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CHAPTER 4
14 January 1975 am in Buddha Hall DYING, DYING, ALL GO ON DYING. NONE DIE A PROPER DEATH. KABIR MET WITH DEATH,
NEVER TO DIE AGAIN.
DYING, DYING, ALL GO ON DYING WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT. ONLY MINE’S AN ARTFUL DEATH. THE REST DIE AND ROT.
DIE YOU MUST, SO DIE!
ALL WHIRLPOOLS FALL AWAY. SUCH IS DEATH. SO WHY DIE HUNDREDS OF TIMES A DAY? WHEN THERE’S FEAR OF DEATH LOVE CANNOT BE FELT.
THE ABODE OF LOVE IS FAR AWAY. UNDERSTAND THIS WELL.
NOTHINGNESS DIES, THE SOUNDLESS DIES; EVEN THE INFINITE DIES.
A TRUE LOVER NEVER DIES. SAYS KABIR: KNOW THIS.
DEATH – THE WHOLE WORLD FEARS. DEATH – MY HEART OVERJOYS. WHEN WILL I DIE AND GIVE MYSELF IN ECSTASY COMPLETE?
Only yesterday Kabir told us:
RAM HAS COME TO LIVE WITH ME
AND I’M DRUNK WITH BOUNDLESS YOUTH. SAYS KABIR: I’M TO WED.
AND THE MAN’S IMMORTAL!
Today Kabir is talking about death. Love and death are deeply related. The man who does not know death will not be able to know what love is, and the man who has experienced love knows no death. Understand this correctly. Move into these wonderful words of Kabir and try to understand them.
Love is the deepest of deaths. The bud of love will not open, will not flower, until you are no more. How can love exist as long as “you” are there? There is no love as long as the lover exists. Your ego is the impediment; your I-ness stands like a dam in between. And so love’s spring will not well up in you; it will not be able to spill forth. The only barrier that stands in the way of love is you yourself.
People think love will come to them when they find a lover, a beloved. This is an illusion. The Beloved is already found. He is there every moment. The Beloved is present everywhere, but the meeting will not take place until you are no more. How will your ego allow you to encounter Him? How will it allow you to see Him? How will it allow you to recognize Him?
You have wandered in search of love from birth to birth, and you have never found it. Many times you have deceived yourself, thinking you have found love, but each time you thought you found it you discovered your hands were really empty. Many times you thought you had found a rare drop
of nectar, but in the end you discovered it was just an ordinary drop of water because it did not turn into a pearl of love in your heart.
You have deceived yourself like this many times. Even now you are behaving in the same way; even now you are hoping what you feel may be true love and not a deception. You have only had dreams of love, you have not experienced real love itself. You have made love in sleep, not in awareness. Only one who is wide awake is willing to face extinction.
The ego is the only impediment. And to drop the ego is a worse death than death itself. In death one only leaves the body. One soon takes another body – and there is not much time involved in this transfer – while you, your mind, remains intact, untouched. “You” are not scratched at all. Your mind, your ego, remains whole. Only the clay vessel is broken. And that is not a very costly affair; you simply get a new jar to replace the old one. It will be fresh and strong and will last a long time. You simply leave your dilapidated old house and occupy a new one instead. “You” lose nothing. When you die, your mind, your ego, your desires all go with you, but “you” remain whole. Death does not take anything away from “you” at all.
But dying to love will take your mind away; dying to love will take your ego away. The feeling of “I am” will vanish and a kind of emptiness will spread throughout you. A deep, complete stillness will engulf you, and you will not be able to find yourself even if you try. Of course, the Beloved will be seen, but you will be lost. You will experience the meeting with the Beloved, but you will cease to be. The Beloved will be there, but you will not. That is why Kabir has said:
WHEN I WAS, THE LORD WAS NOT. NOW HE IS; I AM NOT.
Even in the life of an ordinary sort of man the ability to make love is only there when he is able to lose himself. Even in your daily lives you are unable to make love, unable to show love – so what can be said about divine love? Divine love is very far away. As Kabir says, THE ABODE OF LOVE IS VERY FAR AWAY. You cannot even make the kind of love that is so close to you, the day-to-day love between individuals, between husband and wife, between friends. This ordinary, day-to-day kind of love is very close to you – this house of love is in your neighborhood – and yet you are unable to enter it. Your ego is your handicap.
You ask, “How can I surrender? How can I yield?” But I ask, “How can you fill your jar without bending?” You may be thirsty, and you may be standing on the bank of a river or you may be standing in the middle, but even though the water is flowing, the river will not jump up to reach your lips. It is you who are thirsty, not the river. But you stand there – erect, in your ego. How will you quench your thirst if you do not stoop and fill your cupped hands with water? You will have to bend. You will have to stoop down to the level of the river, to the surface of the water.
The current of love flows in every heart. And anyone can drink. But what about bending? Being unable to bend is the real obstacle. For thousands of lives your back has been cramped and now you are unable to bend. You are suffering from paralysis. And whenever the question of bending arises something happens in you to create difficulty. Your ego says, “I? Bend down? I would rather die!” Your ego tells you it is better to break than to bend. This is the lesson that is taught, the advice
that is given – break but do not bend. This poison has been injected into your bloodstream. As if this were the yardstick of a brave man! As if this were being heroic!
In fact, this fear of bending, this fear of losing one’s prestige is the fear of a coward. Why should a brave man be afraid to bend? He is not going to lose anything. When a storm comes, big trees may fall but the small plants yield. And after the storm has passed the big trees are unable to stand erect again, but the small plants bounce back easily. They know the art of yielding. They know how to be humble. The big trees that stood erect and fought against the storm were defeated and broken; they were unable to stand up again.
