Main Mrityu Sikhata Hun #10

To understand stupor and awakening, the first thing to grasp is that they are not opposites. Ordinarily we take them as opposites. In fact, we view life by splitting it into dualities. We divide darkness and light and assume they are two different things. The very moment we take darkness and light to be two separate things, a fundamental mistake has been made. On such a mistake, whatever thinking we build afterward will be distorted; it can never be right.

Darkness and light are gradations of one and the same phenomenon. They are forms, rungs of the same ladder. What we call darkness would be better called “less light”—a degree of light our eyes cannot catch. And what we call light is “less darkness”—a degree of darkness that our eyes can catch. They are not two opposing substances; they are degrees, intensities of one thing.

What is true of light and darkness is true of all dualities in life. Stupor (moorchha) and consciousness are the same kind of phenomenon. Take stupor as darkness and consciousness as light. In truth, even the most “unconscious” thing is not absolutely unconscious. A stone is not sheer unconsciousness; it too is a state of consciousness—but so faint that it lies beyond our grasp.

A man sleeps, a man is awake. Sleeping and waking are not two different things; it is the same person traveling between degrees of sleep and wakefulness. And what we call sleep is not absolute sleep. If five hundred people are asleep and someone calls out loudly, “Ram!” four hundred and ninety-nine do not hear; the one named Ram opens his eyes: “Who is disturbing my sleep? Who is calling me?” If he was absolutely asleep, he should not have heard his name; nor recognized it as his. His sleep was only a dimming of wakefulness, a thinning of attention.

Consider another man whose house is on fire. He is running down the street. You greet him; he looks and yet does not see. He hears and yet does not hear. The next day you ask, “I greeted you yesterday; you didn’t answer.” He replies, “My house was on fire. I could see nothing but the house, hear nothing but the cry that my house was burning.” Was he awake or asleep? In every ordinary sense he was awake; yet inwardly he was more asleep than the man who heard his name in sleep. His attention had narrowed so much that the rest of the world slipped into darkness.

So, sleep and wakefulness are not opposites. Matter and God are not opposites. Night and day, light and dark, the devil and God, evil and good—none are true opposites. But the intellect immediately breaks everything into two. In fact, thinking itself is the act of dividing. To think is to split. The more a person thinks, the more fragments he makes—until only fragments remain and the whole is lost. Yet the answer to every question lies only in the whole. That is why intellect never truly finds answers; it can extract twenty-five new questions out of any answer, but it cannot arrive at truth—because truth belongs to the whole, and intellect cannot move without cutting things apart.

Right now I am here, speaking; you are seeing and hearing me. The one you see and the one you hear are not two different persons. But you see me with the eyes and hear me with the ears; you have already split me in two. If you are near enough to catch my body’s scent, you have made a third piece. Then you reassemble these pieces into an image of me. That image is not me; it is your construction—and it will always be distorted, because the whole cannot be made by adding parts. The whole is that which existed before the parts were cut.

Thus, the moment we ask, “Awakening and stupor?” we have already begun to divide. I say there is only one continuum. Saying “one” does not mean awakening is stupor or stupor is awakening. When I say darkness and light are one, I do not mean you can walk in darkness just as you would in light. I mean existence is one continuum of degrees; the difference is of more-or-less, not of being-or-nonbeing.

What is that one thing which, when abundant, appears as awakening and, when meager, appears as stupor? Once we see that, everything becomes easy. That element is attention. The denser and more intense the attention, the greater the awakening; the thinner and weaker the attention, the greater the stupor. Stupor and awakening are densities of attention. Where attention is concentrated, there is wakefulness; where its density drops, stupor grows. The difference between a stone and us is simply that the stone has no dense attention in any direction. Wherever attention grows dense, awakening happens; wherever it thins, stupor sets in.

If you focus sunrays through a lens, fire appears. Light that becomes dense is fire; fire that diffuses is merely light. An ember is fire because its light is dense. Where light is dense, fire is; where light grows rare, fire becomes mere light; as density decreases further, darkness increases. If we travel toward the sun, brightness grows because light is denser near its source; as we move away, it thins, and at vast distance only darkness remains. That darkness is nothing but the attenuation of light’s density.

Exactly so with stupor and awakening. Attention is the root element; its liquidity or density decides whether we call you awake or asleep, conscious or unconscious.

And whenever we use these words, remember they are relative terms. When we say “there is light in the room,” it only means there is more light here than outside. If the sun is blazing outside, the same room may seem dim. So when we say someone is awake or asleep, it is always in comparison. Language compels us to speak in absolutes, but the truth is relative.

We are many here. In one sense we are all awake—but not equally. Each of us is awake to different degrees. Your neighbor may be asleep relative to you; another neighbor may be more awake by your measure.

The element that journeys between stupor and awakening is attention. Understand attention, and you will understand both. Attention means awareness—something registering within consciousness, a reflection on the inner mirror. And even within one day this fluctuates; no one remains equally alert for twenty-four hours.

