---
section: Library
booktitle: "And Now, And Here"
booktype: "Translations"
bookcode: "NOW"
dategiven: "04 November 1969 pm"
place: " in Bhulabhai Auditorium, Bombay, India"
chapternum: "Chapter #8"
chaptertitle: "Ignorance of Life is Death"
acode: "6911045"
shorttitle: "NOW08"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "And Now, And Here: Chapter #8"
---

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Man doesn't even know what life is. And if we can't know what life is, then there is no possibility of our knowing death either. As long as life itself remains unfamiliar, as long as it remains an enigma, there is no way one can be familiar with death, no way one can ever know what death is. The truth is, death seems to occur because we have no idea of what life is. For those who know life, death is an impossible word. It is something which has never occurred, never occurs, can never occur.


There are certain words which are absolutely false; they contain not even an iota of truth. The word death is one of them. It is a totally false word. No event like death occurs anywhere. But we see people dying every day. Every day, death seems to be happening all around us.


Every village has a cremation ground. And if we understand rightly, we will come to realize that wherever we may be standing on the earth, the dead bodies of countless people have been cremated on that very spot. The very piece of land on which we may have built our houses has been a cemetery at some time or other. Millions upon millions of people have died, and are dying every day. And yet, you will be surprised if I say there is no other word in the entire human language more false than 'death'.


There was a mystic in Tibet by the name of Marpa. Someone once came to him and said, "I have come to ask you about life and death." Marpa gave a big laugh and said, "If you want to know about life you are most welcome, because I know what life is. As far as death is concerned, I have not had any meeting with death, I am not acquainted with it. If you want to know death, go and ask those who are as good as dead, or those who are already dead. I am familiar with life, I can talk about life. I can show you what life is. I am not familiar with death."


This story is similar to the tale of darkness and light. Perhaps you may have heard it. Once darkness went to see God and implored, "Lord, this sun of yours is out to get me. I am exhausted. He starts chasing me at dawn and only after much trouble leaves me alone in the evening. What wrong have I done? What kind of enmity is this? Why is this sun following me and harassing me? I barely manage to rest after a hectic day when once again I find him standing at my door at dawn. Again I have to run for my life, again I have to escape -- this has been going on since eternity. I have run out of patience. I can't take it any more. I beg you, please make him understand."


It is said that God called the sun and said, "Why are you after darkness? What wrong has he done you? Why the enmity? What grievance do you have against him?"


"Darkness?" asked the sun. "I have been wandering the universe since time immemorial, but I have never come across darkness. I don't know who darkness is. Where is he? Please bring him before me so that I may ask his forgiveness, come to know him, and stay out of his way."


Infinite time has passed since this incident took place. The matter is still pending in God's files; he has still not been able to bring darkness before the sun. He never can, and this matter is never going to be resolved. How can you bring darkness before the sun? Darkness has no positive existence of its own at all. Darkness is merely the absence of light. How can the absence of the sun be brought into the presence of the sun? No, darkness can never be brought before the sun. It is even difficult to bring darkness before a little lamp, let alone the sun, which is so vast. It is difficult for darkness to penetrate the radius of light around a lamp; it is difficult for darkness to have an encounter with a lamp. How can darkness be where there is light? How can death be where there is life? Either there is no life at all, or else there is no death. Both cannot be true together.


We are alive, but we don't know what life is. And this ignorance makes us believe in the certainty of death. Ignorance is death. The ignorance of life itself becomes the phenomenon of death. If, God willing, we could come to know the life that is within, a single ray of that knowing would destroy forever this ignorance that one can die, or that one has died at some time in the past, or that one will die at some time in the future. We don't know the light that we are, and we become scared of the darkness that we are not. We fail to become acquainted with the light that is our vital energy, our life, our existence, and we are frightened of the darkness that we are not.


Man is not mortal, he is immortal. The whole of life is immortal, but we never look at the immortality. We never search in the direction of life; we don't even take one step towards it. And since we remain unfamiliar with life, we seem frightened of death. So the question is not one of life and death, the question is only of life.


I have been asked to speak on life and death, but this is impossible. The question is only of life, there is nothing like death at all. When one knows what life is, only then does life exist, but when life remains unknown there is only death. As a problem, life and death do not both exist simultaneously. Either we know we are life, then there is no death -- or we do not know we are life, and in that case death alone is, there is no life. They don't both exist together -- they can't. But we are all afraid of death.


The fear itself shows we are unfamiliar with death. The fear of death has only one meaning, unfamiliarity with life. And the fact is, life is flowing within us every moment. It is flowing in every breath, in every particle, all around, within and without -- and yet it is unknown to us? This can mean only one thing, that man is in a deep sleep. Only in sleep is it possible a man could remain unfamiliar with who he is. It boils down to the fact that man is deeply unconscious. It can only mean that the whole vital energy of man is not conscious, not awake.


