Tag: death

A Conscious Death – Osho

Is it possible to die consciously without being enlightened?

Nirah, existence follows certain laws – and there are no exceptions. If one wants to die consciously, the only way is to be enlightened.

Death is such a great surgery: your soul is being taken apart from the body and mind, with which it has been involved for seventy or eighty years. Even for a small operation you need anesthesia; and this is the greatest operation in existence.

Unconsciousness is nothing but nature’s way of giving you anesthesia. Unless you are completely unidentified with body and mind, you cannot die consciously – and a death which is not conscious is a great opportunity missed.

Enlightenment is an absolute necessity.

Enlightenment only means that your whole being is conscious: there are no dark corners left inside you. Dying in such consciousness the body, the mind, the brain can be taken away from you, because you know now – not just as a theory, but as your authentic experience – that you have always been separate. The involvement with the body was broken the day you became enlightened.

In the ancient scriptures of the Buddhists, enlightenment is called the “great death” – not that you are going to die, but the death is great because you will be able to see it happening, you will be a witness. Now you are no longer attached to the body, no clinging, and you have become aware of your immortality.

You can die consciously only when you know that you are immortal, that you belong to eternity, not to time; that deep within you is the beginning of existence and the end of existence – if there is any beginning or if there is any end. In fact there is no beginning and no end; you have always been here, and you will always be here.

A conscious death is one of the miracles of life, because after that you will not be born again in any form – as a man, as a bird, as a tree. You will remain in the eternal consciousness of the universe, spread all over the ocean. Hence, it has been called the “great death.”

But there are no exceptions. Existence follows absolutely definite laws, and this is a law of the highest order, because it concerns your consciousness, your life, your death.

-Osho

From The Rebellious Spirit, Discourse #16, Q1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Raja Stop the Wheel – Osho

Death is not the end but only the culmination of one’s whole life, a climax. It is not that you are finished but you are transported to another body. That is what the easterners call “the wheel.” It goes on turning and turning. Yes, it can be stopped, but the way to stop it is not when you are dying.

That is one of the lessons, the greatest lesson I learned from my grandfather’s death. He was crying, with tears in his eyes, and asking us to stop the wheel. We were at a loss what to do: how to stop the wheel?

His wheel was his wheel; it was not even visible to us. It was his own consciousness, and only he could do it. Since he was asking us to stop it, it was obvious that he could not do it himself, hence the tears and his constant insistence in asking us again and again, as if we were deaf. We told him, “We have heard you, Nana, and we understand. Please be silent.”

In that moment something great happened. I have never revealed it to anybody; perhaps before this moment was not the time. I was saying to him, “Please be silent” – the bullock cart was rattling on the rough, ugly road. It was not even a road, just a track, and he was insisting, “Stop the wheel, Raja, do you hear? Stop the wheel.”

Again and again I told him, “Yes, I do hear you. I understand what you mean. You know that nobody except you can stop the wheel, so please be silent. I will try to help you.”

My grandmother was amazed. She looked at me with such big, amazing eyes: what was I saying?

How could I help?

I said, “Yes. Don’t look so amazed. I have suddenly remembered one of my past lives. Seeing his death I have remembered one of my own deaths.” That life and death happened in Tibet. That is the only country which knows, very scientifically, how to stop the wheel. Then I started chanting something.

Neither my grandmother could understand, nor my dying grandfather, nor my servant Bhoora, who was listening intently from the outside. And what is more, neither could I understand a single word of what I was chanting. It was only after twelve or thirteen years that I came to understand what it was. It took that much time to discover it. It was bardo thodal, a Tibetan ritual.

When a man dies in Tibet, they repeat a certain mantra. That mantra is called bardo. The mantra says to him, “Relax, be silent. Go to your center, just be there; don’t leave it whatsoever happens to the body. Just be a witness. Let it happen, don’t interfere. Remember, remember, remember that you are only a witness; that is your true nature. If you can die remembering, the wheel is stopped.”

I repeated the bardo thodal for my dying grandfather without even knowing what I was doing. It was strange – not only that I repeated it, but also that he became utterly silent listening to it. Perhaps Tibetan was such a strange thing to hear. He may never have heard a single word in Tibetan before; he may not even have known that there was a country called Tibet. Even in his death he became utterly attentive and silent. The bardo worked although he could not understand it. Sometimes things you don’t understand work; they work just because you don’t understand.

No great surgeon can operate on his own child. Why? No great surgeon can operate on his own beloved. I don’t mean his wife – anyone can operate on his wife – I mean his beloved, who certainly is not his wife, and can never be. To reduce your beloved into your wife is a crime. It is of course unpunished by law, but nature itself punishes, so there is no need for any law.

No lover can be reduced into a husband. It is so ugly to have a husband. The very word is ugly. It comes from the same root as “husbandry”; the husband is one who uses the woman as a field, a farm, to sow his seed. The word “husband” has to be completely erased from every language in the world; it is inhuman. A lover is understandable but not a husband!

I was repeating the bardo though I did not understand its meaning, nor did I know where it was coming from, because I had not read it yet. But when I repeated it just the shock of those strange words made my grandfather silent. He died in that silence.

To live in silence is beautiful, but to die in silence is far more beautiful, because death is like an Everest, the highest peak in the Himalayas. Although nobody taught me, I learned much in that moment of his silence. I saw myself repeating something absolutely strange. It shocked me to a new plane of being and pushed me into a new dimension. I started on a new search, a pilgrimage.

-Osho

From Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, Chapter 15

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Glimpses of a Golden Childhood

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

On Knowing the Eternal Law – Osho

Death is destiny. It has to be so because it is the origin – you come from death and you go to death. Life is just a moment between two nothingnesses, just a flight of a bird between two states of non-being.

If death is destiny, as it is, then the whole of life becomes a preparation, a training for it – a discipline in how to die rightly and how to die totally and utterly. The whole of life consists in learning how to die. But somehow a wrong conception about death has entered humanity, the conception that death is the enemy. This is the basis of all wrong conceptions, and this is the basis of humanity going astray from the eternal law, from Tao. How has this happened? It has to be understood.

Man has taken death as the enemy of life, as if death is there to destroy life, as if death is against life. If this is the conception then of course you have to fight death, and life becomes an effort to survive death. Then you are fighting against your own origin, you are fighting against your destiny, you are fighting against something which is going to happen. The whole fight is absurd because death cannot be avoided.

If it were something outside you it could be avoided, but it is inside. You carry it from the very moment you are born. You start dying really when you start breathing, at the same moment. It is not right to say that death comes in the end, it has always been with you from the very beginning. It is part of you, it is your innermost center, it grows with you, and one day it comes to a culmination, one day it comes to flowering. The day of death is not the day of death’s coming; it is the flowering. Death was growing within you all this time, now it has reached a peak; and once death reaches a peak you disappear back into the origin.

But man has taken a wrong attitude and that wrong attitude creates struggle, fight, violence. A man who thinks that death is against life can never be non-violent. It is impossible. A man who thinks that death is the enemy can never be at ease, at home. That is impossible. How can you be at ease when the enemy is waiting for you any moment? It will jump on you and destroy you. And the shadow of death is always falling on you? It can happen any moment. How can you rest when death is there? How can you relax? The enemy won’t allow you to relax.