Consider the pupil of the eye. In bright light, it contracts; in darkness, it dilates. Like a camera lens, it is always adjusting its aperture to conditions. In the same way, our attention is flexible moment to moment. On a familiar road, your attention is thin; on an unfamiliar road, it becomes dense. In security, everything is known and attention relaxes; in insecurity, attention must intensify. Hence, except in moments of danger we are rarely awake. If I suddenly press a knife to your chest, you will awaken in a way you are not awake right now. The emergency will not allow sleep; your entire life-force will gather, your attention will become one-pointed. Perhaps only for a second—but danger compresses attention. Once the danger passes, you relax again and fall back into stupor.

This is the secret of danger’s strange allure. The gambler’s thrill is the thrill of danger. In that instant when the stake is placed, he awakens in a way he cannot otherwise. He may be putting a hundred thousand rupees on the line—this is a crisis; one cannot remain drowsy. A single moment of concentrated attention is tasted, whether he knows it or not.

A man marries; gradually the wife becomes familiar and he goes to sleep toward her. The neighbor’s woman appears attractive—not for any mystical reason, but because she awakens attention by her unfamiliarity. The eye’s focus shifts. For the wife or husband, we hardly need a focus at all—we glide by with eyes averted. Hence the perennial attraction of the new: new house, new clothes, new rank. Deep down, it is a longing for denser attention. All joy depends on the density of attention. Moments of joy are moments of condensed awareness. Therefore, if you seek bliss, awakening is essential; in sleep, bliss is not possible.

Religion is a search for attention; so, in their own way, are gambling, battle, hunting. The man who enters the forest to hunt a lion is also seeking attention; so is the yogi in a cave striving at the ajna chakra. The search may be noble or ignoble, desirable or undesirable, successful or futile—but the underlying hunger is one.

Attention means: the knowing power within me becomes fully manifest—no part left potential or dormant. Whatever capacity to know I carry turns from potential into actual.

In the moment a person is fully awake, in that very moment he fully is. Awakening and being happen together. Think of a seed: the tree is hidden in the seed, but only potentially. The seed can die without becoming a tree; the tree is not a necessity, only a possibility. When the tree manifests, it is the seed in its expressed form. Sleep is the unmanifest state of awakening; stupor is the unmanifest state of awareness. Conversely, awakening is stupor expressed.

What travels through both seed and tree? There must be a bridge, a traveler present in both. It cannot be the seed or the tree—because if it were the seed, it could not be the tree; if it were the tree, it could not have been in the seed. That third power is life-force. Awakening and stupor are two states; the element that journeys between them is attention—the life-force expressed as awareness. The more attentive you are, the more awake; the emptier of attention, the more asleep.

A stone is God fast asleep—utterly seedlike, no shoot breaking through. Man is not yet a tree; he is a sprouted seed, an in-between. Man is on a journey—or better, man is a journey, a way-station. What we call awakening is still only a tender sprout, very dim. Our so-called waking life—walking on the street, working in the office—differs little from somnambulism. One can rise in sleep, go to the kitchen for water, even sit and write a letter, and in the morning remember nothing. A tiny corner of the mind wakes; the rest remains asleep. So with us: ask what you did on 1 January 1950—you know the date existed and you did something, but you cannot say what. Yet under hypnosis you could recall it all. One corner recorded it; the whole did not register.

So too the memories of past lives are stored. Our present conscious mind does not know them; some other part was awake then. That part has gone to sleep; another is awake now. If you could descend, you would find not only human births but animal births, then vegetal, then mineral—deeper and deeper strata. Even Buddha and Mahavira, in their experiments with recollection of former lives, mostly stopped at animal lives; tree-consciousness and mineral-consciousness lie deeper still. But all that is stored—recorded during states of trance—hence unknown to the present surface mind.

Notice what you never forget: the slap on your cheek when you were five; humiliation; intense joy or sorrow. Why? Because in those moments attention grew dense; impressions penetrated deep. Pain forces attention to converge. Hence we do not forget moments of insult, grief, ecstasy—they are intense, and our awareness pervades them.

What is this attention? If I prick your hand with a pin, immediately all streams of attention rush to that point. That point becomes existentially significant; for that moment, your entire being stands there. A moment before, that patch of skin existed but you had no awareness of it. The pin creates a crisis and your rays of attention pour there. A moment before, there was no consciousness at that point; now there is. Its is-ness stands revealed.

Attention is awareness. It has two forms, and this is crucial to your question.

- One is concentration. When your attention concentrates at one point, you “sleep” to all other points. If a pin pricks, as awareness converges there, the rest of the body fades out. The sick live only in the ailing organ; the rest of the body disappears. In concentration, attention densifies at one point while darkness spreads over the rest. The man whose house is on fire is awake only to the fire; to the rest of the world he is asleep.
- The second is awareness without concentration—nonfocused awareness. This is harder to grasp because we know focused attention from pain, exams, crises. But there is an attention with no point, no object. As long as there is a point, there will be stupor toward all other points.

If God exists, He must be fully awake. But what would be the point of His awareness? If there is a center, then all else lies in shadow. Therefore divine awareness can have no object, no center: awareness without a center—everywhere, all at once. This all-pervading awareness is the supreme state.

That is why, when we define the nature of the divine as sat-chit-ananda, the term chit does not mean “consciousness of something.” Consciousness is always about something; it is object-centered. Chit means objectless awareness—chaitanya, pure sentience. Consciousness as we commonly use it is always “about”; chaitanya is radiant, centerless knowing, not stopping anywhere, not fixing on anything, spreading to infinity. There is no point at which stupor need arise.

