Osho – You have lost the night; you could not wake up in the night. But it can be forgiven: it was night and you slept. But you cannot be forgiven when death is coming closer — now it is time to wake up! And if even death cannot wake you up, then what is going to wake you up? And if a person wakes up in death, then for him there is no more any birth, no more any death.

But a person can wake up in death only if he has tried hard to wake up in life, if his whole life has been a consistent effort to find a center in his being, a persistent effort to know “Who am I? Only then is it possible that when death comes… and death is a great shock! It shatters all that you have made. It takes away all that you have been clinging to; it dispossesses you of all your possessions. It simply leaves you utterly naked and alone. If death cannot wake you up, then you are not simply asleep — you are in a coma. And that’s how people are.

Every day millions of people die. They lived in darkness. they die in darkness. They lived dreaming, they die dreaming. They lived in a stupid way, they die in a stupid way. They miss all opportunities.

And three are the great opportunities in life. The first is birth. Only once in a while is a man so intelligent that he uses that opportunity — only very rarely. Maybe a Lao Tzu — hence the story.

It is said Lao Tzu lived in his mother’s womb for eighty-two years. Now this is nonsense, but it has some truth in it. It is not factual, but it has some truth in it. And that is the difference between the Western way of thinking and the Eastern. If you tell such a story to the Western mind, he simply says, “This cannot be. How can a person live for eighty-two years in the mother’s womb? And what will happen to the mother? Eighty-two years? This is not believable; this cannot be historical.”

The Western mind immediately asks about the facticity of the phenomenon — but it is a parable! It has nothing to do with facts; it certainly has something to do with truth. And truth can only be expressed through parables; there is no other way to express truth. Truth can only be expressed through metaphors, through poetry, not through history. It is poetry, pure poetry, and of tremendous power.

It means that when Lao Tzu was born he was already so mature, so ripe, that he used his first opportunity to wake up. Ordinarily it takes eighty-two years for a person to wake up, and even then, how many people wake up? People wake up at the time of death, but how many? — that too is very rare.

Lao Tzu must have been of immense intelligence, must have carried the intelligence from his past lives — maybe just a little bit was missing, just the last straw on the camel. He used the opportunity. The first opportunity is birth. It is as important as death. It is a death in a way, because the child in the mother’s womb lives in one way, one kind of life, and then is simply thrown out, expelled. He wants to cling to his home where he has lived for nine months, and so peacefully, so silently, without any worry, without any responsibility, in such warmth….

He clings to the womb, he does not want to go out. He feels it as a death, and it is natural — because what does he know about what is going to happen? One thing is certain: his home is being shattered; he is being thrown out of all his comfort and security. He knows he is dying! Hence the birth trauma — because the birth enters into the child’s consciousness as death. He dies and is reborn.

Lao Tzu used his first opportunity. And the same is the case with Zarathustra, another beautiful story. It is said that Zarathustra is the only child in the whole history of man who laughed when he was born. Children cry, they don’t laugh — and Zarathustra laughed — must have shocked his mother and… a real belly-laughter. He must have used the first opportunity.

These two names are known TO have used the first opportunity. The first shock, and they became awakened. The second opportunity in life is love. A few people have become awakened through love. And the second opportunity is available to more people than the first or the third — because birth is almost unconscious and so is death, but love can bring a little consciousness to your heart.

Hence my insistence on love — and Kabir’s insistence is also on love, because this is the opportunity many many people can use and become awake. If you love, you will have to drop your ego — and that will be the death, the death of the ego. If you love you will have to learn how to melt, merge, disappear. If you love you will have to know that there is much more to life than logic, calculation… there is much more to life than having money, more possessions, power.

If you love, you will have a glimpse of the divine. And if you go deep in love, you will start entering into the temple of God — that is the second opportunity. The society has destroyed it.
The first opportunity is very rare, but the second opportunity could have been available to almost everybody — that has been destroyed by the society. Your love has been contaminated. You have been brought up in fear, not in love. You have been brought up to fight, not to love. You have been brought up as if the whole existence is your enemy, not your friend — how can you love? Love has been made impossible by the society.

