“Death is the most misunderstood phenomenon. People have thought of death as the end of life. That is the first, basic misunderstanding.
“Death is not the end, but the beginning of a new life. Yes, it is an end of something that is already dead. It is also a crescendo of what we call life, although very few know what life is. They live, but they live in such ignorance that they never encounter their own life. And it is impossible for these people to know their own death, because death is the ultimate experience of this life, and the beginning experience of another. Death is the door between two lives; one is left behind, one is waiting ahead.
“There is nothing ugly about death; but man, out of his fear, has made even the word, death ugly and unutterable. People don’t like to talk about it. They won’t even listen to the word death.
“The fear has reasons. The fear arises because it is always somebody else who dies. You always see death from the outside, and death is an experience of the innermost being. It is just like watching love from the outside. You may watch for years, but you will not come to know anything of what love is. You may come to know the manifestations of love, but not love itself. We know the same about death. Just the manifestations on the surface – the breathing has stopped, the heart has stopped, the man as he used to talk and walk is no more there: just a corpse is lying there instead of a living body.
“These are only outer symptoms. Death is the transfer of the soul from one body to another body, or in cases when a man is fully awakened, from one body to the body of the whole universe. It is a great journey, but you cannot know it from the outside. From outside, only symptoms are available; and those symptoms have made people afraid.
If you can avoid it that is very good. When people ask, they create trouble for me. If I say no then it feels as if I am hurting your motherhood. If I say yes then certainly there are going to be troubles and responsibilities and you may get into a mess. The best thing is to remain alone a little longer. First finish your work upon yourself. When you have come to a certain state where you know now nothing can disturb you, then it is perfectly good to have children. Then you will be able to help them also: you will be really mothering them.
Right now you yourself need mothering and you will be simply giving them all the diseases that you’re carrying. One psychoanalyst has called the disease that parents give to children “NDD” — neurosis, disease, depression. That’s what people are going to give. You don’t have anything else to give! Wait, you can wait it will be far better. Neurosis and all the confusion of your mind, that is the problem. You will be bringing up the child and you will pour all that you have into the child. First, become a little more blissful.
One man came to me and he said, "I am very much afraid of death." He had cancer, and death was very near; any day it could happen. And he could not postpone it. He knew it was going to happen. Within months it would be there, or even within weeks.
He was really physically, literally, trembling, and he said, "Just give me one thing: how can I get rid of this fear of death? Give me some mantra, or something which can protect me and give me courage to face death. I don't want to die trembling in fear." The man said, "I have been to many saints. Many things they have given—they were very kind. Someone has given me a mantra, someone has given me some sacred ashes, someone has given me his picture, someone has given something else, but nothing helps. Everything is in vain. Now I have come to you as the last resort. Now I will not go to anyone anymore. Give me something."
So I told him, "Still you are not aware. Why are you asking for something?—just to get rid of fear? Nothing will help. I cannot give you anything; otherwise, as others have proved failures, I will also prove a failure. And they gave you something because they don't know what they are doing. I can say only one thing to you: Accept it. Tremble if trembling is there—what to do? Death is there, and you feel a trembling, so tremble. Don't reject it, don't suppress it. Don't try to be brave. There is no need. Death is there. It is natural. Be afraid totally."
He said, "What are you saying? You have not given me anything. Rather, on the contrary, you say to accept."
I said, "Yes, you accept. You just go and die peacefully with total acceptance."
After three or four days he came again, and said, "It works. I couldn't sleep for so many days, but for these four days I slept deeply, because it is right, you are right." He said to me, "You are right. Fear is there, death is there, nothing can be done. All the mantras are just hocus-pocus; nothing can be done."
No doctor can help, no saint can help. Death is there, a fact, and you are trembling. It is just natural. A storm comes and the whole tree trembles. It never goes to any saint to ask how not to tremble when a storm is passing by. It never goes for a mantra to change it, to protect it. It trembles. It is natural; it is so.