So the supreme state is complete awakening. Its exact opposite is complete deep sleep. In concentration there is a single point of light and darkness elsewhere. In total awareness, there is no point—only awareness everywhere. The object is gone; only the knower remains—and even the knower as a point dissolves, leaving pure knowingness spread without limit. Whenever you know “something,” you always pay for it with ignorance of something else. Knowledge exacts the price of ignorance.

Thus, the more a man knows about one thing, the more ignorant he must remain about many others. The scientist is the paradigm: the chemist knows little of physics; the mathematician little of chemistry. Specialization demands ignorance of much. Mahavira and Buddha, in this sense, are not “experts.” We call Mahavira sarvajna, all-knowing, and yet he cannot tell you how to patch a bicycle tire. He is no specialist. Science means knowing more and more about less and less, until one knows almost everything about almost nothing—while ignorance spreads everywhere else.

Hence a great scientist who can build a hydrogen bomb may be cheated by a simple shopkeeper. His arrow of attention is fixed on a minute object; for the rest, there is darkness—even about himself. Ask him about his field, he answers; ask him about himself, he hesitates. Edison, who made a thousand inventions, once stood in a ration queue during the First World War. When the name “Thomas Edison” was called, he looked around as if for someone else—he had not heard his own name spoken for decades. “You remind me,” he said, “for thirty years I have had no occasion to meet myself; I forgot my name.” His consciousness had been riveted outward.

In the final state I speak of, all objects disappear; light is everywhere, and the point “I am” is also lit. It is unfocused light. Call it not light, but radiance. Between prakash (focused light) and alok (radiance) lies this difference: when the sun rises, there is light; when night ends yet the sun is not seen, there is radiance—diffuse, uncentered glow.

God is radiance. The culminating awakening is a state of pure glow. The opposite is darkness, complete deep sleep. In full awakening, neither a knower-point remains nor a known-object; only endless radiance remains—which, in one sense, knows everything because nothing lies outside its light, and in another sense knows nothing in particular because it has not seized upon any object. It is not knowledge in the scientist’s sense; it is knowledge in the poet’s sense.

The ordinary state is concentration: we know one thing and forget the rest, ourselves included. Prior to that lies the primal state: we know neither objects nor ourselves—total darkness. Knowing is still in the womb, a seed unmanifest. That is complete sleep. The other pole is complete awakening. Between them lie innumerable gradations of attention, and we swing among them.

By day, your pendulum tilts a little toward wakefulness; by night, toward deep sleep. When we sleep, we come closer to matter; when we awaken, we come closer to the divine—just a little sway. If this movement deepens, there comes a time when even in sleep you are not totally asleep: you know that sleep is happening. Then sleep is only physical rest, not inner darkness. You turn over in the night and know you are turning. A continuous current of knowing begins to flow.

The reverse also occurs. A man in coma, intoxicated, unconscious—is there, yet knows neither inside nor outside. Both the knower and the known are lost—in darkness. In the supreme state, both are lost too—but in light.

So, in brief: there is a journey of attention, from total sleep to total awakening, across many levels.

Trees too know—science now offers evidence. Plants can hear, feel; some even have light-sensitive skins. I recently saw experiments at Oxford’s Delabar Laboratory. They sowed half the seeds from the same packet in one pot, half in another. Over one pot, a saintly person prayed that the seeds sprout quickly, flower, fruit, and reach fulfillment; over the other, no prayer. Everything else was kept identical; gardeners were not told of any difference. The prayed-over pot sprouted sooner, more fully; all its seeds germinated; its flowers and fruits differed in quality. The implication is astonishing: prayer is sensed and received.

More startling still: the Christian monk who prayed wore a cross around his neck and spread his hands while praying over a seed. A photograph of that seed showed, it is claimed, the faint imprint of his cross and spread hands—on the seed’s image. The implications are vast. The seed, too, receives—has some interiority. Compared to man it is more asleep, yet within its sleep a kind of wakefulness exists.

Stones are yet more asleep, and yet within their sleep too there is a wakefulness. Not all stones are alike; they have personality. From the discovery of the personality of stones came the finding of precious stones. It is not merely scarcity that makes a gem precious. There are stones more awake, stones more asleep; stones awake in certain directions and thus usable for specific purposes. Wear such a stone and events begin to occur that would not have otherwise—because the stone has its own life, and in living with it a shared field arises.

Some stones carry a legend of misfortune—whoever possesses them suffers, and yet finds it hard to part with them. Over hundreds, even thousands of years, their history repeats: wherever they go, trouble follows. Others enhance fortune and possibility. Stones, plants—everything has personality, shaped by degrees of sleeping and waking—by the activity of attention.

So think of it this way:
- The activity of attention is awareness.
- The inactivity of attention is sleep, stupor.
- The extreme inactivity of attention is matter.
- The extreme activity of attention is the divine.

In relation to this answer, there is another question.