Lao Tzu said to behave as the plants do; he said if a storm comes, yield. Who are you going to fight? What are you fighting? You will find that the storm cleanses you, washes away your dirt, and that after the passing of the storm you will again stand erect – fresher, greener.
Don’t always remain erect; learn to bend. Don’t be an egoist; learn to be humble. Remaining stiff and erect is really a sign of old age, while bending, yielding, is a characteristic of childhood, of freshness. An old man cannot bend. His bones have hardened, have become stiff. A child is soft and bends easily. A child often falls down, but he stands up again just as quickly. Why do you want to be old? Why do you want to paralyze your inner life? Why don’t you want to be like a small child? When a man falls in love he becomes a child again. Again he learns to yield; again he becomes soft. Then all the fear and paralysis disappear.
Do you know what this fear is? Do you know why you are afraid to yield? It is because you ask, “What will happen to my prestige if I bend, if I yield?”
The man who is concerned with protecting his prestige really has none to begin with. The man who is unsure of his success is the one who is afraid of defeat, and the man who has been defeated within is the one who tries to make a victorious show on the outside.
You have always been told a man does not yield, a man does not bend, a man does not give in. The so-called brave man is nothing but an egoistic coward. Cowardice exists within him. He is afraid that he will lose his prestige if he yields. But a man who is afraid like this cannot possibly have any prestige, and the man who really has prestige is not afraid to lose it. Bear in mind it is impossible to fear losing something you really have; it is only possible to fear losing that which you do not have at all. This seems paradoxical, but it is the truth.
You are afraid of losing something you do not have; you are afraid of giving away the thing you do not possess. That which you really have you give away in abundance. You know you have it; you know it will not be exhausted. The fear of losing something only exists in relation to that which you really do not have but wrongly suppose to be yours.
The person who is truly fearless never enters into conflict with the flow of existence. Not only is it someone else’s existence, it is his own existence too. The storm is also yours. It is not against you, it is also on your side. A truly fearless man is convinced the whole of existence is his.
No sooner do you learn to bend, to stoop, to be egoless, than the flow of love descends in you. And if you are unable to experience that flow in relation to your neighbor, how do you expect to experience
it in relation to God? This is the final surrender, the final yielding; there is no further arising. And then there is no return. Reaching there, you attain to your real self – but you do not return. It is an evaporation into the Supreme, a melting into God; it is becoming one with Him. If you only knew how to lose your self, if you even dared to lose your self just once, you would be a truly brave man. You would have given up your fear and your habit of being egoistic, and you would have attained to a life that is ageless.
RAM HAS COME TO LIVE WITH ME
AND I’M DRUNK WITH BOUNDLESS YOUTH.
You would be able to sing this along with Kabir. You would be able to say that God has come to your door and that a youthfulness of spirit has been born in you – the kind of youthfulness that is never born, that just is, that is eternal. At such a moment you are no more; at such a moment you make room for God.
Readiness to die is SANNYAS. To learn to die is SANNYAS. And for ultimate fulfillment, death is the condition. Love is the great death. People who die ordinary deaths return to the world, but those who die in the achievement of this love do not return. Nothing is left to achieve. There is no cause, no reason to return. They have achieved all.
SAYS KABIR: I’M TO WED. AND THE MAN’S IMMORTAL.
Why should he who is to marry the immortal return? The man who has found his beloved does not see her face in his dreams. We only dream about those things we have not achieved. A poor man dreams of wealth, a beggar dreams of becoming an emperor, a hungry man dreams of food – this is how we console ourselves in dreams. A dream is false, deceptive, a consolation, an illusory contentment.
No man can fill his stomach with dream-food, but at least he can sleep soundly, without a break. You may have gone to sleep without food and you may be hungry during the night, but then you will dream you have received an invitation to dine in a palace. That food will neither satisfy your hunger nor nourish your body, but at least you will be able to continue sleeping without interruption. Your mind will assure you that you have eaten. Now you will be satisfied; now you will go on sleeping quietly. A dream helps sleep.
When you wish for something you do not have, that desire will go on troubling you as long as it remains unfulfilled. So when all desires die, why should a person return to the world? But you return because you die unfulfilled. And this happens many times. You are still interested in worldly happiness; there are still desires – and they shout at you, “Where are you going? Come back!” No one sends you back into this world, you come back yourself because of your desires. You return yourself; you travel over the bridge of your own desires. The body is left behind, but you come back with your same mind and start your journey once again. You enter another womb; you repeat the same routine all over again.
The death that becomes the means for another birth is not, in fact, real death. Kabir says it is an incomplete death. It is an immature death, one that is not fully ripe. You have not grown up yet. You have not yet become wise and died a mature death. You have not yet attained wisdom and died a mature death. Wisdom does not necessarily go hand in hand with old age. Hair turns grey in the natural course of things, but there is a great difference between attaining wisdom and having one’s hair turn grey. Wisdom is attained only when one’s desires grow old and crumble, only when one’s desires exist no more.
Animals grow old, trees grow old, and you will also be old one day. And one day you too will die. But the man whose desires grow old, the man who knows what desires are, the man whose desires die, is the man who attains to wisdom. The death of such a man is totally different. Kabir dies, Buddha dies, and you will also die, but there is a qualitative difference between your death and that of Kabir, between your death and that of Buddha.
Try very carefully to grasp each of these sutras. Once you have fathomed their meaning correctly you will be able to understand that qualitative difference.
