Osho Attitude Towards Death

 

 

Question 3:

Beloved Osho,

What is exactly your attitude about death?

 

 

Kamalesh, a mystic who was being led to the gallows saw a big crowd running on before him. "Don't be in such a hurry," he said to them. "I can assure you, nothing will happen without me." That's my attitude towards death: it is the greatest joke there is.

 

Death has never happened, cannot happen in the very nature of things, because life is eternal. Life cannot end; it is not a thing, it is a process. It is not something that begins and ends; it has no beginning and no end. You have always been here in different forms, and you will be here in different forms, or, ultimately, formless. That's how a buddha lives in existence: he becomes formlessness. He disappears from the gross forms totally.

 

Death is not there, it is a lie -- but it appears very real. It only appears very real, it is not. It appears so because you believe too much in your separate existence. It is in believing that you are separate from existence that you give reality to death. Drop this idea of being separate from existence, and death disappears. If I am one with existence, how can I die? Existence was there before me and will be there after me. I am just a ripple in the ocean, and the ripple comes and goes, the ocean remains, abides.

 

Yes, you will not be there -- as you are you will not be there. This form will disappear, but the one who is abiding in this form will go on abiding, either in other forms or ultimately in formlessness. Start feeling one with existence, because that's how it is. That's why my insistence again and again to let the distinction between the observer and the observed disappear, as many times during the day as possible. Find a few moments -- whenever you can find, wherever you can find -- and just let this distinction and difference between the observer and the observed disappear.

 

Become the tree you are seeing and become the cloud you are looking at, and slowly slowly you will start laughing at death. This mystic who was being led to the gallows must have seen the utter lie of death, he could joke about his own death. He was being led to the gallows, he saw a big crowd running on before him; they were going to see the crucifixion....

 

People are very much interested in such things. If they hear that somebody is being murdered publicly, thousands of people will gather to see it. Why this attraction? Deep down you are all murderers, and this is a vicarious way to enjoy it. That's why films about murder and violence, detective novels, are so much in vogue, popular. Unless a film has murder in it and suicide in it and obscene sex in it, it never becomes a box office hit. It never succeeds, it fails. Why? -- because nobody is interested in anything else. These are deep desires in your being.

 

Seeing them on the screen, there is a vicarious enjoyment as if you are doing it; you become identified with the characters in the film or in the novel. Now this mystic was being led to the gallows. He saw a big crowd running on before him. "Don't be in such a hurry," he said to them. "I can assure you nothing will happen without me. You can walk easily, slowly, there is no hurry. I am the person they are going to kill, and nothing is going to happen without me."

 

This is my attitude about death. Laugh! Let laughter be your attitude about death. It is a cosmic lie created by man himself, created by the ego, by selfconsciousness. That's why in nature no other animal, bird, tree is afraid of death. Only man, and he makes so much fuss out of it... his whole life trembling. Death is coming closer, and because of death he cannot allow himself to live totally. How can you live if you are so afraid? Life is possible only without fear. Life is possible only with love, not with fear. And death creates fear.

 

And who is the culprit? God has not created death, it is man's own invention. Create the ego, and you have created the other side of it -- death.

 

-Osho, “The Book of Wisdom, #22, Q3”