When a man is asleep he doesn't know who he is, what he is, where he is from -- everything is lost in the darkness of sleep. He does not even know whether he exists or not. He becomes aware of his sleep only after waking up; only then he comes to know that he has been asleep. In sleep a man doesn't know he is asleep. When he was not asleep he knew he was about to sleep. And as long as he was awake he knew he was still awake and not asleep. But as soon as he falls asleep he doesn't know he is asleep, because if he were to notice that he is asleep then that would mean he is still awake, not asleep. When a man is no longer asleep, only then does he know he was asleep before. In sleep one doesn't know whether one really is or not.


Obviously, man has no idea whether he is or not, or who he is. This can only mean one thing, that some deep spiritual hypnotic sleep is surrounding him. That's why he doesn't know life itself, what life is. But we won't accept this. We'll say, "We know very well what life is. We breathe, we walk, we rise, we sit, we sleep." A drunkard also walks, breathes, moves, talks, and so does a madman. But that does not prove the drunkard is in his right senses or that the madman is conscious.


Once, while a royal procession was passing, a man stood in the main square and began throwing stones and shouting abuse at the emperor. It was, after all, a royal pageant, so the man was immediately arrested and thrown into prison. But while the man was hurling stones and abuse at the emperor, the emperor himself was laughing. His soldiers were puzzled. His prime minister asked. "Why do you laugh, my lord?"


The emperor replied, "As far as I can see, the man doesn't know what he is doing. I believe he is drunk. Nevertheless, bring him before me tomorrow morning."


Next morning the man was brought before the emperor. The king asked, "Why did you shout abuse at me? Why did you swear at me yesterday? What was the reason?"


The man said, "Me? Swearing at you? No, your majesty, I must not have been myself; that's why I must have said such things. I was drunk, I was unconscious, I wasn't there. I have no idea what I said."


We too exist as if we are not. We walk and talk and love and hate, wage war -- all in sleep. If anyone from a distant planet were to watch us, he would think the entire human race is behaving as one behaves in sleep, in a state of unconsciousness. In the last three thousand years man has fought fifteen thousand wars. This shows the human race is not awake.


From birth to death it is one long story of anxiety, misery, pain and death. Man doesn't find a single moment of bliss, a single spot of joy in his life. He remains completely ignorant of what joy is. Life passes and he has not a single glimpse of joy. Obviously, one cannot say man is living in awareness. Misery, pain, anxiety, sadness and insanity make up our lives, but we never notice it because people around us are also as asleep as we are.


Once in a while, when an awakened one takes birth, we who are asleep become so angry at this awakened person that we immediately kill him. We don't tolerate him for long. The reason we give for crucifying Jesus is "... because you are an awakened man, and that is your fault. Seeing you awake, we who are asleep feel very insulted. For people like us who are asleep, you become a symbol of disgrace. You are awake; your presence disturbs our sleep. We'll kill you." So we give poison to Socrates, we execute Mansoor. We treat the awakened ones in the same manner the inmates of a madhouse would treat someone who is not mad.


A friend of mine once went mad. He was put in a lunatic asylum. In his insanity, one day, he accidentally drank a bucket of phenyl that had been left for cleaning toilets. For fifteen days he was violently sick. He suffered from continuous vomiting and diarrhea. This brought about such a drastic change in his body that he became well -- as if all the excess heat were expelled from his body. Actually he was to stay in the asylum for six months, but his stay was extended for three more months even after he became well.


These three additional months in that asylum, he told me later, were worse than hell for him. He said, "As long as I was mad, there was no problem, because everyone else was the same as I was. But when I recovered, I couldn't figure out where I was. I was fast asleep and two men jumped on me; I was going my way and someone started pushing me. I never noticed these things before because I was mad too. When I was mad I never could recognize that everyone around me was mad as well. Only when I came out of my madness did I realize that all those people were mad.


"As I ceased to be mad, I became the target of everyone there. My problem was that I knew I was quite well, but I wondered and worried what would happen to me now. How would I get out of there? My screaming 'I am not mad,' was of no avail because all madmen scream they are not mad. No doctor was ready to believe me."


We are surrounded by people who are asleep, hence we don't realize we are asleep too. We immediately kill the one who is awakened because he appears very troublesome, very disturbing to us.


A British scholar, Kenneth Walker, has dedicated a book of his to a mystic, Gurdjieff. The wording of his dedication is tremendous, wonderful. He has written, "To George Gurdjieff, the disturber of my sleep."


There have been very few people in the world who have tried to break man's sleep. But if you attempt to break anybody's sleep, he will take revenge on you. Don't ever try to waken a sleeping man, he will be at your throat. Up to now, whosoever has tried to shake man out of his spiritual sleep, we have been at his throat as well. We don't notice it because we are all sleeping too.