The moment the word “absolute” is used, certain conditions must be understood. If we ask where the absolute ends, we are asking a wrong question—because the very meaning of the absolute is that it cannot end anywhere. If it ends, it becomes limited, partial. If we ask where the absolute begins, again it is a wrong question—because if it begins, it cannot be absolute. The absolute is always beginningless and endless. It has no edge before or after. If there is an edge, it is no longer the absolute. So we cannot ask before-and-after questions about the absolute. If you must ask, ask only on this side of it. The very meaning of the absolute is that beyond it questions become meaningless.

When the mind asks, “From where has this unconsciousness come? Why did it come? When did it come? Where will it end? Why should it end? When will it end? Where does the state of awareness exist? And where would the state of total unconsciousness exist?”—such questions are quite consistent and yet utterly meaningless. Do not fall into the illusion that something becomes meaningful just because it is consistent. It can be consistent and still meaningless. These questions are wholly consistent. But any answers given to them will also be meaningless and will resolve nothing—because about whatever answer is given, the same kind of question can again be asked. Then what would I like to say to you?

I would say: just as there are things you never ask a scientist, why do you ask them of a religious person? Some questions are never put to a scientist; why are they put to a religious one? And the religious mind is often naive: where the scientist refuses to answer, the religious jumps into the mistake of answering. All religions fall into this mistake, getting trapped by answering questions that cannot be answered.

For example, if you ask a scientist, “Why is a tree green?” he will say, “Because of chlorophyll.” If you then ask, “Why does a tree have chlorophyll?” he will say, “That is not a question; it is a fact. That is how it is.” He will say, “There is chlorophyll; therefore the tree is green.” If you ask, “Why shouldn’t it be that a tree has no chlorophyll?” he will say, “I am not a creator; there is no answer to that.”

In this way science avoids foolishness: it leaves things at the level of fact—this is how it is. It says: mix oxygen and hydrogen and water is formed. No one goes to ask: “Why is it that mixing oxygen and hydrogen produces water? Why does it happen so?” He will say, “That is not the question. We know that when they are combined, water is formed; when they are not, it is not. This is a fact.” Beyond this, if we offer a “why,” fiction begins.

So I want to say: in the world there is unconsciousness and there is awakening. This is a fact. No way has yet been found to go beyond these facts; and I don’t think one ever can be. These are ultimate facts.

At this end there is darkness; at that end there is light. Darkness, ultimately, dissolves into the infinite—its first edge is not to be found. Light, too, dissolves into the infinite—we do not see where it ends. And we are always in the middle, seeing a little distance in both directions. Look a little way back and you find darkness increasing, thickening. Look forward and you find darkness thinning, light growing denser. But neither the end of light is seen, nor the end of darkness. Neither is the beginning of darkness visible, nor any limit to light. Such is our position in the middle. However far one can see, this is all that is seen; even the farthest seer has seen no more.

What difficulty arises? Once we manufacture questions, some unwise person will always be found to answer them. Once a question is coined, an answerer will appear, because someone will manufacture an answer. Thus all philosophies have been made—by foolish answers to foolish questions. The questions remain the same; the answers differ, because each answer is a matter of personal thinking. Someone will say, “God created.” But what difference does that make? We can still ask: Why did he create? Why did he create it like this? Why is God creating at all? The matter will stick right there. Someone else will say, “All is maya—beyond understanding.” He says it is beyond understanding, all is illusion—and when he says “all is maya,” he is speaking within understanding; he has “understood” it! If it is beyond understanding, be silent; do not say “all is maya.” If it is beyond understanding, how can there be an answer? Be silent; don’t answer.

Another says: “God made man so that man could attain God.” What madness! If God made man for that, why didn’t he make him God in the first place? What need for this hassle, this whole disturbance? Another says: “This whole thing runs so that the fruits of past actions can be reaped.” But we can ask: there must have been a first birth before which there were no births—so for what karma was that first birth? That would be causeless!

In my view, none of the ultimate questions of the world has been answered by any philosophy. And at their foundation all philosophies are dishonest; a deep dishonesty is hidden there. Yes, once their basic dishonesty escapes your notice, the entire structure that follows will look absolutely right. If you accept the first lie, all subsequent lies will appear as truths.

If someone accepts that God is the creator, the matter seems finished. But how do we know that God is the creator? If that question arises even once, then nothing has finished or begun; we are back where we started.

My own view is to look at religion in the same way as science. I remember: a few days before his death, someone asked Einstein, “What difference do you see between a scientist and a philosopher?” Einstein said: I call him a scientist who, if you ask a hundred questions, will answer one and for ninety-nine will say, “I don’t know.” And even regarding the one he answers he will add: “This is what is known so far; what is known later may change it. This is not a final statement.” Science never gives a final statement. Therefore there is a kind of honesty in science.

And Einstein said: the philosopher—if you ask him a hundred questions, he will give a hundred and fifty answers, and every answer is absolute, never changing. What he has said is the proof; whoever doubts it may go to hell. But the principle never changes; it is fixed.

My approach is that if we can cultivate the scientific and the religious minds together, that is my state. I am speaking entirely about religion, but my perspective is always that of a scientist. Therefore I have no answers to the ultimate questions—nor can there be answers. And the moment an answer appears, understand that it is no longer an ultimate question; it has become some intermediate question that has been answered—and then the matter moves further.