And the man said, "But a miracle has happened. Now I am not so afraid." If you accept, fear starts disappearing. If you reject, resist, fight, you give energy to fear. That man died peacefully, unafraid, fearless, because he could accept fear. Accept fear and it disappears.
One Christian missionary was with me a few days ago and he said, "God created the world."
So I asked him, "Who created sin?"
He said, "The devil."
Then I asked him, "Who created the devil?"
Then he was at a loss. He said, "Of course, God created the devil."
The devil creates sin and God creates the devil. Then who is the real sinner—the devil or God? But the dualist conception always leads to such absurdities. For tantra God and the devil are not two. Really, for tantra there is nothing that can be called "devil", everything is divine, everything is holy. And this seems to be the right standpoint, the deepest. If anything is unholy in this world, from where does it come and how can it be? vbt02
People come and ask me whether their fate is determined. They are asking whether they are so important, so significant for this universe that their fate must be determined beforehand. "What is my purpose?" they ask. "Why was I created?" This childhood nonsense that you are the center creates these questions like, "For what purpose am I created?"
You are not created for any purpose. And it is good that you are not created for any purpose; otherwise you would be a machine. A machine is created for some purpose. Man is not created for some purpose, for something—no! Man is just the outflowing, overflowing creation. Everything simply is. Flowers are there and stars are there and you are there. Everything is just an overflowing, a joy, a celebration of existence without any purpose….
Try to understand it. Because our minds are fixed, we take things as theories, not as devices. So many times people come to me and say, "One day you said this is right, and another day you said that is right, and both cannot be right." Of course both cannot be right, but no one is saying that both are right. I am not concerned at all with which is right and which is wrong. I am only concerned with which device works. vbt06
People come to me and say that they are seeking God, that they are seeking their soul. Their faces give no indication of their search. Their search is misnamed; they seek something very different under the cover of God and soul.
A friend approached me—he was an old man—and said he has been seeking God for the last thirty years. "That is a long time!" I exclaimed. "You should have found him by now. It seems that God is avoiding you. If that is so, then even thirty births will not be sufficient. Or it could be that you are not seeking in the right direction, you have not taken the path to his house. Either he is avoiding you or you are avoiding him. Tell me exactly what it is that you seek."
"I told you. I am seeking God," he said. "I do my practices and my meditation regularly, but I have no results to show."
"What results are you trying to achieve?" I asked.
"I want to attain some occult powers."
Now this man is not seeking God; he is seeking power in the name of God. It is not only in the bazaar that we find one name on the label and something quite different inside the package. It happens in the temples too.
He recognizes the heartbeat of the universe. He recognizes that the universe is not dead, it is alive. This aliveness is God! The unenlightened person is asleep, asleep and full of dreams. Those dreams function as a barrier; they don’t allow him to see the truth of his own reality. And, of course, when you are not even aware of your own reality, how can you be aware of the reality of others? The first experience has to happen within you.
Once you have seen the light within you will be able to see it everywhere. God has to be freed from all concepts of personality. Personality is a prison. God has to be freed from any particular form; only then he can have all the forms. He has to be freed from any particular name so that all the names become his.
Then a person LIVES in prayer – he does not pray, he does not go to the temple, to the church. Wherever he sits he is prayerful, whatsoever he is doing is prayerful, and in that prayerfulness he creates his temple. He is always moving with his temple surrounding him. Wherever he sits the place becomes sacred, whatsoever he touches becomes gold. If he is silent then his silence is golden; if he speaks then his song is golden. If he is alone his aloneness is divine; if he relates then his relating is divine.
The basic, the most fundamental thing is to be aware of your own innermost core, because that is the secret of the whole existence. That’s where the Upanishads are tremendously important. They don’t talk about a God, they talk about godliness. They don t bother about prayer. their whole emphasis is on meditation.