I have heard: A magician once entered a city. He threw some powder into a well and declared that whosoever would drink water from that well would go mad. This was the only well in the city. There was one more, but that was inside the king's palace. By the time it was evening everyone in that city became thirsty, so even at the cost of turning mad, people drank the water. How long could they hold out? They were helpless. And so by evening the entire city had gone mad.


The king and his queens were happy that they didn't have to drink the water from that well and become mad. His ministers were happy to be saved from madness as well. The palace was filled with music and celebration, but by evening they realized they were wrong. The people had surrounded the palace; they had all gone mad. The palace guards and the soldiers of the king's army had gone mad as well. Surrounding the palace, they shouted, "It seems our king has gone mad. We cannot tolerate a mad king sitting on the throne."


From the tower of his palace the king saw there was no way to escape, that he was completely surrounded by the mad crowd. The king was terrified. He asked his prime minister what he should do. "What will happen now?" he worriedly asked. "We thought we were fortunate that we had our own well. Now we have to pay very dearly for it." Sooner or later, all kings have to pay dearly for owning an exclusive well. This is true all over the world. One who has recently become a king will certainly find his separate well proves costly tomorrow. Owning an exclusive well is dangerous.


But, until then, the king had not realized the consequences of having his own separate well. So he turned to the prime minister for advice. The prime minister said, "Now there is nothing left for which to seek advice. Just escape by the back door, drink the water of the well outside and hurry back; otherwise this palace is in grave danger."


The king asked in horror, "You want me to drink water from that well? You want me to go mad?"


"There is no other way you can save yourself except by becoming mad," replied the prime minister.


The king and his queens rushed to the city well and drank its water. That night a great celebration took place in the city. The people expressed their joy, singing and dancing the whole night. They thanked God for restoring the king's mental state, because now the king was also dancing in the crowd and shouting abuse. Mentally, the king had become normal.


Since our state of sleep is so common, so universal, and because we have been asleep since birth, we remain unaware. In this state of sleep what do we understand about life? We understand only that the body itself is life and that one is unable to penetrate the body. This kind of understanding is similar to a man mistaking the outer wall of a palace for the palace itself, or a man walking on the parapet and thinking he is in the palace, or a man sleeping, leaning on the outer wall, thinking he is resting in the palace. One whose understanding revolves around the body is like this fool who imagines himself to be the palace's guest while standing outside its walls.


We have no access inside the body. We live outside the body. We are familiar only with the outer layer of the body; we never come to know its inner layers. We don't even know the inner sides of the palace walls, let alone the palace itself. We consider the outside of the wall to be the palace, we remain ignorant of the inside of the wall.


We know our bodies externally; we have never gone inside and seen the body from within. For example, we are all seated in this room; we can see this room from within. A man, wandering around outside, sees this house from the outside; he can't see it from within as we do. Man is not even able to see his own body, his own house from within -- he knows it only from the outside. And this gives rise to the idea of death.


That which we know from without is only the sheath, it is only the outer covering. It is only the outer wall of a house, it is not the master of the house. The master of the house is within, and we never get to meet him. When we don't even know the wall from the inside, how will we come to know the master seated within?


This experiencing of life from outside becomes the experience of death. When this experience slips away from one's hands... the day one's vital energy contracts within -- leaving the house, the body behind, and the consciousness moves inside, away from the outer wall -- people looking on from outside feel the man is dead. The man also feels he is dying. He is dying, because his consciousness begins to move within, away from what he had understood as life.


The consciousness begins to move within, away from the plane where he knew life to be. On its way to the new, unknown journey, his soul starts screaming in agony, "I am dying! I am gone! Everything is sinking!" -- because what he had considered as life up to now begins to sink, to drop away. People outside think the man is dead, and in this moment of death, in this moment of change, the person also feels, "I am dying! Dying! Dying! I am gone!"


This body of ours does not really represent our authentic being. Deep inside we have a kind of being which is entirely different from the body. It is totally opposite, reverse to the body. Look at a seed. It has a very hard shell which protects the tender, delicate seedling of life hidden inside it. Inside lies the very delicate sprout, and a tough wall, an enclosure, a sheath covers the seed in order to protect it. But the sheath, the enclosure itself, is not the seed. If a man takes the sheath for the seed, he won't be able to know the sprout hidden within it. He will just cling to the sheath and the sprout will never come out.


No, the sheath, the cover is not the seed. On the contrary, the truth is that when the seed is born the sheath has to efface itself, has to burst, has to diffuse itself, has to dissolve in the earth. When the sheath is dissolved, the seed inside manifests itself.


Our physical body is the sheath containing the seed, and inside there is a sprout consisting of life, of consciousness, of being. But, taking this sheath for the seed, we ruin ourselves and the sprout is never born, the seed never sprouts. One experiences life when the seed sprouts. When it sprouts, man ceases to be a seed and grows into a tree. As long as man is a seed, he is only a potentiality, and when the tree of life is born in him, he becomes authentic. Some call this authenticity the soul, some call it God.