“Ultimate question” means: it still stands after all answers. The ultimate question means that however many answers you devise, when you finish answering you will find the question standing where it was, the question mark intact. Only this much happens: it moves back a step. You push it aside here; it stands again a little behind.

You must have seen that Japanese doll which, however you throw it, stands upright—the Daruma doll. It is modeled after a sage: Bodhidharma, who went from India; his Japanese name is Daruma. Because of Bodhidharma that doll was made. However much you lift and throw Bodhidharma, he will stand just as he was—where he was, he will be. In imitation of him the doll was made. However you throw it, overturn it, push it down, it will stand up again.

The ultimate questions are like the Daruma doll, like Bodhidharma. Whatever you do, they will stand back in place. Yes, only their position will change: in your throwing they will move here and there and stand elsewhere. Push them from there; they stand in a third place. You can keep shoving all your life—you will tire; the doll will not. It will keep standing.

These are ultimate questions. When we ask before-and-after about the absolute, we step outside the domain of meaningful questioning—it is meaningless. All I can tell you is: behind spreads darkness—unconsciousness; ahead spreads light—awareness. I can also say this: as darkness lessens, bliss increases. I can also say: as darkness increases, suffering grows. These are facts. If you choose suffering, you can move toward darkness and unconsciousness. If you choose bliss, you can move toward light and the supreme light. And if you choose to go nowhere, you can stand in the middle and go on speculating: What was first? What lies ahead?

The sense of death dissolves if one can die awakened in the very moment of dying. That is, if someone can maintain awareness as death approaches, he discovers that he does not die. When I say death is proved to be an illusion, it does not mean death remains while only the illusion disappears. To say death is an illusion means that if one stays aware at the moment of death, he finds he does not die at all. It is not that some “illusory death” still remains. No—if an awakened person dies, he discovers there is no death. Death becomes untrue.

But then the natural question is: to whom does the illusion of death occur? It is also right to ask: it cannot be to the body, for how will the body know? It cannot be to the soul, for the soul does not die. Then to whom does the illusion of death occur?

It happens neither to the soul nor to the body. In truth the illusion of death does not happen to the person at all; the illusion of death is a social phenomenon. This needs a little understanding. The illusion of death is a social event; it is not essentially an individual event. We see a man die and we think, “He is dead.” I have not died, so in a way I have no right to think anything about it—and my taking a decision is sheer foolishness. All I can legitimately say is that the person is no longer appearing as I knew him until now. Anything more is risky; it goes beyond the boundary. I should say, “Until yesterday he spoke; now he does not. Until yesterday he walked; now he does not. That life which I understood as his is no longer.” In truth, one should only say: “The life that was visible until yesterday is no more. If there is some further life, it will be—and if there is not, it will not be.” But to say, “He is dead,” is to say too much, to go beyond the limit. We should say only, “He is no longer alive in the way we called alive.” What we have known as life is no longer there.

Such a negative statement is fine: “What we took to be life—fighting, quarreling, loving, eating, drinking—now is not.” But “he has died” is a very positive assertion. We are not merely saying, “What was, is not.” We are adding, “Something else has also happened—he has died.” We are asserting that some ‘event of dying’ has occurred. It is one thing to say the old happenings are no longer occurring; but we say more—we say a new event has been added: he died. And who says this? We, who have not died. We, who have no knowledge of dying. We stand around in a crowd, and a man has died; and the whole crowd decides the case without asking the man himself. He has no testimony in the matter. Judgment is being passed in court one-sidedly; the other party is not present. The poor man cannot say, “I have not died,” or “I have died.” He has no voice in it, and those who decide are none of them dead.

Do you see my point? This is a social delusion. It is not that man’s delusion; it is society’s. The man’s own delusion is of another kind. His delusion is not about dying; his delusion is something else: he has lived so drowsily, so asleep, that at the time of death how can he remain awake? A man who has been asleep even while “awake” in the daytime—can he remain awake in sleep? The one who could not see in broad daylight—will he see in the darkness of night? The one who, while alive, could not see what life is—do you think he will be able to see what death is? As soon as life slips from his hands, he will fall into deep unconsciousness.

Outwardly, we conclude he has died—this is society’s decision and conclusion, and it is wrong, because none present is a qualified witness. There is no right witness, for no one has ever seen anyone die. The process of dying has never been seen. We have only known that until now he was living and now he is not living. Beyond this there is a wall. Beyond this wall no one has ever seen the event of dying.

Our difficulty is that when certain notions are long in circulation, we stop thinking about them. For example, if I say to you, “No one has ever seen light,” you will at once object: “What are you saying?” But I say: no one has ever seen light. We have only seen things illuminated; no one has seen light itself.

In this room we say there is light because the walls are visible, you are visible. Light is not visible; things are visible in light. Light is always an unknown source; some things glow within it. Because they glow, we say there is light. When they do not glow, we say there is darkness. Nor have we seen darkness. If one has not seen light, how would he have seen darkness? We can at least imagine seeing light; but how would darkness be seen?

What we call darkness simply means: now we are not seeing anything. It would be better to say, “I am not able to see anything”—that would be the fact. We say, “It is dark.” That is entirely wrong. We reify darkness as a thing. It is proper only to say, “I am not able to see.” But my not seeing does not mean there is darkness; it means the source in which things used to appear luminous has become dim. Things are not seen; hence “darkness.”

