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Now, the question then is, what is death? Please ask this question: Are you just the vast reservoir of memory, words, pictures, symbols? Is your consciousness the rest of mankind, that you are not an individual? That what you think, other people think, your thinking, is not individual and that there is only thinking? When you realize you are not an individual though you may have a different form, different shape of head, different jobs, and so on, but that inwardly you are like the rest of mankind, what does death mean then? Look, sir. Suppose I am all that - name, thought, education, physical responses, psychological reactions, all the inherited racial memories and personal memories, which is all in the past, I am all that and all human beings are that, all human consciousness is that, then what does it mean to die? Ask this question, sirs.
Now we are living, repetitively active, mechanically active, as most people are; but you are active, you have got life, you have got feelings, you have got responses, sensations, and when death comes, all that is wiped out. That is what we call death, which is to end all the things you have held, your joys, your house, your bank account, your wife, your children; all that you end; you and your attachment, that is death. But you want to carry it over to the next life which is just an idea, vision, fulfillment. Please listen: While living, can you end attachment? Because, when you die, all attachment ends. But can you invite the ending of attachment? Do you understand this? That is ending. Ending is death. So, can you, while living, vigorous, active, end your attachment, end a particular habit voluntarily, easily, quietly? Because then, where there is an ending, there is a totally different beginning. When you end something like attachment, there is a different activity going on: to incarnate in the present now. That is creativity. It is up to you if you want to do all this.
Now we are living, repetitively active, mechanically active, as most people are; but you are active, you have got life, you have got feelings, you have got responses, sensations, and when death comes, all that is wiped out. That is what we call death, which is to end all the things you have held, your joys, your house, your bank account, your wife, your children; all that you end; you and your attachment, that is death. But you want to carry it over to the next life which is just an idea, vision, fulfillment. Please listen: While living, can you end attachment? Because, when you die, all attachment ends. But can you invite the ending of attachment? Do you understand this? That is ending. Ending is death. So, can you, while living, vigorous, active, end your attachment, end a particular habit voluntarily, easily, quietly? Because then, where there is an ending, there is a totally different beginning. When you end something like attachment, there is a different activity going on: to incarnate in the present now. That is creativity. It is up to you if you want to do all this.
Mind Without Measure | Talks in Calcutta 4th Public Talk 28th November, 1982
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