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Osho's interest in death
At the age of fourteen, my family again became disturbed that
I would die. I survived, but then I again tried it consciously.
I said to them, "If death is going to occur as the astrologer
has said, then it is better to be prepared. And why not give a
chance to death? Why should I not go and meet it half way? If
I am going to die, then it is better to die consciously."
So I took leave from my school for seven days. I went to my
principal and I told him, "I am going to die."
He said, "What nonsense you are talking! Are you committing
suicide? What do you mean you are going to die?"
I told him about the astrologer's prediction that the possibility
of death would confront me every seven years. I told him, "I
am going into retreat for seven days to wait for death. If death
comes, it is good to meet it consciously so that it becomes an
experience."
I went to a temple just outside of my village. I arranged with
the priest that he should not disturb me. It was a very lonely,
unvisited temple - old, in ruins. No one ever came to it. So I
told him, "I will remain in the temple. You just give me
once a day something to eat and something to drink, and the whole
day I will be lying there waiting for death."
For seven days I waited. Those seven days became a beautiful
experience. Death never came, but on my part I tried in every
way to be dead. Strange, weird feelings happened. Many things
happened, but the basic note was this - that if you are feeling
you are going to die, you become calm and silent. Nothing creates
any worry then because all worries are concerned with life. Life
is the basis of all worries. When you are going to die anyway
one day, why worry?
I was lying there. On the third or fourth day a snake entered
the temple. It was in view, I was seeing the snake, but there
was no fear. Suddenly I felt very strange. The snake was coming
nearer and nearer, and I felt very strange. There was no fear,
so I thought, "When death is coming, it may be coming through
this snake, so why be afraid? Wait!"
The snake crossed over me and went away. Fear had disappeared.
If you accept death, there is no fear. If you cling to life, then
every fear is there. Many times flies came around me. They would
fly around, they would creep over me, on my face. Sometimes I
felt irritated and would have liked to throw them off, but then
I thought, "What is the use? Sooner or later I am going to
die, and then no one will be here to protect the body. So let
them have their way."
The moment I decided to let them have their way, the irritation
disappeared. They were still on the body, but it was as if I was
not concerned. They were as if moving, as if creeping on someone
else's body. There was a distance immediately. If you accept death,
a distance is created. Life moves far away with all its worries,
irritations, everything. I died in a way, but I came to know that
something deathless is there. Once you accept death totally, you
become aware of it.
Then again at the age of twenty-one, my family was waiting.
So I told them, "Why do you go on waiting? Do not wait. Now
I am not going to die."
Physically, someday I will die, of course. However, this prediction
of the astrologer helped me very much because he made me aware
very early on about death. Continuously, I could meditate and
could accept that it was coming.
Death can be used for deep meditation because then you become
inactive. Energy is released from the world; it can move inwards.
That is why a deathlike posture is suggested. Use life, use death,
for discovering that which is beyond both. vbt24
In the East we have been watching the death experience of people.
How you die reflects your whole life, how you lived. If I can
see just your death, I can write your whole biography - because
in that one moment your whole life becomes condensed. In that
one moment, like a lightning, you show everything.
A miserly person will die with clenched fists - still holding
and clinging, still trying not to die, still trying not to relax.
A loving person will die with open fists - sharing...even
sharing his death as he shared his life. You can see everything
written on the face - whether this man has lived his life
fully alert, aware. If he has, then on his face there will be
a light shining; around his body there will be an aura. You come
close to him and you will feel silent - not sad, but silent.
It even happens that if a person has died blissfully in a total
orgasm you will feel suddenly happy near him.
It happened in my childhood. A very saintly person in my village
died. I had a certain attachment towards him. He was a priest
in a small temple, a very poor man, and whenever I would pass - and
I used to pass at least twice a day; when going to the school
near the temple, I would pass - he would call me and he would
always give me some fruit, some sweet.
When he died, l was the only child who went to see him. The whole
town gathered. Suddenly I could not believe what happened - I
started laughing. My father was there; he tried to stop me because
he felt embarrassed. A death is not a time to laugh. He tried
to shut me up. He told me again and again, 'You keep quiet!'
But I have never felt that urge again. Since then I have never
felt it; never before had I ever felt it - to laugh so loudly,
as if something beautiful has happened.
