Death is an illusion

There is no death in the first place.

Death is an illusion.

It is always somebody else who dies; you never die. It means death has always been seen from the outside, it is the outsider’s view.

Those who have seen their inner world are unanimous in saying that there is no death. Because you don’t know what constitutes your consciousness; it is not constituted of breathing, it is not constituted of heartbeats, it is not constituted of blood circulation. So when the doctor says that a man is dead, it is an outsider’s conclusion; all that he is saying is, “This man is no longer breathing, his pulse has stopped, his heart is not beating.” Are these three things equivalent to death? They are not.

Consciousness is not your body, nor your mind, nor your heart.

So when a person dies, he dies for you, not for himself. For himself he simply changes the house, perhaps moves into a better apartment. But because the old apartment is left, and you are searching for him in the old apartment and you don’t find him there, you think the poor guy is dead. All that you should say is, “The poor guy escaped. Now where he has gone, we don’t know.”

In fact, medical science is going beyond its limits when it says that some person is dead. Medical science has no right yet, because it has no definition yet of what constitutes death. It can simply say that “This man is no longer breathing. His heart has stopped. His pulse is no longer functioning.” To conclude that he is dead is going beyond what you are seeing. But because science does not have any idea of consciousness, the death of the body becomes the death of the being.

Those who have known the being… and it is not necessary for it that you should die and then you know; you can just go inside. That’s what I call meditation – just go inside and find out what is your center, and at your center there is no breathing, there is no heartbeat, there is no thought, no mind, no heart, no body, and still you are.

Once a person has experienced himself – that he is not the body, not the mind, not the heart, but pure awareness – he knows there is no death for him, because he does not depend on the body.

Osho, Beyond Enlightenment, Ch 3, Q 2 (excerpt)