Hence the tension, the anxiety, the anguish of humanity. The more you fight with death, the more anxiety-ridden you will become, you are bound to become. It is a natural consequence. If you fight with death, you know that you are going to be defeated. How can you be happy with a life which is going to end in defeat? You know that whatsoever effort you make, nothing is going to succeed against death. Deep down you are certain about only one thing and that is death. In life everything else is uncertain, only death is certain. There is only one certainty, and in that certainty, you have an enemy. Fighting with certainty and hoping for uncertainties how can you be in a repose? How can you be relaxed, calm, collected? Impossible.

People come to me, and they say they would like to be at peace, they would like to be at home in the world, they would like to be silent, they need a certain relaxation. But I look into their eyes and the fear of death is there. Maybe they are just trying to be relaxed to fight against death more easily; maybe they are trying to find a repose so that they can become stronger against death. But if death is there, how can you be relaxed, silent, at peace, at home? If death is the enemy, then basically the whole of life becomes your enemy. Then every moment, everywhere, the shadow falls; then every moment, from everywhere, death echoes. The whole life becomes inimical, and you start fighting.

The whole concept of the Western mind is to fight to survive. They say, ‘survival of the fittest’, ‘life is a struggle’. Why is it a struggle? It is a struggle because death is taken as the opposite. Once you understand that death is not the opposite of life but part of it, an intrinsic part of it, which can never be separated from it – once you accept death as a friend, suddenly a transformation happens. You are transfigured, your vision now has a new quality in it. Now there is no fight, no war, you are not fighting against anybody, now you can relax, now you can be at home. Once death becomes a friend only then does life become a friend also. This may look paradoxical but it is so, only the appearance is paradoxical. If death is the enemy, then deep down life is also the enemy, because life leads to death.

Every type of life leads to death – the poor man’s life, the rich man’s life, a life of success and a life of failure, the life of the wise man and the life of an ignorant one, the life of a sinner and a saint.

All sorts of lives, whatsoever their differences, lead to death. How can you be in love with life if you are against death? Then your love is just nothing but a possessiveness, your love is nothing but a clinging. Against death you cling to life, but you can understand that this very life is bringing death nearer every day. So you are doomed, all your efforts are doomed. And then anxiety arises, the whole being trembles. You live in a trembling and then you become violent and mad. In the West the proportion of mad people is much higher than in the East. The reason is clear.

The West takes death against life but the East has a totally different standpoint – life and death are one, two faces of the same phenomenon. Once you accept death many things are immediately accepted. In fact if you accept death as part of life, then all other enemies are also accepted as part of friendship because the basic duality dissolves, the duality of life and death, being and non-being. If the basic duality is resolved, then all other dualities are just superficial, they dissolve. Suddenly you are at home – eyes are clear, no smoke is in them, perception is absolutely clear, and no darkness is around.

But why, why has it happened in the West? And it is happening in the East also because the East is turning more Western every day. In all education, in scientific attitudes the East is no longer purely Eastern, it is already contaminated. The East is now also becoming anxious, afraid. Have you observed that in the West there is much time consciousness but in the East it is not so much, and even if it is, it is only in the cultured, educated parts? If you move to the villages there is no time consciousness. In fact, time consciousness is death consciousness: when you are afraid of death then time is short. With so many things to do and so little time given, you are conscious of every second passing. Life is being shortened so you are tense, running around, doing many things, trying to enjoy the whole of it, running from one place to another, one enjoyment to another – and enjoying nothing because you are so time conscious.

In the East people are not so time conscious because they have accepted life. You may not be aware that in India we have named death as time. We call death kal, and we also call time kal; kal means time and kal means death as well. To use the same word for both means a very deep understanding, it is very meaningful. Time is death, death is time: the more death conscious you are, the more time conscious you will be, the less death conscious, the less time conscious. Then there is no question of time. If you have completely absorbed death into life time consciousness simply disappears. Why in the West and now in the East is there so much anxiety about death, somuch so, that life cannot be enjoyed at all?

Living in a timeless world rocks are more happy than man; living in a world where death is not known the trees are more blissful than man; not that they don’t die, but death is not known. Animals happy, celebrating, birds singing, the whole existence except man is blissfully unaware of death. Only man is aware of death and that creates all the other problems; that is the source problem, the basic rift.

It should not be so because man is the highest, the most refined, the peak of existence – why should it be so with man? Whenever you attain to a peak, almost side by side the valley becomes deeper. A high peak can exist only with a deep valley. For rocks there is no unhappiness, no valley part, because their happiness is also on the plain ground. Man is a peak, he has risen high, but because of this rise, side by side there is a depth, a valley. You look down and you feel nauseous, you look down and you feel afraid. The valley is part of the peak.  The valley cannot exist without the peak and the peak cannot exist without the valley, they are together, they are a togetherness. But a man standing at the height of the peak looks down and feels nauseous, giddy, afraid, fearful.

Man is conscious – that is where the whole trouble lies.

Consciousness is a two-edged sword; it cuts both ways. It can make you so utterly happy that that type of happiness is not known anywhere in existence; it can make you so unhappy and miserable that that type of unhappiness is also not known anywhere else in the world. Man is a double possibility; by being conscious two roads suddenly open before him.

Consciousness can become a blessing, but it can become a curse also. Every blessing comes with a curse. The problem is that it depends on you how you choose. Let me explain it to you, then we can enter the sutra easily.

Man is conscious. The moment man becomes conscious he becomes conscious of the end also – that he is going to die. He becomes conscious of tomorrow, conscious of time, conscious of the passing of time – then sooner or later the end will come near. The more he becomes conscious, the more death becomes a problem, the only problem. How to avoid it? This is using consciousness in a wrong way. It is just as if you have given a child a telescope, and the child doesn’t know how to use it. He can look into the telescope from the wrong end.

Consciousness is a telescope; you can look through it from the wrong end. And the wrong end has some benefits of its own – that creates more trouble. Through the wrong end of the telescope, you can see that many benefits are possible; in the short range many benefits are possible. People who are time conscious gain something in comparison to people who are not time conscious. People who are death conscious attain many things in comparison to those who are not death conscious. That’s why the West goes on accumulating material wealth and the East has remained poor. If you are not death conscious, who bothers?

People live moment to moment as if the tomorrow doesn’t exist. Who accumulates? For what? Today is so beautiful, why not celebrate it, and we will see about tomorrow when it comes.

In the West they have accumulated infinite wealth because they are so time conscious. They have reduced their whole life into things, material things – skyscrapers. They have attained much wealth . . . that is the benefit of looking from the wrong end. They can see only certain things which are close, short-range, they cannot see farther away. Their eyes have become like those of a blind man who cannot see farther away. He looks at just whatsoever he can gather right now, without thinking that it may be at a very great cost in the end. In the long range this benefit may not prove a benefit. You can make a big house, but by the time it is built you are ready to go; you couldn’t live in it at all. You could have lived in a small house beautifully, even a cottage would have done, but you thought that you would live in a palace. Now the palace is ready but the man is gone. He is not there.

People accumulate wealth at the cost of their own self. Finally, eventually, one day, they become aware that they have lost themselves and that they have purchased useless things. The cost was great, but now nothing can be done, the time is past.

If you are time conscious you will be mad about accumulating things, you will transform your whole life energy into things. A man who is conscious of the whole range will enjoy this moment as much as he can. He will float. He will not bother about the tomorrow because he knows tomorrow never comes. He knows deeply that finally only one thing has to be attained – that is one’s own self.

Live, and live so totally that you come in contact with yourself…. And there is no other way to come in contact with yourself. The deeper you live, the deeper you know yourself, in relationship, in aloneness. The deeper you move in relationship, in love, the deeper you know. Love becomes a mirror. And one who has never loved cannot be alone, he can at the most be lonely.

