You feel drawn to death because you want pain to stop, but real happiness comes when your ego ends—not your life.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I have attempted suicide a number of times, and I feel really attracted to death. This disturbs me, but at the same time gives me joy. Will you say something about it?
Seeing the notes, immediately he was back, perfectly healthy. He walked down the hill laughing, and told the peon, "You should not listen to this man, he is dangerous. He almost killed me!" He told the other professor, "This is not right, that you suggested to me that I must have had a heart attack." He told the postmaster, "You are my neighbor, and is this right, to push me towards death?" He was very angry with his wife. He said, "I can think that he persuaded other people -- he has everybody impressed by him -- but I cannot believe that my own wife deceived me, listened to him. We were in an argument; it was a question of my prestige, and you destroyed it!" But the wife said, "You should be grateful to him. He has given proof that man can be programmed for something which does not…Read the full discourse →
Osho, I am afraid of death, yet at the same time it has an incredible attraction for me. What does it mean?
DEATH IS THE GREATEST MYSTERY OF LIFE. Life has many mysteries, but there is nothing comparable to death. Death is the climax, the crescendo. One is afraid of it because one will be lost, one will dissolve in it. One is afraid of it because of the ego -- the ego cannot survive death. It will be left on this shore when you start moving towards the other; it cannot go with you. And the ego is all that you know about yourself, hence the fear, great fear: "I will not exist in death." But there is great attraction too. The ego will be lost, but not your reality. In fact, death will reveal to you your true identity; death will take away all your masks and will reveal your original face. Death will for the first time make it possible for you to encounter your innermost, interiormost subjectivity as…Read the full discourse →
The strangest thing has happened: I feel happy! My problems seem transparent, and I feel more and more alive. You talk about the need to die. How can my happiness lead me through'the dark night of the soul'?
This is from Sambuddha. Now, Sambuddha, please don't try to create new problems. This is how the mind functions. Even if you are happy, you feel uneasy. You, and happy? -- impossible. Something must have gone wrong; it doesn't fit with the idea that you have of yourself. You, and happy? You must have gone mad, or you must be imagining, or this man, Rajneesh, has hypnotized you. You, and happy? -- impossible. Now, Sambuddha, don't try to create new problems. Forget all that I say about dying, because in the happiest moments one dies. The death I am talking about is not the death of misery; the death I am talking about is not the death of suffering, is not the death of agony. The death I am talking about is the death of ecstasy, the death of pure bliss, the death when you are so happy that you…Read the full discourse →
The more you talk about death, the greater my desire for life. I have just realised that I have not really lived. While I can understand that life and death come together, there is a yearning inside me that cries out for life, love and passionate intensity. I have discovered I am anguished at the thought of surrendering my unfulfilled desires. Can one give up what one has never had? I feel I would only return to the body again. Illusion or not, to my great amazement I have to admit that I still desire, and I have never felt such hunger.
So let me tell you one thing. You are afraid of life because you are afraid of death. And I would like to teach you how to die so that you lose all fear of death. The moment you lose the fear of death you become capable of living. I am not talking against life. How can I talk against life? I am madly in love with life! I am so madly in love with life, that because of it I have fallen in love with death also. It is part of life. When you love life totally how can you avoid death? You have to love death also. When you love a flower deeply, you love its withering away also: When you love a woman deeply, you love her getting old also, you one day love her death also. That is part, part of the woman. The old age…Read the full discourse →
Beloved Osho, often, when I am deeply relaxed, a strong feeling to die comes up in me. In these moments I feel myself as part of the whole cosmos, and I want to disappear into it. On one hand, it is such a beautiful feeling, and I am so grateful for it. On the other hand I mistrust it: maybe I have not said "yes" to myself, to my being, if the desire to die is so strong. Is it a suicidal desire?
It is not a suicidal desire. One basic thing about suicide is that it arises only in people who are clinging very much to life. And when they fail in their clinging, the mind moves to the opposite pole. The function of the mind is of either/or: either it wants the whole, or none of it. The lust for life cannot be fulfilled totally, because life as such is a temporal thing; it is bound to end at a point, just as it began one day at a point. You cannot have a line with only the beginning; somewhere or other there is bound to be an end. So the people who commit suicide are not against life; it only appears so. They want life in its totality, they want to grab it whole, and when they fail -- and they are bound to fail -- then out of frustration,…Read the full discourse →