DYING, DYING, ALL GO ON DYING. NONE DIE A PROPER DEATH. KABIR MET WITH DEATH,
NEVER TO DIE AGAIN.
Kabir says everyone in this world dies but that no one dies in a right and proper manner. He says, as all the other enlightened men have also said, that dying is an art.
You may never have thought of death in this way; you do not even consider living an art. You live like a log floating on the river, being dragged wherever the current pulls it. Your life is a tragedy; it has not become an art. Before you take a step you do not even stop to think. If someone asks you, “Why did you do that?” you really have no answer. Although you prepare an answer and give it, inside you know very well it is no answer at all. You live as if you are groping about in the darkness. Your life has not become an art. That is why, up to the end of your life, you do not know what beauty is, what truth is, what bliss is. You do not experience any of these things. You feel as if you have spent your whole life wandering in a desert; you feel as if you have achieved nothing at all in your life.
But this is all quite natural, because your life has not become a work of art. If it had, you could have made your life into a beautiful sculpture. You could have given your life a definite shape; you could have cleaned it and polished it and brought out its intrinsic brilliance. If you had burned all the rubbish in your life you would have achieved the purity of gold by now. If you had chipped away all the superfluous stone each limb of the statue would now be sheer artistry. You could have created a beautiful sculpture of your life, a beautiful work of art. But no, in spite of the fact you have done many things in your life, you have achieved nothing substantial.
Your life is not art; it is not art through and through – and Kabir says that even death must be total art. Death is as much an art as life is. And death is the test. If you have lived rightly, you can die
rightly. If you have not lived rightly, you will not be able to die rightly. Death is the final offering. It is the highest; it is the crowning, the peak. Death is the essence, the flowering of life. How can your death be right if you have spent your life wrongly? How can your death be full of meaning if your life has been a waste? How can a tree whose roots are rotten bear sweet fruit? It is impossible.
What is the secret to the art of life? The secret is this – live in full awareness. Don’t grope in the darkness; don’t walk in sleep – walk in awareness. Whatsoever you do, no matter what it is – even if it is as insignificant as opening and closing your eyes – do it thoughtfully, do it with awareness. Who knows – everything may depend on that tiny action, on opening and closing your eyes! You may be walking along the road and see a woman, and you may spend your whole life with her. Even opening and closing your eyes, stay alert.
Buddha used to tell his disciples not to look more than four feet in front while they were walking. “For walking, it is quite enough,” he used to say. It is not necessary to look around, to keep checking on all sides. When you complete the first four feet you will see another four feet in front of you. It is enough. you can travel thousands of miles in this way. What need is there to look about? Don’t keep on looking all over the place. Such a journey never ends.
If you examine your life you will be able to see that whatever has happened in it has been accidental, has happened by chance. Something happens accidentally, and because of that accident the course of one’s entire life is changed. You were walking along the road on your way to the temple, for example, and a woman smiled at you. And instead of reaching your destination, you arrived somewhere else. You married that woman; you begat children. You were anxious to marry her, and so you were caught in a huge wheel that turns round and round. Has it never occurred to you that all of this was caused by chance, by an accident? Had you followed Buddha’s advice to his disciples, perhaps none of this would have happened.
To acquire the art of living, remember this – never act in unawareness, never act in sleep. Never allow anything to happen of its own accord. First see it properly. First consider it rightly. Look at it firmly, with discretion and wisdom, before putting it into action. If you do this you will find that your life acquires a kind of beauty, a certain elegance. You become like a sculpture; you become like the situation in which the sculptor and the stone are not separate. You yourself are the sculptor, you yourself are the statue, you yourself are the stone, you yourself are the chisel – you are everything, you are all.
If you live in awareness you will find that the chisel has done its work well. It has cut away the useless stone; it has not allowed anything worthless to remain. The chisel has chipped away the superfluous and gone right to the essence. And then, one day, you will find you have reached the temple, that you have become the divine sculpture itself; you will find you have achieved a kind of beauty, that you have attained a deep consciousness.
If you remain awake and alert until death, you have lived rightly. And then you will be able to meet death in a right manner as well.
DYING, DYING, ALL GO ON DYING.
Kabir says that everyone in the world dies, that death is a daily occurrence, that it happens every
moment. He says we are surrounded on all sides by the sea of death. The whole is drowning in it continuously.
NONE DIE A PROPER DEATH.
No one dies in a correct way. Kabir is saying no one dies in consciousness. KABIR MET WITH DEATH,
NEVER TO DIE AGAIN.
This is the art. This is the verification that there is no death any more. If you do a thing correctly once, you will not have to do it over again. You only have to do a particular thing again when you have been unable to do it correctly before. God gives us opportunity after opportunity to live rightly. He is not in a hurry; He has plenty of time to spare. And so long as you keep on making mistakes you will be thrown back into the world.
You will only be caught in His net when you can go to Him with full and complete experience of this life. You are just like a child who is sent back to the same class again and again until he makes a passing grade. We tell him he will not be allowed into the next class until he completes this one. The abode of love remains closed to you in the same way until you are through with life.
The art of life is getting through life successfully. And the man who gets through life successfully has nothing more to learn in this world. He has learned all that can be learned in this world of matter. He has passed through the ordeal of longings, through the fire of desires. Now the door to the higher grade opens for him; now he is admitted there. He has learned everything there is to learn here in this world. So this door is closed to him. Now he cannot return.
KABIR MET WITH DEATH, NEVER TO DIE AGAIN.