Man is the seed of God. He is only a seed. It's the tree that will have the experience of the wholeness of life. How can the seed have such an experience? How can a seed ever know the blissful state of the tree? How can a seed ever know that green leaves will appear someday, and that the sun's rays will dance on them? How can a seed ever know the winds will pass through the leaves and the branches, and a resounding music will emerge from their beings? How can a seed ever know that flowers will bloom, eclipsing the beauty of the stars? How can the seed ever know that, sitting on top, birds will sing and that travelers will rest in the shade? How can a seed ever know the experience a tree has? The seed has no idea. The seed can't even dream of the possibilities awaiting when it grows into a tree. It can only realize them by being a tree.


Man doesn't know what life is because he has believed his fulfillment is in being a seed alone. He will know it only when his inner tree of life has manifested itself totally. But this is a far cry when, in the first place, we don't even realize there is something existing within that is different and separate from the body. We are never able to remember, to realize there is something different and separate from the body as well. Hence, the real issue in life is experiencing that which is within, but we believe life to be that which pervades outside.
Once I asked a tree, "Where is your life source?"


The tree replied, "In the roots, which are not visible." The life of the tree springs from those invisible roots; the tree which is visible draws life from the roots that are invisible.


Mao Zedong has written an anecdote from his childhood. He tells that there was a little garden close to the hut he and his mother lived in. All her life his mother had tended the garden with great love and care. People used to come from faraway just to see the large, beautiful and lovely flowers of that garden. There was never so hard-hearted a person who, passing by the garden, would not stop for a moment or two and admire such appealing flowers. In her old age his mother fell ill. Mao was very young then. There wasn't any grown-up around, but Mao told his mother not to worry about the plants and flowers. He said he would take good care of them.


Day and night, from dawn till dark, Mao would toil in the garden. Assured, the mother rested. In fifteen days the mother recovered from her illness and came out in the garden. What she saw was awful. The entire garden had withered away. Not only were the flowers long gone but the leaves were dead too. Even the trees had become sad. The old woman must have felt the same way anyone with eyes would feel looking at the garden of humanity today. All the flowers had fallen off, all the leaves had dropped, all the trees were sad. The old woman cried out, "What have you done? What were you doing from dawn till dusk?" she wailed.


Mao also burst into tears. He said, "I did the best I could. I used to dust each and every flower, I used to dust each and every leaf. I used to kiss each flower and spray water on each flower. I don't know what happened! I put in so much effort, and the whole garden has withered away!"


Even though she was crying, his mother couldn't hold back her laughter. "You foolish child!" she said. "Don't you know trees never have their life-energy in their flowers and leaves? It lies in their roots, which are not visible. Your watering the flowers and leaves, your kissing them, your pouring love on them was all meaningless. Never worry about the flowers and the leaves. If the invisible roots begin to gain strength, the flowers and leaves come on their own -- you don't have to worry about them."


But man has understood life in terms of the outer expanse of the flower and has neglected the roots completely. Man's inner roots are lying there, totally neglected. He doesn't even remember that he is something inner as well. And actually, whatsoever is, is within. The truth is within, the energy is within, all potentialities are within -- they manifest from there. Being is within, becoming takes place outside.


That which is authentic is within. That which expands and manifests is without. Manifestation is all outside. Being is within. Those who take the outer manifestation as life, their entire life is threatened with the fear of death. They live as if almost dead. They are afraid they may die some day, any moment. And those very people who are frightened of death, weep and are troubled over someone else's death. Although, in fact, they don't really cry and feel troubled over anyone's death -- each death reminds them of their own, and the closer the dying person, the stronger the reminder. And then a chill goes up one's spine, fear grips one, one begins to tremble. In this state a man thinks nice things. He thinks, "The soul is immortal, we are part of the divine, we are the form of Brahman." This is all rubbish, it is nothing more than self-deception.


To boost his strength, one who is scared of death repeats, "The soul is immortal...." What he is saying in effect is, "No, I won't have to die, the soul is immortal." Although his being shakes with fear, yet outwardly he says that the soul is immortal. If a man knows the soul is immortal, he doesn't have to repeat it even once. He knows. The matter is over.


These people who are scared of death continue to fear it. Meanwhile, they fail to know life and invent a new trick, a new deception that the soul is immortal. That's why it is difficult to find a nation more afraid of death than the one which talks about the immortality of the soul. That misfortune has occurred in this very country. Of all the people in the world who believe in the immortality of the soul, most are in this country. And in this country the number of cowards afraid of death is the greatest as well. How did these two things happen together?


There is no more death for those who know the soul is immortal. The fear of death has disappeared for them; now no one can kill them. You should also keep another thing in mind: neither can anyone kill them, nor can they be now under the illusion that they can kill anyone -- because now, for them, the very phenomenon of death is finished forever. This secret needs to be understood.


