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Part V : Death
If you ask me, it will look like an exaggeration, but in fact,
in the whole of India I never found another Shambhu Dube. He was
just rare.
When I was traveling all over India he would wait for months for
me to come and visit the village just for one day. He was the
only person who ever came to see me when my train would pass through
the village. Of course I am not including my father nor my mother;
they had to come. But Shambhu Dube was not my relative. He just
loved me, and this love started at that meeting, on that day when
I had gone to protest against Kantar Master. glimps20
This is synchronicity.
Somehow a deep, deep connection existed. The day he died I went
to him without hesitation. I did not even inquire. I simply drove
to the town. I never liked that road, and I like driving, but
that road from Jabalpur to Gadarwara was really a sonofabitch!
You will not find a worse road anywhere...the road from the
university to Shambhu Babu's house. I just rushed - a feeling
in the guts.
I am a speedy driver. I love speed, but on that road you cannot
go more than twenty miles an hour; that's the maximum possible,
so you can conceive of what kind of a road it must be. By the
time you arrive, if you are not dead then you are something close
to it! There is just one good thing: before you enter the town
you come across the river. That is its saving grace: you can take
a good bath, you can swim for half an hour to refresh yourself,
and give your car a good bath too. Then, when you reach the town,
nobody thinks you are a holy ghost.
I rushed. Never in my life have I been in such a hurry....
That day I had to hurry, and it proved true because if I had
been just a few minutes later I would never have seen Shambhu
Babu's eyes again. Alive, I mean - I mean looking at me just
the way he had looked that first time. I wanted to see that first
look for the last time that synchronicity. And in that half hour
before he died there was nothing but pure communion. I told him
he could say whatever he wanted to say.
He sent everybody else away. Of course they were offended. His
wife and sons and his brothers did not like it. But he clearly
said, "Whether you like it or not, I want you all to leave
immediately because I don't have much time to waste."
Naturally afraid, they all left. We both laughed. I said, "Anything
you want to say to me, you can say."
He said, "I have nothing to say to you. Just hold my hands.
Let me feel you. Fill me with your presence, I beg you."
He went on, "I cannot go on my knees and touch your feet.
It is not that I would not like to do it, just that my body is
not in a position to get out of bed. I cannot even move. I have
just a few minutes longer."
I could see that death was almost on his doorstep. I took his
hands, and said a few things to him, to which he listened very
attentively. glimps22
My (paternal) grandfather died. In my family, he was the oldest,
and I was the youngest, but by a strange coincidence, we were
great friends. And all those who were in between were against
both of us....
When he died, I was sitting.... It was a beautiful winter
morning and the sun had risen. I was just sitting at the door,
because everybody else of the house was surrounding the old man.
One of my uncles asked, "This is strange; your great friend
is dead, and you are sitting outside the house enjoying the morning
sun."
I said, "When he was alive none of you sat with him, except
me. I am just giving you a chance; there will never be a chance
again. But you can sit only by the side of the dead, not by the
side of the living."
Neighbors came to sympathize, to comfort - they met me first,
because I was sitting outside the house - and they would start
weeping, and tears would be rolling down their face. I said, "Don't
pretend," and they were very much shocked. I said, "These
tears are crocodile tears, because I never saw you coming to the
old man when he was alive. He was a lion; he could have made a
breakfast of you. Now that he is dead....
But he had lived so totally, and his death was so beautiful.
At the last moment he called me, took my hand in his hand, and
said, "I have lived totally, without any regret. Just remember
it: never listen to anyone, just listen to your own heart."
So I said to the neighbors, "There is no need to cry for
a man who lived so blissfully, so beautifully. When your grandfather
dies, then you can cry. And remember, I will not come, even to
comfort you."
They could not understand what I was saying, and when somebody
from my family dragged them in, they said, "Don't talk to
him." They said, "He said very insulting things to us - that
our tears are crocodile tears."
Coming back, I said, "Enjoy that your grandfather is still
alive. In this comfort, I can see your heart enjoying that somebody
else's grandfather has died. Your grandfather is alive, but I
want to tell you - your grandfather has been dead all his
life!"
They said, "We are not even talking to you."
I said, "It doesn't matter. But I wanted to be clear to
you that all this comfort and sympathy is for those who have missed
life, who have missed love, who have not lived according to their
own longings." My grandfather was a simple man, but unpolluted,
uncorrupted by the priests. His death was as beautiful as his
life. mess214
In my village one old priest was very much respected as a wise
man. I used to go to him. And to any question that I ever asked
him, he would say, "Wait. At the right time, in the right
season, you will find the answer."