Live in such a way that there will not be another birth, and die in such a way that there will never be another death. If there is birth then there will certainly be death; death will follow automatically. So live in such a way that there will not be another birth – and then there will be no more death either.
Everyone wants to be saved from death. Can you find a man who does not want to save himself from death? Then why are these people not saved from death? You cannot be saved from death so long as you do not want to be saved from birth. Birth is the other end of death. If you say you want to be born over and over again forever you are speaking nonsense. All this means is that you have not understood a very simple rule of arithmetic – that birth is one pole of life and death is the other.
The man who is born will have to die. The thing that has begun will also have to end. But if there is no end, there can be no beginning either. So if you want to save yourself from the end, never wish for the beginning. Do not long for the beginning if you want the beginningless, if you want the infinite. Just try to save yourself from the beginning.
Even the small experiences of life will be helpful to you in this effort. People come to me and they say, “We want to save ourselves from feeling angry. What should we do?” I tell them to stay alert right from the beginning. If anger has already caught hold of you, it will be very difficult, it will be almost impossible to avoid it, to free yourself of it. You will have to pass through it. It makes no difference whether you go through it quickly or slowly, you simply have to pass through it. It may take time, but whatever has begun is sure to end at some point.
If you want to be saved from anger, be alert from the very beginning. Be aware before the wave rises up in you. It may not have come yet, but it may well come later on. Suppose someone abused you and you were not angry right away – it will catch up to you. So this is the right moment to be alert, to be fully awake. Anger is on its way to you. Then you remain the master. You have stopped anger from entering your house. You are the master so long as anger is not born in you. But if it is already born in you, you will have to pass through the whole process. To stop anger after it has been born is an impossibility; there is no way to end it. You have to be alert at the very beginning of the thing you wish to halt.
You want to save yourself from death. But you do not even know when death begins. People think death begins in old age, when the body becomes incapacitated, when medicine is no longer effective, when physicians become helpless. If you think like this, you are in the wrong. Then you will have to die over and over again; then you will not be able to understand the truth about life.
The beginning of death happens with birth. And if you go deeper into this phenomenon you will also see that death happens along with conception. When you are born you have already been dead for nine months, because for nine months you have already lived in the womb. Those nine months must certainly be included in the journey towards death that begins at the moment of conception. You are already nine months old at the time of your birth. That much old age has already overtaken you. Your birth actually begins from the moment your essence enters the womb, and that moment is also the beginning of death. You are dying every day. It is not an event that takes place at the end of your life. Death is not a miracle; death is not a magic trick. Death is a process. You are slowly dying, dying ever so slowly every day, and a day will come when this process of dying will cease. Death is the finale of this process. Death is the end of the beginning. And it has lasted a long time, nearly seventy years!
If you want to save yourself from death, then try to save yourself from entering another womb. And if you do not want to enter another womb, then go deeper and deeper within yourself. As you do this you will come to realize, you will come to understand the true art of life and death; you will come to know what life and death really are. If you do not want to enter another womb you will have to save yourself from desires, from desiring.
An old man who is dying – who is on the verge of death but still attached to life – will say, “If only I had a little more time, I could complete all my unfulfilled desires. My house is not finished yet, and I still have to see my son married. There are so many other desires yet to fill. And only recently have I begun to fulfill them. Is it just or proper that I am to be dragged away from the world? Only lately have I been able to organize things better. And I was planning to take a little vacation. Now that the children are grown up and have started earning their own living, I was thinking I might devote some time to worshipping God, to going to church and singing hymns.”
No one ever does this. Yet when death approaches a man always thinks, “Had I had the time I would
have spent it worshipping God. It seems so unjust that God is taking my life away without letting me fulfill my desires.”
This is the difficulty at the time of death. A man’s desires are not fully satisfied and the body is ready to leave him. So those incomplete and unfulfilled desires will immediately seek a new birth. They must be fulfilled. You cannot be free of the world before that. Your desire for a little more of life, to live a bit longer, is the cause of another birth.
Therefore, understand well that the beginning of death is not really in the womb, it happens before you enter another womb. This chain of death started when you desired more life at the time of your previous death. As you go deeper and deeper into the phenomenon you will find that desires are the links in the chain of deaths. Whether someone is young or old he has desires he wants to fulfill – and that is the cause of the series of births and deaths. Buddha said continuously: Be free from desires and you will be free of SAMSAR, free of the world. So don’t entertain any desires whatsoever. Be happy with what you are. Be satisfied with what you are. Then there will not be another birth for you.
You should be content – as if you have reached your goal; as if there is no further journey to be undertaken; as if there is nowhere else to go. No matter what may be achieved, it should be more than enough. There should be no thought whatsoever of achieving more than you already have. If this happens to you, how will you be born again? You will die fully satisfied. And the man who dies completely satisfied has no reason to come back again. Such a man has known the art of death. The man who dies in desirelessness knows the art of death.
KABIR MET WITH DEATH, NEVER TO DIE AGAIN.
Kabir says:
DYING, DYING, ALL GO ON DYING WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT.
Kabir is saying you have never stopped and given a moment’s thought as to why you are still trapped in this web of life and death – despite the fact that you have lived and died countless times.
ONLY MINE’S AN ARTFUL DEATH. THE REST DIE AND ROT.
Kabir says he first attained wisdom and then he died, but that you die in a condition of helplessness. This is the difference between you. This is the difference between the death of an enlightened man and the death of an ignorant one. The distinction is qualitative; a physician would never be able to see the distinction.