Those who believe the soul is immortal are people afraid of death. They are merely repeating, "The soul is immortal." Afraid of death, such people will also talk a great deal about non-violence -- not because they wouldn't want to kill anyone, but because, very deep down, they don't want anyone to kill them. They believe the world should become non-violent. But why? Their answer will be, "It is bad to kill anyone." But deep down they are saying, "Lest we are killed by someone." To kill is evil indeed, but if these people know there is no death at all, then there is neither room for the fear of dying nor of killing. Then such matters become irrelevant.


On the battlefield, Krishna says to Arjuna, "Do not be afraid, because those you see standing in front of you have existed many times before. You have certainly existed before, and I have too. We have all been here many times in the past and will be here many more times again." Nothing is ever destroyed in this world; hence, there is no place for the fear of dying or of killing. The question is of living life. Those who are afraid to kill or to be killed become impotent in the eyes of life. One who can neither die nor kill has absolutely no idea that that-which-is can neither be killed by anyone nor can it ever die.


How exciting the world will be when, as a whole, it will come to know from within that the soul is immortal! That day the whole fear of death will disappear. The fear of dying will vanish as well, and the threat of killing will be gone for good. That is when wars will disappear -- not before.


Wars cannot disappear from the world as long as it appears to man that he can be killed, that he can die. Regardless of how much Gandhi may teach non-violence, or Buddha and Mahavira may teach it; no matter how many lessons of non-violence are given in the world, as long as man does not experience from within that whatsoever is, is eternal, war cannot cease. Don't think those who wield swords are brave people. A sword is proof that the man is a coward. Statues in the city square of those holding swords are statues of cowards. The brave man needs no sword in his hand because he knows it is childish to kill and to be killed.


But man creates a strange deception. He pretends he knows things he is ignorant about -- all because of fear. Deep down he is fraught with fear, deep down he knows he will have to die -- people are dying every day. He sees his body growing weaker inside -- youth has passed, old age is approaching. He sees the body is on its way out, but inside he keeps reiterating, "The soul is immortal." He tries to muster up his belief, his courage by doing so, and tells himself, "Don't be afraid. Of course death is there, but the sages, the wise men say the soul is immortal." Around such wise men who talk about the immortality of the soul, people afraid of death gather in big crowds.


I am not saying the soul is not immortal. What I am saying is that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a doctrine of those who fear death. Knowing the immortality of the soul is a totally different thing. And remember, only they can know the immortality of the soul who experiment with death while being alive -- there is no other way of knowing it. This needs to be understood.


What happens in death really? The entire vital energy that is diffused, spread all around, it contracts, returns to its center. This essential energy that is reaching out to every nook and corner of our bodies, withdraws, comes back to its core. For example, if we go on dimming a diffused light, it will begin to shrink and darkness will gather. At some point the light will be reduced to the point where it comes close to the lamp itself. And were we to dim it even further, the light would be lodged in seed form and darkness would surround you.


So the vital energy of our life shrinks, returns to its own center. Again it becomes a seed, an atom, ready for a new journey. Because of this very contraction, this very shrinkage of the essential energy, one feels, "I am dying! I am dying!" What one had taken to be life until then begins to slip away; everything begins to drop. A man's limbs start losing their strength, he begins to become short of breath, his eyesight becomes poorer, his ears become hard of hearing.


In fact, all these senses were alive, and the whole body too, because of the connection with some energy. And once the energy begins to recede, the body, which was essentially lifeless, becomes lifeless once again. The master prepares to leave and the house becomes depressed, desolate. And the man feels, "Here I go!" At the moment of death he comes to feel, "I am going. I am sinking, the end is near."


The nervous feeling that he is dying -- the worried and melancholy state, the anguish and anxiety of dying, the feeling that his end is approaching -- brings such terrible suffering to a man's mind that he fails to be aware of the very experience of death. To know death one needs to be peaceful. Instead, a man becomes so restless he never knows what death is.


We have died many times before, an infinite number of times, but we have never known what death is. Each time the moment of death has arrived, we have become so perturbed, so restless, so troubled -- how can we have known anything in that state? What knowledge can one have had? Each time death has come -- and yet we have remained unfamiliar with it.


No, death can't be known at the moment of dying, but one can certainly have a planned death. A planned death is meditation, yoga, samadhi. Samadhi means only one thing: bringing about the event that, otherwise, occurs by itself in death. In samadhi, the seeker brings it about with effort by knowingly drawing his entire life energy within. Obviously, there is no need for him to feel restless, because he is experimenting with pulling, drawing the consciousness in. With a cool mind he contracts the consciousness within. What death does anyway, he does himself. And in that silent state he finds that the life energy and the body are two separate things. The bulb that emanates electricity is one thing, and the electricity that is emanated from it is another. When the electricity contracts totally, the bulb lies there, lifeless.


The body is nothing more than an electric bulb. Life is the electricity, the energy, the vital force that keeps the body alive, warm, excited.


