Question :

Osho,

What is it that happens within a twenty-four-mile radius of a living master that causes a person to become enlightened when he dies within that twenty-four-mile radius?

 

 

It is simply a law of existence, like other laws. The enlightened man has a certain energy aura around him. Everybody has, but different people have different colored auras. That color depends on their psychology. In fact, one can see the aura; there is a certain training how to see the aura that surrounds your body and particularly your head. And looking at that aura, much can be said about your mind, your past, your actions, your desires, your imagination, your ambitions -- almost your whole biography in the past, and, if you remain continuous with the past, the future also can be predicted.

 

As a person starts meditating, the colors of his aura start changing. When the meditation is complete, when you have come to your innermost point, you are surrounded by a twenty-five-mile-radius aura of immense whiteness. It is not like the sunrise, but it is like just before the sunrise, just those few moments when there is light but the sun has not arisen. In the East we have called it brahmamuhurt, the moment of the divine.

 

And why have we called that the moment of the divine? The reason was because of the exact type of light, without any source because the sun has not yet risen; it is far below the horizon but the night is over... between the night and the day. In India, meditation has a very beautiful name, sandhya. Sandhya means the time just before the sun rises, and the time just after the sun sets -- just a few seconds -- because they both are the same, a light without source.

 

The ordinary person's aura is an average of two inches around him, but as he grows, becomes mature, the aura also becomes bigger. Finally, at the ultimate peak of your meditation, the length of the aura is twenty-five miles. Now, in this area if somebody is dying who is in love with the enlightened one, has trust in the Master, whom do you think he will remember? The last thing is the whole life condensed.

 

The man who was after money will remember his bank balance. Certainly he is going to remember his money: "Now what is going to happen to the money?" He is not concerned with his death, he is worried about the bank balance and the stupid sons and daughters who will destroy everything. That is going to be his idea.

 

A man whose sex has been repressed -- a monk, Catholic, Jaina, Hindu -- his last moment is going to be full of sexual dreams, because now there is no life energy to repress it. They have all uncoiled, the spring is no more pressed by energy. Death is coming, energy is moving away. His past of repression will give him a sexual dream. He will die in that dream.

 

But if a man has loved a Master, has been in tune with someone who is enlightened, he is not going to think of dollars, is not going to think about anything else, because that love with the Master was the greatest thing in his life. In that moment he will open up towards the Master, just like sunflowers open towards the sun. As the sun moves, the sunflower moves. In the morning it is facing east, in the evening it is facing west.

 

The dying sannyasin, the dying disciple is just a sunflower. So when you do your gachchhamis you should be sitting in a posture facing towards your Master, because in those moments it can happen. If your gachchhamis are really authentic, if you are not doing them just as a formality, if you are really saying with your whole heart, "I go to the feet of the Awakened One," space disappears, time disappears. Suddenly, you are available to the Master.

 

The sannyasin dying will die with gachchhamis in his heart, utterly open, available, unconditionally available. Now what is there to be afraid of? He is going to die. There is no risk. Living, there was trouble, there were problems. He could not commit totally, his commitment was divided, partial. He had a wife, he had children, he had a job, he could not say to the Master, "I am absolutely, unconditionally surrendered to you, now you are my way. Lead me wherever you want."

 

But now he can say it. Now there is no wife any more, no children to go with him, no job, no money. Nothing that has been important up to this moment and was preventing him from being totally connected with the Master is there any more. Then why not take the chance? He could not do it in life, but he can do it in death. He can really feel -- there is no need to say, "I go to the feet of the Awakened One" -- you need not utter the words. Your whole being feels it.

 

And in that is the whole secret. If you are within the twenty-five-mile radius, it is as if you are just sitting by the side of the Master, because that energy field is your Master's energy body; and the moment you become open, suddenly there is just light, and eternal life opens its doors.

 

First try it in life, because if you can become enlightened in life you will be able to enjoy this beautiful life which you were just passing by like a somnambulist. There is really a large number of somnambulists -- ten percent of people. So if there are five thousand people here, ten percent of them will be somnambulists. They will not know, but they will get up in the night and go to the fridge -- the whole day they had been trying to diet -- and they will come back and go to sleep, and in the morning they don't remember anything, but they are puzzled: there has been nobody in the house and the ice cream has disappeared -- and it is ice cream that the doctors are against -- but they have no remembrance.

 

There have been very strange cases of somnambulistic people who will get up in the night and burn something in the house and go back to bed, and in the morning they will report to the police that somebody is doing mischief; their things are being burned every night.

 

It happened when I was visiting Hyderabad in south India. My friends there said it was not good that I accept the invitation of the family I was staying with. "They are rich and have a very beautiful mansion with a big garden, swimming pool, everything; but perhaps you don't know that house is haunted." I said, "If I knew it, then I would have certainly gone to their house, then there was no other way. This was just accidental that their letter reached before yours. I am going to stay there and see what kind of ghosts are haunting the house."

 

There were not many people in the house: the husband, the wife and a daughter -- only three persons. The daughter was not more than fourteen. And what was happening in the house was that things were being moved in the night from this room into another room, sometimes being thrown on the roof or on the terrace or in the garden. And naturally, neither the father was doing it, nor the mother was doing it, nor the daughter was doing it. The obvious conclusion was that it was haunted.

 

I told them, "I would like not to sleep away from you, I want to sleep in the same room with your family." The man said, "Why? We have made a beautiful place, the best room in our house with the best view." I said, "You can all come there if you want, but I am going to stay with you because I am going to finish this haunting forever."