The only possibility of people turning to religion, the only possibility of revolution in people’s lives, has been destroyed by the society. Society is so much afraid of love that it is not afraid of anything else like it is of love. Love is the most potential and dangerous thing for your so-called society, because love will wake up people, love will stir people’s hearts. And they will start living through the heart, and they won’t listen to the head. And if they don’t listen to the head then the society will be at a loss; it will be impossible to dominate people who live through the heart. Only the head can be dominated only heads can be reduced to slaves. The heart is always the king, the master.

And the third opportunity is death — the last. If you have missed birth, if you have missed love, don’t miss death. At least the last chance should not be missed.

Source – Osho Book “The Fish in the Sea is not Thirsty”

Question – Beloved Osho, I have heard that your Sannyasins Celebrate Death.

Osho – Paul, you have heard rightly! My sannyasins celebrate everything. Celebration is the foundation of my sannyas — not renunciation but rejoicing; rejoicing in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers, because this whole life is a gift of God.

The old religions have taught you to renounce life. They are all life negative; their whole approach is pessimistic. They are all against life and its joys. To me, life and God are synonymous. In fact, life is a far better word than God itself, because God is only a philosophical term, while life is real, existential. The word “God” exists only in scriptures; it is a word, a mere word. Life is within you and without you — in the trees, in the clouds, in the stars. This whole existence is a dance of life.

I teach love for life. I teach the art of living your life totally, of being drunk with the divine THROUGH life. I am not an escapist. All your old religions have been teaching you escapism — they were all in a certain sense hip. The word “hippie” has to be understood. It simply means one who escapes from the battle of life, who shows his hips…! All your old religions are hippie! They have shown their hips. They could not accept the challenge of life, they could not confront and encounter life. They were cowards; they escaped to the mountains, to the monasteries.

But even if you escape to the mountains and to the monasteries, how can you leave yourself behind? You are part of life. Life pulsates in your blood, life breathes in you, life is your very being! Where can you escape? And all those efforts to escape, considered correctly, are suicidal. Your monks, your nuns, your mahatmas, your so-called saints, were all suicidal people; they were trying gradual suicide. Not only were they suicidal, they were cowards too — cowards because they could not even commit suicide in a single blow. They were committing suicide gradually, in installments; by and by, slowly they were dying. And we have respected these unhealthy people, these unwholesome people, these insane people. They were against God because they were against life.

I am in tremendous love with life, hence I teach celebration. Everything has to be celebrated, everything has to be lived, loved. To me nothing is mundane and nothing is sacred. To me all is sacred, from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung. It is the same ladder: from the body to the soul, from the physical to the spiritual, from sex to SAMADHI — everything is divine!

An old neo-sannyasin told an actor playing Hamlet that he himself had once played the part.
“What was your interpretation of the role?” asked the actor. “Did Hamlet really make love to Ophelia?”
“I don’t know if Hamlet did,” replied the sannyasin, “but I certainly did!”

Celebration has to be total, only then can you be multidimensionally rich. And to be multidimensionally rich is the only thing we can offer to God. If there is a God, and someday you have to face him, he will ask you only one question: “Have you lived your life totally or not?” — because this opportunity is given to you to live, not to renounce.

Paul, my sannyasins celebrate death too, because to me death is not the end of life but the very crescendo of life, the very climax. It is the ultimate of life. If you have lived rightly, if you have lived moment to moment totally, if you have squeezed out the whole juice of life, your death will be the ultimate orgasm. The sexual orgasm is nothing compared to the orgasm that death brings, but it brings it only to the person who knows the art of being total. The sexual orgasm is a very faint thing compared to the orgasm that death brings. What happens in sexual orgasm? For a moment you forget that you are a body, for a moment two lovers become merged into one unity, into one organic union. For a moment they are not separate entities; they have melted into each other like two clouds which have become one.