One who has loved and known a relationship, can be alone. Now his aloneness has a totally different quality to it, it is not loneliness. He has lived in a relationship, fulfilled his love, known the other, and known himself through the other. Now he can know himself directly, now the mirror is not needed.

Just think of someone who has never come across a mirror. Can he close his eyes and see his face? Impossible. He cannot even imagine his face, he cannot meditate on it. But a man who has come to a mirror, looked into it, known his face through it, can close his eyes and see the face inside. That’s what happens in relationship. When a person moves into a relationship, the relationship mirrors, reflects himself, and he comes to know many things that he never knew existed in him.

Through the other he comes to know his anger, his greed, his jealousy, his possessiveness, his compassion, his love, and thousands of moods of his being. Many climates he encounters through the other. By and by a moment comes when he can now be alone; he can close his eyes and know his own consciousness directly. That’s why I say that for people who have never loved meditation is very, very difficult.

Those who have loved deeply can become deep meditators; those who have loved in a relationship are now in a position to be by themselves. Now they have become mature, now the other is not needed. If the other is there they can share, but the need has disappeared; now there is no dependence.

Consciousness becomes conscious of death in the end. If consciousness becomes conscious of death in the end a fear arises. That fear creates a continuous escaping within you. Then you are escaping from life; wherever there is life you are escaping because wherever there is life a hint, a glimpse of death comes. People who are too afraid of death never fall in love with persons, they fall in love with things – things never die because they have never lived.

You can have things for ever and ever and, moreover, they are replaceable. If one car goes you can replace it by another car of exactly the same make. But you cannot replace a person – if your wife dies, she dies forever. You can have another wife, but no other woman will ever replace her – for good or for bad, no other woman can be the same woman. If your child dies you can adopt another, but no adopted child will have the same quality of relationship that your own child can have. The wound remains, it cannot be healed. People who are too afraid of death become afraid of life. Then they accumulate things: a big palace, a big car, millions of dollars, rupees, this and that, things which are deathless. A rupee is more deathless than a rose. They are not bothered about roses; they only go on accumulating rupees.

A rupee never dies, it is almost immortal, but a rose . . . In the morning it was alive and by the evening it is no more. They become afraid of roses, they don’t look at them. Or sometimes, if the desire arises, they purchase plastic flowers. They are good. You can be at ease with plastic flowers because they give a sense of immortality. They can be there forever and forever and forever. A real rose – in the morning it is so alive, by the evening it is gone, the petals have settled on the soil, it has returned to the same source. From the earth it comes, flowers a while, and sends its fragrance to the whole of existence. Then mission done, message given, it falls silently back to the earth and disappears with not a single tear, with no struggle. Have you seen petals falling down onto the earth from a flower? How beautifully and gracefully they fall, with no clinging; for not even a single moment do they try to cling. A breeze just comes and the whole flower has gone to the earth, returned to the source.

A man who is afraid of death will be afraid of life; will be afraid of love, because love is a flower – love is not a rupee. A man who is afraid of life may get married but he will never fall in love. Marriage is like a rupee, love is like a rose flower. It is there, it may not be there, but you cannot be certain about it, it has no legal immortality about it. A marriage is something to cling to, it has a certificate, a court behind it. It has the force of the police and the president behind it and they will all come if something goes wrong.

But with love . . . There is the force of roses of course, but roses are not policemen, they are not presidents, they cannot protect.

Love comes and goes, marriage simply comes. It is a dead phenomenon, it is an institution. It is simply unbelievable that people like to live in institutions. Afraid, afraid of death, they have killed all possibilities of death from everywhere. They are creating an illusion around them that everything is going to stay as it is. Everything is secure and safe. Hidden behind this security they feel a certain security, but that is foolish, stupid. Nothing can save them; death will come and knock at their doors and they will die.

Consciousness can take two views. One is to be afraid of life because through life comes death.

Another is to love life so deeply that you start loving death also, because it is the innermost core of it. The first attitude comes from thinking; the second attitude comes from meditation. The first attitude comes from too many thoughts, the second attitude comes from a thought-less mind, from a no-mind. Consciousness can be reduced to thoughts; thoughts can be melted down again into consciousness.

Just think of a river in cold winter. When icebergs start appearing certain parts of the water are now frozen. Then more cold comes, the temperature falls below zero and the whole river is frozen. Now there is no movement, no flow. Consciousness is a river, a stream – with more thoughts, the stream is frozen. If there are so many thoughts, so many ‘thought-hindrances’, there is no possibility of any flow. Then the river is completely frozen. You are already dead.

But if the river is completely flowing, if you melt down the icebergs, if you melt down all that has frozen, all the thoughts . . . That is what meditation is all about: it is an effort to defreeze all thoughts. They can be converted again into consciousness. Then the river flows, then the river has a flow to it, and alive, vibrant, dancing, it moves toward the sea. Why do people like to be frozen? Because a frozen river cannot move to the sea. Sea means death. The river will disappear, disappear forever, it will become one with the infinite, it will not be any longer an individual. It will not have its own name: the Ganges will not be Ganges then, the Volga will not be Volga. They disappear into the uncharted.

If the mind is afraid, it becomes a whirlwind of thoughts. If you are too much of a thinking man, continuously thinking from morning to evening, from evening to morning, in the day, thoughts and thoughts and thoughts, in the night, dreams and dreams and dreams – your river is frozen. That too is part of fear: your river is so frozen that you cannot move, so the ocean remains far away. If you move, you will fall into the ocean.

Meditation is an effort to defreeze you. Thoughts by and by melt like snow, become flowing again, and mind becomes a stream. Now nothing hinders it, it moves unhindered towards the sea.

If consciousness becomes meditative then you accept death, then death is nothing apart, it is you. Then you accept death as repose; then you accept death as a final relaxation; then you accept death as a retirement. You retire. The whole day you have worked hard, in the evening you come home, and then you go to sleep, you retire. Life is like the day, death is like the night. Again you will come; many mornings will come, in different forms you will be here again and again and again, until the absolute death happens. That absolute death is for those who have become absolutely without thoughts. It is for those who have known absolutely that death and life are two aspects of the same coin, who are now no longer afraid of death – have not even a slight fear – and who are now no longer attached to life.

So there are two stages of the final disappearance. The first one is not to be afraid of death. And once you are not afraid of death the second step is not to have any deep lust for life. Then you go beyond.

And Lao Tzu said this is the eternal law – to know it is to be enlightened, not to know it is to court disaster.

-Osho

From Living Tao, Discourse #1 (Originally Titled Tao: The Three Treasures,V.2)

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com  or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

How to Die – Osho

Every culture, every civilization, every so called religion, cuts every child off from his heart. It is a most dangerous thing. All that is dangerous comes out of the heart. Mind is more secure, and with the mind you know where you are. With the heart, no one ever knows where one is. With the mind, everything is calculated, mapped, measured. And you can feel the crowd always with you, in front of you, at the back of you. Many are moving on it; it is a highway – concrete, solid, gives you a feeling of security. With the heart you are alone. Nobody is with you. Fear grips, fear possesses you. Where are you going? Now you no longer know, because when you move with a crowd on a highway, you know where you are moving because you think the crowd knows.