And I could not hold myself. I laughed loudly, everybody was angry,
I was sent back, and my father told me, 'Never again are you to
be allowed in any serious situation! Because of you, even I was
feeling very embarrassed. Why were you laughing? What was happening
there? What is there in death to laugh about? Everybody was crying
and weeping and you were laughing.'
And I told him, 'Something happened. That old man released something
and it was tremendously beautiful. He died an orgasmic death.'
Not exactly these words, but I told him that I felt he was very
happy dying, very blissful dying, and I wanted to participate
in his laughter. He was laughing, his energy was laughing.
I was thought mad. How can a man die laughing? Since then I have
been watching many deaths, but I have not seen that type of death
again.
When you die, you release your energy and with that energy your
whole life's experience. Whatsoever you have been - sad, happy,
loving, angry, passionate, compassionate - whatsoever you
have been, that energy carries the vibrations of your whole life.
Whenever a saint is dying, just being near him is a great gift;
just to be showered with his energy is a great inspiration. You
will be put in a totally different dimension. You will be drugged
by his energy, you will feel drunk.
Death can be a total fulfillment, but that is possible only if
life has been lived. nirvan09
It was one of my pastimes in my childhood to follow every funeral
procession. My parents were continually worried: "You don't
know the man who has died, you have no relationship, no friendship
with him. Why should you bother and waste your time?" - because
the Indian funeral takes three, four or five hours.
First, going out of the city, the procession walking, taking the
dead body, and then burning the body on the funeral pyre....
And you know Indians, they can't do anything efficiently: the
funeral pyre won't catch fire; it will just live half-heartedly
and the man will not burn. And everybody is making all kinds of
effort because they want to get away from there as quickly as
possible. But the dead people are also tricky. They will try their
hardest to keep you there as long as possible.
I told my parents, "It is not a question of being related
to somebody. I am certainly related with death, that you cannot
deny. It does not matter who dies - it is symbolic to me.
One day I will be dying. I have to know how people behave with
the dead, how the dead behave with the living people; otherwise,
how am I going to learn?"
They said, "You bring strange arguments."
"But," I said, "you have to convince me that death
is not related to me, that I am not going to die. If you can convince
me of that, I will stop going; otherwise let me explore."
They could not say to me that I would not be dying, so I said,
"then just keep quiet. I am not telling you to go. And I
enjoy everything that happens there."
The first thing I have observed is that nobody talks about death,
even there. The funeral pyre is burning somebody's father, somebody's
brother, somebody's uncle, somebody's friend, somebody's enemy:
he was related to many people in many ways. He is dead - and
they are all engaged in trivia.
They would be talking about the movies, they would be talking
about the politics, they would be talking about the market; they
would be talking about all kinds of things, except death. They
would make small cliques and sit all around the funeral pyre.
I would go from one clique to another: nobody was talking about
death. And I know for certain that they were talking about other
things to keep them occupied so that they didn't see the burning
body - because it was their body too.
They could see, if they had a little insight into things, that
they are burning there on the funeral pyre - nobody else.
It is only a question of time. Tomorrow somebody else from these
people will be there on the funeral pyre; the day after tomorrow
somebody else will be - every day people are being brought
to the funeral pyre. One day I am going to be brought to the funeral
pyre, and this is the treatment that these people will be giving
to me. This is their last farewell: they are talking about prices
going up, the rupee devaluating - in front of death. And they
are all sitting with their backs toward the funeral pyre.
They had to come, so they have come, but they never wanted to
come. So they want to be there almost absently present, just to
fulfill a social conformity, just to show that they were present.
And that too is to make sure that when they die they will not
be taken by the municipal corporation truck. Because they have
participated in so many people's death, naturally it becomes obligatory
for other people to give them a send-off. They know why they are
there - they are there because they want people to be there
when they are on the funeral pyre.
But what are these people doing? I asked people whom I knew. Sometimes
one of my teachers was there, talking about stupid things - that
somebody is flirting with somebody's wife.... I said, "Is
this the time to talk about somebody's wife and what she is doing?
Think about the wife of this man who has died. Nobody is worried
about that, nobody is talking about that.
"Think of your wife when you will be dead. With whom will
she be flirting? What will she do? Have you made any arrangements
for that? And can't you see the stupidity? Death is present and
you are trying to avoid it in every possible way." But all
the religions have done that. And these people are simply representing
certain traditions of certain religions. person12
One of my teachers died. He was a funny man, very fat, and he
used to have a very ancient type of turban - very big, maybe
thirty-six feet long or more. Thirty-six feet is normal for the
old, ancient turban. His face was also such that you could not
remain looking at him without smiling. And he was my Sanskrit
teacher.