Meditation has two parts: the beginning and the end. The beginning is called dhyana and the end is called samadhi. Dhyana is the seed, samadhi is the flowering. Dhyana means becoming aware of all workings of your mind, all the layers of your mind – your memories, your desires, your thoughts, dreams – becoming aware of all that goes on inside you.
Dhyana is awareness, and samadhi is when the awareness has become so deep, so profound, so total that it is like a fire and it consumes the whole mind and all its functionings. It consumes thoughts, desires, ambitions, hopes, dreams. It consumes the whole stuff the mind is full of. Samadhi is the state when awareness is there, but there is nothing to be aware inside you; the witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed.
Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it – that is the only way to know it.
GOD is not a person. That is one of the greatest misunderstandings, and it has prevailed so long that it has become almost a fact. Even if a lie is repeated continuously for centuries it is bound to appear as if it is a truth.
God is a presence, not a person. Hence all worshipping is sheer stupidity. Prayerfulness is needed, not prayer. There is nobody to pray to; there is no possibility of any dialogue between you and God. Dialogue is possible only between two persons, and God is not a person but a presence – like beauty, like joy.
God simply means godliness. It is because of this fact that Buddha denied the existence of God. He wanted to emphasize that God is a quality, an experience – like love. You cannot talk to love, you can live it. You need not create temples of love, you need not make statues of love, and bowing down to those statues will be just nonsense. And that’s what has been happening in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques.
Man has lived under this impression of God as a person, and then two calamities have happened through it. One is the so-called religious man, who thinks God is somewhere above m the sky and you have to praise him. to persuade him to confer favors on you, to help you to fulfill your desires, to make your ambitions succeed, to give you the wealth of this world AND of the other world. And this is sheer wastage of time and energy.
And on the opposite pole the people who saw the stupidity of it all became atheists; they started denying the existence of God. They were right in a sense, but they were also wrong. They started denying not only the personality of God, they started to deny even the experience of God.
The theist is wrong, the atheist is wrong, and man needs a new vision so that he can be freed from both the prisons. God is the ultimate experience of silence, of beauty, of bliss, a state of inner celebration. Once you start looking at God as godliness there will be a radical change in your approach. Then prayer is no more valid; meditation becomes valid.
Martin Buber says prayer is a dialogue; then between you and God there is an ”I-thou” relationship – the duality persists. Buddha is far closer to the truth: you simply drop all chattering of the mind, you slip out of the mind like a snake slipping out of the old skin. You become profoundly silent.
There is no question of any dialogue, no question of any monologue either. Words have disappeared from your consciousness. There is no desire for which favors have to be asked, no ambition to be fulfilled. One is now and here. In that tranquility, in that calmness, you become aware of a luminous quality to existence.
Then the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the people are all surrounded with a subtle aura. They are all radiating life, and it is one life in different forms. The flowering of one existence in millions of forms, in millions of flowers.
THIS experience is God. And it is everybody’s birthright, because whether you know it or not you are already part of it. The only possibility is you may not recognize it or you may recognize it. The difference between the enlightened person and the unenlightened person is not of quality – they both are absolutely alike. There is only one small difference: that the enlightened person is aware; he recognizes the ultimate pervading the whole, permeating the whole, vibrating, pulsating.
"Fill your life with love. But you will say, 'We always love.' And I tell you, you rarely love. You might be longing for love…and there is a vast difference between the two. To love and to need love are two very different things. Most of us remain like children all our lives because everyone is looking for love. To love is a very mysterious thing; to long for love is a very childish thing. Small children want love; when the mother gives them love they grow. They want love from others also and the family loves them. Then when they grow older, if they are husbands they want love from their wives, if they are wives they want love from their husbands.
"And whoever wants love suffers because love cannot be asked for, love can only be given. In wanting there is no certainty that you will get it. And if the person from whom you expect love also expects love from you, it is a problem. It will be like two beggars meeting and begging together. All over the world there are marital problems between husbands and wives, and the only reason for this is that both expect love from each other but are unable to give love.
