about the thing that I have called living, and the thing that I have called death. I
do not know what they mean. Therefore there is living and dying all the time.
There is no death when the mind is completely free of the known: the beliefs, the
experiences, the conclusions, the knowledge, the saying ‘I-have-suffered’, and so
on.
Intellectually we have carved life out beautifully according to our
conditioning: To achieve God I must be celibate; I must help the poor; I must
take a vow of poverty. Death says: You cannot touch me. But I want to touch
death; I want to shape it into my pattern. Death says: You cannot play tricks on
me. But the mind is used to tricks, used to carving something out of experience.
Death says: You cannot experience me. Death is an original experience, in the
sense that it is a state that I really do not know. I can invent formulas about
death—the last thought is that which manifests itself; but they are other people’s
thoughts. I really do not know. So I am starkly frightened. Can I now begin to
learn about living and, therefore, about dying?
So deny knowing—see what takes place. In that there is real beauty, real love;
in that the real thing takes place.
New Delhi
28 December, 1970