Many things start happening around a dead man

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Osho speaks about what happens when a person dies, and what happens when an enlightened one dies.

Osho

If you can be silent when death is there you will suddenly see many things, because death is not just a person stopping breathing. Many things are happening. When a person dies, his aura starts subsiding. If you are silent you can feel it – an energy force, a vital energy field, subsiding, getting back to the center.

When a child is born just the opposite happens. When a child is born an aura starts spreading; it starts near the navel. Just as when you throw a pebble in a lake, ripples start – they go on spreading, go on spreading – when a child is born breath is like a pebble in the lake; when the child breathes the navel center is hit. The first pebble has been thrown in the silent lake, and the ripples go on spreading.

Your whole life you go on spreading. Nearabout the age of thirty-five your aura is completed, at its peak. Then it starts subsiding. When a person dies it goes back to the navel. When it reaches the navel, it becomes a concentrated energy, a concentrated light. If you are silent you can feel it, you will feel a pull. If you sit near a dead man you will feel as if a subtle breeze is blowing towards the dead man and you are being pulled. The dead man is contracting his whole life, the whole field that he was.

Many things start happening around a dead man. If he loved a person very deeply, that means he had given a part of his life energy to that person, and when a person dies, immediately that part that he had given to another person leaves that person and moves to the dead man. If you die here and your lover lives in Hong Kong, something will leave your lover immediately – because you have given a part of your life and that part will come back to you. That’s why when a loved one dies you feel that something has left you also, something in you has died also. A deep wound, a deep gap will exist now.

It is a universal phenomenon
because he is involved
in many many lives,
millions of lives,
and from everywhere his energy
will come back.

Whenever a lover dies, something in the beloved also dies, because they were deeply involved with each other. And if you have loved many, many people – for example, if a person like Dogo dies, or a buddha – from all over the universe energy moves back to the center. It is a universal phenomenon because he is involved in many many lives, millions of lives, and from everywhere his energy will come back. The vibrations that he has given to many will leave, they will move to the original source, they will become again a concentration near the navel.

If you watch you will feel ripples coming back in a reverse order, and when they are totally concentrated in the navel, you can see a tremendous energy, a tremendous light-force. And then that center leaves the body. When a man ‘dies’, that is simply a stopping of the breath, and you think he is dead. He is not dead; that takes time. Sometimes, if the person has been involved in millions of lives, it takes many days for him to die – that’s why with sages, with saints, particularly in the East, we never burn their bodies. Only saints are not burned; otherwise everybody is burned, because others’ involvement is not so much. Within minutes the energy gathers, and they are no more part of this existence.

When I am dead,
don’t bury my body,
don’t burn it,
because I will be involved in you,
many of you.

But with saints, the energy takes time. Sometimes it goes on and on – that’s why if you go to Shirdi, to Sai Baba’s town, you will still feel something happening, still the energy goes on coming; he is so much involved that for many people he is still alive. Sai Baba’s tomb is not dead. It is still alive. But the same thing you will not feel near many tombs – they are dead. By ‘dead’ I mean they have accumulated all their involvement, they have disappeared.

When I am dead, don’t bury my body, don’t burn it, because I will be involved in you, many of you. And if you can feel, then a sage remains alive for many years, sometimes thousands of years – because life is not only of the body. Life is an energy phenomenon. It depends on the involvement, on how many persons he was involved in. And a person like Buddha is not only involved with persons, he is involved even with trees, birds, animals; his involvement is so deep that if he dies his death will take at least five hundred years.

Buddha is reported to have said, ‘My religion will be a live force for only five hundred years.’ And the meaning is here, because he will be a live force for five hundred years. It will take five hundred years for him to get out of the involvement totally.

When death happens, be silent. Watch!

All over the world, whenever you pay respect to a dead man, you become silent, you remain silent for two minutes – without knowing why. This tradition has been continued all over the world. Why silence?

The tradition is meaningful. You may not know why, you may not be aware, and your silence may be filled with inner chattering, or you may do it just like a ritual – that is up to you. But the secret is there.

Osho, And the Flowers Showered, Ch 5

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