.... Millions of things are there which he has not got. He can dream, he can hope that when these things are there he will have attained the target. Then everything will be okay, he will be happy. This man pursued happiness for sixty years. At sixty death is coming nearer, and he must have felt it that night, because whenever a birthday comes a subtle feeling of death arises. To suppress that feeling we...

... celebrate birthdays. Whenever a birthday comes, on that day it is impossible to forget death. To help you forget, friends come and greet you and they say, "This is your birthday." Every birthday is a death day, because one more year has gone, death is nearing. In fact a birthday is not a birthday, cannot be - death is approaching, death is coming nearer. Time is slipping fast through the fingers...

.... The very earth on which you are standing is being pulled away. Soon you will be in the abyss. A birthday is a death day. To hide it, to suppress it, the society has created tricks. People will come with flowers and gifts to help you forget that death is coming nearer - and they call it a birthday. He had become sixty. Next morning a new birthday was approaching. He must have felt, he must have heard...

... the sounds, the footsteps, of death somewhere around... the shadow. And he decided: Enough is enough. I pursued long - almost my whole life has been wasted in trying to be contented, and I could not be, so now I will do without. The old man said, "Now here I am. I have never been so contented as I am today, absolutely contented. There is no discontent, no unhappiness." In the very search...

..., because if an earthworm, not related to a plant at all, of a totally different species, is thrown into hot water, and the death, the torture, the violence, is felt by the plant and the plant goes through a turmoil, a terrible turmoil, shaken to the very roots, then the other thing also seems possible. Buddha attains to nirvana, he becomes enlightened. One life has reached the goal: it does not seem too...

... Osho From Death to Deathlessness: Abandon hope all those who enter here Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho From Death to Deathlessness   Next > Abandon hope all those who enter here From: Osho Date: Fri, 3 August 1985 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: From Death to Deathlessness Chapter #: 2 Location: am in Rajneeshmandir Archive Code: N.A...

... existence. You start feeling yourself part of this immense organic whole. You enjoy tremendously. How can there be anguish? Those existentialists were feeling anxiety, anguish, despair, because death is there, and death will destroy everything. Life has no meaning, and facing them, there is just death closing in on them. The darkness of death makes them feel lost. They start trembling deep inside their...

... being. Their life has been empty, and now comes death. What kind of existence is this? - just despair. It seems to be created not by God but by the devil. Perhaps the devil enjoys torturing people. He enjoys wars, he enjoys Ethiopias, he enjoys poverty, he enjoys all kinds of crimes. Courts go on increasing, and crimes are always far ahead of them. Governments go on becoming more and more dictatorial...

... has no meaning, that all that it gives is anguish, despair, death, and the only way out is suicide. But none of them committed suicide, they all lived long lives. It is just a game with words. I want you to remember that I am the only existentialist ever! I have tasted from the cup of existence. There is no meaning. There is no meaninglessness either. There is no hope. There is no hopelessness...

.... Listening to me, you may be thinking that Jung was very much more courageous than Sigmund Freud, because he was so interested in ghosts, but that is not true. He was interested in ghosts because he was very much afraid of death, and afraid of becoming a ghost! Jung wanted to go to Egypt to see the ancient mummies of kings and queens preserved there. Almost ten times he booked his trip, but at the last...

...From Death to Deathlessness...

... eternal. It fades, it disappears, it dies. You cannot trust it. You have to bring law, instead of love, between you. Law is a plastic thing. That's what marriage is: love become plastic. Now you can rest assured the law will prevail. Love will die sooner than it would have died if there was no marriage. But you will go on pretending that it is there, hence the suspicion. True lovers will understand it...

... an ansavatara - that means the partial incarnation of God. The second most important incarnation is Rama, who is worshipped all over India. He is the most worshipped incarnation in India, but the reasons why he is worshipped are again the same. His father had four wives. Rama was his eldest son, and when he felt that he was getting too old and death was coming close, he wanted Rama to be enthroned...

... as his successor. But his fourth wife, who was the youngest and the most beautiful, whom he had just chosen.... Now this dirty old man, who knows that he is going to die, is almost on his deathbed - why should he have married at this time? She persuaded him that Rama should be sent, exiled, into the forest beyond the kingdom for fourteen years - because her own son by that time would be adult and...

..., you are with it. When it is pleasure, you are with it; when it is pain, you are with it. You are with it in life, you are with it in death. Not for a single moment on any point do you differ from it. This total agreement, this absolute agreement, creates the religious man. Question 2: BELOVED OSHO, BISHOP JENKINS FROM DURHAM HAS BEEN EXCOMMUNICATED BY LORD HAILSHAM, THE LORD CHANCELLOR FOR...