In samadhi, the seeker himself meets death. And because he enters death himself, he comes to know the truth that he is separate from his body. Once it is known that "I am separate from the body," death is finished. And once the separation between the body and the being is known, the experience of life has begun. The end of death and the experience of life take place at the same point, simultaneously. Know life, death is gone; know death, there is life. If understood correctly, these are just two ways of expressing the same thing. They are two pointers in the same direction.


Hence, I say religion is the art of dying. You might say, however, that I have often said religion is the art of living. I certainly talk about both things, for only one who knows how to die is able to know what life is. Religion is the art of living and dying. If you wish to know what life is, what death is, you will have to learn the art of withdrawing energy from your body voluntarily. Only then can you know, not otherwise. This energy can be withdrawn; it is not difficult. It's easy to pull this energy inside. This energy is diffused at will and withdrawn at will. This energy is simply an expanse of the will. It is merely a matter of will. One just needs a determined resolve to go within.


If you resolve that for half an hour you want to turn within, you want to die, you want to drown within yourself, you want to withdraw all your energy, then within days you will come close to experiencing the contraction of energy. It will be a state in which the body will lie separate from you. A deep three-month long experiment will make you see your body lying separate from you; you can see your own body lying distant from you. First you will see from within that inside, you are standing separate -- radiating, like a flame. You will see the entire body from within as you see this building. With a little more courage you can even bring this inner living flame outside, and from outside you can see the body lying there, removed from you.


Let me tell you an incredible experience I had. It has just occurred to me; I have never told it before. About seventeen or eighteen years ago I used to meditate until late at night sitting in the top of a tree. I have often felt the body has a greater influence over you if you meditate sitting on the ground. The body is made of earth, and the forces of the body work very powerfully if one meditates sitting on the ground.


All this talk of the yogis moving up to the higher elevations -- to the mountains, to the Himalayas -- is not without reason; it's very scientific. The greater the distance between the body and the earth, the lesser the pull of the earthly element on the body. So I used to meditate every night sitting in a tree. One night... I don't know when I became immersed in deep meditation, and I don't know at what point my body fell from the tree, but when it did, I looked with a start to see what had happened.


I was still in the tree, but the body had fallen below. It's difficult to say how I felt at that time. I was still sitting in the tree and the body was below. Only a single silver cord connected me with the navel of my body -- a very shiny silver cord. What would happen next was beyond my comprehension. How would I return to my body?


I don't know how long this state lasted, but it was an exceptional experience. For the first time I saw my body from outside, and from that very day on the body ceased to exist. Since then I am finished with death, because I came to see another body different from this one -- I came to experience the subtle body. It's difficult to say how long this experience lasted.


With the breaking of dawn, two women from the nearby village passed, carrying milk pots on their heads. As they approached the tree they saw my body lying there. They came and sat next to the body. I was watching all this from above. It seems the women took the body to be dead. They placed their hands on my head, and in a moment, as if by a powerful force of attraction, I came back into the body and my eyes opened.


At that point I experienced something else too. I felt that a woman can create a chemical change in a man's body, and so can a man in a woman's body. I also wondered how the touch of that woman caused my return to the body. Subsequently, I had many more experiences of this kind. They explained why the tantrikas of India, who experimented extensively with samadhi and death, had linked themselves with women too.


During intensive experiences of samadhi, man's luminous body, his subtle body, cannot return without a woman's help if it has come out of the physical body. Similarly, a woman's luminous, subtle body, cannot be brought back without a man's assistance. As the male and female bodies connect, an electrical circuit is completed and the consciousness that has gone out returns swiftly to the body.


Following this event, I consistently had the same kind of experience about six times in six months. And in those six months I felt I had lost at least ten years off my life. If I were to live up to seventy, now I can only live up to sixty. I went through some strange experiences in six months -- even the hair on my chest turned white. I couldn't comprehend what was happening.


It occurred to me, however, that the connection between this body and that body had ruptured, had been interrupted, that the adjustment, the harmony that had existed between the two, had broken down. What also occurred to me was that the reason for Shankaracharya dying at the age of thirty-three and Vivekananda dying at the age of thirty-six was something else. It becomes difficult to live once the connection between the two bodies breaks abruptly. This explained why Ramakrishna was besieged with illnesses and Ramana died of cancer. The cause was not physical; rather, the breaking of the adjustment between their physical and subtle bodies was responsible for it.


It is generally believed that yogis are healthy people, but the truth is completely the opposite. The truth is, yogis have always been ill, and have died at early ages. The sole reason for this is that the necessary adjustment between the two bodies becomes interrupted. Once the subtle body comes out of the physical body it never reenters fully and the adjustment is never completely restored. But then it is not needed. There is no reason for it; it has no meaning.