And everybody is in the same position: everybody thinks, ‘So many people are moving, we must be moving somewhere; otherwise, why so many people, millions of them, moving? They must be moving somewhere.’ Everybody thinks like that. In fact, the crowd is not moving anywhere. No crowd has ever reached any goal. The crowd goes on moving and moving. You are born; you become part of the crowd. And the crowd was already moving before you were born. And then a day comes when you are finished, you die, and the crowd goes on moving, because new ones are always being born. The crowd never reaches anywhere! – but it gives a feeling of comfort. You feel cozy, surrounded by so many people wiser than you, older than you, more experienced than you; they must know where they are moving – you feel secure.

The moment you start falling towards the heart… and it is a falling: falling like falling in an abyss. That’s why when somebody is in love; we say he has fallen in love. It is a fall – the head sees it as a fall – someone has gone astray, fallen. When you start falling towards the heart you become alone; now nobody can be with you there, you in your total loneliness. Afraid, scared you will be. Now you will not know where you are going, because nobody is there and there are no milestones. In fact, there is no concrete solid path. Heart is unmapped, unmeasured, uncharted. Tremendous fear will be there.

The whole of my effort is to help you not to be afraid, because only through the heart will you be reborn. But before you are reborn, you will have to die. Nobody can be reborn before he dies. So the whole message of Sufism, Zen, Hassidism – these are all forms of Sufism – is how to die. The whole art of dying is the base. I am teaching you here nothing except that: how to die.

If you die, you become available to infinite sources of life. You die, really, in your present form. It has become too narrow. You only survive in it – you don’t live. The tremendous possibility of life is completely closed, and you feel confined, imprisoned. You feel everywhere a limitation, a boundary. A wall, a stone wall comes wherever you move – a wall.

My whole effort is how to break these stone walls. And they are not made of stone – they are made of thoughts. And nothing is more like rock than a thought. They are made of dogmas, scriptures. They surround you. And wherever you go, you carry them with you. Your imprisonment you carry with you. Your prison is always hanging around you. How to break them?

The breaking of the walls will appear to you like a death. It is in a way, because your present identity will be lost. Whosoever you are, that identity will be lost. You will be that no more. Suddenly something else…. It was always hidden within you, but you were not aware. Suddenly a discontinuity. The old is no more there, and something utterly new has entered. It is not continuous with your past. That’s why we call it a death. It is not continuous: a gap exists.

And if you look backwards, you will not feel that whatsoever existed before this resurrection was real. No, it will appear as if you saw it in a dream; or it will appear as if you read it somewhere in a fiction; or, as if somebody else related his own story and it was never yours – somebody else’s. The old completely disappears. That’s why we call it a death. An absolutely new phenomenon comes into existence. And remember the word ‘absolutely’. It is not a modified form of the old; it has no connection with the old. It is resurrection. But resurrection is possible only when you are capable of dying.

-Osho

Excerpt from Until You Die (Journey Toward the Heart), Discourse #1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com  or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Bardo: Between These Two Dreams – Osho

I’ve always been fascinated by the state of bardo as described in ancient Tibetan scriptures. Could you say something about this?

Bardo is a simple method but with great significance. Only people who have meditated a little bit in their lives can be benefited by it, and Tibet was one of the countries where almost everybody was devoting some time to meditation – just to be alone, silent, not doing anything, just witnessing. If such a person does not achieve enlightenment in his life, and death intervenes, then bardo is used.

Such a man has achieved a certain opening of the door. He has not entered in, but he has at least tried; he has knocked on the door. He has a certain receptivity, and at the time of death he is absolutely willing to go into a state of meditation. Now there is nothing to be afraid of. Death has already come; he can risk everything. And bardo is a certain soft method of hypnosis… just the way I am using it. Listening to me you become quiet, silent.

The bardo is a suggestion to the dying person: “Now be silent. Leave this life consciously. Rather than death taking it away from you, relax your hold; don’t be defeated by death, don’t struggle. Just drop all your attachment. This world is finished for you, and this life is finished for you. There is no point in holding on to it; in holding on to it you will be fighting with death. You cannot win, and a very significant possibility will be missed.

“Simply let go of everything on your own accord. Relax, and accept death without any antagonism as a culmination of life, as a natural phenomenon. It ends nothing. Remain conscious and watch what is happening – how the body starts becoming more and more distant from you, how the mind starts falling into pieces as if a mirror has fallen and broken into pieces, how your emotions, sentiments, moods… everything that made your life starts disappearing.”

It is the end of a dream. That is the fundamental point in bardo, that you have lived a dream that you call life, a seventy-year-long dream. It is coming to an end. You can weep for the spilled milk and miss the opportunity… because within seconds you will be entering into another womb, into another dream.

Between these two dreams just a few seconds are available for you to be alert and awake, and if you can manage this alertness you have conquered death, you have conquered dreaming. You will be entering into another womb consciously; you will be leaving this body consciously, entering into another body consciously.

You will be able to remember the death, the dream you had lived, in the coming life, which will make you alert not to get into the same rut – again chasing the same stupid desires, getting caught in the same jealousies, fighting for the same meaningless respectabilities. It will keep you alert that you have done it before. Everything ends in death and this too will end in death.

So bardo is reminding you that what is disappearing was a dream. It is very easy when death is coming to see your life as a dream. What else can it be? It is just as if you are waking up in the morning.

The whole night you have lived so much, so many dreams – you may have lived years in the night – but bardo reminds you that it was a dream. It has to be done by a very evolved being – a lama, a master – and he insists that it is time to realize that it was a dream: you are not dying, only the dream is broken.

And while you are being shifted from one dream to another… the gap is of tremendous importance because in that gap there is no dream, there is simple clarity, absolute clarity, awareness. So the second point to be reminded of is: don’t miss the gap.

And the third thing: don’t miss the entry into the womb. Then you have accomplished something which people need lives to work on.

The person is just falling into deep silence and death is descending. He is listening to these words from someone he has loved, he has trusted, from someone he cannot imagine deceiving – only then is it meaningful. It won’t work from just anybody. The bardo is available, all the instructions are available, but it is possible only through someone whom you have respected, honored, trusted, loved.

In this critical moment a small doubt about what the person is saying will destroy the whole thing – then the bardo has been futile. But if you don’t miss and you follow the instructions, you are laying a foundation for a new life which will be a totally different life. It will be your last life, because anybody who is dying consciously, who uses the gap to have a taste of absolute purity, enters into the womb alert, is born alert. His enlightenment is guaranteed by nature: he has the seed, the foundation.

So bardo is a simple process, but it can be helpful only to those who have meditated a little, who have been with a master, who have once in a while tasted the silence, the presence, and the beauty of being in the moment. They become capable.

Bardo is the greatest contribution Tibet has made to the world. Tibet has not contributed anything else. It is a poor country, far away from the world – the roof of the world – unapproachable. Even today it is very difficult to reach Tibet.

Tibet developed meditation through Buddhist influence and finally became the only country in history where everybody was meditating, where meditation was a normal phenomenon. Every family had to give at least one of its members – someone who was ready – to a monastery, to meditate totally. So from every family at least one member went from each generation.

Almost the whole country of Tibet became a monastery. Just as Russia has become a concentration camp, Tibet became a monastery. There were hundreds of monasteries in the mountains, in beautiful places. Every family had contributed someone who was truly interested in seeking. It was the only place where people were encouraged to go on the search; it had become part of the style of the whole country.

And those who were not in the monasteries were also meditating as much as they could manage, so by the time of death, bardo was possible for everybody. There were many masters available, many evolved beings available who could repeat those instructions – and everybody had a master of his own. It was a totally different world.

