disillusioned man is unaware of the great potential that is latent with him; he forgets what he is, what he can become. Like a seed that lies in the...

... earth, unaware of what life has in store for it, the situation of the man who is engrossed in his disappointment with life is the same. Today, everyone is in this same predicament. Nietzsche has said "God is dead", but I do not find this as disturbing as the death of hope, for as long as hope exists there is a possibility for men to find God. If hope does not exist, whether there is a God or...

.... Birth may be cancelled out by death, but death cannot destroy life. Life is neither birth nor death. Life exists before birth; life exists beyond death. Only the man who knows this will be able to rise above his fear and misery. But how can someone who is cloaked in disillusionment realize this? Such a man simply perishes from the tension of birth and death. Life is just a possibility; it requires...

... consume it, we die again and again. With passions we die again and again. With food we die again and again; with ambitions, anger, hatred, burning jealousy - consuming these, we go on dying again and again. We have died again and again because of these. Up until now, have we known living in life? We have known only death. Our life until now... where is the flaming torch of life? There is only the smoke...

... of death. From birth to death we are gradually dying. Are we living? We die every single day. What we call life is a continual process of dying. We don't know life yet: how can we live? The body goes on weakening every day, strength goes on decreasing every day. Enjoyment and passion go on sucking our energy every day, go on aging us. Passions and desires are like holes, and our energy, our being...

... you base your thinking about life on what is receding or do you base it on what is drawing nearer? What kind of inverted arithmetic is this? We are dying every day, death keeps creeping closer. Ashtavakra says passions are poisonous, because by indulging them we simply die. We never get any life from them. "Oh Beloved, if you want liberation then renounce the vishayas, the passions as visha...

... politics nor any other institution of human life has had any influence on the sayings of Ashtavakra. They are such a pure expression - transcending emotion, transcending time and death - there is nothing comparable. Perhaps this is why Ashtavakra's Gita, the ASHTAVAKRA SAMHITA, has not had much impact. Krishna's Bhagavad Gita has been very influential. The first reason is that Krishna's Gita is a...

... beginning also. What is seen at the moment of death must also have been present at the moment of birth; otherwise how could it arise? So one way is to look backwards from the flower, and the other is to look forward from the seed. If you look carefully their essence is the same, their foundation is the same, but what a difference: like between earth and sky! The one who knows the seed says, "How can...

... for the truth. Oh lord, be so gracious as to come to my home. I have understood! I couldn't sleep the whole night. You spoke truly: what depth of understanding have those who recognize only the body? They are debating the being, but attraction and repulsion for the body still arise; hate and attraction still arise. They are looking at death while talking of the deathless! I'm blessed that you came...

..., just as success is entering my life, just as my chances are getting better, as the arrow is hitting the target - now this fellow comes and says everything is meaningless! Just as I win the elections and the way is open to get into power, this great man comes along, and says it is all a dream, it has no meaning, that death will come and take everything. Don't talk like this! When death comes we will...

... vishayas the passions as visha, poison and take forgiveness, innocence, compassion, contentment and truth as nectar." "If you want liberation then renounce the vishayas, the passions as visha, poison." The word vishaya is very meaningful. It is derived from visha, poison. The meaning of visha is a substance which, if one eats it, one will die. The meaning of vishaya is that which, if we...

..., goes on flowing out through them. In the end our pail is empty - this is what we call death. Have you ever seen? - if you throw a bucket full of holes into a well, as long as it is submerged in water it seems to be full. Pull on the rope and lift it out of the water and already it has started emptying. It creates a great noise. Is this what you call life? Falling streams of water - is this what you...

... your birthday would be better called your deathday - it would be nearer the truth. You have been dying for one year and you say a birthday has come. You have been dying for fifty years and you say you have lived for fifty years: "Let's celebrate my golden anniversary." But you died for fifty years. Death is drawing nearer and life is receding further and further: the bucket is emptying. Do...

..., poison, and take forgiveness, innocence, compassion, contentment and truth as nectar." Nectar means that which gives life, that which gives immortality, ambrosia - when one has found it, one will never die again. Then forgiveness. Anger is poison - forgiveness is ambrosia. Innocence. Deviousness is poison. Simplicity - innocence is nectar. Compassion. Hardheartedness, cruelty, is poison - kindness...

... study project. Now it is not anger, it has become a drama. So why not look at a thing from the positive, with something to learn from it? Why go on accumulating the negative? This is just a habit - it is not inevitable; it is not. Buddha could send his disciples to the burning places, to cemeteries to look at dead bodies, to contemplate death, to meditate on death: The body is burning - the dead body...

... is there - it is burning. And Buddha would send his disciples there, to sit there and meditate on death. And meditating on death, the disciple would soon come to realize a different quality of life which never dies. Then he would come dancing, singing, to Buddha - from the dead body burning in the cemetery, he would come running, dancing - why? he should come sad, sorrowful, depressed, dead himself...

... in a way. But he has not accumulated the negative even from a dead body. He has accumulated something positive. He has been meditating on death, and if you meditate on death you become more and more aware of life. He comes running, dancing, grateful - grateful to Buddha, grateful to the dead man also. Why go on accumulating the negative? - we go on; that's just a wrong habit. Change it! Always look...

