Live Rightly

We will have a few questions from Yoga Sutra 42.

WE ARE ALWAYS AFRAID OF BEING OLD? AND ALWAYS SEEKING HOW I CAN GET RID OF IT.

Life, if rightly lived, if really lived, is never afraid of death. If you have lived your life, you will welcome death. It will come like a rest, like a great sleep. If you have peaked, climaxed in your life, then death is a beautiful rest, a benediction. But if you have not lived, then of course death creates fear. If you have not lived, then certainly death is going to take time from your hands, all future opportunities to live. In the past you have not lived, and there is going to be no future: fear arises. Fear arises not because of death but because of unlived life.

And because of the fear of death, old age also gives fear, because that is the first step of death. Otherwise old age is also beautiful. It is a ripening of your being, maturity, and growth.

If you live moment to moment, to all the challenges that life gives, and you use all the opportunities that life opens, and if you dare to adventure into the unknown to which life calls and invites you, then old age is a maturity. Otherwise old age is a disease.

Unfortunately many people simply age, they become old, without any maturity corresponding to it. Then old age is a burden. You have aged in the body, but your consciousness has remained juvenile. You have aged in your body, but you have not matured in your inner life. The inner light is missing, and death is coming close every day; of course you will tremble and you will be afraid and there will arise great anguish in you.

Those who live rightly, they accept old age with a deep welcome, because old age simply says that now they are coming to flower, that they are coming to a fruition, that now they will be able to share whatsoever they have attained.

Ordinarily old age is ugly because it is simply a disease. Your organism has not matured, has only become more and more ill, weakened, impotent. Otherwise old age is the most beautiful time of life. All the foolishness of childhood gone, all the fever and passion of young age gone… a serenity arises, a silence, a meditation, a samadhi.

Old age is tremendously beautiful, and it should be so because the whole of life moves towards it. It should be the peak. How can the peak be in the beginning? How can the peak be in the middle? But if you think your childhood is your peak, as many people think, then of course your whole life will be a suffering because you have attained your peak – now everything will be a declining, coming down. If you think young age is the peak, as many people think, then of course after thirty-five you will become sad, depressed, because every day you will be losing, losing and losing and gaining nothing. The energy will be lost, you will weaken, diseases will enter into your being, and death will start knocking at the door. The home will disappear, and the hospital will appear. How can you be happy? No, but in the East we have never thought that childhood or youth is the peak. The peak waits for the very end.

And if life flows rightly, by and by you reach higher and higher peaks. Death is the ultimate peak that life attains, the crescendo.

But why are we missing life? Why are we aging and not maturing? Somewhere something has gone wrong, somewhere you have been put on the wrong track – somewhere you have agreed to be put on the wrong track. That agreement has to be broken; that contract has to be burned. That’s what I call sannyas: an understanding that up to now I have lived in a wrong way – I have compromised, not lived, really.

When you were small children you compromised. You sold your being. For nothing.

What you have gained is simply nothing, just rubbish. For small things you have lost your soul. You have agreed to be somebody else other than yourself; that is where you missed your path. The mother wanted you to become somebody, the father wanted you to become somebody, the society wanted you to become somebody; and you agreed. By and by you decided not to be yourself. And since then you have been pretending to be somebody else.

You cannot mature because – that somebody else cannot mature. It is false. If I wear a mask, the mask cannot mature. It is dead. My face can mature, but not my mask. And only your mask goes on aging. Behind the mask, hiding, you are not growing. You can grow only if you accept yourself – that you are going to be yourself, nobody else.

The rosebush has agreed to become an elephant; the elephant has agreed to become a rosebush. The eagle is worried, almost consulting a psychiatrist, because she wants to become the dog; and the dog is hospitalized because he wants to fly like an eagle. This is what has happened to humanity. The greatest calamity is to agree to be somebody else: you can never mature.

You can never mature like somebody else. You can only mature like you. The “shoulds” have to be dropped, and you have to drop too much concern about what people say. What is their opinion? Who are they? You are here to be yourself. You are not here to fulfill somebody else’s expectations; and everybody is trying that. The father may be dead, and you are trying to fulfill a promise you have given to him. And he was trying to fulfill a promise to his own father, and so on and so forth. The foolishness goes to the very beginning.

Try to understand, and take courage – and take your life in your own hands. Suddenly you will see an upsurge of energy. The moment you decide, “I am going to be myself and nobody else. Whatsoever the cost, but I am going to be myself,” that very moment you will see a great change. You will feel vital. You will feel energy streaming in you, pulsating.

Unless that happens, you will be afraid of old age, because how can you avoid seeing the fact that you are wasting time and not living and old age is coming and then you will not be able to live? How can you avoid seeing the fact that death is waiting there and every day it comes closer and closer and closer, and you have not lived yet? You are bound to be in deep anguish.

So if you ask what to do, I will suggest the basic thing. And it is always a question of basics. Never be bothered by secondary things, because you can change them, but nothing will change. Change the basics.

For example, what is secondary. “Why am I always afraid of being old? Show the way how I can get rid of it.” The very question is out of fear. You want to “get rid of it,” not to understand, so of course you are going to become a victim of somebody or some ideology which can help you to get rid of it. I cannot help you to get rid of it. In fact that is the problem. I would like you to understand and change your life. It is not a question of getting rid of the problem; it is a question of getting rid of your mask, of your false persona – the way you have been trying to be and which is not a true way. You are not authentic. You are not sincere towards yourself; you have been betraying your being.