... create confusion. You are talking of the kingdom of God that is after death, somewhere in the heavens. But the politicians become afraid - kingdom of God! - and say you are gathering people to conquer the kingdom of God. It seems that you are using a code language and you are trying.... That's what the priest is trying to tell me" - the viceroy told him - "that 'He really is a revolutionary...

... the person to die... because it was not like an electric chair, or a gas chamber of Adolf Hitler where within seconds thousands of people evaporate. It was a very crude method: nailing a person to a post. Now blood will ooze drop by drop, it will take time. So this was the conspiracy - that by the evening, when the sun sets, he will not be dead. He was only on the cross for six hours. Nobody has...

... ever died on the Jewish cross in six hours. Twenty-four hours, thirty-six hours, forty-eight hours, people have even taken sixty hours to die. And what was the strategy? ... Because Saturday is the Sabbath, everything stops for the Jews; no work can be done. And the body of Jesus had to be brought down from the cross after six hours, because the sun was setting; now all work stopped. So he was...

... after hour he comes back to see the disciples. Whenever he comes back, they are all fast asleep, snoring. They could not even remain awake one night. And the next day the master is going to die. They could not even sacrifice one night's sleep - people sacrifice it sitting before a television, looking at a Hollywood movie, any crap - and they could not remain awake. And why was he insisting? - because...

... have practiced the breathing exercises which can keep the body without any deterioration even after death. So the bishop is courageous, but ignorant. He knows nothing about Jesus and his crucifixion. One thing he says, that he cannot believe in the virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus - no sane man can believe that. Christians think it is the holy ghost who made the poor girl pregnant. Strange... I...

... prove that there is a chain of births, that the soul goes from one birth to another birth to another birth." I said, "Stop now. I will not answer any of your questions. You say, 'I want to prove....' It means you have already accepted the fact, and all that you want now is evidence. As far as you are concerned, you have accepted the fact that life goes on changing forms, death is not a real...

... death; it is only a changing of the clothes, a changing of the body, a changing of the house. Your Hindu mind wants to prove scientifically a Hindu belief. Certainly you will find evidence - because you are looking for it. No Christian is trying to look for it, no Mohammedan is trying to look for it, no Jew is trying to look for it. Why are only Hindus concerned? What business is it of yours? Have you...

... body, as if there is only a dead body touching. This insensitivity is bad. It is bad because you are defending yourself against life. You are so much afraid of death, and you are already dead. You need not really be afraid because no one is going to die; you are already dead. And that is why you are afraid - because you have not lived. You have been missing life and death is coming. A person who is...

... "alive" will not be afraid of death because he is living. When you are really living there is no fear of death. You can even live death. When death comes, you will be so sensitive to it that you will enjoy it. It is going to be a great experience. If you are alive you can even live death, and then death is no more there. If you can even live death, if you can even be sensitive to your dying...

... alive, and you will be more divine. Be totally alive, and there is no death for you. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

.... Once he is a Buddha he is nowhere: neither in time nor in space. He jumps out of the realm of history. That is why we have never been concerned with history in India. We concern ourselves only with that which is meaningful. Concern with death is beyond history, all that is meaningful is beyond history, so history became meaningless to us. It records all that is nonsense. So India, the Indian mind...

... indirectly about it. He never talked directly, he indicated it. But it could not be understood. The concept of rebirth is the reason why the East could conceive of history in a circular dimension. If you are to be reborn again and again there will be birth and death - then birth will follow and again there will be death. It will be a repetition. But if there is only life - birth followed by death, but...

... death not followed by birth - then birth becomes absolute, death becomes absolute. Neither will come again. That is why time became so important in the West, and the West became time-obsessed. These are all related things: history, time, tension. Why has the West become so tense about time? Not a single moment is to be lost because. once lost, you cannot find it again; it cannot be reclaimed. The East...

... is at ease. Nothing is lost, everything can be reclaimed. You cannot lose it even if you try. Things will come back. Death will be followed by birth again, you will be young again. Everything will come back, will return to itself. This seems more natural. Every movement is circular - it may be of an atomic particle or it may be of a great star. Everything moves in a circle; there is no movement...

... a circular time concept, history cannot exist. With an infinite opening toward the future, with an infinite possibility of repetition, a historic sense cannot exist. With the concept that death is just temporary - just a phase and not the end - history cannot exist. History can exist only with the concept of absolute death. Then, each moment becomes significant, You have to live it, otherwise it...

... will be lost. Tension follows; you become tense. How to live each moment so that it may not be lost, how to live it so that it may be lived to its fullest extent? You cannot be relaxed. The West can never be relaxed unless its time concept changes. Unless death is just a passage for rebirth, unless each moment is a repetition, an infinite repetition, you cannot be relaxed. How can you be relaxed when...