... question, "HOW DISAGREEABLE IT IS!" THE MONK SAID, "WHAT ABOUT DRINKING IT?" The same obsession. The question has not changed even a single inch. JOSHU SAID, "YOU WILL DIE." If you go on asking in the hope of finding an answer from the outside, there is nothing else for you, "YOU WILL DIE." Only death comes from outside, life is within. Life is, death comes and...

..., "IT DOESN'T GO IN THE MOUTH." THE MONK WENT TO JOSHU AND SAID WHAT HAD BEEN DISCUSSED. JOSHU SAID, "IF IT WON'T GO IN THE MOUTH, IT WON'T GO THROUGH THE NOSTRILS." THE MONK THEN ASKED, "HOW ABOUT WHEN THE OLD VALLEY WATER IS A COLD SPRING?" JOSHU SAID, "HOW DISAGREEABLE IT IS!" THE MONK SAID, "WHAT ABOUT DRINKING IT?" JOSHU SAID, "YOU WILL DIE...

... goes. Death is only an episode in an eternal journey of consciousness. WHEN SEPPO HEARD OF THIS CONVERSATION, HE SAID, "JOSHU IS ONE OF THE ANCIENT BUDDHAS," AND BOWED DOWN IN RESPECT TO JOSHU, FROM A DISTANCE. AFTER THAT HE ANSWERED NO QUESTION HIMSELF. After this anecdote Seppo never spoke again. Seeing the futility of people's minds, their consistent misunderstanding, not only Seppo but...

... religion, to one faith and because we belong to one faith, we are brothers and sisters. We will live for the faith and we will die for the faith." All organizations have arisen out of the relationships between disciples. In fact, two disciples are not connected with each other at all. Each disciple is connected with the master in his individual capacity. A master can be connected with millions of...

... YEARS. WHAT IS THIS FEAR, OSHO? There is only one basic fear. All other small fears are byproducts of the one main fear that every human being carries with himself. The fear is of losing yourself. It may be in death, it may be in love, but the fear is the same: You are afraid of losing yourself. And the strangest thing is that only those people are afraid of losing themselves who don't have themselves...

... knows? -- as you come close to the master, in his presence, in his light you may find that you don't exist. And that will be almost a death... bigger than death. So people keep at a certain distance. Watching the wild animals in the jungles, in the mountains, scientists have come to discover a certain idea: that they have a territorial imperative, that each animal has his own territory. If you don't...

... -- that is a prohibited area. The scientists studying the whole thing came to a conclusion: Why are these animals so much interested in keeping a certain space of their own and not allowing anybody else to enter? -- they found that it is fear. The other animal can be death. It is better to warn him, and before he attacks the best way to defend yourself is to attack. So if anybody enters your territory...

... TO YOU AS A DISCIPLE UNLESS I AM CONTINUALLY IN YOUR PRESENCE. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE SEED OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH WHICH YOU PLANT IN US AND WHETHER IT CAN DIE? Pankaja, the seed is immortal, it cannot die. But it can remain dormant; it can remain dormant for lives. If the right soil is not provided, if the right water is not provided, if the right exposure to the sunlight is not provided, it...

... will remain dormant, a potentiality, a waiting -- but it cannot die. You may die many times, but the seed, once planted in you, will go on following your consciousness wherever you are. Unless you give it your attention, nourishment, your care, your love, it cannot become a living sprout. Small, fresh green leaves cannot come out of it. Only your love and your consciousness can create the miracle...

... great security, safety against dangers, disease, sickness, death. When Voltaire used to go out of his house, he would come home almost naked, because crowds would follow him, tearing his clothes -- and not only his clothes, he would get scratched on the body. He had to ask for police protection if he wanted to go to the railway station or to go to some other place. Without police protection it was...

... is wasted in misery just to fulfill a non-existential ego. Tomorrow you will die, and the day after tomorrow nobody will remember you. How many novelists have been in this world? And who cares about them today? And they all must have suffered in the same way, because what they were doing was garbage. You may be a big garbage truck. It does not matter -- big or small -- if you can have a little...

... from my childhood I have heard the saying that before death comes, six months before, a man stops seeing the tip of his own nose, because the eyes start turning up. So when he cannot see the tip of his own nose, that is a sure sign. That is described in ayurvedic scriptures thousands of years old: you can know that you are going to die within six months if you cannot see the tip of your nose. Your...

... structure. You also are a machine: your eyes can be replaced, your hands can be replaced, your legs can be replaced - and sooner or later brains will be replaced. But do you think if we can take Albert Einstein's brain while he is dying, remove it before death is certain and transplant it - for example in the skull of Polack the pope - do you think he will become an Albert Einstein? The brain is only a...

... are given two meals a day is cut in half. He himself was surprised: less food and longer life; more food and less life. Now he has come up with the theory that one meal is perfectly enough; otherwise you are loading the system of digestion, and that causes the cut in your lifespan. But what about people who are taking five meals a day...? Medicine will not allow them to die but will not allow them...