A man who has taken life to be only this—eating, drinking, sleeping, getting up, sitting, fighting, quarreling, loving, friendship and enmity—when he begins to die, he suddenly feels life is going. What he took to be life was not life; those were only things seen in the light of life. Just as in light objects are seen, so when life was inside, he saw certain things: he ate, befriended, feuded, built houses, earned money, rose to positions. All that was seen in the light of life. Now all that is fading. Now he thinks, “It’s gone, I’m gone; life is gone.” And he too has seen others “die.” That social illusion is in his mind as well—that people die. Now he says, “I am dying.”

Even that judgment of his comes from the share of social delusion. He says, “As others died, now I too am dying.” Around him his loved ones are beating their chests; that confirms his illusion. A hypnotic effect is working upon him: all the signs are “as they should be”—the doctor is there, oxygen has been arranged, hands and feet are being tied, the atmosphere in the house has changed, tears are in people’s eyes. He understands: “I’m dying.” The social delusion seizes him: “Now I am dying.” And all the friends and relatives around him are hypnotizing him: “You are dying.” Someone is checking his pulse, someone is reading the Gita, someone is chanting mantras in his ear. They are giving him firm assurance that he is dying—because whatever is done with the dying, they are now doing with him. They are beating their chests.

This is social hypnotism. Now he becomes quite convinced: “I am dying—now I am dead, dead, dead.” In this hypnosis of dying he will become unconscious, panic-stricken, afraid, contractive—“I am dying; what can be done?” In that panic and fear he will close his eyes. In that panic and fear he will faint.

In fact, fainting is one of our tricks, used against things we fear. If your stomach pain becomes intense—so intense you cannot bear it—you will faint. That is your trick, a mental switch to turn pain off. It is a device of the mind: the pain is too much; now we want not to feel it. The pain does not cease, so the alternative is: we cease. We switch ourselves off so we don’t know the pain is happening. This is our personal arrangement whenever pain becomes too great.

Note well: there is no such thing in the world as an “unbearable” pain. You only know up to the bearable. The moment the limit of bearable is crossed, you are gone. Unbearable pain, as such, does not exist. If someone says, “I am in unbearable pain,” do not believe it—for he is still conscious. If it were truly unbearable, he would already have fainted. The natural trick would have worked; he would be unconscious by now. The instant pain crosses the limit of bearable, one faints.

Now, when for small illnesses we become afraid, panic and faint, death brings an even more frightening idea. The very idea of death kills us—we faint. And in that fainting, the event we call death occurs.

Therefore when I say death is an illusion, I do not call it the soul’s illusion, nor the body’s. I call it a social delusion that we cultivate in every child. We teach every child: “You will die, and dying is like this.” All the “symptoms” of dying are learned through life, and when they happen to him, he closes his eyes and faints. He becomes hypnotized.

Against this, active meditation has been devised—how to enter even death with awareness. In Tibet that process is called Bardo. At the time of dying, just as we now hypnotize, they give anti-hypnotic suggestions. When a person is dying, all his dear ones stand around and tell him, “You are not dying, because no one ever dies.” They give this anti-hypnotic suggestion. No one will weep, no one will wail; nothing of that sort is done. All gather, and the village priest or monk or sannyasin says to him, “You are not dying, because no one ever dies. Depart knowingly, awake, at ease. You will not die, for no one ever dies.” Then the man closes his eyes, and the whole process is described to him: “Now this will drop from you, now this will drop, now this…” but you will remain. “Now your legs have dropped away, now your hands have dropped away, now this is dropping; now you cannot speak—but you are.” From all sides they keep suggesting. These are only anti-hypnotic. That is, to prevent his social delusion—“I am dying”—from seizing him, they apply the antidote.

If the world became healthy regarding death, there would be no need of Bardo. But we are very unhealthy. We are steeped in delusion; hence the counter-method becomes necessary. I feel that in this country too there should be a widespread beginning of a Bardo-like practice. Whenever anyone is dying, his loved ones should try to break this delusion: “You are not dying.” If we can keep him alert, and remind him at each step—the steps are all there. When consciousness withdraws from the body, not everything dies at once; it leaves one limb at a time, one part at a time, slowly shrinking inward. There are stages. Each stage can be pointed out, and measures can be taken to keep the person aware.

Many kinds of measures are possible. Certain fragrances can keep him alert—just as certain fragrances can induce fainting, others can rouse awareness. Frankincense, incense—these were invented because they assist in awakening. A kind of music can be created around him that keeps him awake; there is music that lulls to sleep, and there can be music that wakes. Words or mantras can be intoned that support wakefulness rather than sleep. One can give small physical stimulations so he does not doze—keep him in awareness. One can seat him in postures that do not allow sleep, that keep him attentive.

A Zen fakir was dying. At the time of dying he said to the monks around him, “I am going to ask you something. Now my time has come; so I think—what is the point of dying as everyone else dies? Many have died that way already. Tell me, have you ever seen someone die while walking—he kept walking and died?” They said, “We have not seen it, but we have heard of it. Once a fakir died while walking.” He said, “Leave that. Have you seen someone die while in a headstand?” They said, “Seen? We haven’t even imagined it! We can’t even dream of someone upside down, dying.” He said, “Then that will be fitting.” He stood on his head and died.