If Buddha, Kabir and you were dying in a hospital and someone were to question the physician as to the nature of your deaths he would not be able to point out any difference at all. The doctor would
say, “There is no difference whatsoever.” He would have to say that the heartbeat in all three men was slowing down, that the breath was becoming more and more shallow and that the circulation of the blood was slowly stopping. He would have to say that all three men were dying in the same way. He would have to say there was no qualitative difference whatsoever.
But try to understand the phenomenon. There is a definite qualitative difference between your death and that of Kabir. That is what Kabir is saying:
ONLY MINE’S AN ARTFUL DEATH. THE REST DIE AND ROT.
Having attained wisdom, having become fulfilled, Kabir dies. He dies having known reality, having known truth. And you are dying without knowing it at all. You are dying without being fulfilled, without being awake, without wisdom. Having grown old, you die; having attained wisdom, the enlightened ones die. This is what Kabir is saying. You die in a state of helplessness, crying for someone’s help, weeping for doctors and medicines.
In America dead bodies have been preserved. It is a very costly experiment and only multi- millionaires can afford the expense. The experiment has been undertaken because scientists believe that by 1980 they will have found medicines that will make it unnecessary to die. One man who died in California in 1950 made arrangements to have his body preserved, because only a period of thirty years was involved. The medicine was supposed to be found by 1980 and he believed that if his body could be preserved until then he would be revived and able to live again. Ten thousand dollars is being spent every day so the body does not rot, so the brain cells and the tiny blood vessels are not damaged. To achieve this they have air-conditioned an entire building, and the body is kept in a special deep-freeze. If the electricity stops even for a moment the body will be finished, then and there. So very elaborate arrangements have been made to preserve the dead body. All possible precautions have been taken in preparation for the arrival of the year 1980.
Man dies. But he does not want to die. He dies because he is helpless. You try so many tricks not to die. you believe in the false assurances given to you by the astrologers and the so-called holy men. Some people even wear amulets in an attempt to save themselves from death. You try all sorts of things to save yourselves.
To grow old does not mean to grow wise. Attaining wisdom means you have realized there is nothing worth achieving in this life and there is nothing worth saving. Attaining wisdom means you have explored all your desires and found them to be without substance. You have made love and found it to be nothing but lust; you have found that nature simply uses you as a means for the procreation of the species. You have earned money and found that even though it is considered valuable by society it is nothing more than soiled pieces of paper. You have attained a high position and hundreds of thousands have looked up to you with awe and respect, but you have realized that your position has not brought you any contentment, that your mind has remained discontent. You have scaled the heights of the ego and found that there too only meanness and pettiness are to be found. You have lived in palaces but your inner beggarliness did not disappear.
You may have earned everything, you may have achieved everything, but only when you realize that all this acquiring is really nothing but losing do you become a wise man. Only then do you realize
there is nothing worth achieving in this life. In spite of the fact you have searched in every nook and cranny you have found that there is nothing of substance in your life.
You learn this from your own vast experience. It is not by listening to someone, not by reading Kabir’s words or by listening to me that you realize this whole game of life is played in ignorance. You realize this through your own testing, through your own experience.
In this world there is no place for the enlightened man. Here, there is nothing for the enlightened man to do. This world is a child’s toy – children are playing in it; children are engrossed in it. When you are enlightened you will laugh; then you will also see it is just a toy. Then you have known. Then you are enlightened. And the moment you realize this, the chain of desires will be broken. This condition is called SAMADHI by Patanjali. He calls it NIRVIKALP SAMADHI, SAMADHI without ambiguities. Then there are no alternatives – neither “Should I do this?” nor “Should I do that?” No “Should I get this?” No “Should I get that?” All alternatives have disappeared.
The word SAMADHI is very beautiful. As well as for the condition of supreme knowledge, we use the word SAMADHI for the grave of a SANNYASI. There is a hidden meaning in the use of the same word for the two conditions. We give the name SAMADHI to the grave of a man who became enlightened before death, who gave up all his desires before death, who forsook even the desire to live, who died before death.
At the time of death you do your utmost to save yourself. You are terrified and you tremble. You are an ocean of uneasiness and agitation. You are dragged into death; you do not want your life-force to leave your body. You cling to the body as hard as you can. And you are forcibly separated from it. You die weeping; you die in anguish. You die a defeated man, in total helplessness.
Sit near a man who is dying and see what frantic efforts he makes to cling to life. Do this, because you may not be conscious enough to see all of this at the time of your own death. The dying man is trying to grab at any straw to stay alive a bit longer, to remain on this shore a little while more. The call to go to the other world has come – the boat is waiting at the shore for you, the oarsman is beckoning you, calling you to make haste, saying, “Your time is over,” asking, “Why are you still clinging to that shore?” – and you say, “Please, wait a moment. Let me have a little more happiness. I have not had any in my life.” You have been unhappy throughout your life and yet you want to live just a moment more in the hope of attaining a bit of happiness. This is the tragedy.
You die unsatisfied; you die thirsty. You have drunk water from several streams but your thirst has not been quenched. Your hunger was insatiable and you were unable to satisfy your tastes, and so your desires have remained what they were. Even though you have gone through all sorts of experiences your desires have remained. They have even continued to disturb you up to the moment of your death. This sort of death is the death of an ignorant and foolish man.
If, after you have undergone all sorts of experiences, your desires begin to disappear and you begin to laugh; if you realize that trying to squeeze happiness from this life is like trying to extract oil from sand; if you see that there cannot be any kind of authentic relationship in this life, that there is no way to obtain happiness in this life; if you see that you have been wandering in vain, that you have been traveling in a dream – if you become conscious of all this, then you have become a wise man. Become wise before your death. You have already died so many times.