But it is only for a single moment, then they are again separate. Hence all sexual orgasms bring in their wake a kind of depression, because you fall from the height. You reached a crescendo, and for only a fragment of a moment you remained on the peak and then the peak disappeared. And when you fall from that height, you fall into the depth of depression. This is one of the contradictions of sex: it gives you the greatest pleasure and also the greatest agony. It gives you ecstasy and agony — both. And each time you reach an orgasmic state, you know that soon it will disappear. Then there is disillusionment, disappointment.

Death gives you the ultimate in orgasmic joy: the body is left behind forever and your being becomes one with the whole. It is immeasurable. If to become one with a single person gives you so much joy, just think how much joy will happen in becoming one with the infinite! But it does not happen to everybody who dies, because the people who have not lived rightly cannot die rightly either. The people who have lived in deep unconsciousness will die in deep unconsciousness. Death will give you only that which you have lived all your life; it is the essence of your whole life.

If your life was of meditativeness, awareness, witnessing, then you will be able to witness death too. If your whole life you remained cool, centered in different situations, death will give you the ultimate challenge, the ultimate test. And if you can remain centered, calm and cool and watching, then you will not die an unconscious death, your death will bring you to the ultimate peak of consciousness. And then, certainly, it HAS to be celebrated. So whenever one of my sannyasins dies, we celebrate, we dance, we sing. We give him a good farewell.

A midget had died and left a widow. Friends came to pay their condolences and look at the body lying in an upstairs room of the house. After one friend came down he was asked by the widow whether he had shut the door of the room where the body lay.

“No,” said the visitor, “I didn’t think it was necessary.”
“Then I’d better go upstairs and shut it,” replied the widow. “The cat has had him downstairs twice already. You know, my cat is a neo-sannyasin and he wants to celebrate the occasion!”

Little Pierino goes camping with his parents. A little while after, at the end of a day doing many things, they bed down for the evening. Pierino cries, “Mummy, I can’t sleep. There is a dead ant on my belly!”
“Shhh, Pierino,” says his mother, “be a good boy, just go to sleep — it is nothing to worry about.”
After a few minutes Pierino’s voice is heard again, “Mummy, Mummy, I can’t go to sleep — I’ve got a dead ant on my belly!”
“Pierino,” scolds his mother, “come on now, don’t tell me that a small dead ant stops you from sleeping!”
“Well,” replies Pierino, “it is not the dead ant really, it is all his orange sannyasin friends that have come to celebrate his death!”

Yes, Paul, my sannyasins celebrate death because they celebrate life. And death is not against life; it does not end life, it only brings life to a beautiful peak. Life continues even after death. It was there before birth, it is going to continue after death. Life is not confined to the small space that exists between birth and death; on the contrary, births and deaths are small episodes in the eternity of life.

We celebrate everything. Celebration is our way to receive all the gifts from God. Life is his gift, death is his gift; the body is his gift, the soul is his gift. We celebrate everything. We love the body, we love the soul. We are materialist spiritualists. Nothing like this has ever happened in the world. This is a new experiment, a new beginning, and it has a great future.

In the past there have been materialists who denied the soul, and there have been spiritualists who denied the body. Both were agreed on one point: that only one can be accepted, either the body or the soul. They were either/or people. They were not ready to accept the whole as it is; they were choosers.

My sannyasins live in choiceless awareness. We are not choosers; we simply accept whatsoever is the case. The materialists — the Charvakas in India and the Epicureans in Greece — denied the soul. They said, “There is no soul. The soul is just imagination. The soul is illusion.” And the spiritualists — Shankaracharya in India and Berkeley in Europe — these people said that matter is illusory, maya. The body does not exist really, it is only your imagination. It is a dream, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of; you are a soul. But both are agreeing on one point: that they cannot accept reality as it is, they have to choose.

It is as if one electrician chooses the positive pole and another electrician chooses the negative pole, and each denies the other pole. There will be no electricity, no light in the world. That’s what has happened: the spiritualist has not been able to transform the world, the materialist has failed also — because the world exists with polar opposites. Without polarity there is no world at all. The day is needed as much as the night; the body is needed as much as the soul; the world is needed as much as God. There can be no circumference without a center and there can be no center without a circumference. This is a simple fact.