People around were terrified: a corpse in a headstand—who would dare take him down and lay him on a bier? Even an unknown corpse frightens; this one was dangerous—dead and standing on his head! No one had the courage to bring him down. Someone said, “His sister is also a nun; she lives in the nearby monastery. Call her. Whenever he caused trouble, she would set him right. She is his elder sister.”

They sent word. She came very annoyed. “It’s his same old habit,” she said. “He’s grown old but hasn’t dropped it. Even at death he will create mischief.” She came with a stick, banged it on the ground and said, “Stop this devilry! If you must die, die properly!”

The man laughed, came down, and said, “I was only playing a little—wanted to see what they would do. Now I will die properly, conventionally.” Then he lay down and died. His sister left, saying, “Fine, now finish the rites. There is a right way for everything; do things properly.”

Our illusion about death is a social delusion. It can be broken. There are methods and arrangements to break it. And even if no one else breaks it for you, anyone who has done a little meditation will break it himself at the time of death. No outside help is needed. If you have known even a little meditation, if you have known even a little of the truth that “I am separate from the body,” if even once you have had a glimpse—“I am separate; the body is separate”—then at death you will not have to faint. In reality, your habit of fainting has already been broken. You will be able to die knowingly. And to “die knowingly” is a contradiction in terms: one who knows cannot die, because he continues to know, “I am not dying. Something is dying; I am not dying.” He keeps knowing. In the end he finds: the body has been left there; I am separate. Then death is only a parting, the breaking of an association—like my stepping out of this house.

But suppose the people of this house have no idea that there is any world outside the walls, and they believe there is nothing outside. They bid me farewell at the door and return weeping: “The man is dead!” Such is our situation.

Death is the separation of body and consciousness. It is separation—therefore to call it “death” is pointless. It is simply the loosening and dropping of a relationship; nothing more than a change of clothes, a change of garments. Therefore one who dies knowingly does not die; the question of death for him does not arise. He will not even say “death is an illusion.” He will not say “who dies and who does not.” He will simply say: life was a conjunction which we called life until yesterday. That conjunction has broken; now a new life has begun which, in that sense, is not a conjunction. Perhaps it is a new conjunction, a new journey.

So when I said that to one who dies knowingly, death is proved to be an illusion, have you caught my meaning? Illusion means: it was never there. It was a social notion created by those who do not know how to die, who have not died, who have no clue about dying. It has been going on from beginningless time and will go on, because the not-dying will continue to decide about the dying. The one who dies does not return with news. In fact, very often it happens that a meditative person—one in whom even a little capacity for meditation has ripened—when he dies, it takes him a long time to realize that he has died. He is only surprised to see people around him weeping: “Why are they crying?” And the arrangements to burn his body, or to bury it, to carry it to the cremation ground—these are important only to remind him: “You have died; you are no longer what you were.”

Therefore, in this land, except for the sannyasin, we used to burn everyone’s body. The reason was simply this: if the body were kept, he might wander for a fortnight, a month or two, deluded that he has not died, circling around the same body. He feels, “Somehow I slipped out of the body; how do I get back in?” If the body remains there, it will obstruct his new journey. He will circle it unnecessarily. So the arrangement was to burn it immediately, so that, going to the cremation ground, he sees: the matter is over. What I had taken to be my body is no longer there. The pathway is cut, the bridge has fallen; there is no way back across. The matter is finished; what I took myself to be I am not.

So remember: the arrangement of cremating the dead is not merely to vacate the house; there is something more precious in it. The one who has departed cannot believe he has died. How could he believe it? He finds himself exactly as he was—no difference at all has occurred within him.

Only the sannyasin’s body we did not burn, because he had already come to know, “I am not the body.” Therefore we could build a samadhi over a sannyasin’s body, for he knew already, “I am not the body.” Preserving his body poses no difficulty. But preserving an ordinary person’s body is problematic—he may wander, orbiting for long; he may think, “My body is still here; somehow I must re-enter.”

Dying with awareness is possible only if you live with awareness. If you learn to live consciously, you will certainly die consciously—because dying too is an event of life. It happens within life; it is one event of life. One should say: it is the last event of what you took to be life, not something outside life. Ordinarily we take death to be something outside or opposite to life. No—it is the last link in the chain of life itself.

A fruit appears on a tree. It is green. Then it turns yellow, more yellow; finally it becomes fully yellow and drops from the tree. That falling from the tree is not an event outside its yellowing; it is the consummation of its ripening. The falling is not some external event that arrived from outside; it is the climax of what was ripening within. And when it was green? Even then the preparation was on. And when it had not yet appeared on the branch, hidden within the branch? Even then the preparation was on. And when the tree itself was not yet born, and was only a seed? Even then the preparation was on. And when even that seed was not yet formed, hidden within another tree? Even then the preparation was on. The event is one part in the same continuous series. It is not an end; it is only a separation. One relationship, one arrangement ends; another relationship, another arrangement begins.

Nirvana means, first, that one has come to know perfectly that death does not happen at all—one. Second, that what we call life yields nothing—this too has been known. Nirvana means the knowing of two truths: that what we call death is not death, and what we call life is not life. Are you following me?