So if you ask – there are priests and philosophers and demagogues – if you go and ask them how to get rid of it, they will say, “The soul never ages. Don’t be worried. Just remember that you are the soul. It is the body; you are not the body.” They have consoled you. Maybe for a moment you feel good, but this is not going to help, this is not going to change you. Again tomorrow, out of the influence of the priest, you will be in the same boat.

And the beauty is that you never look at the priest: he himself is afraid. You never look at the philosopher: he himself is afraid.

I have heard: The new vicar had been overworking and examination revealed that his lungs were gravely affected. The doctor told him that a long rest was absolutely essential. The vicar protested and said he could not possibly afford to leave his work.

“Well,” said the doctor, “you have the choice of Switzerland or heaven.”

The vicar walked the room for some time and then said, “You win, Switzerland it is.”

When it is a question of life and death, even the priest, the philosopher, people you go to ask – they have also not lived. More possibility is there that they have not lived even as much as you have lived; otherwise they could not be priests. To become a priest they have completely denied their life. To become monks, sadhus, mahatmas, they have completely denied their being and they have accepted whatsoever the society wanted them to be. They have agreed totally to it. They have disagreed with themselves, their own life energy, and they have agreed with false, foolish things – appreciation, respectability.

And you go and ask them. They are themselves trembling. Deep down they are themselves afraid. They and their disciples are all in the same boat.

I have heard: The Pope lay gravely ill in the Vatican, and a message was issued that a special announcement would be made by the Cardinal from the balcony of St. Peter’s.

When the day came, the famous square was packed with the faithful. The aged Cardinal spoke in quavering tones, “His Holiness can only be saved by a heart transplant, and I am appealing to all you good Catholics gathered here today for a donor.”

He held up a feather and continued, “I shall drop this feather among you, and on whomsoever it falls, that person is the one chosen by Holy Providence to save the Holy Father’s life.”

With that he dropped the feather… and all that could be heard were twenty thousand devout Roman Catholics gently puffing.

Everybody is afraid. If the Holy Father wants to survive, why should these poor Catholics become donors?

I am not going to give you any consolation. I am not going to say to you, “The soul is eternal. Don’t be worried, you never die. Only the body dies.” I know that is true, but that truth one has to earn the hard way. You cannot learn, by somebody else’s assertion and statement about it. It is not a statement; it is an experience. I know it is so, but it is absolutely meaningless for you. You have not known what life is. How can you know what eternity is? You have not been able even to live in time. How can you be able to live in eternity?

One becomes aware of the deathless when one has become capable of accepting death.

Through the door of death, the deathless reveals itself. Death is a way of the deathless to reveal itself to you… but in fear you close your eyes and you become unconscious.

No, I am not going to give you a method, a theory to get rid of it. It is symptomatic. It is good that it goes on indicating to you that you are living a false life. That’s why the fear is there. Just take the hint, and don’t try to change the symptom; rather try to change the basic cause.

From the very beginning every child has been misinformed, and misinformed, has been misdirected, misguided. Not knowingly, because the parents are also in the same trap; they have been misguided. For example, if a child is too energetic, the family feels uncomfortable, because a too energetic child is a revolution in the home. Nothing is safe, nothing at all is safe. The energetic child will destroy everything. He has to be stopped.

His energy has to be blocked, his life has to be diminished. He has to be condemned, punished, and only rewarded when he behaves. And what do you expect? You expect him to be almost an old man – not doing any harm to anything that you think is very precious. Just to save a clock you destroy the child. Or to save your crockery you destroy the child. Or to save your furniture; otherwise it will be scratched from this end to that.

You destroy a newly arrived being, a gift from God. You go on scratching the being of the child just to save the furniture from being scratched.

By and by, the child is forced to follow you because he is helpless. He depends on you; his survival depends on you. Just to survive, he accepts to be dead. Just to survive, because you give him food and milk and care. Where will he go if you are so much against him? By and by he goes on selling his being to you. Whatsoever you say, by and by, he accepts. Your rewards and your punishments are the way you misguide him.

By and by he trusts you more than his own inner voice because he knows his inner voice always leads him into trouble. His inner voice has always proved to bring punishment, so punishment and his inner voice become associated. And whenever he does not listen to the inner voice and simply follows you blindly, he is rewarded. Whenever he is himself he is punished; whenever he is not himself he is rewarded. The logic is clear.

By and by you distract him from his own life. By and by he forgets what his inner voice is. If you don’t hear it for a long time, you cannot hear it.

Close your eyes any moment: you will hear the voice of your father, your mother, your peers, teachers, and you will never hear your voice. Many people come to me and they say, “You talk about the inner voice; we never hear it.” There is a crowd. When Jesus says, “Hate your father and mother,” he is not actually saying to hate your father and mother. He is saying hate the father and the mother which have become consciences within you. Hate, because that is the most ugly agreement you have made – a suicidal contract. Hate, destroy those voices, so that your voice can be freed and liberated, so that you can feel who you are and what you want to be.

In the beginning, of course, you will feel completely lost. That’s what happens in meditation. Many people go to Osho and they say, “We had come to find a path. On the contrary, meditations have made it feel completely lost.” It’s a good indication. It shows that the grip of others is loosening. That’s why you feel lost, because those voices of the others were giving you guidance, and you had started to believe in them. You have believed in them for so long that they have become your guides. Now, when you meditate, those voices are destructured. You are freed from the trap. Again you become a child, and you don’t know where to go. Because all the guides have disappeared. The voice of the father is not there, the voice of the mother is not there, the teacher is not there, the school is not there; suddenly you are alone. One starts feeling scared – “Where are my guides? Where are people who are always leading me to the right path?”