[Osho speaks to a sannyasin who just arrived to take care of his wife who lies very ill in a local hospital.]
Osho – She will survive – just wait; help her. You have come, that’s very good. Just be as loving to her as possible. And death, when it is around, or when one feels that it is around, is a great opportunity to be loving, because when we think the other person is going to live we are miserly in love, because we can love tomorrow or the day after tomorrow; and the mind always postpones. The mind is afraid of love because love is too much and the mind cannot control it; love overwhelms it. Love creates a chaos and the mind is always trying to create some order.
So the mind goes on postponing love. But when one starts feeling death around – and death is always around; anybody can die any moment…. But when it is felt that somebody is seriously ill – and the person may not die, but when we start feeling the shadow of death – then there is no way to postpone. Love has to happen right now, because we cannot think even of the next moment. Next moment she may be gone, so there is no future.
And when there is no future, the mind cannot go on controlling you. The mind can control only through the future, through postponing. It says ’Tomorrow. Wait – let me do my things right now; tomorrow you can do other things. There is tomorrow, so why are you in such a hurry?’ But when there is no tomorrow and suddenly you feel the curtain falling then the mind cannot deceive you. And these moments can become of immense revelation.
So be loving! All that we have is love – everything else is immaterial because everything else is on the outside; only love comes from the inside. Everything else – we can give money and things and presents… we have not brought them with us; we have collected them here. We come naked but we come full of love! We come empty of everything else but we come full of love, overflowing.
So when we give our love, then only do we give. That’s the gift, the real gift, and that can be given only when death is standing there. So never miss the opportunity. She may survive, but then you would have learned a lesson of tremendous importance. Then don’t forget that lesson, because nobody needs to be seriously ill to die! One can simply die of a heart attack, any moment. So never postpone love; you can postpone everything else but not love.
And the man who never postpones love becomes love, and to become love is to know god. And death is a great opportunity: it throws you back into your love source. So be around her, shower your love energy… If she dies, she dies in a great loving space – if she survives, she survives as a new being; both ways it is perfectly good. Death doesn’t matter – all that matters is love.
And when people feel very sad after a person has gone, the reason for their sadness is not the death of the person but the guilty feeling that they didn’t love, that they didn’t give enough; they could have given. My observation is that whenever a loved one dies, those who are left behind start feeling guilty. To hide their guilt they cry and weep and they make much fuss. That is just somehow a substitute because they could not love when the person was alive and now there is no way… no way to repent, no way even to feel sorry, and apologise, no way to say the thousand and one things that one wanted to say but didn’t, no way to take many things back which one had thrown on the other person in unconsciousness.
All that anger and rage and the wounds one would like to take back, but now they cannot be taken back. A thousand and one times one wanted to be loving, wanted to hold the other person close, but did not… one continued to postpone, for stupid things. All this creates great guilt. It hurts. How to forget it? What to do? So ’as an excuse’ one starts crying and weeping and feeling sad and desperate and in despair. This is just an effort to cover things up.
But my feeling is that if a person has loved totally, yes, one will be sad, but that sadness also will have beauty. It will be a kind of depth, very loving… a silence. And even if tears come, those tears will not be of despair and misery; those will be of thankfulness, of gratitude, of a very subtle joy of fulfillment.
Yes, even when somebody dies one can feel very very joyous if there is no guilt, there is joy. And one can say goodbye with gratitude for all that the other person did and was, for all that the other person gave to you, for all the poetry that the other person was and the music the other person was, and the dance that the other person introduced into your life. One simply feels grateful, fulfilled.
So be loving. If she leaves, she leaves in great love; and when there is love there is no death. Who cares about death? One can die laughing! If one knows that one is loved, one can meet death with great celebration. If she dies she dies in tremendous peace. If she survives she will be a new person; she will have known your heart for the first time. So just be loving… and you have come – that’s very good. Good!
Source: from Osho Book “The Tongue-Tip Taste of Tao”