I have just told you one thing: whoever truly knows death will find that death is not death. But coupled with it is a second happening: whoever looks at life with total wakefulness will discover that what the world calls life is not life either. That too is a social delusion, just as death is a social delusion. Nirvana means these two insights are fully realized.

If you know only this much—that death is not death—life will still continue. You have known only half. The longing will remain to live again, to grab another body, to be born again. That will go on. The day you also fully know the second truth—that life is not life and death is not death—there is no returning. The point of no return has come. Then there is no meaning in coming back here. Do you understand what I mean?

We have seen a man off outside the house. The people at home think, “This house was the end.” While he was inside, the man too thought this house was the end. Once outside, he will knock on the door: “Let me in.” If the steps of this house are broken, he will knock on some other house: “Let me in.” Because life seems to be inside a house. He will enter some house again. If not this house, another. Exactly so: when a person dies, the very instant he dies, since he had taken the body to be life, he immediately, restlessly, desperately runs about to obtain a body.

You may not have noticed: at night when you sleep, the last thought you have becomes your first thought when you wake in the morning. Test it a little. The thought that is last as you fall asleep will, seven hours later, be your first thought in the morning. For seven hours it will wait for you to awaken, sitting at the door: “Wake up, let us begin work.” If you slept after quarreling with someone, that person will be the first thought in the morning. If you slept after praying, prayer will return first thing in the morning. What ended the night before begins the next morning.

So the last thought, the desire or craving at a person’s final moment, becomes his first desire the moment he dies. He sets out at once. If at the time of death he is saying, “My body is being destroyed, I am dying, my body is gone, my body is gone,” then immediately after death he will cry, “A body, a body—I need a body!” He will run, he will hurry to find a way to take up a body as quickly as possible. The last craving at death—and remember, that last craving will be the distillation of your whole life.

In fact, the night’s last thought is the distillation of your day. It is the day’s summary. Just as a shopkeeper works all day and at night writes the summary in his ledger before sleeping, so the last thought at night is the condensed essence of what you were doing all day. If someone were to keep writing down only their last thought every night, the astonishing autobiography they would write—none could write a more wondrous one. It would be a condensed life-story, with the essential included and the non-essential omitted. And if you keep writing down your first thought every morning, then by looking at fifteen first thoughts over fifteen days, everything about your life could be said—what you were, what you are becoming, what you are trying to become.

The last thought at the time of death is the distilled essence of your seventy or eighty years. That very essence becomes the potential for your next life. It is the capital you carry forward. Call it karma, call it craving, call it anything—call it samskara—it makes no difference. It is the built-in program of your whole life that will operate in the future.

Now, when we plant a tiny seed, a marvel: why does a banyan tree emerge from that seed? There must be a built-in program for a banyan in the seed; otherwise it could not happen. It must have a blueprint. How else would it produce leaves, branches—and why would all those branches be banyan branches? There must be a plan! In that tiny seed the whole plan must be present. If we could prepare a horoscope of that seed’s future, we could report leaf by leaf how many leaves it will bear, how many fruits, how many seeds, how tall it will grow, how broad, how large its branches will be, how many bullock carts could rest beneath it. All this is in that little seed, if someday we could fully examine it! For in it everything is hidden. It is the blueprint of the whole building-to-be.

At the time of dying we all compress and gather the condensed summary of our life. Whatever we regarded as significant, we save; what we regarded as trivial, we drop. A man who earned a hundred thousand rupees and gave a thousand to build a temple—remember, at death he will not remember the thousand-rupee temple; he will remember the ninety-nine thousand rupees in his safe. What was significant will be saved; what was not will be left. In the dying moment your essential and non-essential are sifted. The useless drops away. The essence you pull together and take along. That becomes your journey. It immediately becomes your new built-in program. And according to that plan you will embark on a new journey, a new birth will happen, a new body, an entirely new arrangement. And this happens as scientifically as anything else does.

Nirvana means that a person has known both: that death is not death, and that life is not life. When both are known, there is no built-in program left. He has dropped the program. Now he says, “I leave both the essential and the non-essential behind.” Do you get the meaning? When he dies, he says, “Now both the essential and the non-essential are left.” Now we go alone—the bird goes alone. He goes alone now. He leaves everything. He says, “Keep the safe, keep the temple.” The debts he had taken are left; the debts he had given are also left. The good that was done is left; the bad that was done is left. In truth, we are leaving.

Kabir has said: “As it was, so I have returned the sheet that I had worn with such great care.” So that no account trails behind, so that nothing starts to appear as essential or non-essential, nothing to be saved and nothing to be discarded. Kabir says, “I wore it with great care—and then returned the sheet exactly as it was.” Then there can be no built-in program for what lies ahead, because the whole affair has been left exactly as it was. Nothing was selected, nothing was saved. Not even, “Let me at least take one thing—I earned it over a lifetime.” No, everything is left. Therefore Kabir says, “The swan goes alone.” Now the swan goes alone; he carries nothing at all. Neither friend nor foe—no one. Neither good nor bad; neither scripture nor doctrine—nothing.

Nirvana means this: one has known that what we called life was not life; what we called death was not death. And when we have known what was not, then what is begins to appear.

Then—tomorrow!