He was a simple man - in fact a simpleton. We had been playing
all kinds of tricks on him, and he was never able to find out
who had done it; he never punished anybody. We had been really
hard on him. He would fall from the chair, because we had managed
to cut the legs of the chair before he came. He would fall from
the chair, his turban would fall all over the class, and there
would be great laughter. But he would start putting his turban
back on and writing on the board again, not getting disturbed.
He was really a nice fellow.
He died. We used to call him Bhole Baba. That was not his name.
Baba is simply used for grandfather, a respectful word. Bhole
means a simpleton, so innocent that anybody can deceive him. I
have completely forgotten his name, because we never used his
name; we always used Bhole Baba. I have been trying to figure
out what was his real name, but I cannot find it anywhere in my
mind.
When I went to his house with my father, his wife came running
from inside the house, fell on the chest of that poor fellow,
and said, "Oh, my Bhole Baba!" I could not contain my
laughter. My father tried telling me, "Keep quiet!"
I said, "The more I try to keep quiet, the more it is becoming
difficult. I cannot contain it; let me laugh!" But everybody
was shocked: somebody is dead, and you are laughing so loudly.
I said, "Please, don't be shocked. If you knew the whole
thing as I do, you would all be laughing."
And I told the whole thing, that he was always getting irritated
by being called Bhole Baba. And we used to write on the blackboard
every day, "Welcome, Bhole Baba". And the first thing
he would do was, he would erase it. And now the poor man was dead
and his own wife...
When I told them this, everybody started laughing. And the wife
also became silent and said, "It is really strange for me
to call him Bhole Baba, because I used to tell that boy not to
call him Bhole Baba, that it is not his name."
And who was the boy? Mostly I was the boy who always going past
his house, would knock on the door and say, "Is Bhole Baba
inside?" And the wife knew me. With the door closed she would
say, "No, he is not inside" - he was always inside - "But
remember, don't call him Bhole Baba! If you stop calling him Bhole
Baba, I can open the door and you can find him inside."
Perhaps continually hammering, "Bhole Baba, Bhole Baba,"
then at the moment of death.... Of course, a Hindu wife is
not supposed to say her husband's name. She cannot, that is thought
to be disrespectful - just the male chauvinistic mind. The
man can call her by her name, but the woman cannot call her husband
by his name. So perhaps...there was no time to figure out
what to say; Bhole Baba came in handy.
But even the wife started laughing, thinking that this was really
hilarious. "My whole life I have been telling you and other
boys who are your friends...who you have been telling that
whenever they pass the door, they should knock and enquire, `Is
Bhole Baba inside?'"
The death became a laughter. But back home, my father said, "I
am not going to take you to another death, another cremation - not
with me, at least. What you have done is not right."
I said, "Everybody laughed - even the wife who was crying,
started laughing. You should all be grateful to me that I made
even death nonserious, fun, a joke." false22
I had a girlfriend when I was young. Then she died. But on her
deathbed she promised me she would come back. And I was afraid.
And she has come back. The name of the girlfriend was Shashi.
She died in `47. She was the daughter of a certain doctor, Dr.
Sharma, of my village. He is also dead now. And now she has come
as Vivek*...to take care of me. Vivek cannot remember it.
I used to call Shashi `Gudia', and I started calling Vivek `Gudia'
also, just to give a continuity.
Life is a great drama, a great play - it goes on from one
life to another to another. plove02
*Note: Vivek met Osho again in 1971 see Part VI
The first woman I loved was my mother-in-law. You will be surprised:
am I married? No, I am not married. That woman was Gudia's mother,
but I used to call her my mother-in-law, just as a joke. I have
remembered it again after so many years. I used to call her mother-in-law
because I loved her daughter. That was Gudia's previous life.
Again, that woman was tremendously powerful, just like my grandmother.
My "mother-in-law" was a rare woman, especially in
India. She left her husband, went to Pakistan and married a Mohammedan
even though she was a brahmin. She knew how to dare. I always
like the quality of daring, because the more you dare, the nearer
you come to home. Only the daredevils ever become buddhas, remember!
The calculating ones can have a good bank balance but cannot become
buddhas. glimps03
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