"Think about this a little – your constant need for love. You want someone to love you, and if someone loves you you feel good. But what you don't know is that the other loves you only because he wants you to love him. It is just like someone throwing bait to fish: he does not throw it for the fish to eat, he throws it to catch the fish. He does not want to give it to the fish, he only does it because he wants the fish. All the people that you see in love around you are only throwing bait to get love. They will throw the bait for a while, until the other person starts feeling that there is a possibility of getting love from this person. Then he too will start showing some love until eventually they realize that both of them are beggars. They have made a mistake: each had thought the other was an emperor. And in time each one realizes that he is not getting any love from the other, and that's when the friction starts."
"A greater fear than death grips you whenever you are in love. That's why love has disappeared from the world. Rarely, very rarely does the phenomenon happen that love descends. What you call love is just a false coin: you have invented it because it is so difficult to live without love. It is difficult because without love, life carries no meaning; it is meaningless. Without love, life has no poetry in it. Without love, the tree exists but never flowers. Without love, you cannot dance, you cannot celebrate, you cannot feel grateful, you cannot pray. Without love, temples are just ordinary houses; with love an ordinary house is transformed, transfigured into a temple. Without love you remain just possibilities – empty gestures. With love, for the first time you become substantial. With love, for the first time, the soul arises in you. The ego drops but the soul arises...
"Moving towards love is moving towards an abyss. One starts wavering, one feels dizzy. Go to a height in the Himalayas and look down at the valley; that valley is no-thing. When you look down at the valley of love, a tremendous fear grips you. You are almost paralyzed: you cannot run away, you cannot take the jump. You simply tremble in infinite fear. What to do? Going back is not possible because love attracts: love calls your depth, love calls your future, love calls your potentiality; love gives you a glimpse of what you can be. You cannot run away from it, and you cannot jump because the cost is too high. You will have to drop yourself – all that you have been thinking yourself to be – the image, the past, the identity.
"But I tell you, the cost only seems to be too much before the jump. Once you take the jump…then you will know that whatsoever you have given up is nothing, and what you have attained is infinitely valuable. Let me tell you a paradox: love demands that you drop that which you don't have, and love offers you that which you already have. Love wants you to get rid of that which you don't have."
"Marriage is a love-hate affair, an attraction-repulsion affair."
Man cannot be without the woman, and the woman cannot be without the man.
They are part of one dialectical process.
Between these two poles there is both attraction and repulsion, because attraction and repulsion cannot be separated.
Hence you feel attracted towards the woman or towards the man and repulsed at the same time.
A part of you wants to be with the woman, a part of you wants to be alone.
You are always hesitating.
If you are with the woman or with the man, you start longing for the freedom to be on your own, to be alone.
Suddenly you become very interested in being alone and free, and you don’t know where this desire to be free is coming from.
The woman or the man, the other, is provoking it.
The moment you have left the other, this desire, this longing, this great longing to be alone will disappear.
And then you are surprised, really surprised. When you are alone you simply feel lonely.
You don’t feel that joy that you had contemplated, you don’t see any freedom;
you simply see loneliness surrounding you. And your whole existence becomes cold, frozen, dark.
Again the desire arises to be with the other. Now you hanker for love, for togetherness.
This is the problem between man and woman. They are attracted and repulsed together,simultaneously.
They want to come to be together and they want to be separate and alone, on their own.
Hence the constant conflict between man and woman.
Marriage is a love-hate affair, an attraction-repulsion affair.
If the marriage lasts long, it can only last if there are mini-divorces happening every day – only then can it last long.
If the man and the woman have decided not to fight, then it is a plastic marriage.
They will be together, they will manage to be together, but they will never be together in reality; they will never know those moments of unity.
They Are only pretending. They are being polite, but not true, not authentic.