In this century many beautiful things have been destroyed but Tibet is at the top. Tibet has been destroyed by a communist invasion from China. Monasteries have been changed into schools, into hospitals, and monks have been forced to work in the fields. Even to mention the word “meditation” became a crime. And it was not hurting anybody: the country was so aloof, so cut off from the world.

But it has been destroyed, and I don’t think there is any possibility to recover its beauty, its grandeur. That is impossible because now there are roads joining it to Pakistan, to China. Now buses are moving, now airports are there and planes are coming and going. The army is there. It has become a military base for China. It has lost its golden age.

Soon it will be difficult to find a person who is capable of listening to bardo instructions and almost impossible to find a person who can give those instructions. They will be in the books; they are available now in all the languages. They are simple instructions but they can be improved, and I have the idea to improve them because they are very ancient and very crude. They can be polished. Much can be added to them, more dimensions can be given to them. But the basic thing is that the people should be meditative. My people are meditative, and it will be part of our basic work to revive the bardo in a more refined form so we can use it for our people.

Tibet is no longer the same Tibet. But we can create the situation, the psychology, where bardo – or something like bardo but even far more evolved – can help people. It is a beautiful process. Just as Japan has brought Zen from Buddhist sources of meditation, Tibet has brought, from the same Buddhist sources of meditation, bardo. These are their immortal contributions.

When nuclear weapons are forgotten, still these discoveries will have the same significance.

-Osho

From The Path of the Mystic, Discourse #7

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Something Belonging to Eternity – Osho

A few months ago, my friend and I were visiting his dying father. Lots of people were around, his body was about finished. To most people he was indifferent, but when everyone left, he suddenly opened his eyes and told us, “I feel like I have two bodies; one body is sick and the other is completely healthy.” We told him, “That’s right! The healthy body is the real you, so stay with that one.” He said, “Okay,” and closed his eyes. As we sat with him, the sick energy around the hospital bed changed. We couldn’t believe this new energy; it was as if we were in darshan with you . . . such beautiful silence. I felt a bit strange saying these words to someone who was really experiencing this. Whatever I said wasn’t really my experience, just something I’d thought about. After we left he improved for a while, went home and died peacefully in his bed.

Beloved Osho, even though I’ve been with you for ten years, I felt so ignorant in front of this man who was ready to let go of everything with such trust and clarity and peace.

Geeta, the experience that you went through always is possible when someone is dying. All that is required is a little alertness. The man who was dying was aware – not much awareness is needed for this experience.

At the moment of death your physical body and your spiritual body start separating. Ordinarily, they are so much involved with each other that you don’t feel their separation. But at the moment of death, just before death happens, both the bodies start getting unidentified with each other. Now their ways are going to be different; the physical body is going to the physical elements, and the spiritual body is on its pilgrimage onwards, to a new birth, in a new form, in a new womb.

If the person is a little alert he can see it himself, and because you said to him that the healthier body is you, and the body that is sick and dying is not you . . . In those moments, to trust is very easy because it is happening just before the eyes of the person himself; he cannot identify with the body that is falling apart, and he can immediately recognize the fact that he is the healthier one, the deeper one.

But you could have helped the man even a little more – this was good, but not good enough. Even this experience of the man, of getting unidentified with the physical body, immediately changed the energy in the room; it became silent, peaceful.

But if you had learned the art of how to help a dying man, you would not have stopped where you stopped. A second thing was absolutely necessary to tell him because he was in a trusting state – everybody is, at the moment of death.

It is life which creates problems and doubts and postponements, but death has no time to postpone. The man cannot say, “I will try to see,” or, “I will see tomorrow.” He has to do it right now, this very moment, because even the next moment is not certain. Most probably he is not going to survive. And what is he going to lose by trusting? Death anyway, is going to take away everything. So the fear of trust is not there; time to think about it is not there. And a clarity is there that the physical body is getting farther and farther away.

It was a good step to tell him, “You are the healthier body.” The second step would have been to tell him, “You are the witness of both the bodies; the body that is dying is physical, and the body that you are feeling is healthy is psychological. But who are you? You can see both the bodies . . . certainly you must be the third; you cannot be one of these two.”

This is the whole process of the bardo. Only in Tibet have they developed the art of dying. While the whole world has been trying to develop the art of living, Tibet is the only country in the world which has developed the whole science and art of dying. They call it the bardo.

If you had told the person, “This is good that you have taken one step, you are out of the physical body; but now you have got identified with the psychological body. You are not even that; you are only awareness, a pure consciousness, a perceptivity….” If you could have helped the person to understand that he is neither this body nor that body, but something bodiless, formless, a pure consciousness, then his death would have been a totally different phenomenon.

You saw the change of energy; you would have seen another change of energy. You saw silence descending; you would have seen music also, a certain dancing energy also, a certain fragrance filling the whole space. And the man’s face would have shown a new phenomenon – the aura of light.

If he had taken the second step also, then his death would have been the last death. In the bardo they call it “the great death,” because now he will not be born into another form, into another imprisonment; now he will remain in the eternal, in the oceanic consciousness that fills the whole universe.

So remember it – it may happen to many of you. You may be with a friend or with a relative, your mother, your father. While they are dying, help them to realize two things: first, they are not the physical body – which is very simple for a dying man to recognize. Second – which is a little difficult, but if the man is able to recognize the first, there is a possibility of the second recognition too – that you are not even the second body; you are beyond both the bodies. You are pure freedom and pure consciousness.

If he had taken the second step, then you would have seen a miracle happening around him – something, not just silence, but something more alive, something belonging to eternity, to immortality. And all of you who were present there would have been overwhelmed with gratitude that this death has not been a time of mourning, but it has become a moment of celebration.

If you can transform a death into a moment of celebration, you have helped your friend, your mother, your father, your brother, your wife, your husband. You have given them the greatest gift that is possible in existence. And close to death it is very easy. The child is not even worried about life or death; he has no concern. The young man is too much involved in biological games, in ambitions, in becoming richer, in becoming powerful, in having more prestige; he has no time to think of eternal questions.

But at the moment of death, just before death is going to happen, you don’t have any ambition. And whether you are rich or poor makes no difference; whether you are a criminal or a saint makes no difference. Death takes you beyond all discriminations of life and beyond all stupid games of life.

But rather than helping people, people destroy that beautiful moment. It is the most precious in a man’s whole life. Even if he has lived one hundred years, this is the most precious moment. But people start crying and weeping and showing their sympathy, saying, “This is very untimely, it should not happen.” Or they start consoling the person, saying, “Don’t be worried, the doctors are saying that you will be saved.”

These are all foolishnesses. Even the doctors play a part in these stupid things. They don’t tell you that your death has come. They avoid the subject; they go on giving you hope. They say, “Don’t be worried, you will be saved,” knowing perfectly well that the man is going to die. They are giving him a false consolation, not knowing that this is the moment when he should be made fully aware of death – so acutely and so impeccably aware that pure consciousness is experienced. That moment has become a moment of great victory. Now there is no death for him, but only eternal life.

-Osho

From The Razor’s Edge, Discourse #3

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Death is the Master – Osho

The Upanishads are unique scriptures on this Earth about the mysteries of life, and the Kathopanishad is unique amongst all the Upanishads. Before we enter into this Upanishad, it will be good to understand the inner current that is underlying this Kathopanishad.

The first thing is that in this world, one who wants to know life must himself go through the experience of death. Except for this there is no other way.