My sannyas is the acceptance of that which is. We are not choosers. Who are we to choose? And what difference is our choice going to make? You can choose whatsoever you like, but whatsoever you don’t like is going to remain there. Just by not choosing it, it is not going to disappear. And because you have not chosen it, you will remain half, lopsided. The East has remained lopsided because of so-called spirituality. It has remained poor, unscientific — without any technology, without industry. It has become lousy, lazy, lethargic; it has lost all joy in existence because “this is all a dream, why bother about it?”

It is hungry, ill, poor, but “this is all illusion. You are simply dreaming that you are poor, you are not really poor. You are simply dreaming that you are starving, you are not starving.”
And the West has chosen materialism, so there is great technology, beautiful houses, better roads, better cars, better airplanes, but man is very empty and meaningless. Without spirituality there is no center; man falls apart. The Western man is half; the Eastern man is half. My effort here is to create the whole man. To me the whole man is the only holy man. The East and the West have to meet; they have to become complementaries, not antagonists.

But this is possible only if we change the whole philosophical background. Hence I teach a very contradictory philosophy. Spiritual materialism is the name that I give to my philosophy.
I want you to be materialists and spiritualists simultaneously, in a balanced way. I would love society to have all the facilities, all the comforts and conveniences that science and technology can provide, and I would also love people to have a great awareness inside them so that they can enjoy whatsoever science provides. I would like everybody to be a buddha, but at the same time I would also like the world to become more and more comfortable, more and more loving, more and more beautiful.

We can transform this world into a paradise, but then we have to stop choosing. We have simply to accept the whole as it is, with all its contradictions. Those contradictions are contradictions only because of our logical obsession; otherwise they are complementaries. Life and death — both are beautiful.

Source – Osho Book “Come, Come, Yet Again Come”

Osho – I have told you many times, but I love the incident so much, because in the contemporary world, and particularly in the West, nothing like it has ever happened …. In the East it has been happening to the Sufis, to the Zen monks, to the masters of meditation, but in the West this small incident stands unique – just like a burning torch in a dark night.

Gertrude Stein, a great poetess, is dying, she is breathing her last breaths. And she was loved by many people, she had many friends. She was a woman of tremendous creative qualities. Her poetry comes closest to the haikus of the Zen masters or to the poetry of Kabir, Nanak, Farid. Her poetry has something essentially of the East; she had some glimpses of the mystic experience.

At the last moment – it is evening and the sun has set and darkness is settling – she opens her eyes and asks, ”What is the answer?”

And those who have gathered to say good-bye to her are puzzled: ”Has she gone senile, insane? Perhaps death has shocked her and she has lost her rationality.” Certainly no man with a reasonable mind will ask, ”What is the answer?” because unless you have asked a question, asking, ”What is the answer?” is very irrational.

There was silence for a moment. Then one very close friend asked, ”But you have not asked the question. How can we answer?”
And Gertrude Stein had a faint smile and said, ”Okay, so tell me, what is the question?”

And then she died, so they had no time left to say, ”This question is as absurd as your first. First you asked for the answer without asking the question; now you are also asking the question from us! There are thousands and millions of questions. Who knows what question you want to be answered?”

In fact, Gertrude Stein was passing beyond mind when she asked, ”What is the answer?” She was passing beyond the heart when she asked, reluctantly, smilingly, ”Okay, what is the question?” And then she passed beyond.

It was one of the most beautiful deaths in the West. In the East we have known many beautiful deaths. It is very difficult for people to make a beautiful life. But there have been people who have lived beautifully and died even more beautifully! Because to them death comes as a culmination, as a climax of life, as if the whole life becomes a flame of fire – in a single moment, in total intensity – before disappearing into the universal.

She was not losing her mind in the sense that it is usually understood, but she was certainly going beyond mind and she was also going beyond the heart. Beyond these two diametrically opposite centers in you is a being which is utterly innocent of any questions or of any answers. It is so fulfilled in itself, so completely contented that there is nothing left to ask and there is nothing left to answer.