With the use of will power, simply with will power, the energy can be drawn inside -- just the thought, the feeling, "I want to turn in, I want to go back in, I want to return within, I want to come back in." Were you to have such an intense longing, such a powerful emotion; if your whole being were to fill with a passionate, intense desire to return to your center; if your entire body were to pulsate with this feeling, someday it can happen -- you will instantly return to your core and, for the first time, see your body from within.


When yoga talks about thousands of arteries and veins, it is not from the point of view of physiology. Yogis have nothing to do with physiology. These have been known from within; hence, when one looks today one wonders where these arteries and veins are. Where are the seven chakras, the centers within the body that yoga talks about? They are nowhere in the body. We can't find them because we are looking at the body from outside.


There is one other way to observe the body -- from within, through the inner physiology. That's a subtle physiology. The nerves, veins and centers of the body known through that inner physiology are all totally different. You won't find them anywhere in this physical body. These centers are the contact fields between this body and the inner soul, the meeting points for both.


The biggest meeting point is the navel. You may have noticed, if you suddenly get into an accident driving a car, the navel will be the first to feel the impact. The navel will become disordered at once, because here the contact field between the body and the soul is the deepest of all. Seeing death, this center will be the first to become disturbed. As soon as death appears, the navel will be disrupted in relation to the body's center. There is an internal arrangement of the body which has resulted from the contact between this body and the inner body. The chakras are their contact fields.


So obviously, to know the body from within is to know a totally different kind of world altogether, a world we know absolutely nothing about. Medical science knows nothing about it, and won't for some time. Once you experience that the body is separate from you, you are finished with death. You come to know there is no death. And then you can actually come out of the body and look at it yourself from outside.


Questions relating to life and death are not matters of philosophical or metaphysical thought. Those who think about these things never accomplish anything. What I am talking about is an existential approach. It can be known that "I am life;" it can be known that "I am not going to die." One can live this experience, one can enter into it. But those who only think, who say, "We'll think about what death is, what life is," may think about it a million times, may think about it life after life, but they won't know anything. What on earth is there to think about?


We can only think about something which is known to us. About something which is unknown nothing can be thought. You can only think about that which is known to you. Has it ever occurred to you that you can't think what you don't know? How can you think, how can you conceive that which you know nothing about? We don't know what life is; we don't know what death is. What are we to think? That's why I say that whatsoever the philosophers have said about life and death is totally worthless.


Whatsoever is written about life and death in the philosophy books is worth nothing, because those people have written it after a lot of thinking. It is not a question of thinking and then writing about it. Except for what yoga has said about life and death, everything else that has been said is only playing with words. What yoga is concerned with has to do with an existential, living experience.


That the soul is immortal is not a theory; it is not an ideology. It is the experience of certain individuals. Only when experience is what you want can experience alone solve the riddle, "What is life? What is death?" And as soon as you have the experience you will come to know that life is, that death is not -- that only life is, that there is no death at all. Then we will be in a position to say that death just happens. And what this simply means is that we leave the house, the body we were living in, and a journey towards a new home begins. We set out, leaving one house for another. This house has a limited capability. This house is a machine. It wears out, it gets tired, and we have to go beyond it.


If science would have it so, it would be possible to keep the human body alive for one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years. But that would not prove there is no soul. It would only prove that the soul won't need to change homes anymore, that science had now worked out a way to fix the old house. Nevertheless, scientists should not remain under the illusion that by increasing the longevity of man to five hundred years, to a thousand years, they would have proved there is no soul in man. It wouldn't prove anything. It would only demonstrate that because the mechanism of the body used to wear out, the soul had to change it. Now, if the parts of the body could be replaced -- the heart, the eyes, the limbs -- if they could be replaced, then the soul would have no reason to change bodies. In that case the old house would do -- it is now repaired. But this doesn't even remotely prove there is no soul in the body.


It is also possible that in the near future science may succeed in creating a child in a test tube, in producing life. And then, perhaps, scientists may fall under the illusion they have created life. But that would also be wrong. Let me say this too: such an achievement won't prove anything either.


What happens when a union between a man and a woman takes place? Together, they don't create a soul in the mother's womb, they just create a situation where the soul can enter. When the two elements of man and woman meet, an opportunity is created for the soul to enter the womb. It may be that soon scientists may create a similar situation in a test tube, but that is not the same as creating a soul.


The mother's womb is a mechanical system too; it's a test tube. It is a natural system. Soon, with full discovery and knowledge of those chemical elements which make up the male sperm and the female egg, a scientist in his laboratory may succeed in producing the same chemical organization in a test tube. In that case, souls, which before had entered the mother's womb, would now enter test tubes. But even so, it would not be the soul taking birth, it would be the body -- the soul would still just be arriving. The phenomenon of birth is a double event -- the formation of the body and the arrival of the soul, the descending of the soul.