To know life one has to learn the art of dying. And the one who is afraid of death will remain unacquainted with life also, because death is the innermost and the most mysterious center of life. Only those who enter into death consciously, with awareness and a welcoming heart, can know this life.

Everyone dies, but not everyone is able to know life just by dying. You have also died many times, and there is the fear that you will still be dying many times more. But death happens to you involuntarily: you do not want to die but you have to die. That is why death is a sorrow, a pain, an anguish. And the pain of death is so intense that the only way to bear it is to become unconscious. Hence, just before dying, you become unconscious, you go into a coma. Surgeons have discovered only recently that becoming unconscious is a way to avoid feeling intense pain—but nature has always known it. The mind goes into unconsciousness; consciousness is lost because of this fear and the pain of death.

You will die in unconsciousness. Many times you have died unconsciously; hence you have no memory of it. You have also been born many times, but unconsciously; and you have no memory of your birth either, so there is no question of remembering past births. This much is certain, that you have been born this time!—but you also have no memory of this birth.

To one whose death happens in unconsciousness, his birth also will happen in unconsciousness, because death and birth are simply two sides of the same coin. One who is unconscious on one side will be unconscious on the other side also. One who dies unconsciously is born unconsciously. That is why you have no memory of your birth. You have heard that you were born—your parents say so, your family says so. It is you who have been born but you don’t have any memory of your own birth. And everybody dies, but unconsciously. Hence you remain deprived of what can be learned from death.

Religion is the art of dying consciously. Religion is the science of entering into death in total understanding and awareness. And the person who enters death consciously, for him death disappears forever because by dying consciously he knows that he is not dying at all. Dying consciously, he knows that what is dying is the body—it is not more than when you discard old clothes—but his inner flame of consciousness is burning bright even in death; even the storm of death is unable to blow it out.

For the person who is awake and full of awareness in death, death does not exist. Death exists only for one who dies in unconsciousness. One who dies consciously, for him there is no death; for him, death becomes a door to the deathless, to the eternal.

One who dies consciously is born consciously. And one who is born consciously, the whole quality of his life becomes different—then he also lives consciously. Every fiber of his being, every part of his consciousness becomes filled with light, with wisdom, with buddhahood.

For one who is born consciously, there will be no death anymore. There will be no new birth for him either. Then he will simply leave the body, only his merging with the cosmic consciousness will survive. The seers have called it nirvana, moksha, kaivalya: the merging with the ultimate reality.

One who has known death consciously and realized the deathless, the eternal, has no more reason to be bound to the body. You become identified with the body because you are unconscious. Your unawareness is the bridge, the connection with the body. With awareness the identification is broken—you become separate from the body. As the realization of this separation deepens, death disappears—because it is the body that dies and it is the body that is born. The one who is hidden in the body, the bodiless one, is neither born nor does it die. It is the very life itself. How can life die? And the one who dies, his life was only a deception, and illusion, something borrowed. His life does not mean anything.

It is a very interesting thing that man is a combination of two entities: one is the mortal body which is already dead, and the other is the immortal soul which is life itself. It is only because of the proximity of the soul that the body appears to be alive. But the aliveness of the body is borrowed; it is a reflected phenomenon. It is as if you stand before a mirror and see yourself in it: the reflection that appears in the mirror is a borrowed phenomenon, it is not real. The moment you step away from the mirror the image will disappear. It is just a reflection, it is not a reality. It is an indication of the real, and it also hints towards the real—but the one who takes it to be real will go astray. He will be disconnected from the real forever.

The body only gives a hint of the life that is hidden within. The body appears alive only because of its nearness, its proximity, to the soul. The aliveness of the soul is so profound that even the material body seems to be alive. But one who takes the life of the body to be life itself will never know the soul.

To enter into death means to move from the mirror and to enter into the original reality. This is the essence of this Upanishad.

-Osho

From The Message Beyond Words: A Dialogue with the Lord of Death, Discourse #1

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A State of Silent Identification – Osho

Please explain. Is life an observer and death observed?

No, both are the observed – life and death. Beyond both is the observer. You cannot call that observer ‘life’ because life contains death in it. You cannot call that observer ’death’ because death presupposes life. That observer is just transcendence.

That which you are is neither life nor death. You pass through life, you pass through death, but you are neither. You are just a witness to it all. You pass through happiness, you pass through misery, you pass through disease, you pass through health, you pass through success, you pass through failure – but you are none of these. You remain the watcher, you remain the witness.

That witnessing is beyond all dualities. So don’t try to make it identified with one part of the polarity. Life is one part of the same circle in which the other half, death, exists. Death and life are not apart, they are together. Death and life are two aspects of the same energy, two faces of the same coin – on one side life, on the other side death. Can you think of life without death? Or can you think of death without life? So they are not really opposites but complementaries. They are friends not enemies; they are business partners.

I can understand your question. You would like to be identified with life, so that you can say, ‘I am immortal. No death for me.’ That is your hankering. And I am not saying that you are not immortal, but the word ‘immortal’ is not right. You are eternal, not immortal. ‘Immortal’ means you have no death – always life, always life. ‘Eternity’ means you don’t have either. You are part of this totality that goes on and on – through lives, through deaths, ups and downs, valleys and peaks – and goes on moving. You are that which lives and that which dies, and yet remains aloof… a lotus in the pond, untouched.

It happened, Maharshi Raman was dying. On Thursday April 13th, a doctor brought Maharshi a palliative to relieve the congestion in the lungs, but he refused it. ‘It is not necessary, everything will come right within two days,’ he said. And after two days he died.

At about sunset, Maharshi told the attendants to sit him up. They knew already that every movement, every touch, was painful, but he told them not to worry about that. He was suffering from cancer – he had a throat cancer, very painful. Even to drink water was impossible, to eat anything was impossible, to move his head was impossible. Even to say a few words was very difficult. He sat with one of the attendants supporting his head. A doctor began to give him oxygen, but with a wave of his right hand he motioned him away.

Unexpectedly, a group of devotees sitting on the verandah outside the hall began singing ‘Arunachala-Siva’ – a bhajan that Maharshi liked very much. He liked that spot, Arunachala, very much; the hill he used to live upon – that hill is called ‘Arunachala’. And the bhajan was a praise, a praise for the hill.

On hearing it, Maharshi’s eyes opened and shone. He gave a brief smile of indescribable tenderness. From the outer edges of his eyes tears of bliss rolled down.

Somebody asked him, ‘Maharshi, are you really leaving us?’

It was hard for him to say, but still he uttered these few words: ‘They say that I am dying – but I am not going away. Where could I go? I am always here.’

One more breath, and no more. There was no struggle, no spasm, no other sign of death: only that the next breath did not come.

What he says is of immense significance – ‘Where could I go? I am always here.’ There is nowhere to go. This is the only existence there is, this is the only dance there is – where can one go? Life comes and goes, death comes and goes – but where can ONE go? You were there before life.

That’s why Zen masters go on saying to their disciples: Go meditate, and try to see the face that you had before you were born – or sometimes even before your parents were born, or before your grand-parents were born. Look for the original face that you had before you were born.

You were there before birth and you will be there after death. Life is between birth and death. You are not life. You are eternity, you are timelessness. You will be here and now, always and always. But don’t call it immortality, because the word ‘mortal’ comes from ‘death’. It is not immortality – it is life-less, it is death-less.

Remember always, whenever you are dropping the duality, drop the WHOLE of it. If you save half, the other half is saved automatically. If you think that you are life, then you will remain afraid of death. Then you can go on convincing yourself that you are not going to die – but you are identified with life, and you know life dies.