My own understanding is that Gertrude Stein died enlightened. The West has no understanding of enlightenment. They simply thought she was going crazy. But it was not craziness, it was a moment of great celebration. What she could not attain in her life, she attained in her death. And she gave the sure indications: no question, no answer and you have arrived home.

Source: from Osho Book “Sat Chit Anand”

Osho – Death is the crescendo, the highest peak that life can attain. In the moment of death much is possible. If you have been preparing and preparing, meditating and waiting, then at the moment of death enlightenment is very easily possible – because death and enlightenment are similar. A master, one who is enlightened, can easily make you enlightened at the moment of death. Even before, whenever it happens, you have to be ready to die.

What happens in death? Suddenly you are losing your body, suddenly you are losing your mind. Suddenly you feel you are going away from yourself – all that you believe to be yourself. It is painful, because you feel you are going to be drowned into emptiness. You will be nowhere now, because you were always identified with the body and the mind, and you never knew the beyond; you never knew yourself beyond the body and the mind. You got so fixed and obsessed with the periphery that the center was completely forgotten.

In death you have to encounter this fact: that the body is going, now it cannot be retained any more. The mind is leaving you – now you are no more in control of the mind. The ego is dissolving – you cannot even say ’I’. You tremble with fear, on the verge of nothingness. You will be no more. But if you have been preparing, if you have been meditating – and preparation means if you have been making all efforts to use death, to use this abyss of nothingness – rather than being pulled into it you have been getting ready to jump into it, it makes a lot of difference.

If you are being pulled into it, grudgingly – you don’t want to go into it and you have been snatched – then it is painful. Much anguish! And the anguish is so intense that you will become unconscious in the moment of death. Then you miss.

But if you are ready to jump there is no anguish. If you accept and welcome it, and there is no complaint – rather, you are happy and celebrating that the moment has come, and now I can jump out of this body which is a limitation, can jump out of this body which is a confinement, can jump out of this ego which has always been a suffering – if you can welcome, then there is no need to become unconscious. If you can become accepting, welcoming – what Buddhists call tathata, to accept it, and not only to accept, because the word accept is not very good, deep down some nonacceptance is hidden in it – no, if you welcome, if it is such a celebration, an ecstasy, if it is a benediction, then you need not become unconscious.

If it is a benediction, you will become perfectly conscious in that moment. Remember these two things: if you reject, if you say no, you will become totally unconscious; if you accept, welcome, and say yes with your full heart, you will become perfectly conscious. Yes to death makes you perfectly conscious; no to death makes you perfectly unconscious – and these are the two ways of dying. A Buddha dies totally accepting. There is no resistance, no fight between him and death. Death is divine; you die fighting.

If a man has been preparing, getting ready, at the moment of death the master can be miraculously helpful. Just a word at the right moment and the flame inside suddenly explodes, you become enlightened – because the moment is such, so intense, you are so concentrated at one point.

[A sannyasin says: A week ago I mentioned to someone ’I think my father might die’ and today during the lecture my watch stopped; then I got the telegram that he’s very sick.... I just have the feeling that this is the first time I can understand him and show him that I love him. I feel that he might have been hurt.]

Osho – Just go and see whatsoever happens. Mm? don’t be worried about the future – just go. And give him as much love and respect as you can. This will be far more important than anything else. Don’t be worried about the groups or anything; that is secondary.

If you can settle your accounts with your father, that is the greatest thing. People remain entangled with their parents. Accounts are never settled, and unless accounts are settled, one remains childish. Growth happens by settling accounts. If one is perfectly clear about one’s parents, that is growth: one is mature. But very few people are clear about their relationship.

Their relationship is formal, clumsy, unloving, inhibited, and a thousand and one complexities are there. If your father is dying, then this is the time not to miss but to settle everything, because once he is gone, then for years and years you can be in Primal Therapy and nothing will be settled. This can be settled very easily now, so forget everything, just go.

And I am not saying that he is going to die. I am saying the idea that he is going to die is very helpful, mm? – you will be able to settle things. If you know that he is not going to die, you will postpone. And don’t be worried about the watch. Watches are not very intelligent: they can stop any time! It is very difficult now to find those wise watches which used to stop exactly!
Don’t be worried – just go!