The future looks very dangerous and dark as far as the soul is concerned, because with each new discovery science will convince man there is no soul. But the existence of the soul will not be disproved by it, it will only weaken the will of man to turn within himself. If, because of increased longevity and the creation of test tube babies, man should come to believe there is no soul, even then the existence of the soul will not be disproved, only the continuing inner search of man will come to an end. And this unfortunate circumstance is sure to occur in the next fifty years. In the last fifty years, the ground has already been prepared for it.


There have always been poor, wretched, miserable, sick people in the world. Their lifespan was short: they neither had good food to eat nor proper clothes to wear. But from the point of view of the soul, the number of poor has never been so great as it is today. This is only because man has come to believe there is nothing within, and so, for him, the question of turning in doesn't arise. Once humanity believes there is nothing within, the whole idea of reaching inside is finished.


The future may turn out to be terribly bleak and dangerous. Therefore, experiments must be carried out in all corners of the world so that a few individuals may stand up and assert -- not merely an assertion of words and doctrines, not just a reiteration of the Geeta, the Koran, The Bible, but a living affirmation, "I know I am not the body." And this should not be just a verbal declaration, it should be reflected through their entire way of living. Only then may we succeed in saving humanity -- otherwise, the whole of scientific development will turn man into a machine, an automaton. The day man comes to believe he is nothing more than a body, that there is nothing within him, perhaps all doors leading inwards will be shut. What will happen after that is hard to say.


Even to this day, the inner doors of the majority of people have remained shut. But once in a while a courageous person breaks through the inner walls. A Mahavira, a Buddha, a Christ, a Lao Tzu breaks through the wall and enters within. But the possibility of such a phenomenon happening again is decreasing every day.


I say: Only life is, death is not. But it may be that in the next one hundred or two hundred years man might say, "Only death is, life is not." The ground is ready for it. People asserting it have already come forward. After all, what is Marx saying? According to Marx, "Matter is, God is not. And what looks like God to you is nothing but a byproduct of matter." Marx says, "There is no life, only death is." Now if the soul is not and only the body is, then obviously there is no life, only death is.


You may not be aware of it, but what Marx has said is gaining ground. There have always been people in the world who have denied the soul, but up to now a religion was never born of these people. Up to now there never has been an organization of atheists. Charvaka, Brihaspati, Epicurus and many other such remarkable people in the world denied the existence of the soul, but they never formed any church, any organization. Marx is the first atheist in the world who created an organized church. Today, half the world is already within its fold, and the remaining half will join it in the next fifty years.


The soul exists, of course, but all the avenues through which it can be known, recognized, are closing down one by one. Life is there, but all the possibilities of connecting with it are fading away. Before all the doors and avenues close down, those who have even a little bit of ability and courage should experiment on themselves and make an effort to turn within so they can have the experience.


If even one hundred, two hundred individuals could experience the inner flame, we will be out of danger. The darkness of millions of people can be dispelled with the inner flame of the few. Even a tiny lamp cuts through a long darkness. With the presence in a village of a single man who has known the immortality of the soul, the whole atmosphere, the whole vibe, the entire life of the village will change. A single flower blooms and its fragrance spreads to faraway places. The very presence of a person who has known the immortality of the soul can bring about the purification of the spirit of an entire village.


This country is full of sadhus, monks and other people who make themselves hoarse shouting "The soul is immortal" -- there is a whole line of them, a huge crowd. And yet, such a low moral character! Such a downfall of the country! This degradation proves they are all involved in a double-dealing business. None of these people know anything about the soul. Look at the crowd, at this queue, at this platoon of sadhus, at this whole great circus of sadhus all over the country. Some clown with bandages over their mouths, some perform acrobatics with a staff in their hands, others present yet another type of circus! Such a crowd of people know the soul and this country is in such a decline! It's hard to believe.


There are people who blame the common man for causing the moral decline in the world. I would like to say they are wrong. The common man has always been the same. In the past, around the world, the moral character was high because of a few self-realized individuals. The common man always remained the same; he has remained unchanged. There have been a few beings, of course, who always raised, always uplifted human consciousness. Their very presence has always worked as a catalytic agent and has always elevated human life.


The responsibility for the present low state of human character lies with these sadhus, with the so-called holy men, with the hypocrites and charlatans who talk about religion. The common man bears no responsibility for it whatsoever. Neither did he before, nor does he now.


If you want to change the world, stop talking nonsense about improving the moral conduct of each and every person, about teaching moral education to everyone. If you want to change the world, a few individuals will have to be willing to go through very intense inner experiments. Those who are ready to undergo the experiment deep within themselves.... Not too many, just a hundred people. If a hundred individuals in a country reach a point of knowing what the soul is, the life of that entire country will be automatically uplifted. With the presence of a hundred shining lamps the whole country can be uplifted.


I agreed to speak on this subject only because I felt that in case some courageous man came forward, I would invite him, "Come on! If you are ready to go on an inward journey, I am willing to take you. There, it can be shown what life is and what death is."
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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