Life is an expression, a manifestation. Death is the energy again moving into unmanifestation. Life is one act of the energy, death is another act, but the energy is beyond acts: it is being.

Yakusan’s manner of death was a piece with his life – a great Zen master, Yakusan. When he was about to die, he yelled out, ‘The hall’s falling down! The hall’s falling down!’ The monks brought various things and began to prop it up. Yakusan threw up his hands and said, ‘None of you understand what I meant!’ and died.

‘The hall’ is based on life-and-death duality. The duality is the house, the hall. The duality is falling – that’s what Yakusan means when he says, ‘The hall is falling down.’ The dual is disappearing and the non-dual is arising… the clouds are disappearing and only the pure sky is left. That pure sky cannot be identified by any word that comes from any pair of any duality. You cannot call it light, because light is a part of darkness, a partner with darkness. You cannot call it love, because love is a partner with hate. You cannot call it man, because man is a partner with woman. You cannot call it any name, because all names are part of dualities.

Hence, Buddha is silent about it. Whenever somebody asks him, ‘What will happen to you, Sir, when you leave the body?’ he smiles. He does not say a single word – because ALL words will be wrong, inadequate. All words will be false, untrue – because all words come from the dual language. Our language is dual; the non-dual cannot be expressed. That’s why Buddha kept silent about God, about the eternal, about the ultimate – he would not say a single word.

A Ch’an story describes how the Abbot Hui-ming approached the master, Hui-neng. Hui-neng is the second great name in Zen history. The first is Bodhidharma, the second is Hui-neng – these are the two foundation-stones of the whole story of Zen. They laid down the whole structure.

Bodhidharma gave the technique, the Zen technique of meditation, zazen – sitting silently doing nothing, and the grass grows by itself. Non-doing, just witnessing, wei-wu-wei – action through inaction. For nine years he was sitting just facing a wall, this Bodhidharma – that was his technique that he gave to the world, one of the greatest. All other meditations look childish before Bodhidharma’s technique.

Hui-neng gave the koan – another great technique that is very special to Zen. Bodhidharma’s technique is not very special to Zen, it comes from Buddha. In that way Hui-neng is more of an original thinker than Bodhidharma; even Bodhidharma is not so original – Hui-neng gave the koan. ‘Koan’ means an absurd question which cannot be answered, any way you try. It is unanswerable. And one has to meditate on that unanswerable question: ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ Now, one hand cannot clap. So the answer is, from the very beginning, impossible. But one has to think about it.

And Hui-neng says when you think about that which cannot be thought, by and by, slowly, slowly, thinking becomes impossible. One day, suddenly the whole structure of thinking falls to the ground, shattered. Suddenly you are in a state of no-thought. That’s what meditation is.

A Ch’an story describes how the Abbot Hui-ming approached Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch, begging for the doctrine. The patriarch said: ‘For the moment, concentrate your mind, not letting your thoughts dwell either on good or evil.’

Hui-neng, is just sitting there with his staff, ready to hit. And he says to Hui-ming, ‘Just close your eyes. For the moment, concentrate your mind, not letting your thoughts dwell either on good or evil.’ Good or evil is just one kind of duality. You can call it life and death, you can call it hate and love, or good and bad – just one kind of duality.

And Hui-neng says: I am sitting here. You just keep your mind alert, so that it does not fall a victim of the duality of good and bad. Don’t say anything is good, and don’t say anything is bad. Don’t judge. If thoughts pass, let them pass. If Buddha passes, don’t say, ‘Good, I am blessed, I have seen Buddha in my thought.’ Or if a prostitute passes, alluring you, don’t say that this is bad – ‘Why should this thought occur to me? Why should this prostitute follow me?’ Don’t call it any name. Buddha passes, let him pass, remain unconcerned. The prostitute passes, let her pass. Remain unconcerned, just remain yourself. When you are not in duality, you are yourself.

After the Abbot said that he was thus prepared, the Patriarch continued: ‘Now that you are no longer thinking of either good or evil, recall the aspect of the Abbot Ming as he was before his parents had yet brought him to life.’

Now the second question – when the Ming said, ‘I am ready now. Now I am not saying good or bad, I am clean of judgment.’

Must have been a rare man, this Ming himself – must have been meditating. He was a monk, a sannyasin, may have been meditating for years – otherwise it is not so easy. And you cannot deceive a Zen master; you cannot just pretend, ‘Yes, I have attained.’ Immediately your head will be hit hard.

A Zen master does not believe in politeness, a Zen master does not believe in etiquette, a Zen master is a very wild master. And when the Abbot said, ‘Now I am prepared,’ Hui-neng said…

‘Now that you are no longer thinking of either good or evil, recall the aspect of the Abbot Ming as he was before his parents had yet brought him to life.’

Now go backwards. Find out about yourself, who you were before you were born, what you were before you were born. Think of that consciousness, go into it.

The Abbot, under the impact of these words, abruptly entered a state of silent identification. He then did obeisance and said: ‘It is like a man who drinks water. He knows in himself whether it is cold or warm.’

Now he cannot answer; he himself cannot answer. He has tasted, he has known who he was, and who he is, and who he will be – but now he cannot say anything about it. It is unutterable, it is ineffable.

He says only one thing: ‘Sir, it is like a man who drinks water. He knows in himself whether it is cold or warm. Now I know, but I cannot tell you.’

So knows Hui-neng, but he cannot tell. So knows Buddha, but he cannot tell. So know I – but I cannot tell what exactly it is.

One thing I can say, but that will be always negative: It is neither life nor death. It is neither time nor space. It is neither body nor mind. It is neither the visible nor the invisible. It is neither good nor bad. It is neither God nor Devil. I can only negate, I can only say that which it is not.

But what it is, you will have to drink. Only when a man drinks water, he knows… whether it is cold or warm.

-Osho

From Zen: The Path of Paradox, V.2, Discourse #6

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An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com  or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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Rebel Against Personality – Osho

Does the being, or self, in the person die with the death of the person; or does it live beyond death in another body?

The question is a little complicated.

First you have to understand that your personality is not your reality; it is given by the culture, by the society.

Individuality is yours, but personality is not yours.

As personality you are always dead; only as individuality are you alive. But to be an individual you have to rebel against personality and against all those people who are forcing a certain personality on you.

Each child is born with a certain potential to be – and each society tries to make him something else.

I have heard about a man who was celebrating the golden jubilee of his marriage. All his friends, relatives, acquaintances, had gathered. There was much joy, laughter. But suddenly they realized that the man was missing. They could not understand where he had gone. They looked in the garden and he was sitting in the shadows, in darkness, by the side of a tree, very sad.

His friends said, “This is strange. You have called all of us to celebrate, and you are sitting here in such sadness as if somebody has died! What is the problem?”

He said, “The problem is… This woman that I married has tortured me so much that twenty-five years ago I enquired of my attorney, ‘If I shoot her what will be the result?’ and he said, ‘Are you mad? If you shoot her you will get twenty-five years in jail!’ I am feeling sad because today I would have been free. That idiot attorney has died; otherwise I would have killed him! He made me afraid.”

A man has to live with a woman he does not love, which is simply misery. A woman has to live with a man… which is simply misery, hell. A man has to work in a certain profession he hates. Everybody becomes something that he does not like. This is your personality. Society distracts everybody from his natural individuality and makes him something other than he was destined to be.