DYING, DYING, ALL GO ON DYING WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT.
Think about this. You have not done so up to now. If you die again without thinking about it, you will simply go through the same fuss, the same slavery all over again. So this time, before you die think about it first. Death is still a little way off, so before it comes to you live thoughtfully, live consciously. Learn the art of thinking; become used to remaining alert.
When death comes to your door for you, go with it in full consciousness; accompany death as an enlightened man would. Don’t go weeping and crying and shouting like a child whose toy has been snatched away from him. Don’t be childish at the time of your death. Die with a smile on your face. Say to death, “You are welcome. I am ready for you.” And when you say this, not even the tiniest bit of regret should remain. In actual fact, if you have really known life there will be bliss and ecstasy in your voice – and no sorrow whatsoever.
DIE YOU MUST, SO DIE!
ALL WHIRLPOOLS FALL AWAY. SUCH IS DEATH. SO WHY DIE HUNDREDS OF TIMES A DAY?
Kabir says when death is certain, when there is no doubt of its coming, one should die as an enlightened man dies. Then the entanglement of this world is left behind forever; then there is no question of ever returning to this world again.
SUCH IS DEATH. SO WHY DIE HUNDREDS OF TIMES A DAY?
The death you encounter is the death of an ignorant man. It happens hundreds of times every day. Whether you are aware of it or not, inwardly you are only afraid of one thing, of just one thing, twenty-four hours every day. And that fear is that death is standing nearby, that death is imminent. The shadow of death is always on you. There are various faces to fear but the base is one. Whenever you are afraid the obvious reason may be anything whatsoever, but if you look deep within yourself you will find that the real cause of your fear is death.
You become nervous when you lose money. Ponder this. Look deep within to see whether the fear is actually because of the loss of the money or if there isn’t some other cause. At first you will feel you are afraid because of the loss of the money, because you have gone bankrupt or are going to go bankrupt, but search within. You will find that the real cause of your anxiety is your hidden fear of death. Money helps you in life; if you have money you have the means of supporting yourself, of saving yourself. If you cannot get the best treatment and the best medicine here in India then you can go to America – provided you have the money. But if you have no money you have no remedy. Then you have no way to save yourself. Then your helpmate has disappeared and you will
be helpless when death comes knocking at your door. The fear one feels at the loss of money, or even at the idea of losing money, is nothing but the fear of death.
When the wife is on her death-bed the husband is upset. His wife’s death is also the death of part of him. He saw her as half of him, and her death will take something away from inside him as well. With her death some inner part of him will also die. He will never be the same as he was before.
A wife is even more upset and frightened when her husband is about to die. She has no choice but to live a lifeless sort of life, while a husband can quickly find another wife to fill the vacancy left by the death of the first. A widow is a woman whose husband is dead, a woman who has now to live a dead sort of life. Nearly ninety per cent of her is dead; only ten per cent carries on. Such a life is very pitiable indeed. It is really neither life nor death; it is nothing but dragging things out. This was the reason wives used to die with their husbands, the reason a wife used to burn herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. She used to do this because she thought it was better to die along with her husband than to lead the life of a widow. Leading the life of a widow was considered tantamount to dying a hundred times a day, so it was better to die now, to die once and for all.
How many times in a day do you die? How many times a day are you afraid? You are dying every time you are afraid. Whenever you are afraid the shadow of death falls on you, the stench of death hovers about you. Kabir says that because death is certain you should die only once, but that you should die in the right manner so the entanglement of this world can be left behind forever. He is saying that no matter what you do, do it so perfectly there is never any need to do it again.
A novice singer once came to a town mainly populated by musicians. And the whole town gathered to hear the new musician who had just arrived. He was really a beginner; he was just learning. He hardly knew the ABC’s of music, yet he was in the habit of visiting places where no one knew anything about music and so his scanty knowledge had always been considered great. But there were experts in this town; classical music was in their blood.
Hardly had he sung his first note when everyone cried, “Again! Again!” He misunderstood. He thought, “How nice these people are! They really are great lovers of music! They are everything I had been told they were.” So he sang again. And once more the whole hall cried out, “Again!” And so it went, seven or eight times more.
Now his throat was beginning to ache. He was becoming exhausted. He finally said, “Friends, I am deeply touched by your love, but please pardon me. No more! My voice is at the point of breaking.”
Then the whole audience shouted, “You will have to keep on singing until you can sing it correctly.”
All this time the neophyte had thought the cries of “Again!” had been in praise of his singing. But the people were experts. “If your voice breaks,” they shouted, “then let it break, but you will have to keep on singing until you can sing it correctly!”
You are often sent back to SAMSAR, back to this world, but don’t think it is because you are so important, because you are so valuable. The fact that you are sent back is God’s message that you will have to keep on singing until you learn to sing life’s song correctly. You need this practice, this repetition, because you always return to Him without having become complete. God does not accept
incomplete things; only the complete is accepted by Him. That is why Kabir is so full of ecstasy. That is why Kabir rejoices that he is going to Him, that he is going to marry the immortal.
DIE YOU MUST, SO DIE!
ALL WHIRLPOOLS FALL AWAY. SUCH IS DEATH. SO WHY DIE HUNDREDS OF TIMES A DAY?
Then Kabir says:
WHEN THERE’S FEAR OF DEATH LOVE CANNOT BE FELT.
THE ABODE OF LOVE IS FAR AWAY. UNDERSTAND THIS WELL.
