Will you stay with me in death as well?

Saroj has asked: “In birth—in this very life—I have found you. Will you stay with me in death as well?”

Birth and death are not separate. Birth is one aspect; death is the other. What is found in birth is found in death as well. What is death? Truly, it is a riddle; life is death’s companion. They are together. What is gained in life is not lost in death. If it is lost in death, that only proves it was never truly gained in life—one had only been deceived into believing so. Wealth gained in life is lost in death—that was a deception. The naive call it an asset; the wise call it a calamity. The ignorant call it wealth; the knowing call it a misfortune—because a whole life was squandered in earning it, and then death came and all was gone. Meditation is wealth. Devotion is wealth. If you have earned them, you have earned them; death cannot snatch them away. Nainam chindanti shastrani, nainam dahati pavakah. Then…

But Osho, the longing for your love does not diminish!

Whatever happens, love is not destroyed. Death has been defeated only before love. No one meets death in the world of love! The lover simply does not die. The lover has never died. The lover can never die. Why? Because in love, egolessness flowers by itself. And where there is no ego, there is no death. Only the ego dies. You never die. You are eternal, you are nectar. Amritasya putraḥ! O children of immortality! You have no death. But the ego you have constructed—the I-sense you have built—that will die. It is imagined. You have propped it up by force. It is false. It is like the fake man we stand in a field: a pot hoisted on a pole, a Gandhi cap set on top, an achkan draped, a sherwani thrown over, a mask fixed—and there stands the field’s sham man. At most, it will scare off a…

Osho, when you speak of your death I begin to tremble. Master, we cannot bear to hear it. We cannot live without you. Even the thought makes the heart shudder.

We had a friend—Ramlal Rana. In the machinery of his head, who knows what went wrong. He began to take himself to be a grain of wheat! Wherever he saw a rooster—he would be afraid: “This one will eat me”— and die a thousand deaths while still alive. Wherever he saw a sack, he grew nervous, skittish: “Someone will stuff me into it, tie it shut.” And if a flour mill came into view, Brother Rana would run for his life: “Here I’ll be ground to powder!” Well, some well-wishers, to set his brain right, filled out a form and had him admitted to the asylum. The doctor explained, “Dear Rana! You have two ears, two eyes, two legs, two hands, you walk, you speak— how can you be a grain of wheat?” But Rana wouldn’t agree— simply wouldn’t agree. He went on believing himself a grain of wheat. A…

In love as well as in meditation the moment of dissolving, disappearing, is so tremendously beautiful. Is it possible for a man who is still not egoless, not enlightened, to encounter death consciously and to _ welcome and enjoy it the same way? You are everywhere. But after we will have died, shall we find ourselves in such a state that it will be possible for us to remain attuned to you whether you are in the body or not? Would you please talk on death?

It is a significant question, and very urgent too. It is from Ma Ananda Shefali. She is a very, very old woman, and she will be facing death sooner or later. And it is good to prepare, it is good to go ready into death. The first thing to be understood about death is: if you have known love you have known death, if you have known meditation you have known death. Death does not bring anything new. It is new only for those who have not loved and who have not meditated. Shefali need not be afraid: she has been deeply in meditation and she has loved intensely. She's the old woman I was talking about just a few days ago, who has become like a child, whose child is born, who is no more a camel and no more a lion, who has become the child. She has…

Osho, are the deaths of meditation and of love different? Are their processes different as well?

Death is one and the same—whether through meditation or through love. But the processes, the paths, the methods that lead to that death are different. Through meditation, the same thing happens: you disappear. Through love, the same thing happens: you disappear. The dissolving happens in both cases, but the ways are very different. In the first stages of meditation, you do not vanish. At that stage, what is false in you is burned away and what is true is preserved. The inauspicious is removed; the auspicious is kept. Impurity is burned; purity is protected. Thus on the path of knowledge or meditation one begins to be purified. One does not disappear; one becomes refined, yet one remains. In the final leap, the refinement reaches a point where even purity appears impure. Where mere being appears impure, there, in the last jump, the meditator snuffs himself out. The devotee snuffs himself…