So the first thing to be understood is that you are not a person, you are not a personality. The word ‘person’ comes from Greek drama. In Greek drama the actors used masks, and the mask… you could not see the person’s real face; you could only hear his sound. Sona means sound. Persona means you don’t know who is speaking; you just hear the sound, the face is missing. The word ‘personality’ comes from that Greek drama.

Everybody is wearing a mask. You can hear the sound but you can’t see the face; you can’t see the individual. So the first thing: you are not a ‘person’. If you are a person, you are already dead. If you are only a personality, you have dragged yourself from the cradle to the grave but you never lived. You live only when you are an individuality – when you assert yourself against every tradition, every religion, every past that wants you to be someone other than existence wants you to be. Then you live.

Again I am reminded: a great surgeon I used to know – perhaps he was the most famous surgeon in India – was retiring, and all his friends, his colleagues, had given him a party, a farewell party, but he was very sad. I asked him, “Why are you sad? You should be happy: you are the topmost surgeon in the whole country.”

He said, “You don’t understand. I never wanted to become a surgeon in the first place, so who cares that I am the topmost surgeon? I hate to hear that! I wanted to become a musician, but my parents forced me to become a surgeon – against my will I became a surgeon. By chance I became the topmost surgeon; perhaps I would not have been able to become the topmost musician. I am rich, I have everything, I have respectability, but that does not help me to be happy.

“Even if I had remained a beggar, as a musician I would have been blissful because I would have been myself. This surgeon seems to be somebody else; it is a role that I have played, but it is not me. These people are celebrating, and I am crying within myself that my whole life is lost.”

So first, you are not a ‘person’; otherwise you are dead before death. And there are millions of people who die thirty, forty, or fifty years before they actually die. You are an individual, and only individuality is capable of knowing your real self. Personality has no self – only an ego, as false as personality. Individuality has a self, a soul. The individual is a living principle of life.

If you know life you will never ask this kind of question. Knowing life authentically means you also know that it is immortal. The knowledge of its immortality is intrinsic. It is not something informed, from outside. Just living your true being in totality you slowly, slowly become aware of the immortal current of life within you. You know the body will die, but this soul, which is life’s whole essence, cannot die.

In existence nothing is destructible.

And it is not something to believe in, it is a scientific truth that you cannot destroy anything. You cannot destroy even a small piece of stone. Whatever you do it will remain in some form or other.

Science enquires into the objective world and finds that even objective reality is immortal. Religion works exactly like science in the inner world and finds the dancing life is intrinsically immortal.

It will be good to remember Socrates at this point because he was not a man to believe anything. If you had asked him whether your soul would survive after bodily death he would say, “Let me first die – because unless I die, how can I say?” And the day he was given poison is one of the most significant days in the history of man. His disciples were sitting around him and he was lying down. He told his disciples, “I will tell you what is happening. As long as I can, I will go on informing you.”

Then he said, “Up to my knees, my legs are dead. Please somebody pinch my legs so I can know whether I can feel it or not.” Somebody pinched his legs. He said, “I cannot feel it; the legs have died. But remember one thing: I am as alive as I ever was. The death of the legs has not cut a part of my life; my life is as whole as it ever was.” Then all of the legs became dead, half of the body. And he said, “Half of my body is dead, but I am whole, as whole as ever.”

Then his hands became dead and he said, “I am still here and I am still whole. Perhaps now my heart will stop, but I can say to you that even though I may not be able to inform you, I will remain, because if all these parts are gone and I am whole, then it doesn’t matter: the heart is only a part.”

And when he died his face was so delighted, so joyous, that Plato, his disciple, remembers, “We have never seen his face so full of light, so radiant. Perhaps the last moment when the soul is leaving the body is just like the sunset when the sun is going down and the whole sky becomes so beautiful and radiant.”

It is not a question of belief. I am not a believer in anything, so I will not say to you to believe me that the soul is immortal. But it is my experience that it is immortal because I can remember my past lives, and that is a solid proof that there are going to be future lives. I can teach you techniques for remembering past lives and that will become a solid proof for you that you have a future. You have an eternity of past and an eternity of future.

You have always been here and you will always be here.

But first drop your fake personality.

Grow into your authentic individuality.

Live the way existence wanted you to live. Your very life should be so intense and so total that you burn your life’s torch from both ends. In that very intensity you will know that you have touched something of eternity. And if you have known it in your life, in your death you will find a deeper confirmation of the fact.

People who live in personality always die unconscious. They have never lived. They don’t know what consciousness is, so before death they become unconscious. That’s why we don’t remember our past lives. You were unconscious, and death happened in your unconsciousness.

But if you live consciously, as an individual, then you will die consciously, the way Socrates is dying – so conscious to the last breath. And this memory will be with you in the next life too.

In the East there are three great religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism. They disagree on every point – their philosophies are different about everything – but on one point they agree, and that is the eternal existence of the soul, because it is not a question of theoretical discussion, it is a question of existential experience. You can’t disagree about it – it is exactly so.

Against these three religions in the East, outside of India there are three religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. They all believe in one life, and that simply shows their poverty. They have not explored deeply enough to find past lives, and they cannot guarantee anything about the future. These three religions born outside India are superficial. Their work is not in-depth research.

But in India for ten thousand years thousands of people have entered into self-realization and have found that there is some light that remains forever. It goes on moving from one body to another body but is indestructible.

I will not tell you to believe it; I will only tell you to experiment. I am against all beliefs, because every belief destroys you, destroys your thinking. I am in favor of experimenting, and there are techniques available.

That has been my whole life’s work – to make those techniques available to anybody who really wants to search and to find, to one who is not only a curious person but is a seeker who is ready to risk everything for the search. And it is a search for which you need to risk everything because you are going to find the greatest treasure.

-Osho

From The Path of the Mystic, Discourse #1

 

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com  or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

 

An Eternal Flame of Light – Osho

Through my own recent encounter with death, I came across many stories of people from diverse cultures and of different religious backgrounds, who temporarily left their bodies and appeared to observers to be dead. They reported seeing a “being of light,” which was totally loving and compassionate. Could this “being of light” be the basis on which the concept of God has been created?

No, not at all. This experience is authentic. It happens sometimes to people who have almost died—not completely, but almost. They see a luminous being. It is their own being, it is not God. In meditation you will encounter the same luminous being without dying.

Meditation is a kind of death. You are separated from the body, you are separated from the mind—that’s what death does. You are separated from the body; you are separated from the mind. Suddenly you become aware of a luminous being, which you think is separate from you because you have never seen such an experience before. If you have been a meditator, you would have recognized—“This is me.”

You are a light, luminous body inside this body—a flame, an eternal flame of light. But those who have almost died and come back to life, because they don’t have any experience of meditation, they think they have seen something, a luminous being. They remember it vaguely, faintly; a faraway echo, but they remember it. They have seen something luminous. Naturally they cannot conceive that they have seen themselves.

God is not based on the experience of people who were almost dead and have come back again to life. But meditation knows exactly what has been happening to these people—they have encountered themselves. But because the encounter was for the first time, and so quick … just like a flash it came and went away, and they were back to life. Naturally they think they have seen some object, some person standing there with a radiant, luminous body, because they have known only objects in their lives. They have never known the subject.

A meditator will not commit such a mistake. A meditator will recognize immediately—whether alive or dead—that he is the luminous eternal light.

-Osho

From I Celebrate Myself: God is No Where, Life is Now Here, Discourse #2

 

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com  or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.