[A sannyasin has to return to the west because her mother is dying of a life-long illness.]
Osho – So it is a good release for her, mm? She should not be prevented, she should be helped to leave the body. Because life in each and every case is not a blessing. It is a blessing only if one can use the opportunity to grow; then it is a blessing. Otherwise it is a curse because it is unnecessary suffering.
It is good for her to leave the body and to be again in a new body so she can start growing. When one is ill for so long the whole energy is taken up in the illness; nothing is left to grow. And when one is ill for so long one tends to become the body more and more, because the body is constantly there, hurting, reminding one of its existence; the whole consciousness becomes focussed on the pain. When the body is healthy, in a flow, then one can turn inwards one can feel oneself more as a consciousness. And to feel oneself as consciousness is the whole search. So just go and help her.
If you find her still alive, help her to die very peacefully, almost joyously. And then a miracle is possible. If she can die joyously, ecstatically, whatsoever she has missed in life she may still have a chance to gain in death. And sometimes it happens that a fifty-year-long life may have been useless and in five seconds of a beautiful death all is gained.
So help her to forget the body; help to remind her that she is a transcendental consciousness, an immortal consciousness. Just go and sit silently by her side, meditatively. Put your hand on her head and remind her to relax and to let go of the body, not to cling, just to let go of the body, to surrender it to existence. And if you can help her to die silently, meditatively, you have served her.
Take a box for her, mm? and put it on her navel, because it is from there that life will be leaving her body. People who have lived deep in illness almost always die from the navel centre. Put it on her navel, you put your hands on her head and tell her to relax, and I will do my best, mm? Make it a beautiful death.
Source – Osho Book “The 99 Names of Nothingness”