Marriage is a kind of intimate enmity.
It is an intimate enmity, it is a friendly fight, it is a war.
Yes,between two wars there are peaceful moments too, and they are beautiful because of the two wars.
Couples go on fighting – that’s how they keep alive the flame of love.
Once they fight, they go away from each other. When they are far away from each other, in their psychologies, they start hankering for the other, they start missing the other.
Then they start seeking and groping for the other. Then They come close, and very close, because they have tasted something of loneliness.
Now they want to be very close. Once they have tasted of closeness they want to be separate again.
So don’t be worried about it.
It is a fundamental phenomenon.
You cannot escape it.
The only way to escape is to have a pretend marriage, which is not a true marriage.
’Remain polite to each other.’
It is a kind of contract, that ’I need you and you need me,’ that ’I will scratch your back and you scratch my back’ – that’s all – ’because I need you and you need me.
You are my security, I will be your security.’ It is a legal contract but not marriage.
“Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself…
Whenever you are self-conscious you are simply showing that you are not conscious of the self at all. You don’t know who you are. If you had known, then there would have been no problem— then you are not seeking opinions. Then you are not worried what others say about you— it is irrelevant!
When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.”
It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love. It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be
diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes.
At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics -- the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination.
And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated.
You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously. People are falling in love with horses, dogs, animals, machines, things. Why? Because to be in love with human beings has become an utter hell, a continuous conflict -- nagging, always at each other's throats. This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a steppingstone , if you can use it as a meditation.
If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a
state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released -- but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. I love you too, Buddha loves, Jesus loves, but their love demands nothing in return.
Their love is given for the sheer joy of giving it; it is not a bargain. Hence the radiant beauty of it, hence the transcendental beauty of it. It surpasses all the joys that you have known. When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable of
partaking, can partake.
Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available -- you are available unconditionally. That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative. `Medicine' and `meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic.
You can know many things without knowing anything. You can know much about love without knowing love. Then it is an accumulation. If you know love, then it is growth. You can know much about love with the false center; you can love only with the real center. Real centers can mature.
The false can only get bigger and bigger without any growth, without any maturity. The false is just a cancerous growth, an accumulation, burdening you like a disease.
But you can do one thing: you can change your focus totally. From the false, you can move your eyes to the real. This is what is meant by self-remembering: whatsoever you are doing, remember yourself - that you are. Don't forget it. The very remembering will give an authentic reality to whatsoever you are doing. If you are loving, first remember that you are; otherwise you will be loving from the false center. And from the false center you can only pretend; you cannot love. If you are praying, first remember that you are; otherwise the prayer is going to be just nonsense, just a deception. And you are not deceiving anyone else; you are deceiving yourself.
First remember that you are, and this remembering that "I am" must become so basic that it follows you like a shadow. Then even while asleep it will enter, and you will remember. If you can remember the whole day, by and by it enters even in your dreams, even in your sleep, and you will know that "I am."
The day you can know even in your sleep that you are, you are grounded in your center. Now the false is no more; it is not a burden to you. You can use it now, it is instrumental. You are not a slave to it, you have become the master.
Krishna says in the Gita that while everyone is asleep, the yogi is not: he is awake. It is not meant that the yogi lives without sleep, because sleep is a biological, bodily necessity. What is meant is that he remembers even in his sleep that he is - that "I am." Sleep is just on the periphery. In the center the remembrance is there.
The yogi remembers even while he is asleep, and you are not remembering yourself while you are even awake. You are walking on the street, but you are not remembering that you are. Try, and you will feel a change of quality. Try to remember that you are. Suddenly a new lightness comes to you, the heaviness disappears; you become weightless. You are thrown off the false center to the real one again, but it is difficult and arduous because we are so much grounded in the false. It will take time, but no transformation is possible without self-remembering becoming effortless for you. You simply start remembering yourself; otherwise no transformation is possible.
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