Is There Life after Birth? OSHO International Newsletter November, 2018

Publish date: 2024-05-05

Is there life after death? What will happen? I’m afraid of dying, but I’m also scared that if I drop my beliefs about it there’ll be nothing left to hold on to when my time comes.

“People come to me and they ask, ‘Osho, what do you say about life after death?’ I say, ‘You are not alive even now, and you are talking about life after death? I don't even see life before death.’

“Man is not! Man only thinks that he is. Man has not happened yet. Rarely it happens. Once in a while, in a Buddha or a Bodhidharma a man is there; otherwise you are just a belief. And you are thinking about life after death? Think of life after birth! Think of life before death. Think of life now. Don't go into the future too much.”

Osho, The First Principle, Talk #9

“There is no life after death, as you know life. And if there is any life you have to learn to live now, and you have to live it so totally and intensely that if there is any life after death you will be able to live there too. If there is not, there is no question. That should always be the rational person's approach.

“I don't say anything about heaven or hell, punishment or reward. I simply say to you: go on dying to the past so it is not a burden on your head. And do not live in the future, which is not yet. Concentrate your whole energy here now. Pour it into this moment, with totality, with as much intensity as you can manage. And in that moment you will feel life. To me that life is equivalent to God. There is no other God than this life. Of course, if after death you survive, you will know the art of living and you will continue. If you don't survive, there is no problem.”

Osho, From Unconsciousness to Consciousness, Talk #7

I am overwhelmed with incredible sadness about leaving this life, what can I do?

“I understand… I understand. But the problem arises because you can't see that even more beautiful things are waiting. When you leave life, one door closes, but another opens which leads into a far more beautiful world. But because we cannot see that… we can only see this door that closes and cannot see that there is any other life beyond that – that is creating the trouble.

“The world is so beautiful…. This cuckoo singing… it is beautiful. It makes one sad that one day one will not be able to listen to this cuckoo singing.… We cannot see that death is just a door. It is an opening of a new life.

“We can only see the crucifixion, we cannot see the resurrection; that's the trouble. Unless you try hard to go deep inside yourself, you will not be able to see it. But a greater life is waiting. A higher life is waiting. A more blissful life is waiting. And this is just a preparation for it. But just by my saying you will not feel it. That's why my insistence on meditation.

“If you can see something within you which cannot die, then all fear disappears. Ordinarily we are too attached with the body. The body is going to die – that's certain. You will not be in this body, that's certain. But there is nothing to be worried about. Just as you change your clothes and there is no worry, bodies are changed. But you have to find existentially something within you which you can separate from the body, which you can see is absolutely separate from the body. Then that fear disappears.”

Osho, The Cypress in the Courtyard, Talk #20

“The fear is not of death, the fear is of time, and if you look deeply into it then you find that the fear is of unlived life – you have not been able to live. If you live, then there is no fear. If life comes to a fulfillment, there is no fear. If you have enjoyed, attained to the peaks that life can give – if your life has been an orgasmic experience, a deep poetry vibrating within you, a song, a festival, a ceremony, and you lived each moment of it to its totality – then there is no fear of time, then the fear disappears.”

Osho, Undone Tao, Talk #2

A recent visit to the doctor confronts me with the prospect of dying in the not too distant future. How can I respond through celebration, as you suggest?

“When death happens, celebrate!

“It is the coming of a great friend.

“Death is not the enemy. Death is very compassionate. It is the universe getting rid of all the junk that you have gathered around yourself and freeing you again, making you again fresh, young, giving you another chance to live – this one you have lost again.

“Nobody is afraid of death. I have never come across a person who is afraid of death. People are certainly afraid of lying down in strange kinds of beds in the hospitals – legs up, hands down, all kinds of instruments attached to the head and to the chest. People are afraid of all this, but death have you seen death doing any harm to anybody ever? Why should anybody be afraid? That's why I said it is not exceptional that you are not afraid. Don't start patting your own back, that ‘I'm not afraid of death.’ Nobody is.

“People are afraid of life, not of death, because life is a problem to be solved. Life has thousands of complexities to be resolved. Life has so many dimensions that you are continuously in a worry…is the dimension you are moving in the right one, or have you left the right one behind?”

Osho, From Darkness to Light, Talk #25

“If the fear of death comes in, that means there are a few loopholes that are not filled with living. So those fears of death are very indicative and helpful. They show you that your dance has to go a little faster, that you have to burn the torch of your life from both ends together.

“Dance so fast that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains.

“Then it is not possible for any fear of death to visit you.”

Osho, The Golden Future, Talk #25

“If you only know there is no such thing as death, then you will continue to take new births. You have known only half the truth: the desire to live again, to have another body, to take a new birth will remain. The day you also come to know the other half of the truth, the day you come to know the truth in its entirety – that life is not life, and death is not death – you will have reached the point of no return. Then there will be no question of returning here.”

Osho, And Now and Here, Talk #10

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