Source: from Osho Book “Turn On, Tune In and Drop the Lot”

[Osho speaks to a sannyasin who just arrived to take care of his wife who lies very ill in a local hospital.]

Osho – She will survive – just wait; help her. You have come, that’s very good. Just be as loving to her as possible. And death, when it is around, or when one feels that it is around, is a great opportunity to be loving, because when we think the other person is going to live we are miserly in love, because we can love tomorrow or the day after tomorrow; and the mind always postpones. The mind is afraid of love because love is too much and the mind cannot control it; love overwhelms it. Love creates a chaos and the mind is always trying to create some order.

So the mind goes on postponing love. But when one starts feeling death around – and death is always around; anybody can die any moment…. But when it is felt that somebody is seriously ill – and the person may not die, but when we start feeling the shadow of death – then there is no way to postpone. Love has to happen right now, because we cannot think even of the next moment. Next moment she may be gone, so there is no future.

And when there is no future, the mind cannot go on controlling you. The mind can control only through the future, through postponing. It says ’Tomorrow. Wait – let me do my things right now; tomorrow you can do other things. There is tomorrow, so why are you in such a hurry?’ But when there is no tomorrow and suddenly you feel the curtain falling then the mind cannot deceive you. And these moments can become of immense revelation.

So be loving! All that we have is love – everything else is immaterial because everything else is on the outside; only love comes from the inside. Everything else – we can give money and things and presents… we have not brought them with us; we have collected them here. We come naked but we come full of love! We come empty of everything else but we come full of love, overflowing.
So when we give our love, then only do we give. That’s the gift, the real gift, and that can be given only when death is standing there. So never miss the opportunity. She may survive, but then you would have learned a lesson of tremendous importance. Then don’t forget that lesson, because nobody needs to be seriously ill to die! One can simply die of a heart attack, any moment. So never postpone love; you can postpone everything else but not love.

And the man who never postpones love becomes love, and to become love is to know god. And death is a great opportunity: it throws you back into your love source. So be around her, shower your love energy… If she dies, she dies in a great loving space – if she survives, she survives as a new being; both ways it is perfectly good. Death doesn’t matter – all that matters is love.

And when people feel very sad after a person has gone, the reason for their sadness is not the death of the person but the guilty feeling that they didn’t love, that they didn’t give enough; they could have given. My observation is that whenever a loved one dies, those who are left behind start feeling guilty. To hide their guilt they cry and weep and they make much fuss. That is just somehow a substitute because they could not love when the person was alive and now there is no way… no way to repent, no way even to feel sorry, and apologise, no way to say the thousand and one things that one wanted to say but didn’t, no way to take many things back which one had thrown on the other person in unconsciousness.

All that anger and rage and the wounds one would like to take back, but now they cannot be taken back. A thousand and one times one wanted to be loving, wanted to hold the other person close, but did not… one continued to postpone, for stupid things. All this creates great guilt. It hurts. How to forget it? What to do? So ’as an excuse’ one starts crying and weeping and feeling sad and desperate and in despair. This is just an effort to cover things up.

But my feeling is that if a person has loved totally, yes, one will be sad, but that sadness also will have beauty. It will be a kind of depth, very loving… a silence. And even if tears come, those tears will not be of despair and misery; those will be of thankfulness, of gratitude, of a very subtle joy of fulfillment.

Yes, even when somebody dies one can feel very very joyous if there is no guilt, there is joy. And one can say goodbye with gratitude for all that the other person did and was, for all that the other person gave to you, for all the poetry that the other person was and the music the other person was, and the dance that the other person introduced into your life. One simply feels grateful, fulfilled.

So be loving. If she leaves, she leaves in great love; and when there is love there is no death. Who cares about death? One can die laughing! If one knows that one is loved, one can meet death with great celebration. If she dies she dies in tremendous peace. If she survives she will be a new person; she will have known your heart for the first time. So just be loving… and you have come – that’s very good. Good!

Source: from Osho Book “The Tongue-Tip Taste of Tao”