.... In India, if someone says that a dead person has returned to life it is not a miracle. It is an ordinary thing. After death, there is no way to move except to rebirth. Someone in India who reads about such a thing will definitely think in terms of rebirth. But in the West, Jesus became 'resurrected'. He came again to life. If became a problem that Christianity could not solve. They feel guilty...

... enough, they never go directly into the flame. They first go round and round, perhaps hesitating, perhaps having another thought, perhaps taking time, a little more time before they take the jump. Because the jump into the flame is going to be their death on one plane. And the other plane on which they will be reborn is not yet - there is no guarantee about it. Only your trust is the guarantee, your...

... clear. The closer you come to the master in deep love, in an incredible pull, your biological mind - which is thousands of years old - immediately creates an anti-pull as a protection, as a defense: you are moving towards a danger. Because of the danger of your personality's death, the mind immediately pulls back. You always keep a little distance from people you love. You can come very close to the...

... stop will be when you have come too close. Just for a moment you will have to think whether to go one step more or a few steps backward or move away - it is too dangerous. The moth has come very close to the flame. Any more closeness and death is sure. The ancient seers of the East describe the master as death. Strange definition! When I first came across it ... death? But slowly, slowly it became...

... clear. To me they were right, yet their definition is only half. I say, the master is death and resurrection. Just to stop at death is very dangerous. It will give a totally different idea to the disciple, making him even more afraid. He has to be assured of a resurrection. And that is only possible not by intellectual argumentation, but by opening your heart to the disciple, inviting him within you...

... accident she asked if she could see the scene of the tragedy. At the brewery the foreman explained to her, "He was climbing this ladder when he slipped and fell into the beer and drowned." "How terrible!" exclaimed Maureen. "It must have been an agonizing death." "I would not say exactly agonizing," replied the foreman. "He managed to get out twice to go to...

... appreciated for my visits? You can bring it and give it to me at the Elephant Gate.'" I loved that peon. He was such a beautiful soul. He died in 1960. Just by chance I was in the town, but to me it was as if I was only there for him, so that I could see him die. And that has been my deep interest from my very childhood. Death is such a mystery, far deeper than life can ever be. I am not saying that...

.... Even at my own death I will, if allowed, still have a good laugh. But in India for the last twenty-five years I have had to play the role of a serious man. It has been my most difficult role, and the longest drawn. But I did it in such a way that although I have remained serious, I have never allowed anybody around me to be serious. That has kept me above water, otherwise those serious people are far...

... you should commit suicide, but remember that death is not the enemy, and not the end either. It is not a film which finishes with "The End." There is no end. Birth and death, both are events in the stream of life, just waves. And certainly death is richer than birth, because birth is empty. Death is one's whole life's experience. It depends on you how much you make your death significant...

... IS YOURSELF! Zareen, I do not believe in miracles, but still miracles happen. Because I do not believe in them, I cannot claim to be the doer. At the most I am also a watcher. The miracles that Jesus did are trivia: walking on the water, or turning water into wine, or bringing Lazarus from death back to life. To me they are not miracles. I am reminded of one of the greatest mystics this land has...

... spiritual, it does not give you a glimpse of the divine. On the contrary it takes you further away from God. You become more egoistic, because you can do something which others cannot do. Jesus brings Lazarus back to life. Naturally it appears to be a great miracle - but it is not, because Lazarus is not transformed, and living a few years more, repeating the old routine again, he has to die. His being...

... long behind each person - of dead people. But she went from house to house and slowly, slowly, by the evening she became aware. Her tears dried up; she came back to Gautam Buddha, touched his feet, and said, "Forget about the boy, in this world everybody has to die. It does not matter when one dies. You initiate me as a sannyasin, so that I can experience something of the deathless, something of...

... miracle. But what is the point? He will die again; you have not given him the taste of immortality. Real miracles are invisible to the ordinary mind. I don't believe in these miracles, because they are not miracles. Zareen, you are asking about my miracle. I have never done anything deliberately, because to do anything deliberately is to go against the natural flow of existence. I am in a total let-go...

... miracles are such trivia. The real miracles remain invisible, unrecorded in history because only the person who goes through the process of the miracle knows it, and even he cannot prove it, he cannot give any evidence for it. I have been a watcher here. I have seen you change from death to life, I have seen you change from darkness to light, I have seen seen you change from a life of lies to the glory...

... done a great job. He has not only caught the body of the person, but also his spirit." And Ramakrishna kept that painting his whole life, just behind his bed. It is still there. While his wife was alive she used to make the bed every day, even after his death. She used to bring food to his room. She used to cook all those delicious things that Ramakrishna liked. People started saying, "One...