... do to people: it may remove a certain sickness, it may create many more. Science has to be more alert, more compassionate, more courageous. Only then is it possible to prevent sicknesses from increasing. Sicknesses like AIDS, which are nothing but death delayed... scientists are of the opinion that there is almost no way to cure it. It is not a disease; something inside the man has died. My own...

... explanation is that two men making love means that the two similar energies mixing with each other have no tension. A certain tension is needed for life. Slowly, slowly they lose all the tension needed for life, and death becomes absolutely necessary. That is what AIDS is. Lesbians are still free... but they should not be happy. It is better, seeing what has happened to homosexuals, that they should get out...

... of lesbianism. It may take a few years more for lesbianism to create its own disease - and that disease will be far more dangerous than AIDS, because two negative energies mixing with each other are bound to create a far more deadly disease than two positive energies meeting with each other. Negativity is part of death. Positivity is part of life. A man and a woman making love bring a balance...

... between negativity and positivity, between life and death, so that the contradiction between life and death disappears and they become complementaries. It is healthy. Question 3: CAN MEDITATION BE USEFUL FOR THE COMMON PEOPLE TO BE HEALTHY? It is the best thing to help people to be healthy, because it gives you the taste of eternal life. It leads you into the shrine of your own being which has never...

... known any death or any sickness. And when you become identified with it - which you really are - your resistance to sickness, to disease, even to death, is tremendously powerful. Yes, meditation can be a great help for people for health. Every medical institute or hospital must have a special section, a division for meditation. Anyone who is in hospital should also be meditating. While he is taking...

... wouldn't allow him to go and he wanted to leave the country as fast, as quickly, as possible -- death was coming closer and he wanted to die in the silence of the Himalayas -- compelled to write, he sat in the guard's room for three days and completed the book, Tao Te Ching. But the first thing that he wrote was, "Tao cannot be said. Once said, it is no more Tao." You can understand what he...

... to be herenow, to be somewhere else, seeking and searching for a faraway goal, looking at a faraway distant star. The farther away the goal, the bigger the ego. Hence people who are not worldly have bigger egos than the so-called poor worldly people. Spiritual people have bigger egos, naturally; their goal is very far away, distant, beyond death, above the seven skies. God is their goal, or moksha...

.... He said to his disciples, "Now I am going to the Himalayas, never to return again. My whole life I have been a wanderer, and the Himalayas are the best place to die. I lived beautifully, I lived the most ecstatic life possible. I would also like to die most ecstatically, most aesthetically. I would like to die in the silence of the Himalayas, in those beautiful mountains." When he was...

... with unawareness, seen with blindness, seen with closed eyes, seen unintelligently, unmeditatively. Then the truth becomes a fact. For example, you come across a buddha. If you look at him unconsciously he is just a fact, a historical fact; he is born on a certain day and is going to die on a certain day. He is the body that you can see with your eyes; he is a certain person, a personality. History...

... can take note of him, you can have a picture of him. But if you look, not with unconsciousness but with great consciousness, with awareness, with great light, silence, then the fact is no longer there -- there is truth. Then Buddha is not somebody who is born on a certain date, he is somebody who is never born and is never going to die. Then Buddha is not the body, the body is just an abode. Then...

... uncaring about him? To say this, there is this metaphor of the cloud just hanging over his head wherever he would go. Jesus dies on the cross, and then after three days is resurrected. This is poetry, not history. This is not fact, this is truth. It simply says that those who die in God and for God attain to eternal life. Those who are ready to die for God are resurrected on another plane of being; they...

... am not saying that my choice has to be his choice, I am not saying that he has to do what I am doing. I am perfectly happy doing my thing, and I am perfectly happy that he is doing his thing. Many people have asked me questions saying that I have spoken on dead masters, so many, but why don't I sometimes speak on a living master? Let Krishnamurti die, then I will speak on him. There is a reason for...

... deliverance to you. But the deliverance is always after death, so nobody knows that any master has ever helped anybody after death because nobody returns to give any evidence. I don't want to help you after death. I want to help you right now. If I cannot help you now, how can I help you after death? While you are alive you should be changed. When you are full of energy and young you should put your youth...

... into B because the difference between A and B is only of degrees. In existence life becomes death. We see it happening every day -life changing into death, its very opposite. And those who have died consciously know one thing more that is not seen by us: they see death changing into new life. So it is not only life changing into death, death is continuously changing into life. They are not two...

... past fifty years he has been insistently challenged that he is wrong, and a new logic, non-Aristotelian, has arisen. That is happening in the West right now, but in the East it had happened even before Aristotle was born. Aristotle knows only about two: light and dark, life and death, subject and object. One morning a man asked Gautam Buddha, "Is there God?" Buddha looked at him and said...

... you tell us about the real thing?" And he would say, "To say anything about it is to betray the experience." They asked him to write it down for the coming generations. Lao Tzu said, "It is impossible, it cannot be written down." When he became eighty, he started traveling towards the Himalayas because he wanted to die in the silence of the Himalayas -the last moments in the...