I came back from the university and I went to see the old man;
he was dying. I said to him, "You have been deceiving me.
I have been waiting for the right moment and the right season.
It has not come. And I want to ask you, at least while you are
dying, to be honest. Tell me, has your right time come?"
He had tears in his eyes. He said, "Forgive me, I used
to say that to everyone, just to avoid their question - because
I don't know the answer. I am myself as ignorant as anybody but
people think I am a wise man, and by and by they have convinced
me that I am a wise man. I too have started believing in it."
I said, "At least now drop that belief. Die as ignorant
as you are. Your whole life you have been dishonest, but even
a single moment before death, if you are honest, perhaps the right
time and the right season may come suddenly." And actually
it happened. He closed his eyes, and I was sitting by his side
and I saw the change happening around his energy; there was a
freshness, a different fragrance. His old face became so beautiful - wrinkled
with age, but now showing a maturity.
He opened his eyes and he took my hand in his hand and he said,
"I cannot be more grateful to anybody in my life than to
you, although you have not done anything. But seeing the fact
that death is coming, I closed my eyes and for the first time
I looked inwards. It was there, it has always been there."
He died an enlightened man. He lived unenlightened, in misery,
in suffering, but he died enlightened, in tremendous joy.
He told me, "Nobody should weep or cry; nobody should be
sad or serious because my death is an illumination. What life
has not been able to give me, my death has given to me. Celebrate!
Tell the people that my death has to be celebrated."
And when I told the people, they wouldn't believe me. I said,
"Whether you believe me or not, that old man's last wish
should be fulfilled. If you cannot celebrate I will have to bring
my friends, and we will celebrate."
I had to gather people, and they were hesitant because death
is not celebrated, death is a calamity. But the death of an enlightened
being, and particularly a death which makes a man enlightened,
has to be a festival. It is far more valuable than birth. Birth
brings you life. Enlightened death brings you eternal life, a
timeless ecstasy, a blissfulness that never ends. exist06
One man I know, Dada Dharmadhikari - he is a very famous
follower of Gandhi, a colleague of Gandhi, and a colleague of
J. Krishnamurti. He does not believe in God, he does not believe
in any traditions. He used to come to see me, and I told him,
"Not believing in God is not enough; believing in God, or
not believing in God, both are God-centered. I cannot say that
I do not believe in God - how can I not believe in something
which does not exist? Believing or not believing are both irrelevant
when something is existential." But he was too full of Krishnamurti.
I said, "Some day some opportunity may come and I will
be able to point it out to you, that this belief is only a reaction.
It does not erase God, it simply puts disbelief in place of belief,
but God remains in its place."
His son is attorney general of the high court. One day he came
very much disturbed and asked me to come immediately, "My
father is dying. He had a serious heart attack, and the doctors
are worried that he may have another heart attack and it will
be difficult to save him. Perhaps he will be happy to see you.
He always talks only of you or J. Krishnamurti."
I went to his house. He was resting in a dark room and I entered
slowly. I told his son not to announce that I had come. He was
repeating "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama"
very silently, almost whispering. But I shook him and I said,
"Have you forgotten J. Krishnamurti? Have you forgotten me?
What are you doing? Hare Krishna, Hare Rama...!"
He said, "This time don't disturb me. Who knows, God may
be a reality. And just to repeat a few times before death...there
is no harm. If he is there I can say, `I remembered you.' If he
is not there, there is no harm, just let me repeat it - no
argument at this moment. I am dying."
I said, "That's what makes it very urgent to prevent you
doing any stupid thing! This is against your whole life."
Now he is eighty years old; he followed Krishnamurti for almost
fifty years, has been in contact for twenty years with me, and
at the last moment all intellectual garbage disappears and the
old conditionings appear again. This was what his parents had
taught him in his childhood, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,"
because Hindus believe that in this dark age of humanity only
the name of God can save you. The name of God is like a boat;
you simply ride on the boat and it will take you to the other
side of existence, the spiritual world.
He became okay; he did not die. And when he had become almost
all right, I asked him about that day. He said, "Forget all
about it. There is no God. I don't believe in God."
I said, "Again - because now death is no longer so
close? That day you were not even willing to discuss it. You were
even arguing: `At this moment, let me repeat the mantra that is
going to save me.'" I said to him, "All your intellectual
garbage is useless. It has not reached to your heart; it has not
given you any transformation." socrat25
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