... your dress.'" This is the custom among the Hindus, that the widow cannot use colored clothes, she cannot use ornaments, she has to shave her head. Ramkrishna said, "You are not to do anything, because I am not going to die, I'm simply leaving the body, but I will be here, now, always." "So whom I am to believe?" Sharda used to say. "And if he is always here now, I cannot...

... that because I know swimming." And he came out. I said, "You are something. When you wanted to die, why did you start swimming?" He said, "You have never tried such a thing, I did everything, because of you! And then when I got the chance to swim out of the river I did not miss. Here is your lighter, you keep it. It may help somebody else." But I said, "What about your...

... doer, he will be blackened. Only one alternative is available: to cease entirely to be the doer. One cannot avoid actions. Actions will certainly be there as long as we live. It is a mistake to say, "Give up doing things so that there is no chance of being smeared by them." Actions will be there till death. To breathe in is an action. It is not only the man who runs his shop who is involved...

... not as a doer; he remains an actor. Remember, it is the doer who gets covered in coal-dust, not the action. If it were the action that caught the coal-dust, then what the Ishavasaya says could not happen, what the Gita says could not happen. Then there would be no escape from action as long as one lived. Then one could be free from action only after death. Then it appears there would be no...

... liberation as long as life persists. But how can one be free after death when one cannot be free while living? If one cannot be free while living, there is certainly no scope to find freedom after death. If action itself can be smeared with the soot of life, then liberation is impossible. But those who search deep within say that the coal dust clings to the doer and not the doing. That is, it clings only...

... am the doer," and at the same time there is the knower who understands that the action is going on - that the actors have come together on the stage to enact the drama - then it makes no difference how great the stage is; let it be as wide as the whole world! It makes no difference that the curtain in the drama is raised only once at the time of birth, and is lowered only at the time of death...

... is also a play. Thus the circle expands, until the whole human world encompassing this community becomes a play. That is why we have to cling firmly to every detail of our position and say, "No, the institution of marriage is not a play, it is a serious matter; it is a life-and-death issue." The family is not a play, the community is not a play. Then every step, every action, becomes as...

.... Leave all your doings to existence. Do not take the load of doing upon yourselves. That load will be far too much for you; it will be more than you can bear. To carry that load is beyond your capacity. You will be crushed under its weight and you will die. Nothing can save you from it." But our ego finds it difficult to swallow this. On the contrary, it takes pleasure in the weight of the boulder...

... praise him, and burdens which he never carried are ascribed to him. But the Ishavasya is referring to a person about whom there remains nothing to praise after his death. It talks about one who has thrown all his authorship on existence. One who says, "I am not at all, it alone is there. If there is a doer, it is existence only. At the most, I am only a pawn in its game. I am willing to go...

... should drop its weapons and declare to the world, "We are absolutely without weapons; we want our people to live joyously, even if it means the death of the country. But we will die dancing, we will not die fighting and killing human beings." That declaration, in reality, will have a sympathetic echo all over the world. And if one country can do that, other countries will follow, because...

... forever or only for a few days. And I love this freedom, that I am not bound to be anywhere tomorrow. Yesterday is dead; tomorrow is so full of life you cannot plan for it. And I love this unplanned opening of the future. It is a tremendous excitement, what tomorrow's sunrise will bring. I have never planned anything in my life. I have lived unplanned, and I am going to die unplanned. HOW ARE YOU...

... ASSASSINATED AND WE DON'T REPORT IT, THEN HOW WILL THE PEOPLE RELY ON ME? Your reporting of Mrs. Gandhi's assassination - do you know how many Sikhs have been killed just for one woman? If you had not reported that, thousands of Sikhs would not have been killed. You are responsible for it. And Mrs. Gandhi was going to die sooner or later, so what is the big mess about it? The legal authorities are there...

... service of killing, in war; naturally the country will remain poor. Without Pakistan attacking you, you will die through your own poverty. My feeling is that India should make a historical decision - that we cease all war efforts and we put our whole energy into destroying poverty. We will fight poverty, not human beings - even if it means that other countries can attack us. But it does not necessarily...

... is not going to be a great war because nobody wants to die, nobody wants to destroy humanity - neither America nor the Soviet Union nor anybody else. My own suggestion is that India should make its ties with the Soviet Union as deep as possible and declare itself really a nonviolent country - taking the risk of the whole country being destroyed. But I don't think destruction can happen because the...

... things cannot be said I would rather die than live - but I cannot tolerate such kinds of stupid attitudes. So I had said India is not worth living in. I still say it is not worth living in. And the burden is on them - the government, the politicians. If they want it to be worth living in and they want me to say so, then they have to behave; otherwise, the whole world is there, and it will be far better...