 

They said, "But how will you stop the haunting? We are afraid of the ghosts. We lock every door, window, we all check" -- first the husband checked, then the wife, then the girl -- "to be absolutely certain that whatsoever happens in other rooms, let it happen, but the ghost should not enter into this room." And they said, "Strange, the locks remain locked, but things from our room are thrown out. Still the ghosts seem to be very nice people; they are not destroying anything, not burning anything, not stealing anything -- they simply change things around. But what is happening... the dining table we find in the sitting room, all the chairs have disappeared -- and they are on the roof of the house."

 

I said, "You just leave it to me. Let me sleep with you." It was the daughter who was doing the whole thing, and it happens mostly at the time when a girl or a boy becomes sexually mature, which is a very delicate period. But she was doing it in her sleep. I had to remain awake till the girl got up. I watched her. She was the last one to check, and she used to leave one window or one door available for herself. And this was all unconscious, she was not doing it consciously. She would throw things out. I caught her red-handed. Her eyes were open but she was asleep. I had to shake her. She suddenly woke up and she said, "What is the matter? What is happening? Why am I standing here? Why is the door open?"

 

The father and mother came running. I said, "There is no problem. The first sexual desire is arising in this girl." In India, particularly, you have to repress it continuously. And this was a rich family; the girl has to pass at least a post-graduate degree, then she will be married... so it was going to be at least ten years more. This repressed sexual energy was a kind of poison. Unconsciously she was taking revenge, she was angry. And all that together made her a somnambulist.

 

I asked the parents. They said she was a somnambulist from the very beginning. In her childhood she used to move from one bed to another, from mother's bed to father's bed, and in the morning she would be puzzled about who had moved her from her mother's side. So I said, "Now the whole mystery is clear. She is a somnambulist, and now, because she has to repress her sexuality, she is taking revenge on you. And she has done a really good job.

 

"But now it will not happen any more. You do one thing: make her free about her sexuality. If she goes with boys, let her go; give her the pill, and the pill will destroy all the ghosts, don't be worried." And that's how it happened. The pill worked, and the house is no more haunted.

 

People are living almost in sleep, but the knock of death wakes them up. Suddenly they see their life is finished and they are drowning in darkness. In that moment they realize that they have missed life, they never lived it; they always postponed for tomorrows. They always thought to go to Kashmir, to go to the Himalayas, to see this, to see that, but they always postponed. What is the hurry? There is so much work to be done; they cannot waste time... three months in Kashmir.

 

So you go on postponing living, and you go on preparing to live tomorrow. You sacrifice today for tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes. One day suddenly, instead of tomorrow, death comes. It is a shock: you were waiting for tomorrow, you were planning for tomorrow your whole life, and now there is no tomorrow. And today you have never learned how to live, you were always preparing.

 

There is a strange story in Tibet that one man wanted to be the wisest man in the world. He collected as many scriptures as were possible and available in Tibet. His library had thousands of ancient scriptures, and he was running from one place to another, because in those days books were not printed. He wasted fortunes on every book because it was the only copy. His whole life he was collecting and waiting until the library was complete; then he was going to study all these scriptures.

 

But life finishes in death. He fell sick and his physicians said that he could not survive more than twenty-four hours. He said, "My God, in twenty-four hours, how am I going to read all these scriptures that I have collected and wasted my whole life on?" The physicians said that there is only one way: "You can have one thousand Buddhist monks, you can ask the Dalai Lama that they go through all the books and condense the essential points in those scriptures, so before you die at least you know the essentials." But those poor scholars had to read, and the books were thousands. They said even one thousand monks wouldn't do, and time was passing and the monks were trying, and the man was getting more and more nervous that soon the sun would set and he would be finished.

 

And he was inquiring again and again what was happening, why the essential message was not being brought. First it was thought that everyone would bring the essential core of the scriptures that he had looked in, but now there was no time to listen to one thousand monks and their summaries, so the monks were asked to please make one summary out of all these summaries. And be quick! -- because by the time the sun sets, the man will be finished.

 

They rushed back into the library, and there were great quarrels -- which is always certain where scholars are -- arguments about what should be included and what should not be included. And by the time they decided, the man was gone.

 

This is not a story, this is actually an existential fact about almost everybody. I say almost, because I have to leave a few enlightened people out of it. Only in death they are surprised... but then it is too late, nothing can be done. Everybody dies in frustration, in despair, in anguish, but a man of meditation dies in joy, in peace, at ease with the whole universe. And this becomes very easy if he is connected in some way with someone who has already arrived.

 

The best is to do it in life, because then you can live life in an enlightened way. And life is tremendously beautiful; it is just a miracle all around. But if in life it cannot happen because you have this and that and there are conditions, then at least in death let it happen. But it may not be possible for you alone, unless you have meditated so deeply that death will not create any disturbance in your silence. Then it can happen without the twenty-five-mile radius or it can happen anywhere.

 

But the chances of such a happening are rare, because if it could happen anywhere, it would not wait for death. It would have happened long ago. So this device of a commune is simply to keep you engaged here. If you cannot become enlightened alive, I say okay, at least don't forget me when you are dying. But enlightened you have to become -- dead or alive!

 

The commune is an immense field of energy and experiment, and soon in other communes around the world I will manage at least one person to be enlightened, so no commune misses this twenty-five-mile radius of energy.

 

Okay?

 

- Osho, “The Last Testament, Vol 2, #4”