Love will not be born in you so long as you are afraid of death. Love is the door to God. As far as Kabir is concerned “love” is the ultimate word; there is nothing above it or beyond it. It is prayer, it is meditation, it is worship, it is adoration, it is penance, it is yoga, it is tantra, it is the mystic mantra – all is included in love. And what Kabir has said about love is without comparison in this world. As you move more and more into Kabir you will realize that no one has ever sung of love’s greatness as he has. Love is the quintessence; love is the ultimate accomplishment.
WHEN THERE’S FEAR OF DEATH LOVE CANNOT BE FELT.
THE ABODE OF LOVE IS FAR AWAY. UNDERSTAND THIS WELL.
Understand well that for you the abode of love is still very far away. Whatsoever you have known as love up to now is false. It is not love; it is just something you call love. It may take thousands of shapes and forms, but it is not love at all.
The man who has known love ha known God. For the man who has known love, nothing remains to be known. And the death of the man whose life has become filled with love is the final death; he will not have another birth. The man who has learned the lesson of love has no reason to come back to this world. He has known love. He has learned the song of love.
WHEN THERE’S FEAR OF DEATH LOVE CANNOT BE FELT.
You have to be prepared to efface yourself completely at God’s door. As you are you wish to possess God, but such guile on your part will not do at all. People come to me and they say, “We wish to seek God.” I tell them, “Don’t speak about that with me. Don’t bring that up for discussion. You should be asking me how to efface yourself.”
All this talk of seeking God is useless. There is no substance or meaning in what you are saying. And there is no end to it either. For you, where you are, it is enough to know how to efface yourself. When you are not, you will find that you are the lover and that you are standing at His door. On that day you will see that God Himself has answered your knock, that He Himself has opened the door to you. But as long a “you” are there you will not be able to seek Him. That is why, no matter how hard you try to seek Him – in temples, in mosques, in Kashi, in Kaba, in remote mountain caves, through renunciation or through yoga – you will not be able to find Him. Your penance will simply enhance your ego, your renunciation will simply bring you status, your charity will simply bring you fame. Whatsoever “you” do will strengthen your ego.
Real charity only exists when you are not; authentic renunciation only exists when you have been blotted out completely. That is why love is the ultimate for Kabir. He says no matter what you do you cannot attain to God while “you” are there. He says, “Give up this fear of death.” He asks, “What is the point of dying so often? What is the point of dying a hundred times in a day?” It is better to die just once, to break the entanglement of this world once and for all.
THE ABODE OF LOVE IS FAR AWAY. UNDERSTAND THIS WELL.
The distance is in proportion to the size of your ego. That is the distance. If you have a thousand- mile ego the distance is a thousand miles; if your ego is the size of an inch then the distance is one inch, but if you have no ego at all there is no distance whatsoever.
On its own, the abode of love is not far away at all. Don’t think it is far; otherwise you have misunderstood Kabir’s meaning. The abode of love is only far away because of your ego. So measure your ego. Size up your ego accurately, because the distance to the house of God is in direct proportion. You don’t have to find God’s house, what you do have to do is diminish the distance. So, if you wish, even though you are sitting in your own house, you can enter the temple of God.
Kabir has said he did not seek God, that he did not wander about in search of Him, that he remained in his own house and yet achieved Him. There is no question of going anywhere. In actual fact there is no such thing as a path, no such thing as a pilgrimage. The only real obstacle is your ego. Even if you travel from one holy place to another, nothing will happen to you so long as your ego accompanies you.
Once the Hindu mystic Eknath was going on a pilgrimage. His brother said to him, “You are lucky to be going on a pilgrimage. I have no time to go with you. But since you are going and you are my brother, it is enough for me. Take this gourd with you. Dip it in holy water in all the holy places. It will become pure. And then I will eat it.” Eknath laughed.
But still he kept the gourd with him and he dipped it in the water of all the holy rivers in which he bathed. On his return he gave the gourd back to his brother. The brother cut a piece and tasted it. He found it to be very bitter. “Your gourd opened my eyes too,” Eknath said, “and I attained true knowledge. I shall never go on a pilgrimage again. Since all those holy waters could not turn a bitter gourd into a sweet one, what is the point of bathing in them? If the holy waters cannot remove the bitterness of a gourd, how can bathing in them remove a man’s inner bitterness? Those places of pilgrimage now hold no more meaning for me. I shall no longer seek Him there.”
As long as the ego exists there will be bitterness within. The ego is the poison. And no gourd can be as bitter as you are! When an insignificant thing like a gourd can defeat the holy places, then you will certainly defeat them also.
Although you visit temples and shrines and holy places, you remain you; you return as you left. Actually you may return even worse off, because then you return as a pilgrim and you have become even more egoistic. You are in the habit of enhancing your ego. You even do it with religion.
WHEN THERE’S FEAR OF DEATH LOVE CANNOT BE FELT.
Efface yourself. That is the only way to achieve Him.
Then Kabir says a great and revolutionary thing, something that will even surprise the enlightened ones:
NOTHINGNESS DIES, THE SOUNDLESS DIES; EVEN THE INFINITE DIES.
A TRUE LOVER NEVER DIES. SAYS KABIR: KNOW THIS.
Everyone will be startled to hear this. Kabir is wonderful; he is a great, courageous, outspoken man. His desire to tell the truth is so keen he does it directly. He neither cares nor thinks about who might be adversely affected by it. He says, NOTHINGNESS DIES.
The enlightened ones have said that when one attains to that emptiness, one has achieved AUM, one has achieved the sound of the universe. They say when you have become nothing, when you have become empty, when you experience that emptiness you have achieved the ultimate. Kabir says that emptiness will also die, that the unutterable will die too.
