Osho Quotes on Death – Each death is an opportunity to be awake

Osho Quotes on Death

Whoever may have died right now… each death is your death, because each death is a reminder that you are not going to be here forever. Each death is an opportunity to be awake. Before death comes use the opportunity of life to attain something which is beyond death.
The secret is, start living more fully, more totally. Be more alert so that you can find within yourself something that is unreachable by death. That is the only shelter, the only security, the only safety. And if you want to help your friends and family, let them become aware of this secret.
The danger is more, but as life is itself always in the grip of death, it is a good opportunity to be aware. Otherwise your death comes without any pre-information: suddenly it comes and you don’t have even a single moment. And even in cases where death is certain — in cancer or in AIDS — the doctors, the family, the friends, everybody tries to hide the fact that it is so close… with good intentions, but good intentions won’t do. They are harming the person. The person should be made aware: “Your death is going to come within one month. You don’t have any more life, so this month do the best thing that can give you a taste of immortality.” Then when you die there is no sadness, no misery — you simply move from this body into another body, or if you become enlightened… A sudden awareness of death can make you enlightened.
A man of realization knows there is no death. Death is a fiction, you have never died. Yes, you have changed your form many times. You have changed your house many times, many times. But you have never died. Have you ever seen yourself dying? It is always somebody else who dies.
life and death are two phases of the same energy. Death is not the end of life. Death itself is part of life, and life goes on. You have died many times, and still you are alive. Your life is eternal. Death is a small episode here and there, when you change your house, but the essential of your being remains the same. How many times you change houses does not matter, but it is inconceivable to the mind.
Mind only thinks about things. “What will happen after death?” Why can’t you wait? One thing is certain: you will die — I guarantee it! How you prefer to die, that is another matter.
You were a child, you have become a grown-up, you will become old. This is phenomenal, this is unreal. But there is something within you which never becomes anything other than itself. In your childhood it is the same, in your youth it is the same, in your old age it is the same, in your death it is the same. A man of meditation knows his eternal being, his immortal being. There is no deathbed for him.
A right kind of education will teach people to live herenow, to create a paradise of this earth, not to wait for death to come, and not to wait for death to come, and not to be miserable till death stops your misery. Let death find you dancing and joyous and loving. It is a strange experience that if a man can live his life as if he is already in paradise, death cannot take away anything from that man’s experience.
Because of our mind we always divide everything into opposite polarities. Delusion and enlightenment, night and day, birth and death, they are all one process but the mind cannot conceive it. It is intrinsically incapable of conceiving of the oneness of life and death, of light and darkness.
Once enlightened, your death is going to be the last death. In other words, only enlightened people die. The unenlightened … very difficult — they go on coming back, they never die. Only the enlightened person can afford death; the unenlightened cannot afford it, he is not yet ready. Life is a school, and unless you have learned the lesson you will have to come back again and again to the same class. Once you have learned the lesson, passed the examination, then even if you want to come back into the class you will find all doors are closed for you. You have to move higher, to a different level of being.
The authentic man lives the unknown, allows the unknown, moves on the unknown path, risks everything. He may not find gold mines, but he finds a tremendous satisfaction. His life is a life of blessings; his death is a death of fulfillment.
The whole function of the master is to create such energy, such a magnetic force that you are pulled in and slowly, slowly start disappearing. And a point comes when you have become one with existence. This I call real death.
The ordinary death that you see every day is not real death; It is only a change of the house, or a changing of your clothes. The master is the real death — because once you are consumed in the energy that the master makes available to you, you will not be coming back into any form; you will disappear into the vast universe. It is death from one side: you will not be this small, imprisoned soul.
It is life eternal from the other side: you will be freed from the prison and you will become one with life itself. You will not be separate; you will be immortal, you will be universal. Just all your misery, all your limitations — the birth, the death, the old age — all these will disappear. You will be simply young, vibrating, eternal life. On the one hand the master is a death. On the other, he is the resurrection.
If you have known life, you will have certainly known death — and then death is not the enemy, death is the friend. Then death is nothing but a deep sleep. Again there is a morning, again things will start. Then death is nothing but rest — a tremendous rest, needed rest. After the whole life of toil and tiredness, one needs a great rest in God. Death is going back to the source, just as in sleep.
Every night you die a little death. You call it sleep; it would be better to call it a little death. You disappear from the surface, you move into your innermost being. You are lost, you don’t know who you are. You forget all about the world, and the relationship, and the people. You die a small death, a tiny death, but even that tiny death revives you. In the morning you are full of zest and juice again, again throbbing with life, again ready to jump into a thousand and one adventures, ready to take the challenge. By the evening you will be tired again. This is happening daily. You have not even known what sleep is; how can you know death? Death is a great sleep, a great rest after the whole life. It makes you anew, it makes you fresh, it resurrects you.
Live the way existence wanted you to live. Your very life should be so intense and so total that you burn your life’s torch from both ends. In that very intensity you will know that you have touched something of eternity. And if you have known it in your life, in your death you will find a deeper confirmation of the fact. People who live in personality always die unconscious. They have never lived. They don’t know what consciousness is, so before death they become unconscious. That’s why we don’t remember our past lives. You were unconscious, and death happened in your unconsciousness. But if you live consciously, as an individual, then you will die consciously, the way Socrates is dying — so conscious to the last breath. And this memory will be with you in the next life too.