Deva means divine, and akal means two things: one is timelessness and another is deathlessness. One word has both the meanings because in the eastern mind – particularly in the indian consciousness – time and death are synonymous.

 

Whatsoever happens in time is going to die. In time, the eternal is not possible. Time is the field for the impermanent, the flux, the changing. Whatsoever is born in time will have to die. Nothing can be permanent in the flux of time. You cannot step in the same river twice. Everything is fleeting and nothing is staying.

 

Time is basically the field of death. So akal means both things – time and death. and akal means no time, no death. Once your consciousness transcends time, it has transcended death too. Once you can have a glimpse of something within your being which is not temporal, which is not born in time, which has nothing to do with time, which stands outside time, then you know that you cannot die. and that certainty is a radical change, because that certainty changes your whole pattern of life, your whole attitude, your total approach.

 

Ordinarily, whatsoever you are doing, you are surrounded by the fear of death. You may not look at it, but that doesn’t make much difference. You may avoid it… you may look at some other things. You may remain occupied in something else so that you need not look at death, but it is there; whether you look or not makes no difference. Your look is irrelevant – it is there. It is constantly eating at your roots.

 

Each moment death is happening. Each moment you have died a little more, a little more, a little more… drop by drop. One day suddenly you find that you are exhausted – nothing is left. Time has flown out of your hand. Death is not something that happens aker seventy, eighty, ninety years – death starts the moment you are born. Even a one-day-old child has died. He has died already… at least one day. One day is less. The arrow of time has started moving towards death.

 

So whether you look or not, death is surrounding you – you are like an island, surrounded by death from everywhere. And it affects you. If you love, you cannot love totally, because death is there – how can you love totally? How can you love when death is there? It looks impossible to love when death is there. How can you see the beautiful when death is there?

 

How can you look into a rose flower and be charmed by its beauty – how? Because death is there – already the petals of the rose are falling. Death is happening in you, in the rose – everywhere – and how can you be happy when death is there? It is impossible to be happy, to be loving, to celebrate, to sing, to dance – death is there!

 

Once you have entered a moment of no time, death disappears. That moment we call akal. You may have heard the famous slogan of the sikhs:’Sat shree akal.’ That means ’Only the deathless is true – everything else is false.’ That is their mantra. Only the timeless is true – everything else is false; And unless you have attained to the timeless, you have been just collecting pebbles and seashells on the seashore. You have been playing with toys… you have been childish.

 

Meditation is the door to timelessness. When thinking stops, when there is no thought moving on the screen of your mind, suddenly the timelessness – akal – -is there. Because with the disappearance of thoughts, time disappears. Time cannot exist without thoughts; it needs thoughts to be there. Once the screen is empty and your mind projector is not Working, not functioning – even for a single moment – you have dropped into the interval. In the pause between the two notes, silence… absolute silence, and then you have the first taste of your being.

 

So keep alert about it, mm? Whenever you are sitting silently, just wait for the moment, the pause between two notes. Relax silently, wait for it. One day it comes. It can come any day… it can come right this moment. It knows no barrier. Just a readiness, a receptivity, an openness is enough, and a heart who can accept, receive. So be feminine, and any time it is going to happen.

 

Sometimes it can happen in dancing, in meditating. Sometimes it can simply happen when you are sitting. It can happen any moment because no time is against it – all time is the same. Each moment is sacred, and it can happen in any moment, so just be alert. I’m not saying to make much effort for it, because if you make effort you will become tense. I’m saying to simply be alert. Be alert in a feminine way – passive, watching, waiting, but not doing anything in particular for it. And the day you realise – any moment which you feel was beyond time, when time had stopped – then come immediately to tell me. Mm? it is going to happen any day!

 

- Osho, “The Buddha Disease, #13”