Nanak has said – and the Sikhs believe – that when AUM is achieved, that when the universal sound is achieved it is such a MANTRA that it is not uttered by you but just goes on by itself. The Sikhs say you have then achieved the ultimate. Nanak has said the sound of AUM, the sound so highly praised by the Vedas, is the only true word. But Kabir says that even AUM will die.
EVEN THE INFINITE DIES.
The Sufis have called the infinite ANAHAD. It means the limitless; it means without limits. They say if you experience this you have experienced everything. But Kabir says that even the infinite will die, that even ANAHAD will die, that all this will die.
A TRUE LOVER NEVER DIES.
But, says Kabir, the man who has achieved the love of God does not die. This must be understood in a bit more depth. This statement is not only very deep, it is also very revolutionary in meaning.
NOTHINGNESS DIES, THE SOUNDLESS DIES; EVEN THE INFINITE DIES.
There is not even going to be the experience of emptiness. If you have become silent, if you have achieved SAMADHI, if you have known that everything becomes nothingness, then this emptiness, this nothingness itself will also become an experience. “You” will be separate; the knower will be separate. The emptiness will also be an object of knowing, a matter of information. Who is there to know that you have become nothingness. Who is there to experience this condition? You, the knower, will still be standing a little distance away. There will still be duality. And as long as there is duality there is death. That is why Kabir says, NOTHINGNESS DIES.
The great enlightened ones have also said the same thing. Buddhists could not grasp it, for example. Lin-chi was a great Buddhist seeker and he once thought he had achieved the ultimate knowledge. There was nothingness in him. There were no thoughts; there was no mind at all. When this happened he ran to his master and said, “I have become emptiness.” The master replied, “Throw this emptiness away and then come to me. Emptiness and things like that are not needed here.”
What did the master wish to convey? He was telling Lin-chi the same thing Kabir is saying to you. He is telling Lin-chi, “You are still separate from the experience you are having. And if separateness exists, there is duality. The moment you can say, I’M TO WED. AND THE MAN’S IMMORTAL, the ultimate has not yet come. There is still some distance. The emptiness is there, but you are also there. The knower is there and the thing that is being known is there. Both subject and object are still there.”
NOTHINGNESS DIES; THE SOUNDLESS DIES.
Who will hear the sound of AUM? You will hear it. Granted the noise of the marketplace is gone; granted the sound of AUM, the universal sound is being heard instead of the noise of the bazaar, but who is the experiencer of the sound? You are still separate.
EVEN THE INFINITE DIES.
If “you” know it, that infinite has a limit, becomes limited. Knowledge creates limits. When you say you have known the limitless, it cannot be true limitlessness, it cannot be the infinite. Knowing can only be of the limited. Kabir says this is the point at which all experiences die.
A TRUE LOVER NEVER DIES.
Only love does not die, because in love the lover dies first. And then true love is born. This is Kabir’s hidden indication that the first condition of love is that you must die, that you must be no more. And a moment comes in love when neither you nor God is there, when only love is there. Then there is neither RAM nor His lover, there is only love. Both the shores disappear and only the everlasting flow of love remains.
A TRUE LOVER NEVER DIES.
And then Kabir says:
DEATH – THE WHOLE WORLD FEARS. DEATH – MY HEART OVERJOYS. WHEN WILL I DIE AND GIVE MYSELF IN ECSTASY COMPLETE?
The man who has known the truth of life will be filled with joy at the coming of death because he will soon be free from the entanglement of SAMSAR, from the entanglement of the world. Soon this useless carry-on will be over; soon this childish toy will be put away. Now such a man is worthy to journey to that place from which there is no return.
Jesus said that a fisherman throws his net into the water to catch fish, and that the tiny fish escape from the net without any difficulty but that the big ones are caught. Jesus said that God will continue to throw His net out for you until you become a big fish, but that before then you will always keep slipping back into the ocean of the world.
Kabir says:
DEATH – THE WHOLE WORLD FEARS. DEATH – MY HEART OVERJOYS.
God’s net is coming for you shortly. You think of death as the end of life; Kabir sees it as the beginning of the highest kind of life. You are afraid, because to you death is the end of life; Kabir is ecstatic because it is the moment of ultimate life. The temple for which you have been searching through countless births is now very near to you. The insignificant distance that still remains because of the body will soon be gone. And then there will be no distance at all.
DEATH – THE WHOLE WORLD FEARS. DEATH – MY HEART OVERJOYS. WHEN WILL I DIE AND GIVE MYSELF IN ECSTASY COMPLETE?
Kabir says he will meet God when he dies. Those who have known life look upon death as a meeting with God, as an encounter with Him. For them, death is the greatest fortune. For them, death is not death, death is a marriage, a union. For them, death is the ultimate, the perfection; the supreme flowering of love. For them, the face of death is transformed.
From the angle at which you look at death you think it is the end of everything, that all will be destroyed. What you have taken to be real is nothing more than a dream. But the angle from which Kabir is looking will open the door of truth, will remove the useless and usher in the bountiful.
You consider death as the blackest night, but to Kabir it is the morning, the dawning of the greatest promise. As the night gets darker and darker and death comes nearer and nearer Kabir is filled with joy. It means the sun is about to rise.
If you live correctly, you can die correctly. The right kind of life is the basis for the right kind of death, so the man who dies in the right way has to face death no more.
Look for the key to dying only once. You have slipped through the net many, many times; many times you have fallen back into the ocean of SAMSAR, back into the ocean of the world. Before His net descends on you this time, make yourself worthy to be chosen by Him.
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